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US Army Could Waive Combat Training For Hackers
An anonymous reader sends word that the U.S. Army may adjust some of its training practices and rules in order to attract the best "cyber warriors" available. "New U.S. Army cyber warriors could be spared the rigors of combat training to help the Pentagon attract badly needed recruits from the ponytail wearing Google generation, a top American general has suggested. Lt Gen Brown, commander of the US Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, said: 'We need to give serious consideration to how the US Army could combine the technical expertise of the "Google" generation with its more traditional military skills. In order to gain an intellectual advantage over adversaries in cyberspace, we will need to tap into a talent pool that may not fit the stereotypical soldier profile. Our goal is to recruit the best talent possible.'" This is not the first time there has been talk about loosening requirements to fill these roles.
What is the obsession about putting them in uniform? All that should matter is what they can accomplish.
How hard is it for a twenty something year old to get into basic fitness? Perhaps if there is a good candidate but would otherwise fall out because of fitness, work with them in 'pre basic' to get up to speed. It needn't be punative - might be the best thing that happened to them. For really handicapped people (say someone with paralysis), perhaps a medical waiver.
But to have a whole group of 'different' Army folks - not such a good idea.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If you're in the Army, you're a legitimate, Geneva Convention-certified MILITARY TARGET.
Wont obey orders.
And the Army isnt qualified to differentiate talent from a blagger.
This is a job well suited to mercenaries. They don't risk their lives.
The great danger and draw back of mercenaries is that they will not fight to the death. But hackers don't die when they lose a battle.
This concept is likely hateful to the military largely for traditional reasons. But they need to get over that. Fill the role with mercenaries and contractors. Bind them to US service, give the company a budget from the federal government, provide them with federal protection to keep them from getting assassinated by rival powers.
And soldier on.
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It isn't physical activity that scares off hackers, it's that the entire military lifestyle and mindset is something that runs counter to the hacking culture.
tips combat helmet
M'Sir.
"the ponytail wearing Google generation" - that is a hell of a lazy shot in the dark. But such reporting is all too frequently the norm among the latest generation of journalists. "We need to give serious consideration to how the Press could combine the technical expertise of the "Facebook" generation with its more traditional journalistic skills" - said Worthington Alfredingtonshite, god-king of journalists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Schedule_(US_civil_service_pay_scale)
100% agreement.
If they are NOT going to be deployed then hire them as GS whatever.
If they ARE going to be deployed to a situation where they can be shot then they need combat training.
Will they also let the "ponytail wearing Google generation" wear their ponytails? How about their bespoke frontiersman beards?
What TV shows does that author watch?
Perhaps this can be packaged into an MRE.
The concept is likely hateful to anyone largely for ethical reasons, traditional or otherwise.
The military is a vocation, not just a regular job done for cash. It is a job which involves killing people in order to defend against threats to one's whole country. If anyone is going in there only for the money, they are behaving improperly, and their commanders are behaving improperly to have recruited them in the first place. The worst sort of soldier is one who benefits from each fight rather than one who sees it as a duty to fight always but only when absolutely necessary.
It is no surprise that the open-ended "war on terror" with poorly defined enemy coincides with a rise in mercenaries in Western armies. While it is not in the interests of any soldier for war to keep going, it is in the interests of mercenaries for war to keep going. No civilised society even contemplates using them.
Bear in mind this is already done for medical recruits. You don't seriously think they make neurosurgeons undergo the rigors of basic training do you? When last I heard MD recruits had a 3 week familiarization course on military customs and courtesy.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
Give them a gun and one bullet to keep in their pocket
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The Army is already a 2nd tier service with lower standards. Short of creating an entirely new branch of the service, they aren't going to get away from the fact that they are the Army and get whatever cultural baggage comes along with that.
Watering down bootcamp is really not going to address the real problem.
They spun off the Air Corps and there wasn't nearly as much of a culture gap going on there.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
This would be like trying to put a cat in uniform. You could do it, but you're not going to get the results you expect. The people equipped to establish and maintain military discipline are not usually the same people who need to give competent orders to the hackers.
Contractors are the way to go here. Hackers can be motivated by money and will take the orders to reap the rewards. Telling them they have to do something because "it's an order" isn't going to work.
Signed,
US Army veteran
Microsoft veteran
Basic Training is about a lot more than combat training. It is about teaching the value of the command structure, of camaraderie, of working as a team and relying on your buddies. If "hackers" aren't able or willing to go through that training then they should be hired as civilian contractors. We are already outsourcing lots of jobs that used to be done by soldiers.
