Sure, this was a good idea in response to Iran's shoot-down of our drone in international airspace:
The future of warfare is now and the Pentagon knows it. How Iran responds will determine if greater cyber attacks might be employed. This was the right attack, it is the right threat to emphasize, and it is the dawn of a new kind of war that will shape the course of international relations.
Well, except that when a cyber attack is really effective, a target might just bomb in retaliation--as the Israelis did.
Of course, this is similar to the issue of economic warfare being effective--a target might decide that kinetics are little different than the pain from enduring economic warfare and respond with their own traditional military (including terrorism) means.
But we aren't likely to make that call because I think the status quo of non-kinetic pressure on Iran is working:
Yeah, the more I think about it, rather than hit Iran with our military I think we should exploit the Iranian attack to seriously increase the economic pressure on Iran. ...
We have a firm grip on Iran's throat and for now that is working just fine. So Iran has an interest in changing that, not us.
War will always mean death and destruction at some level depending on the stakes. Thinking we have new ways to avoid death and destruction is folly.
But I'm certainly grateful that our non-war options are--for now--the best option for opposing Iran.
