host: daniel gallington is our guest.is former deputy assistant secretary of defense for territorial security and now a senior research fellow for the potomac institute. he's here to talk about the front page story in "the wall street journal" yesterday. what does the pentagon say here. guest: i think it is a preliminary document. i have mixed feelings about that. put a paper that tries to cyber in traditional law of armed conflict perspective. whether it is necessary, whether it is a good idea to do that, i'm sure we will talk about that. basically, that's what it is. i'm happy they're doing it. i'm happy they have done it. i'm a little surprised we have not done it before. i'm a little bit surprised we have not done it long before. should we be thinking about this kind of things? absolutely. are there big issues that are not addressed in what was talked about in "the wall street journal"? absolutely. i'm sure we will talk about some of those today. host: i want to read one paragraph of "the wall street journal." "if a c

host: daniel gallington? guest: let me respond. first of all, the quote from " the post" sort of addresses this. we've always had a recognition of the difference between intelligence activities and operations in this country. those are activities and operations which are designed to find out things, as opposed to military operations and things, which are designed to address traditional -- more traditional military threats. i think the quote you read from "the washington post" says that in so many words. in cyber warfare, we have both of those things. we have the need to find out. we have legitimate intelligence activities that we need to carry on to find out. we also have -- we will have or may have situations where we need to take action. essentially, that's what that quote said. i think that's really what the caller is talking about. i should assure the caller, however, that intelligence operations are not done simply because we want to do them or we like to do them. you have to have authority and you have to have a reason to con