Some time ago, the press spent some energy on a report by a U.S. military contractor on preparing for online threats from China. Wired this week has a solid contribution to the issue. It’s opinionated, but it opens with a provocative statement on the part of a White House staffer with responsibilities for cyber security. Read it.

Howard Schmidt, the new cybersecurity czar for the Obama administration, has a short answer for the drumbeat of rhetoric claiming the United States is caught up in a cyberwar that it is losing.

“There is no cyberwar,” Schmidt told Wired.com in a sit-down interview Wednesday at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco.

“I think that is a terrible metaphor and I think that is a terrible concept,” Schmidt said. “There are no winners in that environment.”