Oh, the whole cyberwar situation is far from "hopeless". The truth is nobody to speak of has taken it seriously yet. Security is still mostly an afterthought, if that, almost everywhere you look. Even in nominally security-focused contexts. And much of the activity in places that really are security focused are built around an environment in which software must be assumed to basically be constructed out of styrofoam and radioactive waste, so they end up looking very restrictive in reaction to this reality.

I'm fairly convinced that if we all really tried we could secure things much better than they are today. The personal tripwire I've been watching for is when it finally becomes simply general knowledge that C is completely unsuitable to write security software in and C++ is pretty damned dangerous. (Many people know this, but a large contingent will still push back on that. Once we get serious about security, one of the things that will have to happen is C is going to have be evicted from its current privileged position.)

Lest I sound utopian, yes, this will require immense effort. My point is precisely that we've never really tried that level of effort yet, not that the effort will be low. There's no real reason that the Internet actually has to be made out of swiss cheese, but it will take a significant change of viewpoint before it will be resolved.