Earlier quoted context omitted.
A feudal oligarchy.
Oligarchy, I'll buy. But why feudal, specifically?
An oligarchy without collusion to divvy up feuds is just straight up pure capitalism.
NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War
191–200 of 214 posts
Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War
#192We 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…
Vulnerability on cybersecurity for critical infrastructure is a known-known.
Best practices have been and continue to be the lowest common denominator and an abysmal failure. Compliance solves nothing, and it is a make work project for compromised jobsworth consultants who lack the standing to tell anyone they told us so.
What I am arguing is tech and poor management culture in energy and infrastructure companies is the weak link that gave away the empire.
Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, NSA used to have the best and brightest until Snowden. Now NSA can't get the best and brightest because they are conscientious objectors.
This isn't a technical issue, but I think that it's important: working for the government comes with less pay, but there was always the idea that you were putting in effort for the benefit of the country. In my opinion the NSA has squandered that and they have somehow ended up in the same category as Palantir and Facebook. I'm not sure how they can fix this, but I do think it will need to be addressed if they want to…
Perhaps if the NSA spun off a white-hat cyber defense organization?
If I knew a 3-letter federal organization was dedicated to defensive tools, white-hat pen testing, and US infrastructure cyber security, I might consider joining. But the NSA has managed to tarnish its name with domestic cyber spying on US citizens, and that should have been the realm of the FBI, which is supposed to follow laws and can be audited.
Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War
#194Maybe the US would do well to obsess a little less about wars? After spending 90%+ of its time existing on being at war, it sure would seem like a good time to take a break and stop attacking other countries maybe.
We just admitted defeat in Afghanistan after 18 years of.. what was the mission again? Build a government? Build the Afghan National Army? We cut out both of those groups from peace talks with the Taliban this year. We tried to keep the talks secret from the government you're negotiating peace about. I can't imagine a more awkward way to discover that mission has been a failure. This has turned into a Vietnam-scale b…
Make a lot of money, dispose of some excess population.
Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Vulnerability on cybersecurity for critical infrastructure is a known-known. Best practices have been and continue to be the lowest common denominator and an abysmal failure. Compliance solves nothing, and it is a make work project for compromised jobsworth consultants who lack the standing to tell anyone they told us so. What I am arguing is tech and poor management culture in energy and infrastructure companies is…
Even if an organized adversary can reliably control whatever infrastructure they choose, it's still being institutionally treated as an unknown - otherwise it would be fixed.
I basically agree with everything you've written here, but saying it already "gave away" basically means giving up. Whereas this "cyberwar" meme is a call to action, and so I think it bears repeating that on the technical side the problems are extremely straightforward. Rather the real problems are organizational/institutional, and that's where blame needs to be directed - so that the call to action doesn't lead to further obtuse top-down measures like more procedure-bound certification-based consultants or a national firewall.
Worthwhile top-down things that could be done would be say a national bug bounty on any critical infrastructure (and indemnification for any incidental damaged "caused" by researchers, rightfully assigning it to plant operators instead), or perhaps even a wholesale repeal of the CFAA to stop papering over the fundamental nature of the Internet being hostile noise. Stop discouraging 12 year olds from playing around with infrastructure for the lulz, and make administrators have to deal with reality rather than continuing to ignore it.
Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
That discussion is pointless without a definition of war. If you read some of what Moscovite thinktanks/ideologists produce, you'll find very little about guns and arms, but a lot on psychology and influencing. War to them is total war. There is no difference. Everything can be weaponized and will be used. There is no choice. Changing that line of thinking is first very different from western lines of thinking. Secon…
Any examples?
Of?
Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War
#197> There are four key implications of this revolution that policymakers in the national security sector will need to address: > The first is that the unprecedented scale and pace of technological change will outstrip our ability to effectively adapt to it. Second, we will be in a world of ceaseless and pervasive cyberinsecurity and cyberconflict against nation-states, businesses and individuals. Third, the flood of da…
(I live in EU) For the 3rd and 4th points, we could rather envision a massive decentralization of power, which would be effectively a change in the model, but not necessarily in a bad way. Telecom, batteries and local energy production will allow much more flexible forms of local auto-organisations and decision-making. Parts of centralized institutions will be obsolete or further decentralized to better fit local spe…
The EU isn't cooperation of armies towards a common goal, or really cooperation of anything towards a common goal. The EU is "cooperation through massive centralization of power under a unified command structure". Nothing decentralised about it.
NATO is decentralised. We can see this clearly because of the bunfights about whether members are spending enough on their own armies to be good contributors to the alliance. Also, NATO has no political goals beyond defending its members against any attack. It's not like the EU which has an expansive ideological vision of the future.
Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War
#198This is huge and is a subject I feel strongly about- especially for defense software. Parts of the US Government are already sounding the alarm over this. see- https://innovation.defense.gov/software/ Basically, we are too slow. The contract acquisition process and waterfall development moves at a glacial pace. I have some serious doubts we will ever adapt since it would require a restructuring of the way our defense…
Wouldn't it be possible to build the next generation of technology to be much less hackable? Right now we're all pretty dumb about cybersecurity, but if plays a major hand in shaping human events even stodgy Pentagon types might start taking things like air gaps and not writing your passwords out on a sticky note more seriously.
It's possible. People wouldn't like it.
Mandate that all software - everywhere - is written in Java or Rust with no unsafe blocks (but, oops, you can't realistically do that in Rust).
Make it illegal to use web apps to administer infrastructure. Desktop GUIs all the way (no XSS there ...).
Then mandate that this infrastructure can't be administered from Windows, but only some locked down new OS that required iOS style code signing from top to bottom.
Then forbid the use of passwords for authenticating to anything, no matter how trivial.
Think many geeks would get excited about that? People write insecure software because they can't/won't accept the fact that they enjoy building software in ways that are very insecure. For a lot of coders you'll prise C out of their cold dead hands, and they'll continue making hackable IoT devices until you do.
Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War
#199Yes indeed
Re: NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
To achieve your goal, you will need to change the very fundamental fabric of humanity and the reality of resource scarcity. Here are some examples that can lead to war: economic gain,territorial gain, religion, nationalism, revenge, civil strife, defensive. Below are a few expressions of what it can look like: * Actor A burned your crops -> Do nothing (appeasement) * Actor B disrupted your servers causing economic lo…
Yeah absolutely. It will happen. In time. But not now. What you think as the fundamental fabric of humanity is but a stage. We will overcome it. Unfortunately until we get there, much suffering will still ensue.
Do you have any justification for this belief that war is just a stage that humanity will get over?
There has always been war. There will always be people who think it's their destiny to rule over you, that you'll really be much happier if you're conquered, and if you don't meekly comply then maybe you just need to be ... liberated.
For as long as some people think they're better than others, there will be wars, and I don't see people not thinking that any time soon, do you?