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Comment by themartorana | Hacker News Reader

"...should be the primary duty of our government."

Fixed it?

Although it's interesting to think about. Actual government retaliation would/could be seen as war provocation, especially if China holds on to any plausible deniability. Cyber warfare is currently very hard to prove, but even harder to hold accountable for. Even with DPRK, and our little shut-down-the-"internet" quiet retaliation thing that happened a few months back, North Korea still disavows responsibility. I imagine holding China actually responsible (in the way where it is recognized and acknowledged in the international community) is almost impossible... And thus we would be seen as the aggressors.

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A government doesn't have to react offensive against threats. It's also possible to provide defensive measures. In this specific case it could provide infrastructure, computing resources and personal to fend off the attack.

Actually, that would be interesting...

Passing some sort of funding bill for the defense of US companies against DDoS attacks might be the only immediate option that could be done on a short time frame. Otherwise, it could (potentially) be something like the government holding on to spare capacity in some way/shape/form that it leases to affected companies for a very low rate.

As we move on further into the 21st century, I can't see this as something that's going to go away. We definitely need to plan ahead.

Exactly, that's where these vast NSA's datacenters could make sense and actually do something useful.

I don't think plausible deniability is really present here. Unlike other things where we "know" it was the gov't (if only because who else is going to spend the financial resources for the attack), here it's been pretty well disected that this is happening on the Great Firewall level.

I dont think that is the case. US government has abdicated its primary duties for protecting interests of military- industry complex.

What evidence did US provide before attacking Afghanistan? Surely 9/11 was an aggression but US had no evidence to link it with the state of Afghanistan. After American ass got whooped in Afgan they have returned claiming Taliban are no more as bad as they use to be.

What evidence does US have to carry out random Drone strikes in Pakistan killing random people ?

And let me not even start with Iraq, which did absolutely nothing to offend US but instead was destroyed in the name of WMD that did not exist.

But when it comes to Iran, where US interest might have legitimate threat, where Chinese expansion in South China sea and many other places where US could have used its military muscle the government acts as if they are China's bitch.

The real problem I think is that US government has lost the sight of legitimate national security over spending taxpayers money making their friends rich.

China has no plausible deniability for anything at all, because it is run by a bunch of Communist cheats who censor the internet and violently put down any dissent. Practically any reasonable action taken by the US against China would not properly be seen as a war provocation.

Lots of people (and governments) hate the US and would call it a war provocation... but they wouldn't be right and generally, the opinions of scum don't actually matter and should just be ignored.

There must be obscure rules. The United States government can plausibly deny shutting down DPRK's Internet. ...It was barely plausible that there was a reason to shut it down.

There's numerous people and numerous ways for those people to respond to this attack. Maybe they're getting something ready or maybe they don't care.

his post sounded like he thinks the government ought to be defending instead of attacking

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