Assuming you're correct about Microsoft's challenge to the US Justice Department on that, then it brings things to a rather interesting head. What happens then? If US companies can't move Europeans' data to the US, it seems to me that these companies will be forced to choose between:
A) Operating in the European Union
B) Keeping their headquarters in the US/being a US company
When push comes to shove, I'm inclined to think they'll all bail out for Ireland or whereever, and leave their operations in the Valley as a subsidiary.
Considering she's running for president, it shouldn't be surprising at all that her record gets raked over with a fine-toothed comb.
As for the deal itself, it definitely sounds like HP tried to gain advantage, but Apple came out as the clear winner, with HP (and Fiorinia) looking entirely foolish. Given the rest of her tenure at HP (and elsewhere), I'm not surprised in the least to hear it. She's never been any sort of true visionary, and having Jobs leave her in the dust with having doubled down on what was soon to be yesterday's technology, while he focused on what was really key is exactly what I would expect.
So is it really a "hit piece" to tell what happened, and put it in proper context? Why was HP wasting its time doing things like buying Compaq, and trying to piggyback on Apple's successes? If she was really a visionary, shouldn't she have been leading the market and innovating the way Jobs was?
Prevent? No, the cyberwar has long since started, and I fear the forces of good are steadily losing.
We continue to fight the good fight, straining endlessly against the sea of foes in the cyberwar - against politicians, government staff, corporate drones, PHBs, and even the tech journalists that have betrayed us. Standing with us, but a few ragged, weary veterans of the IT industry - the programmers, the sysadmins, the network engineers, struggling valiantly in our constant fight to get people to stop putting the prefix "cyber" in front of anything and everything.
The reliability of Intelligence is very important. Bad intelligence gets our people killed, wastes resources on snipe hunts, etc. Torture is entirely counterproductive to getting good, reliable intelligence.
You know why the North Koreans/Chinese/North Vietnamese/etc tortured prisoners? It wasn't for intelligence, it was for the purpose of brainwashing and propaganda. That's why they kept doing it long after any intelligence those poor bastards had was of no more use.
Want to know what works for getting intelligence? Stuff like the time-tested tactics outlined in the Army Field Manual - not Hollywood Tough Guy bullshit.
That, and the fact that it's TORTURE, the sort of thing we prosecuted people for in the past as a war crime.
It's also completely useless for gathering information, because all you get is garbage - someone will tell you whatever they think you want to hear to make it stop, even making shit up. Jesse Ventura put it rather well when he said something on the lines of "Give me Dick Cheney strapped to a folding table and a pitcher of water, and in 5 minutes I'll get him to confess to the Manson Family murders."
Skepticism is certainly warranted - however, far better to go with someone whose track record indicates that they could oppose mass surveillance, or take actions to roll it back. I would choose someone who might go back on their word later over someone who PROMISES to do the very thing I don't want them to.
There's certainly very little downside to it, these days, for most candidates. Even if you gain no traction/little notice, and you drop out early, the net resultis likely that nobody really remembers so it doesn't matter. On the other hand, if you make a splash, but you lose out after a while, you can write/sell a book, get hired as a contributor on Fox, go give speeches, etc, and do a lot more than you could have before.
The really sad/funny thing is that Fiorina ran in 2010 as a moderate for California Senate. Now she's trying to sell herself as a hard-right ultraconservative republican. It's a bunch of flimflam, and you shouldn't buy it, any more than you should hire her to run your company.
You're looking at it the wrong way. This doesn't hurt or hinder DHS in the slightest - in fact, DHS would shrivel up and choke without contractors. They're an essential part of its workforce, and they always have been since day 1.
No, this is just DHS being used as a giant cash cow by the national security contracting industry. See that reference to lobbying by Raytheon et al? It's not just lobbying to try and get contracts, it's also lobbying to have those contracts, and the agencies issuing them, to exist in the first place. It's things like this that make sure politicians want to keep lumbering hulks like DHS around.
The only one, arguably, would be Lincoln in 1860, since at the time the Republican Party was still an insurgent, and was still in the final stages of supplanting the Whig party, but even that one would be a stretch, as they were clearly in the top two (and would remain firmly ensconced to this day as such).
And more importantly, we haven't had an actual supplanting of either of the two parties in the 155 years since then, despite it happening twice in the preceding 50 or so years. Instead, the two parties are so thoroughly entrenched that the more successful tactic has been to infiltrate and take over one of the two parties from within. Both parties have changed noticeably on a number of issues, to the point that they're almost unrecognizable when compared with their original versions (and, more ironically, are arguably closer to the OTHER one's original beliefs/constituencies).
