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Defense Department Eyes Hacker Con For New Recruits
alphadogg writes "The US Air Force has found an unlikely source of new recruits: the yearly Defcon hacking conference, which has been running since Thursday in Las Vegas. Col. Michael Convertino came to Defcon for the first time last year, and after finding about 60 good candidates for both enlisted and civilian positions, decided to come back again. Federal agencies have only recently begun embracing the hacker crowd. When US Department of Defense director of futures exploration Jim Christy hosted his first Defcon 'Meet the Fed' panel in 1999, he was one of two people onstage. At this week's Defcon, there may be several thousand federal employees in attendance, he said."
An American bomb falls on a wedding in the Swat Valley and creates 50 new terrorist recruits.
An American soldier kills three people in a private home in Iraq. The youngest son witnesses the carnage and becomes a life-long anti-American soldier.
A young girl witnesses her mother ripped to shreds by a missile fired by an unmanned American drone.
The War Against Terrorism (TWAT) is a fight against innocents. To claim any less is simply a rationalization of the pani inflicted upon those who have nothing to do with with true terrorism. And what's worse: Each attack leads to the creation of new terrorists.
Maybe the US government can hire script kiddies to wage war against "terrorists", but true hackers should fight the government. It is our enemy. It is the enemy of every life-loving person in the world.
Pretty much every Al queda leader has come from a country weve never attacked, many of the countries are in fact our "allies"
The leaders of Al queda come from Saudi Arabia and Egypt, its not our wars that create our enemies its our support for repressive regimes.
In Vietnam a country where we waged a 15 year war, they welcome american tourists and even former american GI's. We dropped atomic
bombs on Japan and now we are their strongest ally.
The problems in Afghanistan have been there before the US arrived (for 30 years) and will be there after the US leaves
Hackers & discipline... probably not the best combination ever.
Score -1: So wrong it hurts to read.
The best hackers i know of are the ones who *are* disciplined. Go to sourceforge and look at the overwhelming number of half assed, dead projects the clutter up the works. The best open source projects are the ones that have taken years of hard work to reach maturity. That's real discipline.
The linux kernel wasn't written in a nights hacking in Linus' moms basement. It takes years of dedication and hard work to get to the level of "holy freaking crap, that guy is amazing" hacking. Simply knocking around around in perl does not a hacker make. For ever 10 hackers out there that won't put up with the bullshit that military service brings, there are probably one or two who will go that extra mile. Kudos to the air force for figuring that out.
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
Now what sort of hacker is going to enlist in the military? First of all he will make 1/10 th of what he can just using his existing skills. Second
of all he would likely be enlisted man and even if he was a officer he would have to put up with the incredible amount of crap that
comes with military service.
Then you have the same sort of issue with civilian govt service, who wants to put up with it. Half of these guys have no degree so the pay
scale does not benefit them either. On top of this it likely requires a TS clearance and how many of these people could actually obtain
the required clearance.
Got Code?
"it seems to me if you put a smart and independent thinking person through the military's recruit-crusher, you're either going to get a non-independent-thinking person, a smart and independent thinking person who has been faking non-independent thinking and hates the military for it, or a corpse."
And, may I ask how many years you served, and in what branch?
In my 8 years of service, I was never made aware that I should think some sort of "group think". In fact, those people who were advanced most rapidly generally though "outside the box". My own meritorious advancement to E-5 was a result of having both balls and brains. (lest anyone asks, I never had brawn - just plenty of balls) That is to say, I saw the situation differently than my leaders, and I took some initiative to accomplish the mission.
The day the military begins hammering independent thought out of men's heads, the military will most definitely fail.
To be perfectly honest, your statement is pretty insulting to veterans. It suggests that men and women who complete one or more tours of duty successfully are either mindless puppets, or dishonest people. If that is what you really mean, then maybe you should look around you. Wherever you live, there are good men and women around you who are veterans and are very successful. Maybe your boss? Maybe HIS boss?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Be careful not to overgeneralize. Not all geeks/hackers are anti-authority by nature. Many of those that are learn to get over it as they mature. To get very far in the real world, you have to be willing to accept that other people (often daft ones) will get to boss you around once in awhile. If you want to succeed, you have to learn to take it in stride. By all means, stand up for what you believe in, but don't think that being a belligerent idealist will win you many friends in any field or environment.
While I wouldn't necessarily call myself a hacker, I am a pretty independent geek and despite that I enjoyed most of my time in the active duty military. Granted, I worked on autopilots rather than PCs, but if I could hack it, I think any geek can. Plus, the discipline that the military provides is exactly what a lot of young hackers need to turn their raw skills and knowledge into a career that can propel them into positions where they can call the shots and do what's needed for the security of the nation's infrastructure.
The fact that the DoD is starting to see hackers as resources rather than adversaries is extremely encouraging and should be applauded. Just a decade or two ago, this was the stuff of science fiction.
I don't think you understand the military very well. They NEED freethinkers. A soldier who can look at facts and make a decision based on the knowledge at hand (not tied down to racial/religious bias and a lot of other baggage) is a key part of military leadership. Not all thoughts can be acted upon however. The action itself must adhere to the current regulations, SOP, and ROE. But that doesn't mean they can't express that opinion, by all means do so.
The biggest goal for any military unit is "mission accomplishment" and many times you have to get their via unconventional means. Freethinkers can only advance that front.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Now what sort of hacker is going to enlist in the military?
An unemployed one. At least the U.S. military is hiring.
Of course, even if you go in for a technical job, you may be deployed to Iraq, wiring up CAT-5 cable and Cisco routers while dodging IEDs on your way to work.
Much military work today is about systems for sorting out who's enemy and who isn't. The days when everybody in front of you is enemy are over. (In recent decades, enemies who've tried stand-up battles against US troops were defeated within days.)
From my enlistment w/ the military, I found that in the wartime situation, enlisted freethinkers were the most beneficial to the military and often helped the unit the most and were most rewarded. Conversely, during the peace time, the enlisted followers/conformist were most often rewarded because they were least bored and had the least amount of issues with adhering to the regulations, SOP, and ROE. Of course, this leads to an interesting dichotomy of the enlisted ranks--those senior NCOs who demanded strict adherence to orders (because they expect conformists), and those NCOs that would let a few minor things slide if you could get shit done.
Sure, freethinkers who can conform to regulations are the ideal, but many times the junior ranks are beaten with the "conform stick" enough that the freethinkers leave the military before they advance to a rank that encourages creativity.
greed@All_Evils:~#
and it's enormously successful at fighting wars
What war was won by the US after World War II?
I mean important modern warfare.
Korean war? Technically still in war.
Vietnam War? Lost. (although some people are still confused about this fact. YES, the US LOST the Vietnam war)
Persian Gulf War? Won. (heh, a last)
Afghanistan War? Still ongoing, still spending humongous amounts of money trying to fix a country that it is becoming more and more unstable.
Iraq War? Still ongoing (with horrible results, everybody agrees it is a failure everybody can't help but see the overwhelming parallelism with "Vietnam", some even started to call it "The new Vietnam")
And that's all so far.
So where is the supposedly American supremacy and the enormous success in wars you talk about?
Yeah, now the US has thermonuclear bombs, stealth planes, supersonic planes, robots flying and crawling, and spy satellites all that propagandistic shit that is aired again and again on TV still can't win.
The US is always backed up by its crew at the UN, but even with all the allies and the embarrasingly large coalition with the support of the most powerful nations and with the irrationally largest budget and resources in the world, still can't win a war.