[michaelt]

  Hasn't "a great offense is always the best defense"
  always been the name of the game?

An air offence against an airfield can put a billion dollars worth of planes out of operation permanently.

There's no cyberattack equivalent of that - it's not like bricking a few $1000 PCs would disable foreign cyberattack capabilities.

[jblow]

Only a billion? This is the USA in 2015 we are talking about. A single F-35C costs a third of a billion dollars. So you are talking about 3 planes.