And even then it would several weeks to disassemble the Chinese attacks, mount a defense against them and to reestablish trust in U.S. networks and systems.
"I don't see these cascading set of attacks, where by the end of Day Three we are all sitting in darkness eating beans and heading out into the mountains with our guns," he said.
Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at @jaivijayan or subscribe to Jaikumar's RSS feed . His e-mail address is jvijayan@computerworld.com .
Read more about cybercrime and hacking in Computerworld's Cybercrime and Hacking Topic Center.
