US: Cyber-attack is 'Act of War'

"...leading to potential military retaliation." Against whom? Would this retaliation be as large a success as the US retaliation against the Taliban or al-Qaeda?

WarGames, an American film from 1983, comes to mind.

Send in the troops, smart bomb the selected targets, die spammer die!

If only it were that simple.

I wonder if this implies there has been a shift then in the US's stance on us taking the cyber offensive?

Well that should eliminate the controversy over extraditing back bedroom social misfit hackers - just take blow away the whole bedroom/block/city.

A cyber-war involving the US is just as "asymmetrical" as a conventional war, except we're far more vulnerable to damage if not loss of life from a computer attack versus a conventional one.

I think this policy is just hedging to put the option on the table and to put would-be attackers on notice: if you don't have a wired infrastructure that we can take down in response, no problem, we'll take down whatever infrastructure you've got the old-fashioned way.