[prodigycorp]

Ok, so we treat it as an act of war. Now what? Attack North Korea? Great, the entire city of Seoul gets shelled within five minutes of your attack and hundreds of thousands of innocent people die.

It's very easy to play with lives that aren't yours.

[sayamqazi]

You would be surprised how many people naively think "Why doesn't my country just open a war on X country and this Y problem will be solved forever" in their head they think war is just a flurry of bombardments and the other side (not theirs) is just destroyed to rubble and their country will have only minimal losses

[flexagoon]

Many country leaders also clearly think the same

[kqp]

Never retaliating is a great way to get people to attack you. Of course escalating to all-out war provokes the same in response, but there does need to be a proportionate response, because it needs to be stupid to hurt us, not good business. t’s a significant failure of the US government when half the world freely loots US citizens and businesses.

[toraway]

Exactly. This is the "Declare fentanyl a WMD" of solutions to ransomware. Sounds kinda badass as long as you don't spend too long thinking about it but has no practical relevance to actual enforcement challenges.

It's a familiar example of the perennial "[THING] could be solved overnight if [PERSON_OR_GROUP] would just start taking [THING] seriously" trope.