Buy a netapp. Yay, RAID-DP.

That was hard!

* wipes brow *

Are you saying the court system in China is (A) open, fair, and impartial, particularly when it judges a case involving (B) the Chinese Govt vs a defendant anti-spyware company?

Old people may need money to eat and get health care.

The question is whether or not that money should be coming from their own savings, their families, or the US taxpayer.

Prior to the growth of entitlements, there was a massive amount of $$ available for defense, if needed.

"The rise of the SAM's made things trickier for land-attack craft. A multi-million dollar jet is risked attacking tanks that are worth maybe $200k".

Tanks cost more than 200k.

True ground attack aircraft such as an A-10 are dramatically different from the a standard high flying fighter. An A-10 may have some vulnerability to SAMs, but they are much harder to shoot down than say an attack helicopter. Generally when A-10s are operating, it is as a close air support, so they have some measure of security on the ground already. The A-10 will supposedly be retired for a lack of speed vs the newest SAMs though.

Air forces have a significant number of measures they take against ground radar and SAM sites. Cruise missiles, ecm birds, and anti-radiation missiles, paired with spy satellite data feeds and drones make operating a SAM a short lifespan occupation against an advanced military. Manpad SAMs have limited ranges and low effectiveness so it isn't like they will fill in the gap either.

Your conclusion that we are near the death of the manned fighter due to advanced SAMs is highly suspect.

The reduction of the manned fighter to a minimal role is more likely because:
Every private can potentially fly a drone
Drones are not casualties
It is pretty easy to have drones sitting around waiting for target sightings, loitering over an area of operations.

you left out anything about budget, or acquisition activities.

If you think the govt has good IT people and loads of $$ just sitting around waiting for unfunded mandates from OMB, you are smoking something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson's_Law applies to govt IT and $$

(1) you have a shill of a biased company selling products to the industry pushing the requirement
(2) An unrealistic deadline set by OMB initially.

This is a craptastic story.

now that its clear that the attackers were government agents the question is what will the US state department do.

The State Department will talk—that's what the State Department exists to do.

For anything beyond that, there are other agencies.