Come on out, slant. I know you're in there!

Colonel Charlie Williamson of the United States Air Force has gone on record for BBC Radio 4 to announce that, in his opinion, the US should be taking less of a back seat in the arena of cyber warfare and sticking more of a digital boot in against the likes of China.

His comments come in the wake of numerous reports of a step up in activity against US information networks, much of which appears to have originated from China.

Proposing the creation of an offensive botnet that would seek out weaknesses in foreign network interests and wreak havoc in revenge for future snooping on US systems, Williamson has also suggested that such a botnet be made public knowledge on the assumption that this would strike fear into the hearts of would-be attackers.

What strikes The Top banana as most terrifying is that such a senior figure in the US military would assume his government was not, in all likelihood, more than aware of the problem and presumably already in active development of such a system. Also, might we suggest that such ethically grey areas need not be made “public”, as one would assume the intended targets would have a good idea of where any such attack came from without having to tune in to Eddie Mayer at 9am to find out.

Going on to suggest that home users who failed to update their security software regularly could be legitimate targets, the good Colonel added “It may, in the right circumstance, be worthwhile and even fair for the US to hit a computer that is hitting us and stop it from harming us for an hour or days when that computer owner failed to take basic steps to protect us“.

Now, call me picky, but when I installed Zone Alarm at home the other week I did so with the intention of protecting my own arse and not that of the US military. The Top Banana might suggest Williams plug the security gap in his own cyber-spouting cakehole before he drops his employer in a deep ditch of digital doo-doo.