Researchers: Let's see who's REALLY behind your code!
*tears the mask off, and gasps*
Researchers: It's Old Man Withers, the owner of the abandoned amusement park!
Withers: And I would've gotten away with it, if it wasn't for you meddling hackers!
No, they don't. The RIAA/etc are unhappy with it, because in their mind it doesn't do enough. They want laws that will let them ram eternal unbreakable copyright down our throats, eliminates fair use or any other provisions that don't involve paying them truckloads of money for stuff written before most of us were even born.
They accepted DMCA as what they could get at the time, but don't make the mistake of sleeping on it, because their lobbyists and lawyers will do whatever they can to get it strengthened, whether in congress or in court rulings.
In some cases, where the conduct of a corporation is so extremely egregious and sociopathic, I do think that something needs to be done to punish those ultimately responsible. That said, as much as this stuff bothers me, it bothers me far less than what GM did. Cheating on emissions tests is bad, but deliberately ignoring and covering up safety issues that you know will get people killed, and then having lots of people get killed, is worse. Of course, GM only suffered a 900 million USD fine for that, and there are reasons why - just not good reasons: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...
Overall, we need more accountability for the executives, and management, that either allows this sort of stuff, or sets up the corporate culture where it's tolerated or even expected. How much money is the Volkswagen CEO going to walk away with? How much money did GM's executives make off with? Do we really expect to discourage this sort of stuff if it just comes down to cost benefit analysis?
At this rate, you're going to see a growing impetus to move the company headquarters overseas, whether to Europe or elsewhere. Leave a subsidiary in the US to deal with the US market, but keep the parent in Ireland or Switzerland or wherever. Yes, this is patently self-defeating for the US, as a whole and for the government, but it's nothing new. The US government (on both sides of the political aisle) has been doing a great job at encouraging companies to move their operations overseas - whether it's to use the tax loopholes like the Apple/Facebook/Google/etc Ireland gambit, or shifting operation plans because other countries offered financing after the Export/Import Bank was shut down, or any number of other advantages.
There's still the social stigma of doing it, but aside from that, are there really any serious downsides? Certainly not enough it seems. The big downside is probably that the executives might have to move to the new country, and/or be subject to the tax laws there, but if the other advantages are high enough, they just might go shopping for a new spot.
While somewhat anecdotal, it occurs to me that any comparison of pollution/air quality in European vs American cities, and their respective emissions standards, should likely take into account that Americans tend to drive far more often than Europeans.
I dunno, Germany/Germans tend to be very fastidious and precise at keeping records, even of wrongdoing. I wouldn't be surprised if it's all right there in the logs.
It depends on what kind of lawyer we're talking about.
Trial lawyers tend to be pro-democrat (think John Edwards, for instance).
Others, such as corporate lawyers, or especially prosecutor types, often lean more to the right (such as Chris Christie, or Rudy Giuliani). They're not all the most ultraconservative, of course, but they do trend right, especially in the "enforce the law" sort of mentality. See also the Federalist Society.
Most home users aren't the sort who buy dedicated PC gaming machines, though. I have a work laptop, that's relatively new and light - but all it needs to run is office/exchange/web browser and anything else corporate decides they need me using. I'm not worried about how many frames of Crysis3 it can push, or how it handles the latest Call of Duty Advanced Modern Black Ghost Ops running at 4k resolution.
I used to have a 'gaming' laptop, because I traveled a lot, and still wanted to play games. A desktop isn't really an option when you're away from home more often than not. That said, the moment I was back in a stable environment, I splurged on a monster gaming desktop with top of the line video cards and a massive monitor, because laptops just don't provide anywhere near a satisfying experience. I also bought a much more modest laptop, that while it had enough to do some basic stuff (play an MMO, web browse, etc) when I went on a trip, it also didn't weigh so much that I would up wanting to kill myself when trying to lug it through an airport.
The only way I'd consider going back to a "gaming" laptop is if I was on the road 24/7 again. It's just not worth the cost, because you'll get far more bang for your buck with a desktop as a gamer.
