I suppose there was nothing overtly biased or overly offensive that went down on Sunday night’s episode of Madam Secretary. Unless, you actually have a normal and good understanding for what real tough-talk and inspirational military speech-making is.
In that case, you were greatly offended.
While the President, Madam Secretary, and the rest of this hypothetically silly Administration sit down to hear the military alternatives that lay before them and they consider how to respond to Russia’s cyber-hijacking of Air Force 1, our fearless General details the litany of responses available to the President:
General: My team at Cybercom has come up with three possible retaliatory strikes against the Russian Federation, which we've designated Phases X, Y and Z. X is our least aggressive option. We target the Ostrov administration itself, initiating DNS attacks against government Web sites. Phase Y: We expand that attack to military infrastructure. Deactivate satellites and interrupt communications networks. That alone should give them serious thoughts about attacking our interests in Ukraine.
President: And Phase Z?
General: The kitchen sink. We do all of the above, plus, we hit the Moscow power grid. Give 'em a night they'll never forget.
President: Oliver, how prepared are we to withstand a counterattack?
Oliver: Sensitive networks have all been upgraded. We're as ready as can be.
President: Good. Because I want to make the Kremlin go dark
Seriously? We’re doing this? We’re tough-talking malignant algorithms and malware? Granted, had the General threatened to infect Russian computers with a virus that only allowed Kardashian news, I would be 100% for that. Because I know such a thing would instantly bring any nation to their knees.
But, for the most part this nerdy tough-talk is incredibly lame. Maybe I saw Braveheart and The Dirty Dozen too many times. But when I hear a military leader annunciating his plan to destroy the enemy, I believe it should sound something like this:
