I doubt we'll see formal legal letters of marque until and unless we're in a state of open war. The US government already has a policy of using kinetic means to retaliate against serious cyber attacks and other governments take similar approaches. So unleashing a bunch of mercenaries without clear constraints would create a dangerous risk of unexpected escalation.

But federal law enforcement could simply decline to pursue private actors who attacked adversary states. Plausible deniability, to an extent.

If we see cyber warfare "letters of marque" imagine if they allow for the takedown of internet pirates without allegiance to any particular country.

But total war might follow.

Live by the sword...What if NSA already did the same to China? That's their mission, isn't it? China's "NSA" succeeded but became public.

Our NSA might have succeed dozens of time but China keeps it a secret.

The open warfare can't come soon enough, as far as caring about the stability of our infrastructure is concerned.

What are you thinking! Open cyber warfare could destroy our way of life. Imagine if all electronic records were very suspect. Bank acct values had millions of known wrong values.

I watched someone take ten pictures of pure black last night to keep a "streak" fire emoji next to their chats on Snapchat.

Our way of life is kind of fucked, to be blunt, and our consumer tech culture could use a cull.

Those who don't understand or respect tech...they haven't been (explained/bitten by) the consequences of their ignorance.

Did you have limited skirmishes in mind or a nuclear war?

Escalating attacks on State/corp network infrastructure would lead to better tools being built immediately by those who have the resources to do so, hopefully making their way to everyone eventually.