For one, I'm not saying it made sense - just that it's what the Air Force calls its medium range tactical strike aircraft. They call them fighter-bombers, and insist on putting an "F" designation on. By all rights it should probably have had an "A" designation, or at least F/A (since "B" is for strategic bombers - and they did later make an FB-111 variant for that role). The air force was looking for an aircraft that could replace the F-105 (which was likewise an attack aircraft, not a 'fighter'), and the Pentagon decided that it could be combined with the Navy's interceptor requirement. Neither that plane, nor the F-111, were ever primarily "fighters" in anything but name and hand-waved capability, certainly.
My point still stands though, that both the Air Force and the Navy would have been better off with planes tailored specifically to their needs, rather than being forced to compromise on those requirements.
You're missing the most important thing - for Combat Air Support, speed is not your friend.
Loiter time is the most important thing - i.e., how long you can stay at the target zone providing support. Ask any grunt (infantry or other combat arms MOS, in either the Army or the Marines) which they'd rather have coming to help - a fast strike that drops a few bombs at a specific target, and maybe 1 or 2 strafing runs, and then flies home, OR, a plane that's capable of sticking around for an hour or more.
You don't need speed to get to the battle spot if you're already out there - worse, if you're flying high and fast, you're more likely to hit the wrong spot, or even worse, drop ordnance on friendlies.
Except you would be wrong. The Air Force wanted an aircraft that could serve as a fighter/bomber, and the Navy wanted a fighter/interceptor to defend Carrier task forces against Russian bomber/cruise missile attack swarms.
McNamara made them combine their requirements into the "Tactical Fighter Experimental" (TFX) program, and it was a "fighter" in that it was intended to use missiles at range to shoot down enemy aircraft, in an era where dogfighting was considered to be obsolete. Of course, the Navy wound up deciding that it didn't meet their requirements, and cancelled their version of it. (They later went back to the drawing board and came up with the F-14)
Meanwhile, the Air Force would use it mostly as a tactical bomber, and also made an adapted version to use as a strategic bomber, and it did a pretty decent job of those - but it could have done much better had it been designed to do just that rather than trying to be everything to everyone.
And I can only imagine what would have happened had the Marines demanded it be SVTOL capable, too.
Yes, CAS really needs to go to the people who care about it (i.e. the Army). Attack Helicopters cover part of it, but have some drawbacks in that they can be a lot more fragile than something like the A-10. You can't fill that role with a simple flyby of something coming in at high speed, dropping a pair of bombs, and racing off - all that does is make the enemy hunker down for maybe 5-10 minutes at most. After that, they're back to shooting. Give me something with lots of dwell time anyday - that's the sort of thing something like an A-10, or the A-29 mentioned in the article, are really good for.
The really sad thing about the F-111 was that it actually could have been a good plane, if they'd bothered to make different versions tailored to the different needs of each of the services, rather than trying to force a "one size fits all" mentality. The Navy, incidentally, went back to the drawing board after they backed out of supporting the F-111, and came up with the F-14 Tomcat. There's no way they'd be capable of doing that in today's environment, sadly.
The F-35 might have been at least halfway decent if we didn't have to design the whole plane around the Marines' VSTOL requirement, which is really the primary thing that kills it (aside from the ridiculous attempt to assign the CAS role to it).
The Air Force doesn't want either plane. They don't want to fly the Close Air Support mission, and to the extent that they do, they want to use F-35s to do it.
Because the Air Force brass hates the Close Air Support (CAS) mission. It's partly a cultural thing - they want to fight wars where airpower is preeminent, where they take the starring role. They don't want to spend their time playing support to the Army/etc (despite the fact that it's been proven, time and again, that this is largely how you win wars - hitting infrastructure etc helps, but does not by itself win the war). They've been trying to kill off the A-10 for years, too, and only failing because the Army loves it, though they've managed to push it off to the Air National Guard.
It probably also helps to understand that, even beyond this air warfare centric mentality, the Air Force is largely dominated at the senior levels by fighter pilots now. Ever since SAC's role and prominence was reduced following the end of the Cold War, fighter pilots have been preeminent, with strategic bombing coming in second, and close air support all but nonexistent. After all, look at the aircraft they're pushing - expensive hi-tech single-seater air combat platforms. They see something like the A-10, or the A-29 Super Tucano, as threats that take away money and resources that could be better used for more F-35s, despite the fact that it's overpriced and underperforming, and that you could probably get 10 A-29s or equivalent for 1 F-35, or better.
