07.26.12
Our cyberwar theoreticians …
Parked in Monterey by the US military, so even they don’t have to listen to him, John Arquilla, the alleged father of cyberwar, and his ineffable wisdom, passed on by the Guardian:
Instead of prosecuting elite computer hackers, the US government should recruit them to launch cyber-attacks against Islamist terrorists and other foes, according to a leading military thinker and government adviser.
The brilliance of hacking experts could be put to use on behalf of the US in the same way as German rocket scientists were enlisted after the second world war, said John Arquilla, a professor of defence analysis at the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, in an interview with the Guardian.
He said that the US had fallen behind in the cyber race and needed to set up a “new Bletchley Park” of computer whizzes and codecrackers to detect, track and disrupt enemy networks. “If this was being done, the war on terror would be over,” he said …
Many dabbled in illegal or questionable acts but the US, he noted, had turned Wernher von Braun, Hitler’s top scientist, into an American hero after putting him to work on US rockets and space programmes.
Would you want to sit in a course by a fellow who actually makes such a comparison with a straight face?
Rhetorical. It would be fun to sit in back and hoot, though.
Anyhoo, it’s just a little bit difficult for our limited mind to see similarities between the guy who used concentration camp slave labor in WWII to build his V2 rockets to bombard London, the chief architect of the Saturn V and — “hackers.”
Standards for the technical help have been so watered-down.
Some have harsh words for this man of renown
But some think our attitude should be one of gratitude
Like the widows and cripples in old London town
Who owe their large pensions to Wernher von Braun!
Note: To my knowledge, no hackers have ever employed concentration camp labor or launched ballistic missiles at one of the biggest cities in the world.
Chuck said,
July 26, 2012 at 2:33 pm
The Taliban has servers?
George Smith said,
July 26, 2012 at 4:17 pm
Don’t try to understand it. Just go with the zen quality.