For all the talk of a cyber-war threat, it turns out, Attacks on Pentagon Networks Dropped this year:

In the first six months of 2010, there were about 30,000 such incidents, according to statistics compiled by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Last year, there were more than 71,000. “If the rate of malicious activity from the first half of this year continues through the end of the year,” the commission notes in a draft report on China and the internet, “2010 could be the first year in a decade in which the quantity of logged events declines.”

The figures are in stark contrast to the sky-is-falling talk coming out of the Beltway.

Mike Masnick comments:

Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn, who’s been leading the charge for why the Pentagon should be in charge of cybersecurity, recently claimed that the frequency was increasing exponentially. Except that’s not true, apparently. The NSA, who is the main group within the Defense Department that wants to handle cybersecurity, apparently had its boss specifically (falsely) claim that he was “alarmed by the increase, especially this year.” Of course, there are still plenty of attacks — no one is denying that, but it’s even more evidence that the folks looking to use this to gain more power are clearly exaggerating what’s going on.

If you’ve yet to read the Hersh piece, The Online Threat: Should we be worried about a cyber war?, you should.