But the thing that unites everyone in the military is a set of core experiences and the values that come from them.
What do you know I wrote a novel
Just have them join the Air Force, the other, other military branch. They are already widely known as the least "military" military branch. Nobody is quite sure what they do in boot camp anyway, but sure don't run up hills and eat dirt like the Army or Marines, nor battle simulated sinking ships like the Navy.
Then by that definition, there is no such thing as civilized society and pretty much never has been.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
you have two kinds of deployment situations: those that need to be in the field, and those that can remain back at a base (preferably outside of the country). i would question even the need for an army to *have* the second type of individual when they could just as easily have someone from e.g. the CIA or elsewhere be contracted in.
so that would leave the first group - hackers that could need to be deployed in the field. now, i don't know about you, but if i was an ordinary soldier, along-side someone who basically could not run 20 metres without getting out of breath, i would hardly have any respect for them. i would consider them to be a liability, unable to fend for themselves, and, much worse than that, such unfit individuals could potentially end up risking the lives of their fellow soldiers under combat situations.
and that's a real serious problem, right there. knowing that, i can say absolutely for sure that even aged 44 there is absolutely no way that i would wish to go into a warzone without the same kind of physical training that *all my peers* had been through. that training is *really* important. it's about letting *you* know what you can achieve, as well as the rest of your squad. everyone gets the same level of training, so that everyone knows that they can count on each other when it really matters.
and the US army *wants* to have hackers be ostracised, uncertain if they can get themselves out of physical danger, and be a risk to people around them. that sounds ... hmm, it sounds like a stereotypical hacker if i am absolutely honest! but having the US army make that even worse... hmmm...
correct
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
You say that indifferent to the fact that the CIA does such things without being under military rules at all.
And you say such things despite the NSA hacking away at things without being under military rules. A member of the NSA can quit at any time. Just resign and go home.
Same is true of all the military contractors that design and build the fighter planes, the submarines, the missiles, etc.
Just because you work for pay does not mean you are without honor or that it is unethical to do the work.
The men that built the atomic bomb were not members of the military.
You perhaps do not know your military history... please take no offense... do you know that mercenary armies used to be the most common means of waging war? You had your police force which was paid by the state and you had a royal guard of sorts which was very much like the modern military. However, the actual armies were considered too expensive to maintain in those days so instead of maintaining an army, you would rent one.
This had pros and cons. They were very cheap over time. Even though during war they were quite expensive, during times of peace they cost nothing at all.
The disadvantage of a mercenary army was that they lacked loyalty and a willingness to die for their client. If they were routed they would run away.
Professional armies owned by the host nation would win in most cases against a mercenary army because the mercenary army would break and run.
What further ended such armies was that professional armies could be much larger. Mercenary armies could fight little wars. They might have a few thousand men in them but they rarely got any larger then that. While as you know, professional armies can number in the hundreds of thousands.
This hacking issue however brings the whole thing full circle. There is no question of a hacker running away because he fears for his life in a hack. There is no question of the money really. And the free hackers tend to be a great deal more competent then those under conscription.
As such, a flexible mind will see that hiring them as mercenaries actually makes perfect sense.
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It is a job which involves killing people in order to defend against threats to one's whole country.
In fairy-tale land. OK, I'll give you the War of 1812, but we are talking about the US Armed Forces here, who almost entirely project force into the world to enact political ambitions.
No civilised society even contemplates using them.
The US Constitution calls for their use (S. "Letters of Marque and Reprisal"), which is relevant to the US Army discussion. But we're talking about governments here, and there never has been a civilized government - by definition they use uncivilized techniques (c.f. religions and markets, which are competing methods for societal management).
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Even if we know for sure that they will not ever even be on the same continent as deployed troopers, they need to be in shape. The stereotypical obese hacker, working out of their mother's basement might cut it for an amateur, but a professional hackers needs a littler more discipline.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Most people in the military have some sort of job and they receive training for that. They don't spend much time learning to be a commando.
Are you talking about boot camp? Bootcamp doesn't really teach you about combat. It's more of a series of complex choreographies that you have to learn. The purpose of this mostly has to do with indoctrination and brainwashing. The military certainly isn't going to loosen its brainwashing requirements on cyberwarriors.
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What the fuck are you talking about? Mercenaries are, by definition, "a professional soldier hired to serve in a foreign army." They put their lives on the line - not for principles, or ideals, but for money. Meaning they take GREATER risks, and more frequently, because they sign up to fight.