Slashdot Mirror
Assuming you're correct about Microsoft's challenge to the US Justice Department on that, then it brings things to a rather interesting head. What happens then? If US companies can't move Europeans' data to the US, it seems to me that these companies will be forced to choose between:
A) Operating in the European Union
B) Keeping their headquarters in the US/being a US company
When push comes to shove, I'm inclined to think they'll all bail out for Ireland or whereever, and leave their operations in the Valley as a subsidiary.
Considering she's running for president, it shouldn't be surprising at all that her record gets raked over with a fine-toothed comb.
As for the deal itself, it definitely sounds like HP tried to gain advantage, but Apple came out as the clear winner, with HP (and Fiorinia) looking entirely foolish. Given the rest of her tenure at HP (and elsewhere), I'm not surprised in the least to hear it. She's never been any sort of true visionary, and having Jobs leave her in the dust with having doubled down on what was soon to be yesterday's technology, while he focused on what was really key is exactly what I would expect.
So is it really a "hit piece" to tell what happened, and put it in proper context? Why was HP wasting its time doing things like buying Compaq, and trying to piggyback on Apple's successes? If she was really a visionary, shouldn't she have been leading the market and innovating the way Jobs was?
Prevent? No, the cyberwar has long since started, and I fear the forces of good are steadily losing.
We continue to fight the good fight, straining endlessly against the sea of foes in the cyberwar - against politicians, government staff, corporate drones, PHBs, and even the tech journalists that have betrayed us. Standing with us, but a few ragged, weary veterans of the IT industry - the programmers, the sysadmins, the network engineers, struggling valiantly in our constant fight to get people to stop putting the prefix "cyber" in front of anything and everything.
The reliability of Intelligence is very important. Bad intelligence gets our people killed, wastes resources on snipe hunts, etc. Torture is entirely counterproductive to getting good, reliable intelligence.
You know why the North Koreans/Chinese/North Vietnamese/etc tortured prisoners? It wasn't for intelligence, it was for the purpose of brainwashing and propaganda. That's why they kept doing it long after any intelligence those poor bastards had was of no more use.
Want to know what works for getting intelligence? Stuff like the time-tested tactics outlined in the Army Field Manual - not Hollywood Tough Guy bullshit.
That, and the fact that it's TORTURE, the sort of thing we prosecuted people for in the past as a war crime.
It's also completely useless for gathering information, because all you get is garbage - someone will tell you whatever they think you want to hear to make it stop, even making shit up. Jesse Ventura put it rather well when he said something on the lines of "Give me Dick Cheney strapped to a folding table and a pitcher of water, and in 5 minutes I'll get him to confess to the Manson Family murders."
Skepticism is certainly warranted - however, far better to go with someone whose track record indicates that they could oppose mass surveillance, or take actions to roll it back. I would choose someone who might go back on their word later over someone who PROMISES to do the very thing I don't want them to.
There's certainly very little downside to it, these days, for most candidates. Even if you gain no traction/little notice, and you drop out early, the net resultis likely that nobody really remembers so it doesn't matter.
On the other hand, if you make a splash, but you lose out after a while, you can write/sell a book, get hired as a contributor on Fox, go give speeches, etc, and do a lot more than you could have before.
The really sad/funny thing is that Fiorina ran in 2010 as a moderate for California Senate. Now she's trying to sell herself as a hard-right ultraconservative republican. It's a bunch of flimflam, and you shouldn't buy it, any more than you should hire her to run your company.
You're looking at it the wrong way. This doesn't hurt or hinder DHS in the slightest - in fact, DHS would shrivel up and choke without contractors. They're an essential part of its workforce, and they always have been since day 1.
No, this is just DHS being used as a giant cash cow by the national security contracting industry. See that reference to lobbying by Raytheon et al? It's not just lobbying to try and get contracts, it's also lobbying to have those contracts, and the agencies issuing them, to exist in the first place. It's things like this that make sure politicians want to keep lumbering hulks like DHS around.
The only one, arguably, would be Lincoln in 1860, since at the time the Republican Party was still an insurgent, and was still in the final stages of supplanting the Whig party, but even that one would be a stretch, as they were clearly in the top two (and would remain firmly ensconced to this day as such).
And more importantly, we haven't had an actual supplanting of either of the two parties in the 155 years since then, despite it happening twice in the preceding 50 or so years. Instead, the two parties are so thoroughly entrenched that the more successful tactic has been to infiltrate and take over one of the two parties from within. Both parties have changed noticeably on a number of issues, to the point that they're almost unrecognizable when compared with their original versions (and, more ironically, are arguably closer to the OTHER one's original beliefs/constituencies).
