Hmm... can the phones only receive or also send?

Ok, you are not aware of the "if the headline asks a question, the answer is invariably 'no'" meme.

Then Germany and parts of Poland would now be a smoldering crater of a nuclear death zone with little chance to ever clean it up in this or any of the next generations.

By no later than 1944, the German Luftwaffe was in no position to conduct any offensive action anymore. The air superiority of the allied was total. Including Germany. So even if he had the bomb, he certainly would not have any means to deliver it anywhere beyond the areas that Germany still occupied.

Given his "strategy" (I'll use that term loosely here) of scorched earth, it's likely that he would have had it used to increase the destruction on the retreat, to decrease the useful materials the approaching allies could use (as he did) but also to create a zone of denial that they would either have to avoid (and thus lengthen the supply lines) or cross while accepting the losses (something the Soviets would probably even have done).

In short, Germany having the bomb after 1944 would maybe have lengthened the war (though this is unlikely due to the Allies having it in Summer 1945 and Berlin having actually been the original main target, Germany was just lucky that it surrendered before the bomb was ready for shipment). It would certainly have meant more suffering for Germany due to self inflicted nuclear destruction (Hitler himself considered the Germans "unworthy" at the end of the war because they have "proven to be the weaker people and not worthy of continued existence". Together with his fantasy of a "Götterdämmerung", an epic apocalypse that has to happen to "his" Germany if he himself fails, it's likely that he would have called for the destruction of large cities before they fall into enemy hands. What would have been interesting is to see how many people would actually have been fanatical enough to do it).

Even excerpts of a diary would probably not be covered by "reporting". But hell, just wait. He died on May 1st 1945. Copyright in Europe is, if memory serves me right, life of author + 70 years.

In about 2 weeks it's 70 years that Goebbels died.

You mean, like, both of them?

The combination you describe isn't that common. Especially if you add "good, skilled AND not earning more than thrice the offered sum in the real world".

The main problem is that the "spirit" of hacking is diametrically opposite of what the military is like. Not that that "spirit" mattered much anymore, but it's still why most people get into the area. They usually stay for the money, Which is another thing that works against the military...

So the military is neither attractive to new people who want to get into the field, nor to seasoned veterans who learned just what salaries they can ask for.

Plus, despite money, most "hackers" still have some kind of moral limitations. At least the people I know, and I dare say that, would not easily be convinced that it's ok to blow up some nuclear plant by messing with its computers from afar for the odd chance that some terrorists may be near while killing a few million as collateral damage. Given the international structure of the community, it's very likely you actually know someone in the country that's supposed to be attacked.

It's actually stunning how many people are self proclaimed hacking experts and yet seem to get most of their knowledge about hacking from sensationalist news and Hollywood.

In other words, pay rates will ensure that the government will get what's left after the best and brightest have been hired by the free market.

Ok, so in other words, business as usual.

Your arguments are all "oh, Europe misbehaves too" as though that somehow means we shouldn't at least stop the fucking US "all your data are belong to us" bullshit.

We're working hard for privacy and security in Europe too, why should the US get a free ride.

If my direct boss - based in Texas - tells me to do something with the intent of breaking UK law, I say no. If I think he's going to use his access to a UK hosted system to break UK law, I'll get his access revoked.

He'll back me fully on that, and even if he doesn't, UK law prevents me being sacked for acting like that. Hell, the UK management team will thank me.

To subvert the security as you suggest, he'd need to do so without anybody in the UK finding out what he was planning to do, how he was doing it, or why. The moment we find out we're legally obliged to act to prevent him.

Maybe a US court wouldn't agree with that, but it's not hard to get a UK court order with which we'd comply.

The majority of major, targeted hacks (rather than just sweeping the net for vulnerabilities) - aka, the kind of stuff that the US military cares about - involves sending emails or making phone calls and introducing yourself as Bob from IT, and sorry to bother you but there's a problem that we need to discuss with you, but first a couple questions...

They don't need script kiddies, they need social engineers. Question number one in the job interview should be "Is your native language Russian, Chinese, Farsi, Korean or Arabic?" And even as far as the more traditional "hacking" goes, rather than script kiddies they're going to need people who are going to custom analyze a given system and assess it's individual vulnerabilities, people with real in-depth understanding. One would presume that in most cases that the sort of targets that the US military wants to hack are going to keep themselves pretty well patched to common vulnerabilities.

AIs doing hacking? What are you talking about? This is the real world, not Ghost In The Shell.

Ah, internal employment constraints?

This is the same organization that will deploy a SEAL team with a suitcase of cash if the mission calls for it, and treat it like any other expendable item, and yet they can't seem to pull enough cash together to keep up with civilian pay rates.

Talk about your bullshit excuses out of the payroll department...I can't even count how many billions were "lost" in accounting. Ironically, neither can the US GAO.

Since "scientific evidence" is very persuasive to jurors, they'll be granting new trials to the ones they haven't killed yet.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAI crack me up!

Actually, no.

In the most extreme cases of improvisation, people have used rocks with a crystalline structure or a razor blade, a pencil, and a safety pin as a detector connected to headphones.