In other news, feeding a mercenary unit into a meat grinder to save a few of your own troops would also be a great way to: 1) Avoid paying on a costly contract; 2) avoid taking casualties from your citizen soldiers.
Again, what the fuck are you talking about? You think an enemy's going to say "oh, they don't want to fight to the death, I guess we can ignore them?" of course not.
Surely defending teh intarwebs for 'Murika should be the purview of the Chairforce.
As to mercenaries being put at greater risk, consult the combat losses of mercenaries and compare them against regular military units.
They have much higher survival rates.
For one thing, they don't take suicide missions. For another, they do absolutely run away more often.
You remember when shipping companies were getting boarded by pirates? The shipping companies started hiring mercenaries.
Do you know what happened when a ship carrying mercenaries was boarded? About half the time they jumped over board and swam to shore.
As to how enemies deal with mercenaries, they do not ignore them. The mercenary force likes nothing better then to attack an enemy from the rear. Mercenaries are actually quite good at attacking in general. Especially ambushes or anything where they have the element of surprise. They do not like attacking prepared defenses head on and will generally refuse to do it. Enemy forces deal with mercenaries by forcing them to retreat which they do rather easily. Mercenaries are terrible defenders for this reason. They are best suited to attack.
During the city state days, that is precisely how they were used. The city states sat behind their stone walls guarded by the city guard. The mercenary army sallied forth encircle the enemy city state. They would then prey upon all the peasants that lived beyond the city walls and raid any shipment that left the city or was sent to the city. Everything the mercenaries took was theirs. They fed on what the farmers produced, they spent the money they took in those lands.
After several months or more the encircled city state would either submit to its rival or drive the mercenaries away with another mercenary company they had hired.
This system of warfare went out of style with the end of the city states and the end of city walls.
Hackers however do not risk their lives when they fight. They should be as willing to attack fixed defenses as anyone. If you have the skills of an elite hacker, you are not signing up to join the military. The pay isn't great, you get ordered around by military goons, and you have no freedom. Why would a hacker... most of whom tend to be anarchists... why would such a person join the military? They won't do it.
The military can either hire them as mercenaries and get what it needs or it can be inflexible and get garbage.
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Why not just have the white/black hats be a separate division completely, as opposed to attached to the AF, Army, or whatnot?
First of all, there is a loss of esprit de corps if the white/black hats are brought in and given rank without seeing boot camp. Pretty much similar to the same contempt that enlisted people have about a butter bar.
Second, what branch should completely own this? Each branch has special forces, under JSOC... it might be an idea to have a JSOC-like entity for the computer/IT related stuff so if the Marines want their own division, they can have them, but yet there is coordination among the branches.
I wonder about having a separate division, because cyber attacks are a completely new threat. The AF was created because of a new threat, so it might be best to create a branch of the Armed Forces whose goal it to deal with whitehat/blackhat stuff on all levels, be it expanding on NIST's guides and making something similar to IBM's Redbooks to secure stuff, to disassembling everything of a major OS to find potential holes and quietly notify vendors to have them patched.
Of course, there is public perception. In China, a blackhat is just as respected as an armorer, infantryman, or tanker. Here in the US, there is this looking down on IT-related people... but someone who manages to get a bogus firmware flash out there can do a lot more damage than most soldiers could do.
I hope this works out. The US needs people with a clue that are loyal and not just there as mercenaries.
If you're actually going to wear the uniform, you need to go through the same stuff. If not, be a GS or contractor.
Having a separate chunk of people that did not have to do that will breed resentment among the rest of the force. Most people in the Army/Navy/Air Force do not have 'combat jobs'. But they all need to meet the same minumum physical requirements, and all went through the same basic training.
The use of mercenaries is bad for a nation. Mercenaries are only loyal to their paycheck, not your country. The Roman empire fell because they switched their military to mercenaries.
The "hackers" I've seen in the movies wouldn't have much trouble with combat training:
http://www.allaboutjackman.com...
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Es2uYtSJ...
even speshul in da military.
Just have them go through the Air Force boot camp, problem solved. signed, an old Army guy ;-)
Yes. You will have to justify it though.
Anyway, back to the previous comment:
It's not magical. It's "military" and "civilian". If you're military then the UCMJ replaces the civilian laws.
