Pentagon To Spend $500 Million On Cyber Defense

hostedftp found a story about the Pentagon's plan to shell out half a billion dollars on cyber defense in the next year. The article says, "The $500 million is part of the Pentagon's 2012 budget request of $2.3 billion to improve the Defense Department's cyber capabilities."

Comments

They plan on spending the $500 million...

[Anonymous Coward]

...on upgrading all their trial copies of Mcafee.

"Network-Centric Warfare"

[Securityemo]

People sneer at "cyberwarfare", but once i came across this I sort of rethought the concept. If they're aiming to basically network everything and everyone to increase reaction times and information availability, it really makes a bit more sense.

Re:"Network-Centric Warfare"

[HungryHobo]

the term "cyberwarfare" is still stupid.

it's espioage, sabotage or disruption of communication.

spending 500 million to defend yourself against espioage, sabotage or disruption is a very good idea.
Calling it "cyberwarfare" though conjours up far too many images from bad movies.

Re:"Network-Centric Warfare"

[mangu]

That article gave me an idea for a new wikipedia warning: "this article contains too many buzzwords".

Re:"Network-Centric Warfare"

[radtea]

People sneer at "cyberwarfare"

Sure, because using the tools that could create a prosperous and peaceful world to inflict dead weight losses on ourselves and others is retarded.

The War Model of conflict resolution is moronic: it involves infliciting massive dead weight loss burdens on your own economy so you can try to destroy your enemy's economy. The War Model has dramatically failed to end poverty, drug use and terrorism in the past forty years. Anyone who invokes the War Model today is an idiot who hasn't noticed how massively it has failed every time it has been applied.

The Germans went to war in 1914 to support Austria-Hungary, which failed anyway. They went to war again in 1939 to create a colonial empire in Eastern Europe and ended up with barely one brick still resting on top of another. The Japanese went to war in 1941 to create a Far Eastern economic empire, and ended up not much better off than Germany, with the added bonus of two cities that didn't need streetlights, what the with landscape glowing in the dark and all.

The Tigers of Tamil Elam declared war on the Sri Lankan state, Basque independence fighters declared war on the Spanish state, the IRA declared war on the English in Northern Ireland, the Shining Path declared war on the Peruvian state... the list of failed War Model revolutionary and independence movements goes on and on and on. Observing that the vast majority of War Model approaches fail while peaceful, non-War Model approaches like the Gandhi-ist movement in India, Solidarity in Poland, the recent uprisings in Tunis and Egypt, and so on, anyone with two brain cells to rub together would conclude that the War Model is only promoted by self-interestred profiteers who want to funnel a larger slice of a smaller pie into their own pockets.

Ergo: "cyberwarfare" is a stupid concept. Cyber-policing might make sense, as plain, ordinary police work is generally the highest level of violent intervention ever justified by a rational evaluation of actual (rather than imaginary) problems.

Re:"Network-Centric Warfare"

[jbeaupre]

No worse than naval warfare. Conjures up images of sumo wrestling.

And don't get start on air combat.

It's always good to have large sums of money...

[sarkeizen]

....attached to vaguely defined requirements. It's what makes the consulting industry work!

As long as the DHS isn't in charge of it.......

[Dega704]

Doesn't sound like an unreasonable price tag, but that is assuming the money actually gets spent where it accomplishes something. This has the potential to become another profiteering complex where hundreds of different(and/or redundant) cybersecurity firms exist that nobody can keep track of.

Re:sonds good ... until you read it.

[khasim]

From TFA:

The effort is part of a âoecomprehensive cyber strategy called Cyber 3.0,â he said.

Hey, it's even cooler than Web 2.0 'cause, you know, it's like 3.0.

Anyone got the spec's for "Cyber 2.7"?

The military is reaching out to commercial companies for the latest technologies and technical experts to safeguard the Pentagonâ(TM)s computer networks from attacks and espionage, Lynn said.

Here's an idea. You can have it for free.

How about you have a department of nothing but hackers who try to crack your systems. As they get through, they report what they did and you fix it? No 3.0 needed.

Lynn told the conference that he had met with Intel Corp. and Google Inc., and planned to meet with Microsoft Corp. âoeThey all think there is technology that can be deployed, both hardware and softwareâ that can adapt technologies to better defend against attacks.

Of course there is. The problem is whether that technology is just a band-aid for core problems in the systems.

You need to identify what can be done with the technology you have today.

That will tell you the flaws in that technology.

Which will tell you what you need to band-aid tomorrow UNTIL you can get the core problems FIXED.

$500 billion for Cyber Toilets

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The government is planning on spending $500 billion on Cyber Toilets. A spokesman stated, "It is our goal to get 90% of America's asses covered with Cyber Toilets within the next ten years." A DARPA study revealed that Americans spend an average of 15 minutes on the throne each and every day. Advances in wireless and tablet technology mean that this could be utilized as productive time to leverage the ailing economy. The spokesman continued, "The Japanese not only have shitters that can wash and dry your tush, their potties can roll excellent sushi's, too. We can not, as a country, afford to fall behind in this important technology sector." Recently, a special test program involving US Air Force UAV pilots, proved that pilots were perfectly able to hit targets while taking a dump.

A member of Congress stated, "We can not say 'no' to any spending bill with the word 'cyber' in it. Oooh! 'Cyber' . . . it makes me feel so macho!"

that's nothing

[spongman]

How about John Boner's $450 million earmark spending the Pentagon's budget on a project it doesn't even want?

Re:that's nothing

[objectdisoriented]

That's simply how things work in the American form of Hypocrisy...er, Democracy.

Spend months firing up the base, build the level of anger and hate, and when it pays off at the ballot box, immediately proceed to violate every promise made.

This is not the exclusive domain of any one political party, but happens when fear, hate and an uninformed populace form a perfect storm in voter polling.

There are a couple of reasons the whole system doesn't implode. First, every "side" is guilty to some extent at some point of everything they accuse others of doing. Everyone does it which makes it somehow okay. Perhaps more importantly, there is a certain about of robustness built into the system, and there is only a certain range of movement allowed by an "average", ie. simple majority, vote of the citizenry.

Coupled with the fact that legislative action involves compromise, the system maintains a certain set point around mediocrity. The only way to stray far is to have majorities across the board.

The US had two years of this very situation with across-the-board majorities. There was the potential to make significant movement for the better or for the worse. One party used rare parliamentary actions like they were candy to throw a wrench in all legislative action. This took the situation from where there was an equal chance of making things better and making things worse, to guaranteeing that things would be worse.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Throw your country under the bus for potential future political gain. Ignoring the morality and patriotism aspects of it all, you have to admire the stone cold brass ones it took to make this your strategy.

A person could get their undergarments in a twist if the system didn't have this built in never-be-far-from-average aspect to it.