We had a virus (mostly just an annoying one, thankfully) rip through our network in Afghanistan. It started off on the 'entertainment shared drive' and eventually found its way everywhere. It's one of the little programs that creates an executable file that has a slightly misshapen folder for an icon. You don't pay attention, click on the .exe file that has the same name as the folder you want, the screen flickers, and the virus scans your system, replicating itself. Before long, every single computer had the damn thing on it, and it took months to clean, if they ever completely managed to. The man hours and frustration alone involved in trying to fix things were mind bottling. Eventually, all external RW media was banned, and if you wanted to put something on the shared drive, you had to take it to the 6, have them scan it, and then THEY uploaded it. Talk about a bunch of bitter people there...
On my old personal laptop, the stupid virus files took up over 12GB, thanks to my iTunes library, which creates a folder for each artist, album, etc. Serves me right for not paying more attention. The fix was relatively easy, however, but it took a few hours to get all of those little fuckers off my system. I can even imagine what one of the big networked drives lost in storage space to it, let alone the processing power used to run the program while it breeds.
While I think this move by the DoD is likely due to some much more malicious things, I think it's easy to see why/how people can move in the reactive, vice proactive, manner. Still, how frequently do hackers--hell, just Chinese ones alone--attack the DoD's network? I don't like it, and I'm not advocating returning to quite the paranoid mindset of the 50s. But I think I understand why.
Maybe it will mean a reduced reliance on powerpoint, and that can only be a good thing. The stupid program is just a crutch anyway, and far too many people use it as a substitute for knowing what the fuck they're talking about. Granted, in today's realm of video conferencing, etc., it can be difficult to get your point across without a good presentation. And while I acknowledge the utility of the program, I still think that people use it far too much/poorly.