Noah Shachtman at Wired’s lede is hard to improve on, so I’ll quote him directly.

The Air Force wants a suite of hacker tools, to give it "access" to -- and "full control" of -- any kind of computer there is.  And once the info warriors are in, the Air Force wants them to keep tabs on their "adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected."

This is why people like me have trouble getting to sleep at night.   The phrase “the military is trying to take over my computer,” is easily dismissed as the rantings of a paranoid delusional conspiracy theorist. It’s another thing when the military says: “We want to take over your computer.”

The program is called “Dominant Cyber Offensive Engagement” and the goal is to – well, in military parlance, the goal is to “Deceive, Deny, Disrupt, Degrade, [or] Destroy” computers deemed by the military to be hostile. 

One of the ways to “degrade” is through military botnets; another goal the armed forces are pushing forward.  Under the theory that the best defense is a good offense, Col. Charles W. Williamson III, (not related to Maj. Charles E. Winchester III, played by David Ogden Stiers for six seasons on M*A*S*H,) wrote in the Armed Forces Journal that “America needs the ability to carpet bomb in Cyberspace.”

It’s not hard to imagine how this could go horribly, horribly wrong for anyone caught in the middle of a “fight” between rival botnets.  Imagine an infected botnet zombie on your network – one whose botmaster, for whatever reason, terrorism, economic disruption, or “teh lulz,” decides to use that computer to attack a computer in the military.  The change from a defensive strategy to a counterattack means that instead of one botnet on your network – you now have two separate botnets.  Furthermore, what’s the likelihood the military botnet will call off the attack if you manage to contain the original botnet?  And of course, with a criminal botnet, you could always kick them off your network without impunity because what they’re doing is illegal.  Interefere with a military botnet and you’re “obstructing the interests of National Security.” 

Either way, both botnets are sending massive amounts of anomalous traffic back and forth – “degrading” performance if it doesn’t just bring the whole enterprise crashing down.

Of course, the military hasn’t been doing that well on cybersecurity defense.  Operation Cisco Raider revealed that over 3,500 counterfeit Cisco network components have been discovered, some of them in military installations. 

I’m going to have to call my doctor and ask him to increase my dose of Ambien.