(b) taking out an electrical grid is not at all comparable to MAD.
I'd imagine domestic recruiting to be more likely, along the lines of the prime-time channel 1 song-and-dance mentioned in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24453689
==== Edit: joke meant to illustrate (b), the Assured Destruction part that makes MAD a non-iterated game. I agree that if TFA is not about MAD, then threatening Proportional Inconvenience can be an effective deterrent in an iterated game, a deterrent much more applicable to future Hussains than to future Bystrovs. (indeed, in that scenario, I would worry about non-nuclear powers swatting each other via Uscybercom) ====
In the middle of the Carribean, a US sub, gleaming and spotless, surfaces next to a dingy-in-comparison russian sub, whose boomers are sprawled out in undershorts and telnyashki, listlessly passing around vodka bottles across a littered foredeck.
One of them is murmuring over and over again, "which one of you idiots threw slippers on control board?"
On the US sub, a dress-uniformed officer in Randolph Engineering glasses emerges from the hatch. "This is the Captain of the USS Alaska. May I speak with your captain, please?"
On board the russian sub, the only response is the clinking and refilling of glasses.
"I repeat, I am Commander William Dull, captain of the USS Alaska, SSBN 732. I would like to speak with your captain!"
A small fight breaks out on the russian sub over who last poured.
"Damn it, what is up with you russkies? Do you call that shipshape? At least we learn discipline back home at King's Bay! Di. Sci. Pline!"
"Don't you get it?" yells back the murmuring russian, in english now. "Is no King's Bay any more." Then he recommences his russian refrain, a little more loudly, "Oi, which one of you idiots threw valenki on control board?"
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