It didn’t get a mention in the State of the Union, but the Wall Street Journal reports on an important initiative that will be contained in President Bush’s forthcoming budget: “an estimated $6 billion to build a secretive system protecting U.S. communication networks from attacks by terrorists, spies and hackers.”

The Journal writes that this proposal is stirring “controversy,” because civil libertarians object to the idea of the government monitoring computer networks. It’s stances like this that give self-proclaimed civil libertarians a bad name. How can the government avoid monitoring computer networks to some extent if it is going to protect them? That’s like saying that police forces shouldn’t monitor what occurs in the streets. Of course that is pretty much the position that some civil liberties groups take, but that’s a subject for another day.

At the moment the possibility that America’s enemies might hack into and damage, destroy, or spoof our computer and communications networks represents one of our biggest strategic vulnerabilities. We’re building a missile defense program to protect against ballistic missile attack. We need to build a system to defend against cyberattack which, while not as devastating as a nuclear missile strike, could nevertheless be extremely damaging given the extent to which every facet of our national life is reliant on computers. And unlike missile attacks the danger of cyberattacks is not theoretical: they already occur tens of thousands of times a year and cause varying degrees of damage, most of which remain secret, because no one wants to release information that will encourage more hacking.

Kudos to the administration for recognizing the danger. I only hope that Congress comes through with the needed funding: $6 billion is just the down payment on an estimated $30 billion program. If it keeps our cyberinfrastructure intact, it will be money well spent.