Air Force Seeking Geeks For 'Cyber Command'

An anonymous reader writes "Wired reports that the two-star general in charge of the US Air Force's new Cyber Command is looking for hacker-types to beef up its cadre of cyber warriors — no heavy lifting required. 'We have to change the way we think about warriors of the future,' General William Lord says. 'So if they can't run three miles with a pack on their backs but they can shut down SCADA system, we need to have a culture where they fit in.' The Cyber Command is the Air Force's first new Major Command since the early 1990s. Its purpose is to be able to win an electronic war with China and other potential adversaries."

Comments

Re:At least I know

[Mr. Slippery]

Soldiers are more than trained killing machines, they are efficient thinkers who are told at all times to do the honorable thing.

Anyone who attempts to do "the honorable thing" in the U.S. military gets court-martialed.

And what sort of group of efficient thinkers is so ignorant that 85% of them think the U.S. invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein played a role in the 9-11 attacks?

I salute the physical courage, and the willingness to serve their countrymates, of those who enlist. I worry about their ignorance, and their lack of judgment and of moral courage in turning their conscience over to the United States government, an organization known as a great perpetrator of injustice.

It doesn't have anything to do with hate for most of them, it has to do with orders, and that is why they are professionals.

Right, it's all ok as long as you're following orders.

If anyone is considering joining up, I urge meditation on the words of Thoreau:

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others -- as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders -- serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as the rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few -- as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men -- serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated as enemies by it.