Instead of prosecuting elite computer hackers, the US government should recruit them to launch cyber-attacks against Islamist terrorists and other foes, according to a leading military thinker and government adviser.

The brilliance of hacking experts could be put to use on behalf of the US in the same way as German rocket scientists were enlisted after the second world war, said John Arquilla, a professor of defence analysis at the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, in an interview with the Guardian.

He said that the US had fallen behind in the cyber race and needed to set up a “new Bletchley Park” of computer whizzes and codecrackers to detect, track and disrupt enemy networks. “If this was being done, the war on terror would be over,” he said.

More from Rory Carroll, The Guardian

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