“America needs a network that can project power by building an af.mil robot network (botnet) that can direct such massive amounts of traffic to target computers that they can no longer communicate and become no more useful to our adversaries than hunks of metal and plastic,” says Col. Charles W. Williamson III, judge advocate, Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Agency.

Proposals he cites include:

Mount botnet code on the Air Force’s high-speed intrusion-detection systems. Defensively, that allows a quick response by directly linking our counterattack to the system that detects an incoming attack.

Recycle obsolete computers, removing the power-hungry and heat-inducing hard drives, and replacing them with low-power flash drives (individual machines need not be cutting-edge because the network as a whole can create massive power).