I’ve been thinking about Wretchard and helodriver’s concept of putting together a civilian league of Western hackers to go after the Russians (and the Chinese, who need to be hacked down to size, too).

I still think the best way to do it would be to make it a game, a challenge, for top of the mountain hankerdom king. But I’m not sure what would appeal to a bunch of underground wanks who are probably all very very bright and very very immature. And maybe unmanageable. Like herding cats.

Therefore, it seems to me that Plan B would be to turn it into a contest, and a really successful contest is the Burt Rutan / XPrize contest for a civilian spaceship. Maybe hacker levels could be set up so if you could prove you’d brought down GazProm in Siberia you’d win $500,000, while you’d win $10,000 if you could steal all the data from the GUM department store in Moscow. Levels of difficulty like any computer game, with the rewards getting bigger and bigger the higher up you go.

So then the two immediate problems would be funding and that technically it’s probably illegal. If Bill Gates bought the Palestinians several hi-tech Israeli greenhouses to feed themselves which they proceeded to plunder for the copper tubing maybe he’d be up to fund an all-American hacker project.

And if it’s illegal, we can invite Russia to take us to the Hague to adjudicate. If it takes the international court people as long to figure out whether or not it’s illegal as they have to come up with a definition of terrorism, we’re home free.