The military does not create the weapons that it uses. It buys them from civilians. The M-16? Parts made by Mattel. The same company that makes Barbie dolls. So a soldier would probably NOT be writing that virus. It would be a civilian contractor or other government agency (NSA).
I think the concept here has gotten lost.
The problem is that if your INITIAL sorting is based upon who can pass Basic Training and such, you will probably exclude people with more valuable skills.
There is nothing stopping the Army from creating a new field and assigning some lieutenants to it. Those lieutenants are the ones that "pull the trigger".
But the network scans, evaluations, compromises and such can all be done by GS contractors. The lieutenants would be the equivalent of "script kiddies" at worst.
The purpose of basic training is to turn civilians into soldiers (not warriors, soldiers.) Prior to the modern army (as deployed by the Romans), battles were fought by a combination of highly-trained elite units (cavalry, well-trained melee combatants, etc.) and cowed peasants forced into battle at sword point. (As you might imagine, other than as a meat-shield vs. other peasants, this was not particularly useful.)
Starting with the Romans, Western Armies took conscripts (or volunteers) and trained them, first and foremost, to follow orders as a unit without question (as in, not prod them in the back with a spear all the time). At the same time, they were taught basic combat skills. Such soldiers were certainly more effective than cowed peasants, and in many situations more effective than independently trained elite warriors, since they could function as a cohesive team.
Nothing hackers do requires orders to be followed in seconds. Their orders do not involve putting themselves in the way of personal harm, so they don't need indoctrination/brainwashing to work against their natural survival instincts.
Certainly you DO need them to follow orders, and a cohesive unit can be good for morale (this doesn't just apply to the military), but there have to be better ways to do it vs. basic training, and you'll needlessly exclude those with perfectly usable skills unsuited for traditional basic. (I will note that Army Basic, while tough, is not actually that hard to pass, physically. You need to be in decent shape by the end, yes, but not an athlete. It's the mental demands that causes the most flunk-outs.)
Sure, you can do a lot of damage running scripts that other people wrote, but isn't Army kind of falling for the Hollywood stereotype nerd? Why not take smart recruits and train them? Admittedly, to be a hacker (in the worse sense of the word), you have to have a malevolent streak which isn't something that works well in Army.
The OLD Marine attitude, of taking all the high school dropouts and troublemakers and making them into a fighting force... That would be more likely to appeal to a hacker than the current military attitude (It might've changed since the early '00s, but previously they only took people with high school diplomas and no history of asthma. While some shady recruiters would 'get you a diploma' so they could pad their numbers, many would just as soon snub their nose at you.) That said a tiered basic intended to handle asthma (not really a problem if you're kept in a filtered air server farm somewhere deep in the bowels of America), obese people, scrawny people, as well as people with a 'normal' level of athletic ability offering qualification badges would go far to please both sides. People who could competently defend the country while immobile can be shoved somewhere heavily defended with guard personnel who ARE properly trained, while people with higher (and more athletic) aspirations can word ever increasing levels of line duty all the way up to the front.
Mind you I think the real solution here is to *STOP FUCKING CONNECTING THINGS TO THE INTERNET*. But like they say, Military and Intelligence, pick any one.
For those worried that we'll create a breed of soldier with no training, you're missing the point. America has not fought a war to defend itself in more than 50 years, and arguably longer than that without some provocation on our part. The last two clusterfucks, iraq and afghanistan, pitted armed soldiers in a formal military against guerilla fighters. In Iraq these were republican guard and former armed forces backed by local governments in the region, and in much the same style as the USSR faced when in Afghanistan our puppet government and elections failed miserably to take into account local customs and traditions. We fought a war for oil and in the process created ISIS. we defended nothing.
In Afghanistans case, we pitted a formal military against veteran militias, most of which were financed and trained by the united states almost 30 years ago. We faced an extraordinarily resillient fighting force that, after 11 years of war, we actually had to make a truce with. The taliban still holds seat in the Afghan government and we, as well as our installed leader, deal with them formally on a daily basis. People forget that when we killed osama bin laden, the Taliban managed to destroy a chinook helicopter and kill 32 marines as a direct act of revenge with nothing more than an RPG. and now we want a hackers brigade?
