Has anyone written up the l33t hax0r implications of the Petraeus Report? I've been patiently waiting for someone take up the gauntlet ever since the general included this line in his prepared statement before congress:

Finally, in recognition of the fact that this war is not only being fought on the ground in Iraq but also in cyberspace, [my recommendations to the Join Chiefs note] the need to contest the enemy’s growing use of that important medium to spread extremism.

I first heard this on the radio, and it seemed a little weird to me. Not because I doubt the existence of insurgent-run websites filled with flash video of roadside bombs, LOLcatted stills from A Mighty Heart and comment threads filled with "INSURGENCY FTW!!", "ANBAR SUX0Rz" and unflattering analogizing of Sunni Islam to the Playstation 3. I'm sure those sites are out there. I can even believe that they serve a significant recruiting function for people who do genuinely bad, genuinely non-virtual things.

But it was a bit odd to hear a military commander say that, in addition to the attention we're paying to people getting shot and blown up, we also need to spend more time dicking around on the internet, presumably countering the nasty internet trouble made by our enemies. For one thing, suppressing online content does not have a particularly storied history. Given that, it seems like the intelligence value of these sites would probably outweigh the utility to be gained by shutting them down. DMCAing the Mahdi Army's MySpace page would just shut down a marginal source of propaganda. Why bother? It'd be far better to just quietly keep an eye on their top 8 (who is this shady "CamGirl69" character, anyway?).

For another thing, I have a hard time believing that the issue requires more attention. As far as I can tell there's no shortage of government funds for boondoggles aimed at preventing Kim Jong-Il from interfering with Americans' Facebook feeds. I trust that there are already people paying close attention to these issues.

But who knows? The internet refuses to tell me anything, so I'm left to wonder why General Petraeus thought that cyber-warfare deserved relatively prominent billing. You've failed me yet again, mainstream media! Was there some analysis of this initiative that I missed, or did the entire punditocracy inexplicably decide that there were more important aspects of Petraeuspalooza for them to attend to?