Tories on cyber war: Waffle, mutter, waffle. Um, vote for us!

Tory peer and shadow security minister Baroness Pauline Neville Jones has set out her party's thoughts on cyber war and defence. Unfortunately once the waffle is stripped away there's pretty much nothing there.

Here are a few selected bits from her speech:

Neither the government nor the private sector can completely control or protect the country's information infrastructure...

I think we all recognise that there is a long way to go...

There are, of course, differences between the threat posed by nuclear weapons and the risks posed by cyber space...

People are often not aware of events in cyber space - at least not until they have happened, and even then not always the case [sic].

Vulnerabilities unknown to operators and users are exploited in cyberspace.

Active defence could well have unintended consequences and does not overcome the question of attribution.

The speech consists mainly of questions - "What's going on here? What should we do about it?" - and offers almost no information on what the Tories actually plan to do, other than get elected first and figure out a plan afterwards.

There was one bit that sounded sincere, though, when the Baroness said - presumably speaking of the political, military and spook communities - "We all need to know a lot more about our cyber assets and to monitor what they - and users - are doing". ®