Out of 34 countries, the U.S. ranked 14th in reading, 17th in science and 25th in math. 14% of American adults have tremendous trouble with comprehension of reading and writing. Hell, we couldnt even fly our most sophisticated drone over Iran without them quickly and safely capturing and dissecting it. And finally theres a bigger problem. most hackers detest and loathe the US government and as a career, its a sight lower pay than a web startup or a fortune 500. Will we require a college education for these noble hacking corps? probably not, considering the US has a collge debt crisis thats threatening to tank the economy again and most schools, even public ones, are totally out of reach of the average fryolator cook earning wage-theft rates. Hackers dont forget about Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, Aaron Schwartz, and the countless others of their ranks the US has waged biblical retribution against for exposing the fallacy of US foreign and domestic policy so have fun trying to find a group of hackers that can swallow the bombastic amount of bullshit they would have to ascribe to in order to be part of a group that arguably, in a war would be the logical first casualty or worse, primary target to torture information from.
Good people go to bed earlier.
All hacking, by nearly every major player, is performed by an AI with an arsenal of tools that are developed from automated scanning of software for vulnerabilities.
What exactly are all these geeks doing anyway? Pretending? Just for show? Modern AI does it all.
I think all hackers who join the Army would like to experience what a real CoD would be like. It really is exciting when it is for real.
As to mercenaries being bad for a nation, not at all.
Consider the age of sail with the privateers. This was at a time when nations didn't have formal navies of any note. Yet those same countries had large merchant fleets with skilled sailors well able to become a navy.
Of course, they were not going to turn over their ships to the king or sign up for service if it meant losing their independence. They worked for those ships. They belonged to them. And their skills were highly in demand so they didn't need to go begging for the king's silver.
So rather then conscript all the merchant sailors, the king instead issues letters of marque granting those ships to make war on the specified enemies of the crown. The ships were permitted to take whatever they wanted from the enemy ships including the ships themselves. Rival powers would brand such sailors to be pirates but really they were just mercenaries in the pay of their respective nation.
An English ship did not sell its services to the Spanish if the spanish were at war with the english. Mercenaries rarely turn on their host nation though they do sometimes abandon it.
Regardless, the practice of privateers was very successful and allowed nations without navies to effectively project naval power. The United States in its early days did this as well. The pirates around the Americas were very thick in large part because a lot of them were New England merchants with armed merchant ships. They'd go south on a trading run and if they saw any enemy of the United States, they'd pillage her. Then sail north with a hold full of wealth and deposit their winnings.
The practice of offering a prize for capturing ships survived long after this time in the British Navy amongst others. If you can board and capture an enemy ship, I believe half the ship's value was credited to the crew of the ship in varying shares depending on the ranks of the crew.
There is nothing dishonorable about paying men to fight. You simply have to understand what you are paying for and not forget that.
In the case of US hackers hired to act in the interests of the US... I have no worries about them being any more disloyal then any conscript. Soldiers betray their countries as well least we not forget. It is upon the commanding officers and his brothers in arms to watch for such treachery and deal with it appropriately when discovered.
Offer to hire US hackers. Offer them prizes for successfully achieving certain goals. You'll get your skilled labor, you'll win every battle you are realistic about, and you'll probably do the whole thing well under budget.
Mercenaries as I have said, are actually much cheaper then regular forces. They just operate under different rules. One of which is that they have their own chain of command independent from the government and must have leave to have flexibility in the way they achieve objectives.
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Smell the Pentagon's vagina!
The limiting factors for recruitment of this type of individual are rarely the boot camp / combat training portion. The two main issues are pay, which is abysmal compared to what they could make elsewhere, and more importantly the culture. The people who are really really good at hacking and naturally interested are the exact kind that would find a top down hierarchy under military discipline to be intolerable. This is a solvable problem, but they're going to have to be willing to invest more time and resources than scooping some ready made folks off the street.
It would be best to hire mercenaries who had already worked for one of your opponents because they would already know the infrastructure. If you were a powerful, ruthless group capable of beheading captives and publicizing the video of said execution, you could cajole the mercenaries into serving you by kidnapping their families. Hiring hackers for straight pay is a horrible idea in terms of defending a nation.
Mercenaries can be useful though somewhat less reliable, you really only get into trouble when they're more numerous/powerful than your regular armed forces.
I'm a hacker, nothin' more
I won't quit until high score
Sound off: if then
Sound off: while for
Bring it on down: if then while for if then WHILE FOR!
Now drop and give me 20K lines of code, soldier
This is not the first time there has been talk about loosening requirements to fill these roles.
No - it's not even the first time this story, or a near-identical one, has been posted on slashdot.
...the Cheeto-fingered
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/30/AR2008043003415.html pretty much sums up why there really is no such thing as a non-combat branch of the Army.
