Your arguments are convincing
You have a way of thoroughly thinking through a problem and delivering very insightful points.
Nonetheless, I don't see this as a realistic option for a few reasons.
- First, if the Iranian incident really was an offline attack, then turning off the Internet is not necessarily going to do any good at all. It may be too late by the time we know to shut it off.
- Closely related to this: Major systems should NOT BE CONNECTED. PERIOD. This is why the government has the SIPR net. It IS an alt-Internet connected via point-to-point links. It's unrealistic to expect (e.g.) power plants to do this, maybe... but in most cases, power companies are regional and don't have a need to interconnect their automated systems with the rest of the country. In the cases where they do, leased lines are a perfectly reasonable alternative to public Internet access. Call me sadistic, but I think a good, hard, revenue-crushing outage due to break-ins would be an excellent lecture within the hallowed halls of the School of Hard Knocks. Hopefully, it never has to happen. And more to the point, if it ever does, hopefully once will be enough to drive that point home. Sometimes you just can't get security through people's big fat heads until they lose something tangible. God help us ALL if this ever applies to some facility holding nuclear weaponry. I hope, at that level, someone has made it a point to ensure isolation. I can live with a power outage. Not so much with excess radiation.
- If something really, really big happens and the Internet truly needs to go down, The White House has AT&T's phone number. They, a commercial entity having to balance The Greater Good with Profitability, can decide at what point having the network operational has crossed over into "not doing anyone any favors." In fact, by then, I suspect the major carriers will know before the government.
- Closely related to that -- I don't credit political figures with the kind of technical savvy necessary to make adequate judgments on how to handle a distributed cyber attack. These guys have shown repeatedly they don't understand technology. That's to be expected. It's not their field. Work together with the backbone companies. They know their network. It's what they do.
- Our financial well-being as a national economy is based on the Internet being accessible 24/7. Bad things will happen if, on a large scale, it isn't. This isn't just about Twitter posts regarding my choice of frozen dinners. There will be real repercussions.
- Similar to Egypt, if this control is in the hands of a handful of decision makers, what happens if for some reason, THEY are the ones we can't trust? Are they infallible? Can they not be bribed or extorted?