Researchers: Let's see who's REALLY behind your code!
*tears the mask off, and gasps*
Researchers: It's Old Man Withers, the owner of the abandoned amusement park!
Withers: And I would've gotten away with it, if it wasn't for you meddling hackers!
No, they don't. The RIAA/etc are unhappy with it, because in their mind it doesn't do enough. They want laws that will let them ram eternal unbreakable copyright down our throats, eliminates fair use or any other provisions that don't involve paying them truckloads of money for stuff written before most of us were even born.
They accepted DMCA as what they could get at the time, but don't make the mistake of sleeping on it, because their lobbyists and lawyers will do whatever they can to get it strengthened, whether in congress or in court rulings.
In some cases, where the conduct of a corporation is so extremely egregious and sociopathic, I do think that something needs to be done to punish those ultimately responsible. That said, as much as this stuff bothers me, it bothers me far less than what GM did. Cheating on emissions tests is bad, but deliberately ignoring and covering up safety issues that you know will get people killed, and then having lots of people get killed, is worse. Of course, GM only suffered a 900 million USD fine for that, and there are reasons why - just not good reasons: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/... Overall, we need more accountability for the executives, and management, that either allows this sort of stuff, or sets up the corporate culture where it's tolerated or even expected. How much money is the Volkswagen CEO going to walk away with? How much money did GM's executives make off with? Do we really expect to discourage this sort of stuff if it just comes down to cost benefit analysis?
At this rate, you're going to see a growing impetus to move the company headquarters overseas, whether to Europe or elsewhere. Leave a subsidiary in the US to deal with the US market, but keep the parent in Ireland or Switzerland or wherever. Yes, this is patently self-defeating for the US, as a whole and for the government, but it's nothing new. The US government (on both sides of the political aisle) has been doing a great job at encouraging companies to move their operations overseas - whether it's to use the tax loopholes like the Apple/Facebook/Google/etc Ireland gambit, or shifting operation plans because other countries offered financing after the Export/Import Bank was shut down, or any number of other advantages.
There's still the social stigma of doing it, but aside from that, are there really any serious downsides? Certainly not enough it seems. The big downside is probably that the executives might have to move to the new country, and/or be subject to the tax laws there, but if the other advantages are high enough, they just might go shopping for a new spot.
While somewhat anecdotal, it occurs to me that any comparison of pollution/air quality in European vs American cities, and their respective emissions standards, should likely take into account that Americans tend to drive far more often than Europeans.
I dunno, Germany/Germans tend to be very fastidious and precise at keeping records, even of wrongdoing. I wouldn't be surprised if it's all right there in the logs.
It depends on what kind of lawyer we're talking about.
Trial lawyers tend to be pro-democrat (think John Edwards, for instance).
Others, such as corporate lawyers, or especially prosecutor types, often lean more to the right (such as Chris Christie, or Rudy Giuliani). They're not all the most ultraconservative, of course, but they do trend right, especially in the "enforce the law" sort of mentality. See also the Federalist Society.
Most home users aren't the sort who buy dedicated PC gaming machines, though. I have a work laptop, that's relatively new and light - but all it needs to run is office/exchange/web browser and anything else corporate decides they need me using. I'm not worried about how many frames of Crysis3 it can push, or how it handles the latest Call of Duty Advanced Modern Black Ghost Ops running at 4k resolution.
I used to have a 'gaming' laptop, because I traveled a lot, and still wanted to play games. A desktop isn't really an option when you're away from home more often than not. That said, the moment I was back in a stable environment, I splurged on a monster gaming desktop with top of the line video cards and a massive monitor, because laptops just don't provide anywhere near a satisfying experience. I also bought a much more modest laptop, that while it had enough to do some basic stuff (play an MMO, web browse, etc) when I went on a trip, it also didn't weigh so much that I would up wanting to kill myself when trying to lug it through an airport.
The only way I'd consider going back to a "gaming" laptop is if I was on the road 24/7 again. It's just not worth the cost, because you'll get far more bang for your buck with a desktop as a gamer.