You ask why post them active duty at all? Why not just hire them as civilians? Money, people.
If they hire them as civilians, it'll cost them two to three times the cost of active duty members. It's the way the GS pay scale is set up. If they are "soldiers", even in name only, they are only given the benefits of an active duty soldier, which is much less than a military contractor.
My last command was a shore duty command. We had a civilian contractor there from Raydeon. He got paid over 120 grand(in 1998) for his job. If he were active duty, he would have been paid, all benefits included, 35 grand. It's the same today.
Don't try to think this is about anything but money. Giving a hacker a uniform will lessen the fact they are getting paid a third as much doing a job they would get paid 80-100 grand as a contractor.
Doctors don't go through basic. They have to go through basic officer leadership. If you don't want to enlist them in as officers then they should have to go through the training. Honestly, we should be ashamed that we are willing to accept the belief that you can't be physically fit and use computers. Pretty shocking.
You've made a long list of reasons illustrating why mercenaries are bad, then used some nonsense about "conscription" to argue that hackers should be mercenaries.
The dichotomy is not mercenary / conscripted. You're missing the point entirely.
Alan Turing basically worked for the military. As have thousands of "boffins", "geeks", "nerds" before and since.
What is supposed to be the new idea here?
Sometimes the military realizes it needs brains as well as brawn.
By the way, recently I have been watching a ton of technical presentations on YouTube from Google, Facebook, Twitter engineers and others, I don't recall seeing a single pony tail.
That sounds great, but how are you going to pry them from their mum's basement? Maybe they can tele-hack?
Yeah, I was having trouble figuring that out. I think of "ponytail-wearing hackers" as those members of my (Boomer) generation who still have enough hair to tie up. And sorry, the Army tried to draft me once (my birthday made its saving throw successfully), taxed me for decades to pay for the Vietnam and Cold and Anti-Muslim Wars, and they're not going to get another chance.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
... Offer to hire US hackers. Offer them prizes for successfully achieving certain goals. You'll get your skilled labor, you'll win every battle you are realistic about, and you'll probably do the whole thing well under budget.
Shit, just offer immunity from prosecution by multinational corps and name the targets. I guess that would be more vigilante than merc. I'm tired of shit bouncing off my firewall and phishing my landline from overseas. Just for the Lutz, give us an NSL of immunity.
The Coast Guard isn't part of Dept of Defense. They were originally there to enforce customs laws and such like.
Men Who Stare at Goatse?
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Everyone knows all the good hackers are fat slobs with asthma... *eyeball roll*
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Our new elite military hacker.
I won't even dignify "patriotism" with more than a laugh.
Can't pay a competitive wage. Can't offer benefits remotely close to what private employers will offer. Lose a ton of personal autonomy from matters trivial (no 420) to absolutely vital (Wanna move to a different state? Nope. Wanna quit? Nope. Wanna change jobs? Nope.) Be beholden to whatever high-functioning sociopaths make it through our joke of an electoral season.
Oh, you might get to play with some cool toys that you might not have access to as a civilian, I guess. And those who don't have any skills to start with might get some training out of it, though, to be honest, if you're old enough to join a service like this and you aren't at least somewhat self-taught already, you're probably not actually going to ever be good enough to be more effective than "the enemy" at what they will want you to do. You'd get a few competent journeymen out of it, I guess.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
No issue with that either so long as it is the most effective means. Often there is a certain amount of corporate bloat that might be intolerable. But assuming they run their shops mean and lean... sounds good.
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In regards to hiring them for pay, you are forgetting that in most cases these would be Americans getting hired to do the job.
You have your head filled with some crap about the way mercs work that is inaccurate. They do not generally go against their host country. We have thousands of years of merc history to go through and what you have to understand is that most of them are actually rather patriotic.
They just don't want to die and they want to get paid what they're worth. That is not unreasonable.
I could go over the wars between the italian city states which I bet you're generally pretty ignorant of as well as the specifics of the european privateers during the age of sail. Which I bet you also don't know much about either.
Both situations involved large highly active mercenary armies and navies that by and large were both very effective and very loyal.
There were exceptions. Both of these sets have a hard time dealing with peace time because they only get paid during war time. Peace means they get paid nothing and so they often resort to banditry or piracy respectively.
