Wednesday, April 8, 2009

From the Morning Desk - China

It was stated that over the past six months, the Pentagon spent at least $100 million dollars securing their networks from cyber attacks. Some of these attacks came from other countries… namely China and Russia. You know, our good friends.

In the old days we ran propaganda videos showing American school children hiding under their desks, neighbors turning on each other and what life would be like if the Soviets ran America. And for the most part, it worked.

What’s changed? Well, the difference is that we weren’t all connected electronically back then. Just today, it was discovered that the US electrical grid was exposed to hackers. That’s right; it’s our good friends the communist Chinese, again.

We need to start a campaign. A campaign that’s appropriate for this age.

"National Security Begins With You"

My NSBWY campaign would focus on small networks and home computers. For national security, Microsoft and Apple would be allowed to include free virus and malware scanners in their operating system, much to the chagrin of Symantec. I would run advertisements on the Internet, on radio, in newspapers and on TV about doing your part to help fight the electronic war on the United States.

Having an unprotected PC on the Internet would become as reckless as drunk driving. You will be shunned from your family, friends and it will put your job in jeopardy. Eventually, I hope my campaign will become part of the social fabric of America. I’d like router device companies like Cisco and Juniper to do their part and block Chinese and Russian IP addresses outright. It’s not like we need to talk to anybody there anyway. Ideally, we could have Google start re-routing Chinese and Russian websites to a US government website indicating the dangers of visiting foreign domains. Hopefully, by this time we will have built two separate Internets. The clean American one and the virus-infected, hackable, malware-ridden one. It will be glorious! And at last, safe.

Electronically, at least.

Folks, this is Johnny Newsmaker signing off. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming… "Ping Pong 24 hour Tournament" only on Ranting-TV…