Why Warriors, Not Geeks, Run US Cyber Command Posts

koterica writes "The Washington Post explains why the military prefers to have combat veterans rather than geeks running network security. '"It was supposed to be a war fighter unit, not a geek unit," said task force veteran Jason Healey, who had served as an Air Force signals intelligence officer. A fighter would understand, for instance, if an enemy had penetrated the networks and changed coordinates or target times, said Dusty Rhoads, a retired Air Force colonel and former F-117 pilot who recruited the original task force members. "A techie wouldn't have a clue," he said.'"

Comments

Re:Umm

[meerling]

I was in the USAF and had to deal with pilots fairly often. It's true they are good with their planes, but most of them are rather stupid and would fail most logic tests. (But they tend to have egos the size of Texas, and the dumber they are, the bigger the ego.)
There are exceptions, about 20%, but for the most part, don't let them near anything that's not a plane they've trained on.

Nonsense

[Tanuki64]

I am a 'geek'. Actually I am a freelancer who worked on a few military projects. Did I understand what I did from a military point of view? Nope, not a bit. I did not need to. A little bit simplified my work boiled down to: If you receive a message, which contains a value between x and y display a red icon, else display it in green. <--- Really simplified.

Does this mean I am generally unable to understand the reasons behind those requirements? Of course not. I just did not care. Not my job.

On another non-military project I got the task to help to develop some traffic simulation models. There I did quite a few consistency checks for the incoming data. Guess my customer was stupid to give me the job. According to the article (no, I did not the original) some old war veteran should have been much better suited for this task and might have been cheaper.

A fighter would understand, for instance, if an enemy had penetrated the networks and changed coordinates or target times, said Dusty Rhoads, a retired Air Force colonel and former F-117 pilot who recruited the original task force members. "A techie wouldn't have a clue," he said.'"

Utter nonsense. If those changes can be determined by statistical or other algorithms then this most likely belongs to the tasks where a computer outperforms a human being considerably. To develop such a system is geek work. If not, it does not matter who does the guesswork. Rolling dices would probably as good.