Top 10 missed foreign policy stories [Updated]

ForeignPolicy.com has a list of the top 10 foreign policy stories you may have missed (if you're not a foreign policy nut like some of us.)

Number 1? The beginning of the cyberwars:

The year 2007 will be remembered as the beginning of the cyberwars. In late April, Western experts were caught off guard when a barrage of cyberattacks emanating from Russia crippled the banking, police, and government offices of Estonia. Many called it the world's first full-scale cyberinvasion. Then in June, Pentagon officials accused the Chinese military of hacking into a computer network used by top aides to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Near the end of the year, Britain's MI5 intelligence service sent a confidential letter to the CEOs of major multinationals warning them that the Chinese army was probing the cyberdefenses of their companies.

This emerging threat may explain why in September the U.S. Air Force quietly decided to form a Cyberspace Command. The new Cyberspace Command, due to become fully operational by October 2009, will be charged with helping to guard against such threats.

Frankly, I'm surprised it's taken this long for the US Military to form a command centre to take care of cyber-threats. So far, such defense had lain in the hands of intelligence gathering agencies like the NSA or CIA, that, while they have expertise in security issues, don't have the resources needed for full on network and computer infrastructure maintenance and defence. They're intelligence gathering services, after all, not defence agencies.

The questions that comes up is: will the Air Force seek to recruit some of the best qualified people to work as these cyberwarriors? I ask this because some of the best people are former black-hat hackers (black-hat refers to malicious hackers) that have turned their knowledge of systems penetration tactics into a skill set in the securities consulting business. Somehow, I think the Air Force would find that pill a little hard to swallow with their attitude tests and psychological profiling.

Update: I forgot the link to the ForeignPolicy.com article. It's now been added. Way to forget the basic premise, Ed.