If they had used this capability strictly to collect intelligence information, and refrained from blabbing about it, who knows what they might ultimately have discovered (names, locations, program status). But since the man-child never had any intention of using overt force, it was more politically expedient to score a temporary “victory” with STUXNET, rather than collecting targeting data for later on.
Exactly. This story should have appeared in the New York Times in about 50 years from now, like the stories of Blechley Park and the German Enigma code did after World War II.
In World War II, there were actually attacks that could have been stopped and weren’t because the Allied Commanders thought it would be too obvious to the Germans that the Enigma Code had been broken. When adults were in charge, lives were sacrificed because they knew that more lives would be saved in the long run if the secret was kept. Today, the work of many dedicated computer scientists has been wasted, because the Obama administration thought this might give them a temporary bump in the polls.