In The Name Of The Internet

As I was meandering through Wikipedia I stumbled across the article about attacks on the root servers of the internet. The DNS backbone servers have been attacked several times, one of those times suspected South Korean hackers managed to take down one or two of the thirteen servers.

Now, the internet is designed to survive even these servers falling apart but it sure as hell spooked everyone.

So, the Department of Defense has said that it is prepared to physically destroy targets which are responsible for causing damage to the internet.

This doesn't mean much right now. But what about ten years down the line when everything is controlled by the internet and hackers may try their own crippling attack a'la Die Hard 4? The US military will be required to hit targets quickly, and these are likely to be houses in the middle of cities.

We seem to be moving from regional and localised wars into conflicts in which the target could be a house in Moscow or Tokyo. What are the politics of taking out a hacker with a JDAM? Given the time sensitivity of attacks there may not be an oppurtunity to use ground forces, targets may have to be prosecuted with cruise missiles.

I haven't really read much on this and I think its an interesting discussion to get into.