You would be surprised how many people naively think "Why doesn't my country just open a war on X country and this Y problem will be solved forever" in their head they think war is just a flurry of bombardments and the other side (not theirs) is just destroyed to rubble and their country will have only minimal losses

Never retaliating is a great way to get people to attack you. Of course escalating to all-out war provokes the same in response, but there does need to be a proportionate response, because it needs to be stupid to hurt us, not good business. t’s a significant failure of the US government when half the world freely loots US citizens and businesses.

Exactly. This is the "Declare fentanyl a WMD" of solutions to ransomware. Sounds kinda badass as long as you don't spend too long thinking about it but has no practical relevance to actual enforcement challenges.

It's a familiar example of the perennial "[THING] could be solved overnight if [PERSON_OR_GROUP] would just start taking [THING] seriously" trope.