Hackers are a big problem for many countries. The risks are very high when basic necessities are also controlled by computer networks. If someone can get hold of your company network, you lose all your data and, ultimately, business and money. Making networks safe is emerging as one of the several small business opportunities. People are scared and they don't want to take risk. There should be better legislation for this menace.

The escalation of WW2 bombing happened when those countries were at war already. An inappropriate example, because the difficult legal question about cyberwar is not what you can or cannot do when already at war. The questions are: When should cyberwar be escalated? And how to prevent cyberwar from escalating into "old-fashioned" war?

To phrase it more succinctly: Do you want to grant some mid-level military folks the power to start (cyber)war against China -- in retaliation to acts quite possibly committed by some bored Chinese teenager?

Because that is the lesson from the hack of "respected" HBGary. (If they were worthy of respect as security professionals, why were they hacked that easily?) It was apparently done by a bunch of kids. Conjuring up the need for unleashed cyberwar over this is nothing but scaremongering.

The other thing about HBGary: It was probably done by someone domestic. (The hack apparently applied "social engineering" techniques, which are so much more difficult across cultural and lingual boundaries.) Should US military busy itself with persecuting US citizens on US soil?

This is the kind of article I expect to see on one of the headline news networks' websites, not on FP. Mr. Baker is correct, lawyers do not win wars. Nor do they lose them. What they do is serve as a vanguard for the values and ideals that make our nation great, the same values and ideals that make wars worth the sacrifice. Cyberwar is a very real threat to this country because we are behind China and even some of the criminal organization in Eastern Europe when it comes to talent and capacity to operate on the networks, not because we are struggling to carry out cyber operations that fall within the norms of LOAC. Mr. Baker makes numerous conclusory statements then launches into an interesting analogy of air power in WWII. While the comparison to airpower can be helpful, it fails on so many levels that it is more dangerous than useful unless more thoroughly discussed. Of this WWII airpower strategy that Mr. Baker refers, General Curtis Lemay said “There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders.” Is that the mindset we should be looking back to and striving to achieve in our cyber operations? The reality of military history is that the significance of lawful military conduct has an inverse relationship with the stakes of the conflict. When the very survival of a nation is at stake, laws are likely to give way to necessity. Inter arma enim silent leges. But hopefully as we progress as a civilization we realize that we can win armed conflicts without sacrificing basic rights and values on the altar of war. As Justice Jackson so eloquently said, “The judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason.”

As in every field of warfare, balances must be developed between conflicting goals. This article makes it sound on the surface as if the law were primarily a hindrance. I'm sure the devil is in the details--and I'm sure legalism can be excessive. BUT insistence on the law is a good first reflex and a good rule of thumb, often enough: it is not a luxury of the civilized; it is a sophistication of complex decision processes. It enables better security decisions in the long run while preserving other interests as well.

And while we have their attention:
1. Why are we letting lawyers keep us from full-fledged torture of criminals and detainees when it might give us information helpful to national security?
2. When will lawyers realize they have no business telling police officers they shouldn't search cars and houses without a warrant when such searches might help solve crimes?
3. Finally, when will lawyers stop being a pain in the ass of every platoon leader who understands that sometimes it's necessary to decimate the civilian population of an enemy village in order to get that ONE insurgent he knows is hiding among them?

For heaven's sake, can we at least pretend we still have some sort of national moral platform that doesn't buckle every time national security is threatened. If Machiavellian mentality prevailed over the rule of law then the Cold War wouldn't have ended with the fall of the USSR, it would have ended in a nuclear winter.

Also, @ Trueoz, little known fact about Republics in general: it's actually lawMAKERS, not lawyers, that create new laws through legislation. I know, an easy mistake to make, but seeing as how we VOTE for lawmakers and lawyers are just professionals enforcing existing laws some might say it's an important distinction.

We will see a lot more of this type of crime in the coming years. As any seo savvy person knows, there are plenty of places of the internet where you can learn hacking skills for free. In due course, hacking activities will be supported by real physical violence, simply to obtain log in details and other usable information. It seems to me thseslichat at the answer to this problem lays in better technologies - not new laws.