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Comment by stretchwithme | Hacker News Reader

If we are being attacked electronically, it makes sense to be able to defend ourselves.

An Internet 'kill switch' is akin to a 'slash and burn' tactic. e.g. 'They' are using our road system to attack us, so we mine our road system. In the end, nobody wins. Even if we defeat 'them' we have to pick up the pieces that we left ourselves.

Actually, this is an excellent analogy. Nobody would believe that mining the Interstate highway system in case enemies used it to invade would be a good idea. But put the word "computer" next to anything else and most people's brains just switch off.

I think that the main reason they are trying to do this is that so many government networks and even utilities are hooking up to the Internet, so they want to be able to shut out 'invaders' if there is a bad attack happening.

The problem with this is that maybe those networks/utilities SHOULDN'T BE ON THE PUBLIC INTERNET. If the military or other government agencies can't defend themselves appropriately, then maybe they should invest in rolling out a completely separate network just for US government purposes. Hell, they did it once (i.e APRANet).

Good point! These morons always say, "But a hacker could destroy our electrical power grid!" and I always wonder why is the power grid accessible on the Internet? What idiot thought that was a good idea, and can't we fire him or her and take the grid back off the Internet? Like, today?

I don't think their talking about destroying the Internet. Come on.

Hmmm things would have to pretty dire to need to do this, can you imagine the financial repercussions for thousands upon thousands of business if they were irrecoverably disconnected from their servers & clients for a unknown period?

The fallout would be huge!

Re-posting my comment from above:

Agreed, not to mention that the real bread and butter of our nations military and intelligence networks are completely separate from what we know as the internet. There is a huge difference between taking, say, whitehouse.gov or army.mil down verse our real command and control networks--which are probably next to impossible to take down considering there are layers upon layers of backup communication systems.

The idea of a "cyber-attack" being used as a first salvo in an act of war against the United States by any nation-state is pretty ludicrous, as it would minimally (if at all) affect our ability to destroy whoever was dumb enough to try it.

By attacking ourselves even more.

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