For one, I'm not saying it made sense - just that it's what the Air Force calls its medium range tactical strike aircraft. They call them fighter-bombers, and insist on putting an "F" designation on. By all rights it should probably have had an "A" designation, or at least F/A (since "B" is for strategic bombers - and they did later make an FB-111 variant for that role). The air force was looking for an aircraft that could replace the F-105 (which was likewise an attack aircraft, not a 'fighter'), and the Pentagon decided that it could be combined with the Navy's interceptor requirement. Neither that plane, nor the F-111, were ever primarily "fighters" in anything but name and hand-waved capability, certainly.
My point still stands though, that both the Air Force and the Navy would have been better off with planes tailored specifically to their needs, rather than being forced to compromise on those requirements.
But loiter time is what you need for a CAS aircraft, and yet they keep telling us that the F-35 will be covering that role, replacing the A-10.
You're missing the most important thing - for Combat Air Support, speed is not your friend.
Loiter time is the most important thing - i.e., how long you can stay at the target zone providing support. Ask any grunt (infantry or other combat arms MOS, in either the Army or the Marines) which they'd rather have coming to help - a fast strike that drops a few bombs at a specific target, and maybe 1 or 2 strafing runs, and then flies home, OR, a plane that's capable of sticking around for an hour or more.
You don't need speed to get to the battle spot if you're already out there - worse, if you're flying high and fast, you're more likely to hit the wrong spot, or even worse, drop ordnance on friendlies.
Except you would be wrong. The Air Force wanted an aircraft that could serve as a fighter/bomber, and the Navy wanted a fighter/interceptor to defend Carrier task forces against Russian bomber/cruise missile attack swarms. McNamara made them combine their requirements into the "Tactical Fighter Experimental" (TFX) program, and it was a "fighter" in that it was intended to use missiles at range to shoot down enemy aircraft, in an era where dogfighting was considered to be obsolete. Of course, the Navy wound up deciding that it didn't meet their requirements, and cancelled their version of it. (They later went back to the drawing board and came up with the F-14)
Meanwhile, the Air Force would use it mostly as a tactical bomber, and also made an adapted version to use as a strategic bomber, and it did a pretty decent job of those - but it could have done much better had it been designed to do just that rather than trying to be everything to everyone.
And I can only imagine what would have happened had the Marines demanded it be SVTOL capable, too.
Yes, CAS really needs to go to the people who care about it (i.e. the Army). Attack Helicopters cover part of it, but have some drawbacks in that they can be a lot more fragile than something like the A-10. You can't fill that role with a simple flyby of something coming in at high speed, dropping a pair of bombs, and racing off - all that does is make the enemy hunker down for maybe 5-10 minutes at most. After that, they're back to shooting. Give me something with lots of dwell time anyday - that's the sort of thing something like an A-10, or the A-29 mentioned in the article, are really good for.
The really sad thing about the F-111 was that it actually could have been a good plane, if they'd bothered to make different versions tailored to the different needs of each of the services, rather than trying to force a "one size fits all" mentality. The Navy, incidentally, went back to the drawing board after they backed out of supporting the F-111, and came up with the F-14 Tomcat. There's no way they'd be capable of doing that in today's environment, sadly.
The F-35 might have been at least halfway decent if we didn't have to design the whole plane around the Marines' VSTOL requirement, which is really the primary thing that kills it (aside from the ridiculous attempt to assign the CAS role to it).
The Air Force doesn't want either plane. They don't want to fly the Close Air Support mission, and to the extent that they do, they want to use F-35s to do it.
Because the Air Force brass hates the Close Air Support (CAS) mission. It's partly a cultural thing - they want to fight wars where airpower is preeminent, where they take the starring role. They don't want to spend their time playing support to the Army/etc (despite the fact that it's been proven, time and again, that this is largely how you win wars - hitting infrastructure etc helps, but does not by itself win the war). They've been trying to kill off the A-10 for years, too, and only failing because the Army loves it, though they've managed to push it off to the Air National Guard.
It probably also helps to understand that, even beyond this air warfare centric mentality, the Air Force is largely dominated at the senior levels by fighter pilots now. Ever since SAC's role and prominence was reduced following the end of the Cold War, fighter pilots have been preeminent, with strategic bombing coming in second, and close air support all but nonexistent. After all, look at the aircraft they're pushing - expensive hi-tech single-seater air combat platforms. They see something like the A-10, or the A-29 Super Tucano, as threats that take away money and resources that could be better used for more F-35s, despite the fact that it's overpriced and underperforming, and that you could probably get 10 A-29s or equivalent for 1 F-35, or better.