That is the primary threat I'd see in establishing something like this... but you deal with that by keeping them on the pay roll whether there is a war or not. And that keeps them happy whether or not there is a war.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Please rephrase and elaborate.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Even then they're not a problem so long as you understand them. Consider again the age of sail with the privateers. The privateers greatly outnumbered the official navies of their host nations. These privateers didn't go raiding their home ports or attacking allied ships... UNTIL the wars stopped and they had no justification to attack anyone.
THEN there was a problem because their whole livelihood was being a privateer at that point.
How do you stop having a war with all these privateers? Spoils. The English especially had trouble controlling their privateers because they didn't share the loot with the men that won the war. Large portions of the new world conquests should have gone to them. Under English law, paying English taxes, but still THEIR land and their profits.
Instead too much of the land went to English nobility and political interests in England that risked nothing and did nothing to win the wars. And that lead to privateers without any means of income besides piracy.
And so they did piracy. First against their old enemies such as the Spanish. Just keep fighting as if the war never ended.
But then their host nation declared them pirates and outlaws in accordance with their treaties with the aggrieved nation. Which meant they could no longer harbor in once friendly ports. They were hunted by their own people as criminals. And once that happened... well... might as well prey upon the English ships too, no?
Moral of the story, don't breed an army of attack dogs, have them win a war for you, and then leave them to starve to death.
Had the privateers been given sufficient tracts of land in the new world. The majority of the English Caribbean islands for a start... there would have been no trouble. And again, they would have operated under english law and paid English taxes. But... instead it went to English nobles and other well placed interests. Which meant the ships of those nobles and interests got boarded by pirates and looted.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
You say I'm wrong without saying why. Offer a reason or you don't have a reason.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
(Really soon moderated down to hell :D, I think I go AC with this. /. user aliquis.)
Not that I know what I'm doing. Sure I've got a computer engineer degree and had an early interest. But... .. but regardless. If the US actually wanted me and was ok to provide the training then I think I would kinda be willing to take and keep the job and stay with them in exchange for simply becoming a US citizen.
Off-topic about the US values of freedom but what I want to grant them/you guys lots of credit for:
I'm a Swede. Is.. Was.. Easy to be proud of. And I guess we have good intentions now too. Maybe it would be a downgrade after all. What do I know.
The problem is we're so tolerant we (well, the politicians and the media at least) even tolerate the intolerant and bad because.. hey! Blindfolds! Don't look at reality of things look at ideology and dreams of how it could work instead!
Here we have a law protecting against being harassed (in among other things words) due to among other things religion, and the OIC through Pakistan even have managed to get "Defamination against religion" as a breach of human rights in the UNHCR (WTF?!)
People have rights. Ideas don't.
It wouldn't be so bad if the Muslims accepted the same rights back but of course Islam doesn't so themselves they don't accept the same human rights (including freedom of religion) since that doesn't blend well with Islam.
And that's the problem.
US Bill of Rights supposedly protect against that.
I'm pro extreme freedom. I want full personal freedom (as long as I don't remove that of others) and I want full freedom of speech because what's the worst thing which could come from it? And what are the alternatives? And who should decide what's ok to say?
Sweden of course is more socialist and there's even a lot of people who question things like owning, paying, stealing, appreciate who made something happen, why it did so and such.
But now we have that stuff above, and a pretty hard "opinion dictatorship" in media, risks are they will go further to remove opinions they don't happen to agree with.
(Like the idea of that defamation thing, the reasoning is that it lead to conflicts. Ok. Sure. And I back in the days thought that while making pictures of Muhammad was legally all-right one didn't had to continue all the time just because people got offended of it. .. It's still just words.)
But now I understand it's the reaction back which is the problem. Yeah. Sure. Your religion is important for you. It tries to put rules on things. So fucking what? Accept that doesn't mean everyone else want to be ruled by the same fucking rules.
It's not like those people are the most liberal, tolerant and accepting themselves
Anyway. I think the risk is that we're accepting people and religion of intolerance to be tolerant just to then have shit forced upon us because they could and wasn't as much for freedom of religion after all .. For instance. .. As is our government has made sure that a budget supported by the government in minority should be the one used rather than another one even if a majority would had voted for that one.
Because they want to make it easier to rule using a minority government rather than reach a majority in whatever way.
I don't need that.
And today (first day of 2015) they moved the secret police under control of the government rather than the police.
Is that really what you want?
Sure I don't know the objectives. But still.
Ideology and dictatorship / we know best seem to take some grip over individual freedom and democracy and I don't like it. At all.
My scare for it was more about if some Islamists would make it happen at some time.. But possibly peopleÂs (or just the people who scream the most?) good intention or "consultation" with Islamic groups are maybe already moving it.
