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In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

navytimes.com

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Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#41

Post by __john »

deciplex wrote: post #39
phaus wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it is that the government doesn't want to, the other part of it is that the American people would shit their pants if they found out that a low-ranking Soldier was making 6 figures a year off of taxpayer money. People resent it when government employees make more money than they do. Also, in the Army, you make the same amount of money no matter what your job is. The people they used to have that were only qua…

The base pay is the same, but don't they have all kinds of extra pay they can tack on for various reasons? There is combat pay, but I'm sure there must be more than that.

You can get extra money for all kinds of things. Knowing another language, certain career fields (i.e. special forces and contracting) still have re-enlistment bonuses, etc. etc. None of the "cyber" career fields, in the Air Force at least, get any sort of extra money that I'm aware of.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#42

Post by doug11235 »

mullingitover wrote: post #40
phaus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If we're trying to use uniformed military troops to hack servers remotely, we deserve to lose any 'cyber war.' Not all Soldiers are incompetent. Some of the most brilliant people I've met are people that I met while I was in the Army. China has created numerous units that focus on offensive hacking, and they are wildly successful. Now, to clarify, I'm not saying that we should have troops performing cyber attacks, I…

I mean no disrespect to the soldiery, but why use soldiers for this, and not the DIA/NSA/CIA/various other TLAs? I guess that's what I'm confused about. Grunts wearing camouflage sitting in front of a laptop trying to outbrain someone seems humorously perverse. It's like some high-level bureaucrat has it in his mind that 'cyberattack' necessarily means that the military has to do it, because we obviously use the mili…

You probably don't realize how much crossover there is between the military and intel. For example, the CSS in NSA/CSS - http://www.nsa.gov/about/central_security_service/

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#43

Post by __john »

Bahamut wrote: post #35
phaus wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the "cyberwarriors" would/should argue that their machines are their weapons and so should have similar latitude. They have argued and lost because the big picture military only cares about PT tests, marksmanship, and hair cuts. No one important enough to change policy understands how computers work.

Only the Marine Corps and maybe Army really care about PT performance - from what I understand, promotions in the Navy and Air Force are based off of exams.

In the Air Force you get a yearly Enlisted Performance Report or Officer Performance Report. Your OPR/EPR counts towards your promotion, and one of the sections of the OPR/EPR is how well you meet PT standards. Fail a PT test and you get a referral OPR/EPR, then you can pretty much kiss your military career goodbye.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#44

Post by _wp3r »

The DOD cyber effort will be passed off department wide to a more function specific agency just as many other efforts before it. ie CDC NRC DARPA NASA

The specific culture or technical requirements of network technology efficacy will/has end/ed up in a more mixed agency such as the NSA or DIA(redux).

There are a lot of "hackers" in the DOD, as others have said they usually do not stay, but some do. The reason they seem like unicorns is because they usually end up working in the non cat video sector.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#45

Post by themodelplumber »

_wp3r wrote: post #44

The DOD cyber effort will be passed off department wide to a more function specific agency just as many other efforts before it. ie CDC NRC DARPA NASA The specific culture or technical requirements of network technology efficacy will/has end/ed up in a more mixed agency such as the NSA or DIA(redux). There are a lot of "hackers" in the DOD, as others have said they usually do not stay, but some do. The reason they se…

That first para is of the only comments here that gives me any hope for U.S. cyber capability and it really makes sense. Thanks.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#46

Post by stonogo »

mabhatter wrote: post #36
salem wrote: post #10

"suits and ties — or tie dyes and blue jeans" That says it all there, written by the navy times. Seems like there is a bit of a culture problem, and the perception of tech people by the regular army/navy/whatever. Apparently, anyone with deep technical skills in hacking computer systems is either a corporate drone, or a hippie.

How about Polos and Kakis?

Those who wear suits and ties see them as tie dye and jeans.

