Russia’s cyber attacks on Georgia and Estonia didn’t do it. A US citizen’s big hack into the Pentagon’s computer system didn’t do it. Even a special Congressional commission’s warnings about China’s advanced cyber warfare capabilities didn’t do it.

But Agent.btz did. When the embarrassingly simple, 3 year-old worm infected the bejeesus out of the whole US Army necessitating a costly pan-continental thumb-drive scrubbing, the US government finally got the message.

And now, maybe, it will get serious about beefing up the nation’s cyber security systems. 

The likely starting point will be National Security Presidential Directive 54 a program that has languished since the day President Bush signed it into law.

Directive 54 set aside $15 billion to develop a national cyber security program that would protect the federal government’s computers as well as critical energy, electric and water systems.

The main reason Directive 54 has gone nowhere is the lack leadership on the issue, according to a special commission set up by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

So the commission plans to recommend appointment of a cyber czar, a person that would report directly to the President and have at his or her disposal all the proper diplomatic, military and intelligence tools to confront cyber threats.

The recommendation is likely to trigger the same furious debate around privacy that surfaced during Bush’s domestic wiretapping caper, so the Big O, who long ago recognized the cyber problem and promised during the campaign to appoint a “national cyber adviser,” better save some chips.

Hopefully, the Big O prevails because according to the commission, “America’s failure to protect cyberspace is one of the most urgent national security problems facing the new administration. The battle in cyberspace…is a battle we are losing.”

It wasn’t a pretty process, but FDA officials finally agreed to proscribe Serevent and Foradil as treatments for asthma while allowing asthma sufferers to continue using Advair and Symbicort.

The 4 inhalational drugs all contain long-acting beta agonists, but only the latter 2 contain steroids as well. Advair and Serevent are made by GlaxoSmithKline. The former is, at $6.9 billion in annual sales, GSK’s biggest seller.

Symbicort is marketed by AstraZeneca and has annual revenues of about $350 million. Foradil is marketed by Novartis.

All 4 drugs are still OK for use by patients with COPD, according to the FDA.

The FDA’s decision followed a hectic week in which officials openly disagreed about the drugs’ safety after a meta-analysis they commissioned on the subject was found to have methodological flaws rendering the study worthless.

Some physicians believe that long-acting beta agonists can prevent asthma attacks if used properly. The problem is that unless they are used in conjunction with inhaled steroids, they seem to increase the risk of particularly severe attacks.

And a lot of people don’t always use the long-acting beta agonists correctly.

The long-acting drugs are not effective treatment for acute exacerbations of asthma. If people use them for this purpose instead of rescue inhalers (which contain short-acting beta agonists), they delay proper treatment which can lead to unnecessary complications.

When two health insurance trade associations announced they’d agree to cover everybody regardless of pre-existing conditions if the Big O required everybody to get coverage, some sensed Big Insurance had become worried it couldn’t squash health reform as it did—with help—in ’93.

In the month since, health care reform has acquired an aura of inevitability and Big Insurance is backpeddling faster than Ali in the Thrilla in Manila.

In fact when Big O supporters hold their tea, arugula and health-reform parties this week, they can expect Big Insurance types to show up in droves.

That’s what the health insurance companies are telling their supporters to do, in what amounts to a complete capitulation to the Big O and his ground-up health reform process.

There will be roughly 4,000 such meetings around the country. Attendees don’t have to disclose their affiliations or employers.

Big Insurance has a problem with the Big O’s plan to create a new public insurance program that would compete, unfairly it fears, with none other than Big Insurance.

Then there’s that promise he made to cut the Medicare payments they receive in return for providing care to Medicare beneficiaries.

After tea is served, Big Insurance wants its supporters to assert that like Medicare and Medicaid, the new public program will stiff providers.

How honorable to stick up for providers like that, but providers and anyone with a pulse knows the Big O will print money if that’s what’s necessary to keep the ball rolling. 

So Big Insurance better come up with something else quick.

“Why do you need a new public program?” offers Alissa Fox, vice president of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

Because “public plans…do a better job of controlling costs,” retorts Richard J. Kirsch, the national campaign manager for Health Care for America Now.

“Private insurers are always looking for ways to avoid paying claims or covering sick people. Their mission is not to provide health care, but to increase shareholders’ profits,” he added.

We hope zingers like that don’t spoil dessert.