Keith Alexander has just been appointed chief of Cyber Command. Doesn’t that sound awesome? That sounds 80’s cartoon awesome. Like he has a robot that turns into a tiger, or something. And the tiger has a sword, and it’s, like, taller than most buildings, and it fights interdimensional evil. From space.

Sadly, the truth is about a tenth as rad. Keith Alexander (not to be confused with Alexander Keith, the beer) is a US military general, and Cyber Command is a new branch of the Pentagon dedicated to waging war in cyberspace. Apparently, that’s a big thing. Also, apparently the Pentagon named this branch three decades ago. Cyber Command? Really?

‘[The Pentagon is targeted by] hundreds of thousands of probes every day,’ Alexander said at his confirmation last month, adding that he was alarmed by the increase in attempted attacks in the last year.

While Cyber Command has everyone worried about the potential militarization of the internet, let’s just remember that digital warfare is nothing new – I myself am only a little apprehensive because affairs tend to go from bad to badder when you get America waving its military at things. However, the Pentagon assures us that Cyber Command will ‘direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and prepare to, when directed, conduct full-spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, [to] ensure US allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries.’ What a mouthful, Pentagon.

I wish this were an 80’s cartoon.

[Via The Observer]