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NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

nytimes.com

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Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#181

Post by bdamm »

body12 wrote: post #156
bdamm wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you be more specific? What governance processes counteract or prevent that failure?

Reduce wealth inequality through industrial and fiscal policy, don't stuff cities full of millions of culturally distant immigrants (distant from both each other and the existing population), encourage integration and patriotism instead of ethnic sectarianism via education and cultural pressure.

That's funny, how do you link multiculturalism to a breakdown of society? If anything you want lots of strong societies overlapping so that everyone can find a group that can support them and each other. The "mosaic" concept has worked out fairly well for Canada, and I just can't get behind denying people their communities.

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#182

Post by TheBeardKing »

coldtea wrote: post #69
HenryKissinger wrote: post #21

That states like China and Russia can recruit the best cybersecurity talent in their respective countries, and force them to work for the government, while the United States can't, is a problem. If I were the president, I would focus on talent recruitment and retention. Google is paying its top cyberstaff 700k? Offer them 1M. Also get rid of archaic hiring practices like drug tests, and streamline the process to obta…

> That states like China and Russia can recruit the best cybersecurity talent in their respective countries, and force them to work for the government, while the United States can't, is a problem. Huh? Why the united states couldn't? It's government/military budget is much higher... As for the "force them", China and Russia don't need to force anyone to work for their cybersecurity teams either (nor it would be wise…

Congress sets salaries and benefits for government positions, but most of those jobs are under the executive branch. So the president can't just increase the head of cybersecurity's salary to $1M, that has to be approved by Congress. The DoD and intelligence agencies get around these restrictions by contracting out the technical work, but the problem is the top decision makers still don't make nearly enough to attract real experts in the field.

In the government agency I'm employed with, the cyber security manager for our products has only a logistics management background. The information assurance personnel are contractors, but they don't have much impact on the real decision making.

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#183

Post by rolltiide »

sangnoir wrote: post #169
rolltiide wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the US' market's liquidity, that seems unparalleled I like the US' diversified portfolio of industries and stewardship of resources Its military seems wasteful and unnecessary, perpetuated by cultural paranoia and its domestic infrastructure for actually living seems to exist in a parallel world where it is compared to the worst countries in existence whenever challenged, operating with seeming unawareness of…

> people that must ... be a soldier to obtain subsidized schooling, trades, healthcare and housing from the government. Sounds like joining the army is one way of getting these special citizenship benefits. Would you like to know more?

I would not like to know more.

Colloquially - as in Im not sure if this is backed by socioeconomic demographic distribution - the military is an option for people with less options, a route for people to choose as much as college is a route for people to choose. Military service being used to defer college and access it cheaper later.

Correct me if Im wrong on this topic, this isnt what people choose in places or circumstances where other opportunities are abundant.

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#185

Post by HeXetic »

avmich wrote: post #178
HeXetic wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the problem with that? He's talking about the future, where hypersonic missiles will be a reality. Anti-missile defences like the Phalanx CIWS have a range of only a couple of miles. A theoretical missile flying at Mach 20 will cover that range in less than half a second, making it extremely difficult to shoot down. A Phalanx only fires at 50 rounds per second. We're talking about a few dozen bullets on target…

But low altitude? I'd consider that, say, 5 km or even less; why a hypersonic missile would be low-flying cruise missile? Why confront that awful aerodynamic drag?

> Why confront that awful aerodynamic drag?

Mainly for exactly the reason of making the missile too difficult to detect until it's far too late to do anything about it.

IIRC there's also two additional reasons: striking from a low angle means a better chance of damaging the ship at or below the waterline in order to sink it, and because sea-skimming means the sensors have a much easier time picking out the ship from the sea.

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#186

Post by boomboomsubban »

bilbo0s wrote: post #52
HenryKissinger wrote: post #21

That states like China and Russia can recruit the best cybersecurity talent in their respective countries, and force them to work for the government, while the United States can't, is a problem. If I were the president, I would focus on talent recruitment and retention. Google is paying its top cyberstaff 700k? Offer them 1M. Also get rid of archaic hiring practices like drug tests, and streamline the process to obta…

Sounds like an interesting plan. Where is the money going to come from? We cutting something else? Like outdated military infrastructure since we should be ramping up for the cyber future? Or are we instead going to ramp up the deficit spending more to cover the extra expenses? Have you actually thought your proposed solution through? Have you considered the larger picture? We're already deficit spending at a level a…

>Where is the money going to come from?

From the money we currently pay third party contractors to do the job.

>We're already deficit spending at a level approaching USD1.5T. How do we handle the financial implications of such a shift

By realizing that a gigantic increase in their salary would not be remotely large enough to constitute "a shift."

>How do we get them the necessary security clearances? Should we be giving them that level of clearance?

With the same bogus system we use for everybody else.

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#187

Post by [deleted] »

bdamm wrote: post #152
body12 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your cities immediately turn into "tribal warzones" when they lose utilities, you've definitely made some governance failures well before the cyberattack.

Can you be more specific? What governance processes counteract or prevent that failure?

[deleted]

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#188

Post by mindslight »

motohagiography wrote: post #129

We could call this historical period a great dis-integration where the consensus that formed the equilibrium of the last 60 years has been disrupted by tech, and we're looking at a period of volatility before reaching a new equilibrium. I've argued before that U.S. critical infrastructure vulnerability will prevent it from intervening in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Its lack of a strong homeland defensive posture on infrast…

Allowing all of these probably-insecure systems to be built out and connected to the Internet is the problem, end of story.

You're essentially arguing that the US is paralyzed due to the possibility of unknown unknowns. It might make sense to think that way to write a book, or for brainstorming large-scale disaster planning. But every system has someone responsible for it, and that someone needs to be responsible for securing it to best practices.

From a policy perspective, we wouldn't just accept that a power plant's energy handlers hum along unsupervised and so could fail catastrophically due to some latent problems. Rather, there are inspection and maintenance schedules to do the diligence of adhering to best practices. That same diligence needs to be brought to bear on a plant's information systems, and if those information systems are hooked up to a WAN (for which there may not be a choice), then that diligence needs to be applied to handling abstract adversarial attackers.

Not doing that is a grave failure, and what seems to be going on here is a "nobody's fault" because it's not in the plant administrators' or vendors' interest to look down and see that they're already past the edge of the cliff. But allowing it to persist is simply kicking the can down the road in an unsustainable manner.

Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

#189

Post by mr_overalls »

thinkmassive wrote: post #105
merpnderp wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the NSA says power will move to the private sector, I don't think they're referring to 'the people', but the wealthy who control most of the private sector.

A feudal oligarchy.

Oligarchy, I'll buy. But why feudal, specifically?
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