We spend upwards of $600 billion annually on our military, and yet we do a subpar job in protecting our business and political interests from the Chinese, Russians, and others robbing us blind, hacking our elections, stealing the plans from weapons systems and federal government personnel files, etc.

The problem is structural.  No entity is accountable for our cyber arena threat matrix- both offensive and defensive capabilities.  There’s the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, Pentagon, Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, NSA, and the list goes on.

Whose fault was RussiaGate?  Whose job is it to respond?  WE ARE AT WAR.  We should be going on the offensive.  And the future isn’t tanks, and jets, and carriers, and missiles.  We already dominate those categories, and we are still left unprotected and vulnerable.  We can’t even run a clean election or a free and truthful press, those most basic tenets of democracy.

The United States must create, ASAP, a new military branch on par with the Army, Navy, and Air Force called the United States Cyber Force.  It’s not just land, air, and sea anymore. It must have cutting-edge technical and personnel resources to show overwhelming AND disproportionate force if any nation or terrorist group or criminal organization ever decides to attack America’s cyber infrastructure.

I’m writing a novel about this.  But this is more important than that.  It’s about patriotism, and it’s not partisan at all.  We need to make it reality. Today.  The clock is ticking, and no less than our democracy is at stake.

Mahanth S. Joishy is Editor of usindiamonitor