[mtgx]

I don't know why they (Obama and his advisers) ever thought that was a good idea. Whoever was planning to hack US never took that seriously anyway, and now that they've seen they won't actually do it, they can take them even less seriously.

I guess they couldn't just say "you hack us, we hack you back". Or more realistically: "We hack you first in secret. Then you hack us back in secret. And then we have an excuse to go public to get the public's support to hack you back, and get more funding and bills passed for whatever other secret operations we want to do next". Case in point: Iran.