The US military has decided that it is completely viable to stop a cyber attack on the US by dropping a nuke on the hacker.

According to the Stars and Stripes magazine, the US has said that a cyber attack would not necessarily be limited to cyberspace. The head of U.S. Strategic Command Air Force Gen. Kevin P. Chilton said that the Law of Armed Conflict will apply to this domain.

He said that how the country would respond to a cyber attack would be decided by the president and Defense secretary and "no response was off the table". Mostly Chilton was talking about dropping a bomb on the hacker but whether or not that would be conventional or nuclear play load was also up for grabs.

"You don't take any response options off the table from an attack on the United States of America. Why would we constrain ourselves on how we would respond? " he said. 

The US military has adopted a policy of flinging as much firepower at an enemy in the hope it would go away since the Revolutionary war. Subtlety has not been a feature of the US military mind. If a botnet can be destroyed with bombs it is going to be, at least in the US mind.