Aussie Spies Spooked By Cyberwar

An anonymous reader writes "Wikileaks cables released overnight revealed that Australia's top cyber spy agency (akin to the NSA) was unprepared for cyberwar in the view of other intelligence agencies in 2008. Australian agencies were so concerned they asked US intelligence to provide the framework to defend the country's critical information infrastructure, modelling on the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative. Spooks also discussed how Israel was preparing to take down Iran's nuclear program and how to stay relevant when so much information that was classified was now open source and available to anyone."

T'was noisy pollies not noisy subs

[dbIII]

The subs are expensive things that whoever is in opposition likes to complain about and whoever is in government likes to use for pork. Minor problems were blown out of proportion, sometimes even after they had been fixed. Then there were things like expensive modifications were done to allow for extremely dodgy procurement deals which kept the subs out of the water. "Free trade" talks with the USA were not going well and it was difficult to get access to some people in US government, then suddenly there was a plan to buy a lot of surplus torpedoes of a size nobody makes anymore and modify the subs so that they will fit. The talks then went ahead and it was a problem for a later government to modify the subs again once that lot of torpedoes is unusable.
It's not just subs, there was the purchase of the sprightly old Sea Sprites which were not safe to fly over water and had been considered obsolete in the 1970s. It had to be corruption because stupidity of that level would be inconsistant with making it to an adult age alive.

Re:Complete solution in five words

[MichaelSmith]

Ask yourself: why didn't they hire Julian Assange? I am sure the cultural reasons will fill several pages for a start.

Wait... Julian Assange has actual skills?!

Yes [1] [inria.fr] [2] [iq.org]