Meet the Spy Chief Leading Us Into Cyberwar

Do any of the representatives passing these inflated budgets have any idea what their five billion dollars is buying? I have to imagine that all of our elected officials hear about our &quot;cybertroops&quot; supplying &quot;cyber-fire support&quot; enacting &quot;cyber-kinetic attacks&quot; and they might as well be hearing about stealth bombers without knowing what radar, explosions, or airplanes are.<p>Are there some kind of Congressional training sessions where basic information about computers is disseminated and explained, or is it all really just a bunch of hand-waving for all the individuals involved? I assume the latter, but I&#x27;d love to be pleasantly surprised.

I love the Threat Level articles that Wired produces, but if I see the word &quot;cyber&quot; one more time, I am going to go nuts.

I just don&#x27;t understand how the NSA can even have the technical capacity to store all of this data. If their total operating budget is a few billion dollars, that doesn&#x27;t even really come close to buying enough disk to store what some claim they are storing (all network traffic, social data, images, emails, voice, etc).

He probably has so much dirt on the politicians that they have to do his bidding.

I had this strange thought occur half way through the article.<p>The US government is storing, analysing and recording all internal electronic transmissions so that US civilians can be protected from external aggressors. Doesn&#x27;t that then provide a hypothetical aggressor a simplified target. If they can access these data hubs then havent they hit the motherload?<p>I wonder how secure the governments facilities are in retrospect.<p>Furthermore, doesn&#x27;t this make the task of detecting or hunting non-state aggressors that much harder now that they know all electronic transmissions are recorded (and thus forcing them into an electronic darkness where they can&#x27;t be spied upon).<p>I think PRISM and all these internal external spying facilities are inevitable but the ramifications of their public knowledge are going to be interesting.<p>Edit: Im also surprised by the complete lack of interest by the general US population. Maybe because HN readers are educated and technical they understand the implications but you would think there would be some kind of public uproar over this, especially considering the myths that Americans are brought up upon (freedom from tyranny etc.)

Fear mongering at its best. &quot;Cyber-kinetic attacks&quot;, give me a break

I think it&#x27;s every bit as likely that the NSA will be responsible for instigating and elevating (arms race) the very cyber war they claim the private sector won&#x27;t be able to defend itself against (eg Stuxnet, and I&#x27;d hate to know what they&#x27;ve been up to since). Self-fulfilling prophecy.