Slashdot Mirror
How Do Militaries Treat Their Nerds?
An anonymous reader writes "Cyber Warfare is a hot topic these days. A major reorganization may be looming, but a critical component is a culture where technologists can thrive. Two recent articles address this subject. Lieutenant Colonel Greg Conti and Colonel Buck Surdu recently published an article in the latest DoD IA Newsletter stating that 'The Army, Navy, and Air Force all maintain cyberwarfare components, but these organizations exist as ill-fitting appendages (PDF, pg. 14) that attempt to operate in inhospitable cultures where technical expertise is not recognized, cultivated, or completely understood.' In his TaoSecurity Blog Richard Bejtlich added 'When I left the Air Force in early 2001, I was the 31st of the last 32 eligible company grade officers in the Air Force Information Warfare Center to separate from the Air Force rather than take a new nontechnical assignment.' So, Slashdot, how has the military treated you and your technical friends? What changes are needed?"
I spent 6 years in the Air Force as a programmer. The only way they can fix that horrible mess is to stop trying and contract out everything they need. It's basically what they are doing now. Of maybe 400 enlisted programmers at my base, I'd guess 10% of them actually had work on a regular basis, and 50% do absolutely nothing their entire time there. And people seem to have trouble grasping it, but when I say nothing, I mean NOTHING. Contractors did all the real work.
Whale
I've had no problems in the Navy and been put on some really choice assignments because of my technical expertise. However, I've also seen some technical experts that got nothing from it and driven out of the service. If you flaunt it like sliced bread has nothing on you, yea, you're going to get treated like a prick. If you just do your thing and not care about the rest, you can do pretty darn good. Unfortunately, at some point you get forced to put down the wrench and pick up the pen, and then its just not fun anymore. Its great if you're just in for the college money, sucks later on if you decide to make a career out of it.
The Military (USAF) always treated me
with great respect. It was the other civilians that would give you a hard time. The military members were all very hard-working and saw that I am too. They repected my expertise and knew about how to be tolerant of my lifestyle even better than civilians (who hated my lifestyle).
And military weren't trying to funnel contracts to their friends. And they didn't seek to ruin my career when I wouldn't go along with boondoggles. It was the Civilians that did this (some of them).
And worse, the ones who treated us the worst, were the people who didn't fund us, politicians who were on vendettas to move our offices (these were out of state politicians).
These were people with no concern other than empire building in their own back yards.
The Military members were always the best to work with, the hardest working, the most diverse, and the ones who understood and appreciated excellence.
Initially I was going to just dismiss this, but then it struck me: yeah, they do. The latest Secretary of the Air Force had this dumbass idea that he would try to make the Air Force tougher. It basically consisted of sending horribly, horribly undertrained airmen out with Marines and Army to do things they weren't good at. A good friend of mine took a 2 week crash course before being sent to Afghanistan where he had to beg Marines to show him how to do things like install the IED countermeasures on the Hummer he was issued. Another friend was sent to Camp Victory in Baghdad without a weapon, and when he finally got one, no ammo.
Whale
This raises some interesting points. I've been an advocate of a separate branch for cyber war, but ironically this article has me thinking in a new direction. A former IT boss of mine used to say that in the military they take pride in the notion that if it is round you carry it, and if it is square you roll it. The article indicates this cultural problem, but isn't this a cultural pervasive in the very institution of the military? While different branches have different cultures, surely a non-kinetic warfare branch would truly be the odd one out. The military is capable of scientific rigor, certainly -- the US Army Corps of Engineers is a good example. Yet, we have all kinds of intelligence agencies under the department of defense umbrella where science is the modus operandi -- so why would cyber security go under the military, as opposed to the NSA, for example?
The military requires some degree of cyber warfare capability in the field, but I'm not sure it makes sense as the nexus of national defense efforts in the field. It further seems axiomatic that cyber security can't be reasonably split into our existing branches. This seems to be the crux of the issue: the military may not be sufficiently distinguishing operational needs from strategic needs. While each branch requires operational components, strategically the military cannot effectively pursue this goal.
I'm not convinced by the point in the article regarding the NSA. On the contrary, it almost seems like the NSA model is ideal: the military requires operational folks who rotate through the doors of the NSA to get schooled and then go out into the field. Meanwhile, I would think, the NSA is staffed by career civilian professionals who can not only devote the necessary strategic attention to cyber warfare, but can also train the military as necessary. The article seems to address an issue where military staff is used to augment an understaffed NSA. Since apparently military staff is rotated out too frequently, it is not an effective use of resources. From this description, at least, this problem seems minor in comparison to the issues of shoe horning geeks into the military.
Most heartening, however, is that these folks seem to really get it, at long last:
Not to mention, a lot of nerds (like me) cope better in a highly hierarchical structure like the military. You can look at someone and know how to treat them at a glance (by looking at their rank) and most of your interaction with other people is almost as highly codified as a programming language. Personally, as a cadet, I found military life comfortable, certainly less stressful than school.
Look at history. Alan Turing was an introverted nerd. He was gay in a society that persecuted gay people. Yet his ability to crack the Nazi enigma encryption system gave the allies huge advantages that saved countless lives on both sides and brought on the inevitable conclusion to that tragic war faster than would have been possible if he had been pushed away.
First, a bit of background. I separated from the Air Force in 2006. When I left I had a CJR (waiting list number to keep my own job) in the 280s. That means just in the quarter I would have re-enlisted, 280 people would have to leave, choose other jobs, or fill spots before I got a spot to keep my own job. I left as a 3c051, Computer communications and operations, with the rank of SrA. I actually had a line number for Staff, which I got on my first try, mostly on the strength of my career knowledge. For those not in the know, advancement up to Senior Airman is automatic, and tied to time in grade, until the NCO (Sergeant) ranks. After that point, it's based on a point system comprised of time in grade, decorations, and your results in a test on general air force knowledge and career knowledge.
