The US Airforce must stand down in cyber space before it is too late.

I know that the military mind thinks differently than the civilian.  I even understand how the total acceptance of authority  has to be inculcated in the soldier leading to sometimes blind thinking.  I am afraid that this author of the most bizarre call to arms ever has really missed the mark. Writing in the Armed Forces Journal, Colonel Charles W. Williamson III calls for the Airforce to create an offensive Distributed Denial of Service attack (ODDoS) capability.   This is so off base it is scary. It demonstrates a sophomoric understanding of the threat, the attack mechanisms, jurisprudence, and fundamentally what the Internet is. 

A quote from "Carpet bombing in cyberspace. Why America needs a military botnet"

 America needs a network that can project power by building an af.mil robot network (botnet) that can direct such massive amounts of traffic to target computers that they can no longer communicate and become no more useful to our adversaries than hunks of metal and plastic. America needs the ability to carpet bomb in cyberspace to create the deterrent we lack.

Let me spell it out for those in the US military and those in the US Congress and Executive branch whose job it is to reign in the Military when they go nuts: The Internet is the highest evolution of shared commons that human society has created.  The fact that it works at all is thanks to the trustworthy behavior of the majority of its users. The spammers, phishers, scam artists, and bot herders that abuse it are a noisome rabble that are containable with a little investment.  Despite its early progenitors ARPAnet and the NSF the Internet is in no way under the jurisdiction of the US Government.   

Using retaliatory measures on the Internet will violate the sanctity of a great human institution.  Attacking individual targets with the proposed AF.MIL botnet will be tantamount to carpet bombing cities to root out petty criminals.  The collateral damage will be worse than the original attack.

An article that draws on historical metaphor from Troy to World War II Belgium deserves as studied a response as the author put in to creating what amounts to a manifesto.   In subsequent postings I will spell out why:

1.       You do not need an AF.MIL botnet to counter the threat from DDoS attacks.
2.       The proposed AF.MIL botnet is flawed in every way. It will not work.
3.       Arming in cyber space will not create any sort of deterrent.
4.       Unleashing a military Distributed Denial of Service attack against botnets is just stupid.
5.       Unlike the first atom bomb that did not set the upper atmosphere on fire, a huge DDoS offense could burn the Internet down.
6.       Metaphors are dangerous things.  Walls and castles and trebuchets were designed for killing and defending.  That is a lot different than protecting a web server from going down.
7.       The military, maybe even the Airforce does have a viable mission in cyber space.

8.       With the rush to a new arms race in cyber space it may be time to convene a group of countries to form a self imposed non-proliferation treaty.

As I have written before . This idea that the military should develop offensive cyber capability is insane, wrong, and dangerous.  The military is effectively admitting that they doubt their own ability to defend themselves against the simplest types of attacks.   Until they get the defensive side figured out I suggest they stay away from the idea of developing cyber weapons.