Can you imagine how many meetings it would take for the US security agencies to go about hiring a botnet? Whereas they have a pretty much unlimited supply of heavies on retainer.
Especially given the DDOS against Wikileaks, I'm pretty sure they also have at least one botnet on retainer.
And there have been voices high up in the government saying that the US needs to develop offensive cyberwarfare capability. If that's not a call to develop state-owned botnets... the people in charge don't understand technology.
Of course, the use of the term cyberwarfare might be a giveaway anyway.
In any case, I'm sure it's a pretty simple matter for some people in the CIA to quietly hire out a botnet.
