Comment Re:This is a recruitent problem (Score 1) 147
This is not a technology issue. Three years ago, I walked into a local Burger King and saw a servicewoman using a laptop that was 20% better than my system in every measure, and my laptop at the time was 3 weeks old and Compaq had only sold it for a month when I bought it.
Roughly 2 years ago, however, I saw a recruiter near my apartment. I asked him, if I was to sign up with the Air Force, could he do 2 simple things for me. One, could I get a full waiver from all physical aspects of basic training, and two, could I get guaranteed placement in the cyber warfare division. I was told no on both requests. This is the problem. The US Military is more interested in transferring soldiers who can hack than recruiting actual hackers. This leads to troops who, while they may have some decent level of skill, are not a fifth as competent in anything cyberwarfare does (or rather, should be doing) as most civilian hackers.
Geeks want to defeat America's enemies as badly as anyone else, but we're not going to have our faces slammed into the dirt by some drill sergeant with a chip on his shoulder to do it. We'll never be able to run 10 miles with 100 pounds of gear on our backs, and while most of us could fire a weapon and hit a target, we're not going to go do it in 140 degree heat in the middle of the desert. On the other hand, when the Chinese, Russians, or whoever else are trying to shutdown the power grid for the whole damn east coast, I don't care if the cyberwarfare division can run or shoot or salute - as long as the lights stay on, they can be as sloppy and physically unfit as they like.
This is the problem with the cyberwarfare division. We're unprepared because the Military is too deep into tradition to attract those who are really the "best and the brightest" for the job in question.
Don't worry though. Eventually this'll get farmed out to some defense contractor once the brass realizes it's costing too much and we suck at it, and those companies are more than willing to hire good hackers, whether they can do 50 pushups or not. I just hope it happens before someone like China decides to bite us in the ass.
Ironic that you should mention farming cyber warfare out to contractors (as I know the Air Force already does this, I was enlisted for 4 years with the USAF), and one of the ones that got hacked (Booze Allen Hamilton) is a prime contractor for a lot of AF systems (as is General Dynamics, Diebold, Lockheed Martin, etc...). The problem is that the enemy can adapt a lot faster than our military can because it is one big bureaucracy on top of another bureaucracy, and it takes too many approvals to change anything, or get anything done. Until the mindset at the pentagon changes this task would be more suited for the NSA/CIA to handle because...well let's face it they have a lot more freedom of who they can hire, and how they can operate.
