It’s official. War is no longer only about deploying tanks and artillery, fighter jets and bombs, soldiers and machines. The US cyber command has been given its first military mission: to take on Isis.

This has been a long time in the making. Indeed, my first reaction to Ashton Carter’s revelation was to wonder what took so long? In the two years since Isis exploded on the scene in the Middle East, its savvy use of the internet to spread its venom, to organise and to recruit has been well documented. So why has the US secretary of defence delivered his order only now?

One would imagine the new Pentagon unit, which will soon be expanded to a 5,000-strong force, began its attacks quite a while back — although, if so, it has not had any obvious success against Isis.