The most powerful Internet weapon on the planet is hiding in plain sight, and no one can do anything about it. At least not yet, or not that anyone is talking about. The weapon in question is the Storm botnet. This is the largest botnet ever seen, and it is acting like something out of a science fiction story. The Storm network is now believed capable to shutting down any military or commercial site on the planet. Or, Storm could cripple hundreds of related sites temporarily. Or, Storm could do some major damage in ways that have not yet been experienced. There's never been anything quite like Storm.
This was done by hijacking personal computers. By somebody. Probably criminals. But who knows?
But why can't our government recruit bots from willing Americans to be ready to wage our own cyber war? Remember how you could enlist your computer to harness distributed computing power to help analyze SETI data with the SETI-AT-home project?
The Storm botnet has 5-10 million zombies? How many Americans would enlist their own PCs during peacetime in a silicon militia to help our government wage a cyber war? Tens of millions? A hundred million? Would other Westerners contribute? Could we give companies a tax credit to participate?
It's been a long time since tilling victory gardens or donating cooking pots for their metal content were real contributions to a war effort. Why not update the contributions that ordinary Americans can make to fighting our wars?
That kind of voluntary computing power would make the Storm botnet look like a spring shower.