Maybe even more so when they are chall
That means they cannot get the people they want, which is good news. After all those jobs are about making the world a worse place.
However their problem might solve itself.
We are on the brink of another "Tech"-Bubble. Nobody knows if Facebook or Uber will still exist in 5 years and no matter when the bubble will burst it will leave a lot of people with various degrees of skills on the market.
The other problem is that the remaining companies will probably enter their "fattening"-stage. They will, for example, get the "dead sea" effect, where the skilled people just leave for more interesting jobs while the less skilled ones stay where they are. In software engineering, less skilled people mean worse and bigger code which lowers the amount of productivity, meaning you need more people. Again the good ones will "evaporate" and gradually the skill level sinks more and more and you get more and more unskilled people until eventually you are left with a company of a million idiots. Obviously to counteract this you need strict procedures which will drive out the remaining skilled people.
When the currently attractive "tech"-companies have reached that point, it'll be comparatively easy for the military to pick people.
For example, "direct input" officers teach nuclear theory to Navy nuclear field recruits. They don't go through real OCS (nor the Academy).
(Some of them were pretty cute, too ... or looked that way to someone who just got out of boot camp.)
This is a problem for all US military service branches, not just the Army. I think it's really time to start re-thinking how our services are structured. An Op-ed piece by Shawn Brimley and Paul Scharre titled "Ctrl + Alt + Delete: Resetting America's Military" notionally explores one option (See: http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/13/ctrl-alt-delete/).
Sir, I don;t feel like saying Sir, Sir, cause you ain't beat it into me with basic training Sir.
I have no respect Sir, go stuff your self, and No! I won't do anything you ask cause I'm a whiny 20 yo wanna be hacker, Sir!
That is funny. They want technical experts now? And may even forego combat training?
I tried about 6 months ago to get in active duty. I had recently quit my job and was pretty open for just about anything, as long as combat was not a primary function. I keep fit, run almost every day, have no physical ailments, a clean record, no drugs, and all that happy jazz they want and more, like no spouse or kids. They said the only thing they had open that might be close was special forces (there are apparently different portions of special forces and technical experts get put into one, if the recruiter wasn't lying anyway). They also said if I drop out of special forces training, I would be stuck with some random infantry-type job based on "needs of the Army." That put me off on that idea, however, they suggested to watch the movie "Two Weeks in Hell" to get an idea what training special forces go through. Fuck that. There are people who train for a long time specifically to try to get through that special forces training and still fail. How is some guy "just off the streets" supposed to pull that feat? Also, normal combat training isn't even half that shit. I know people who were much less off than me phsyically that got through normal combat training. They were just trying to trick me into getting stuck with the infantry-type job they really wanted me for, though if I was able to get through that special forces training bullshit, all the better for them.
The question is rather, what kinda shit is he smoking and could he share some?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's the whole rest. The uniforms... ok, they are kinda cool, but that's pretty much where the cool stuff ends.
Getting up at some time when normal people go to bed.
Calling someone "sir" whose IQ matches that of my last bowel movement.
Going through tourette-like spastic twitches every time such a pea-for-brain waltzes by.
The food. Not so much the content (as if any hacker cares just what he shovels into his body) but instead of eating when you're hungry you're eating when you're eating. Why kinda sense does that make?
Various daily/weekly/monthly routines without any rhyme or reason (like where that oversized colorful hanky is being pulled up on a pole and everyone's watching like they're waiting for God to blow his nose or something).
And that's just what I remember of my time in that insane clown posse.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
(I will note that Army Basic, while tough, is not actually that hard to pass, physically. You need to be in decent shape by the end, yes, but not an athlete. It's the mental demands that causes the most flunk-outs.)
It is set up in such a way that pretty much the only way someone can fail is if they want to.
NSA? What good is it?
I think all current US military organizations should be legally prevented from doing any sort of cyberwarfare without NSA oversight.
This would only attract patriots who would be willing to trade 4 years (potentially 8 years) of being in the private sector to be a severely under-paid peon who's looked upon by Army regulars as not one of them. This is fraught with potential disaster.
Come on.....roll the world ahead 100 years. Will the military need personal combat training ?
I mean if computers are not running it then the people needed will need a different skill set that muscles.
89% of bootcamp is about discipline and teamwork and learning you are always your Commanding Officers bitch. And it actually isn't that hard. I see no reason to remove it.