My assumption was, with as little relative time in grade as I had, that taking the tests was merely a day doing something different, and why not. But my scores, primarily on the career knowledge, was so high as to overcome my lack of points for time in rank and decorations.
So, ignoring any of my own opinions about how good or knowledgeable I am, by the measures that the Air Force has, I was the top of the class. I was also assigned to an Info Warfare Flight, exactly the unit that would be concerned with the things being discussed as priorities then, and today. None of it figured into Rank, or into my skill level, or if they tried to retain me.
The fact that I could run circles around the Staffs and Techs in my unit, and they knew it and deferred to me on technical matters, was irrelevant to what even my technical skill rating was, let alone pay or rank. By the standard of the air force, they had higher skill levels in technical proficiency than I did. Quite frankly, given that I had computer knowledge coming in, I'm certain I could have passed the 7 level class without any effort. However, it's not even offered till you've had Staff on for long enough to get scheduled for it, so, basically a year, mission requirements allowing. Further, as I was processing out, the unit First Shirt (kind of an HR Sergeant) gave a little speech to the airmen, saying those in overfilled career fields should stay in and retrain to something else, that we were young, therefore it was easy for us to do different things, therefore our experience at what we already were doing was irrelevant. I found it insulting to say the least.
The bottom line is this. The military is not setup to advance and reward those with technical ability. It is setup to have standard sized cogs. One airman's supposed to be exactly equivalent to another, One Staff equivalent to another staff. And if you're thinking from the mindset that one airman could be blown up, and his or her replacement must be ready to step in, it makes a kind of sense. It also doesn't make sense to promote up the ranks based on tech ability. NCO's are the equivalent of lower and middle management, Senior NCO's middle to upper, and officers filling out upper and executive levels. Just because you're an ace with networks certainly doesn't mean you are ready to lead people.
So, the system itself isn't designed to handle individuals that have technical ability, but who aren't ready/don't want to command lower level troops. None of this even TOUCHES on the way the military lifestyle itself clashes with the general hacker mentality. About the only draw the military has at all is that they will accept just about anyone, and if you can prove a certain aptitude, you will be allowed to do computer work, no previous provable experience or training required. For some of us who don't do well with traditional education, and don't want to work up through the hell desk ladder, it's got that as a draw. But that will only keep people in for 4 and out, and they then use that experience to go get a real job. And you can't run a realistic computer defense or offense program if your best people leave every 3 years (4 years minus the training), and all that's left and
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
Former defense contractor here, too...
When I dealt with the customer, I tended to deal with middle-upper officers MAJ, LTC, and COL. While not nerds per se, they were among some of the most clueful and intelligent people I have worked with.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
When I was in the Canadian military it was a common "initiation rite" for new soldiers in a unit to be given ridiculous tasks to see how bright they are or how much attention they paid during training. One popular one at my unit was to send the newbie out to get Diesel Sparkplugs for one of our diesel trucks. Diesel engines do not of course require sparkplugs, but most newbie soldiers wouldn't know this, so off they would go to the unit Supply section only to be told there were none in stock but they could try Base supply - who would immediately know what was up and send them off to a different unit supply in the hopes of begging some etc. With luck this could keep a particularly ignorant soldier busy for half a day before someone pointed out to them that they had been "had". Smart ones would of course catch on immediately and point out that such a thing didn't exist etc.
What always got me was that some people would fall for items which should have been immediately obviously bogus - like sending someone out to a reel of 100' of Shoreline - as if it was a type of rope etc. However every year along would come some private asking if we had any shoreline...
I can't say as Canadian forces basic ever had you trying to solve a problem lacking all of the required resources but there were definitely similar tests that required you to solve a problem that appeared to be unsolvable as an attempt to build up cooperation and resourcefulness.
The one I will always remember was waxing the floors in the barracks during basic. Essentially the floors had to be waxed in preparation for the morning inspection (about 6:30 AM). Since we were often kept busy until 9:30 PM and lights out were at 10 PM (and the instructors came through to ensure that everyone not on Fire Picket was in bed and all the lights were out at 10 PM), there was simply no time to actually strip and wax the floors. The solution: immediately after the Instructors came through the barracks (walking on the floors of course), the Fire Pickets woke everyone up and we all used tape and garbage bags to cover up all the windows in the barracks so that no light would escape. Then everyone got up in their underwear and we rewaxed the floors and cleaned up the shower areas etc, with an array of blankets making a walkway up and down the barracks. Once everything was completed, we all got back into position in our bunk areas, remade our beds (including ironing the sheets and pillow cases so they were perfect), then the fire pickets turned out the lights and we removed the garbage bags and tape and hid them again. We then slept on the beds in reverse (your head went at the foot end and you used the spare blanket that had formed your walkway earlier and your feet went at the head end (it made less of an impact on the ironing). In the morning you got up, got dressed ready for inspection, then replaced the spare blanket carefully at the foot of the bed, picked up the pillows off the floor and put them in place then stood ready for inspection. All in all you got about 5h sleep each night, but the floors were perfectly polished, the bathrooms were clean etc all with zero time apparently devoted to the process. All completely chickenshit stuff, but it built up a spirit of cooperation between soldiers headed for different trades very well. By the end of basic (when they relaxed the standards a bit anyways) we had it down to a science and it could all be done in no time.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid