MUTUAL ASSURED DIGITAL DESTRUCTION: The Global Commons is a Great Good.

From an interview with former NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis:

TCB: Is there a level of hypocrisy when countries who engage in offensive cyber operations abroad but then condemn it when others do it against them, calling it an infringement on their sovereignty?

Inglis: We need to understand that we live in a bit of a glass house, and therefore, the things we practice could become the norms for others who might practice those things against us. There is a certain symmetry here, which is that what we can do to others, can easily be done to us. There are very low barriers to entry – it doesn’t require extraordinary capabilities to do anything, frankly, in cyberspace. Any feature can be picked up, turned around, and used in the reverse direction. In that sense, the old adage, don’t through stones in a glass house because you live in that house and the impacts will come back to you, is true in cyberspace.

Mutual Assured Destruction was never good policy — it was just a Cold War acknowledgement that both sides could build enough nukes to destroy the other, and that there was no way, with the technology of the time, for either side to defend itself.

Since the barriers to entry are far, far lower in digital warfare than in nuclear warfare, you would think that we would take digital defense much more seriously than we seem to do.