Andrew Malcolm has an interesting new piece out, describing the curious reassurance to the public that the latest Wikileaks revelations about CIA hacking capacities give. Yes, reassuring.

Which, if the Russians were behind it, would accomplish exactly the opposite of their 'sow uncertainty' meme that seems to be the working thesis of their intentions held by the U.S. intelligence agencies.

Malcolm finds it actually reassuring because it actually shows they know how to do something. As he put it:

The unauthorized release of 676 once-secret alleged source codes, if true, will no doubt disturb some — perhaps many — at the Central Intelligence Agency. Some of us have difficulty tracking our own eight-character passwords. And we’ve wondered about all the government’s public hand-wringing about foreign hackers getting into everything in recent times, instead of — here’s an idea! — actually doing something to stop it and deliver payback.

So, thanks to WikiLeaks, it’s really rather comforting to discover now that our spooks can play the electronic hide-and-seek game right up there with major league bad guys. Yay, team!

Not a bad analysis. I'd add my own just for the fun of it. There have been many many news stories saying that the U.S. intelligence agencies are unable to hire the hackers they need, due to so many of them being daily pot smokers and drug-addled programmers. This is the legend the mainstream media has been promoting for about a decade, and it's nothing but a disguised call for a breakdown in hiring standards to include any old doobie-addled computer geek of uncertain moral and legal standards. Sounds downright Sorosian.

In reality, the Wikileaks show that there are people on payroll who are very very good and who can give Internet invaders and interlopers of the state player variety as good as they get. It kind of open the door to some interesting future spy action movies.

If they can quit hiring the people who leak to Wikileaks, it should be a good thing. Cyberwarfare-wise, we are armed.