Earlier quoted context omitted.
Piggybacking off your comment: I am surprised, am I missing something? Given the US' and the West's rather serious vulnerability in this arena, escalating the use of cyber-"weapons" doesn't obviously seem the best idea. (Stockpiling hacks and crypto nastiness is obviously a good idea, doing something about China's cyber-espionage makes sense, and increasingly sophisticated and well-funded hacking is probably unavoida…
What is the logic here? That if the US simply doesn't invest in offensive security research, nobody else will? That the US is somehow escalating the information security crisis? That would be a ridiculous point, unworthy of debate. Nation states around the world owe their first allegiance to their own interests, and then to the interests of their long-term economic and geopolitical prospects, and then maybe to their…
Absolutely. The US was simply the first to cause actual physical damage to a high-profile target. Other nation states have focused their efforts on accessing sensitive information, a la Aurora. Occasionally these attacks make it into the news but, more often than not, they go undisclosed by the target and/or unreported by the media.