The media has spent the last few months reporting on "Operation Cisco Raider," a recently declassified effort to bring Chinese military hackers to justice for selling counterfeit Cisco products that have been used to download the U.S. Navy's top secret nuclear submarine program, among other things.

I recently spoke with a highly placed colonel at Air Force Cyberspace Command.  He tells me "the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, and the Secret Service division within the Department of the Treasury" have all banded together to convince Congress to nationalize Cisco.  "The federal government would 'own' Cisco in the same way that states & municipalities 'own' water treatment plants and portions of the U.S. electric power grid," my source said.

"Cisco is a vital public service as far as we're concerned," my source told me.  "It needs to stop being a private company and start being a public asset.  Nationalization is the only logical course of action here."  Cisco CEO John Chambers would be named an Undersecretary of Transportation, which is quite logical when you realize Cisco products are all about transporting packets across the Internet.  Cisco's director of engineering, Mike Fuhrman, will almost certainly report directly to the Department of Transportation's CIO Daniel G. Mintz.

My source assures me that Cyberspace Command has already sent officers into the halls of Congress to get the needed legislation passed.  "We're visiting with senators and congressmen, explaining the need and even cajoling them if necessary," he said.  "It's a matter of life & death.  If they don't nationalize Cisco, U.S. citizens will die.  It's that simple."

So where do I stand on this issue?

On the one hand, I'm against it.  America should not take over an asset of this magnitude in the name of the "public interest" unless it is truly vital to our survival as a nation.  Even the warhawks will admit that if we were cyber-attacked by a hostile nation-state, we have many treaties with many countries that will rush to our aid and fight for us when we're crippled.  And I still think we can trust U.S.-centric companies to do what's right for the United States, even if it means giving up the profits they could make from our enemies.

On the other hand, I'm all for it.  America cannot afford to lose even a single life in a cyber-attack.  It would send exactly the wrong message to terrorists who desperately want to destroy our way of life with the click of a mouse.  And, truth be told, Cisco has gone way beyond the notion of "just another company traded on the stock market."  It rightfully belongs to the American public as a vital national asset.