The supreme irony of the Cartwright case is that the man who’d helped propel the federal government into shaping a sophisticated approach to dealing with the world’s most complex weapon was among the first victims of the paranoia about discussing that approach. The government could have responded to the disclosures about Olympic Games by embracing the revelations and reminding adversaries—Iran, Russia, and North Korea among them—that the United States could do far worse to them. It could have explained why cyber was critical to avoiding a shooting war in the Middle East. It could have used the
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