Those who wear tie dye and jeans see them as suits and ties.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#47

Post by phaus »

mullingitover wrote: post #40
phaus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If we're trying to use uniformed military troops to hack servers remotely, we deserve to lose any 'cyber war.' Not all Soldiers are incompetent. Some of the most brilliant people I've met are people that I met while I was in the Army. China has created numerous units that focus on offensive hacking, and they are wildly successful. Now, to clarify, I'm not saying that we should have troops performing cyber attacks, I…

I mean no disrespect to the soldiery, but why use soldiers for this, and not the DIA/NSA/CIA/various other TLAs? I guess that's what I'm confused about. Grunts wearing camouflage sitting in front of a laptop trying to outbrain someone seems humorously perverse. It's like some high-level bureaucrat has it in his mind that 'cyberattack' necessarily means that the military has to do it, because we obviously use the mili…

>I mean no disrespect to the soldiery, but why use soldiers for this, and not the DIA/NSA/CIA/various other TLAs?

I specifically said that I wasn't advocating this as a military mission. I was just stating that if it was a military mission, the Soldiers themselves wouldn't be the reason that it fails.

>Grunts wearing camouflage sitting in front of a laptop trying to outbrain someone seems humorously perverse.

A grunt is an infantryman. Not all Soldiers are grunts. The Soldiers that work as security analysts do it as a full time job. They still have to take a couple PT tests each year and qualify once or twice a year with an M16, but they spend most of their time doing their job.

I'm not sure how wearing camofluage affects a person's ability to use a computer? They are people like everyone else.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#48

Post by phaus »

deciplex wrote: post #39
phaus wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it is that the government doesn't want to, the other part of it is that the American people would shit their pants if they found out that a low-ranking Soldier was making 6 figures a year off of taxpayer money. People resent it when government employees make more money than they do. Also, in the Army, you make the same amount of money no matter what your job is. The people they used to have that were only qua…

The base pay is the same, but don't they have all kinds of extra pay they can tack on for various reasons? There is combat pay, but I'm sure there must be more than that.

John is correct. There are different types of extra pay, but they don't have anything for tech related jobs.

The allowances in the Army are for things like jumping out of a plane, scuba diving, foreign languages, combat pay, etc.

The Army still has this attitude that if you aren't outside all day, running around yelling at people, then you must not be doing any work. I'm not sure if that will ever change.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#49

Post by zachrose »

phaus wrote: post #32
thefreeman wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how the military cannot afford to compete with the private sector. This is where wars will be won now (or soon). It's pretty important to defend ourselves. And we have trillions of dollars...

Part of it is that the government doesn't want to, the other part of it is that the American people would shit their pants if they found out that a low-ranking Soldier was making 6 figures a year off of taxpayer money. People resent it when government employees make more money than they do. Also, in the Army, you make the same amount of money no matter what your job is. The people they used to have that were only qua…

The NSA has no problem paying for top talent, but they do it by going through consulting firms. It's true that most Americans would shit their pants at 6 figure soldiers, but few military skills are so valued by the open market. As we're constantly told by the tech media, you should prefer five $200,000 people to ten $100,000 people, or—god forbid—50+ people writing PowerShell scripts for minimum wage.

Re: In secret cyberwar game, reservist techies pummel miltary cyberwarriors

#50

Post by phaus »

zachrose wrote: post #49
phaus wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of it is that the government doesn't want to, the other part of it is that the American people would shit their pants if they found out that a low-ranking Soldier was making 6 figures a year off of taxpayer money. People resent it when government employees make more money than they do. Also, in the Army, you make the same amount of money no matter what your job is. The people they used to have that were only qua…

The NSA has no problem paying for top talent, but they do it by going through consulting firms. It's true that most Americans would shit their pants at 6 figure soldiers, but few military skills are so valued by the open market. As we're constantly told by the tech media, you should prefer five $200,000 people to ten $100,000 people, or—god forbid—50+ people writing PowerShell scripts for minimum wage.

>It's true that most Americans would shit their pants at 6 figure soldiers, but few military skills are so valued by the open market.

Infantrymen won't have marketable skills, but we are talking about military security analysts. These guys often do have skills equivalent to their civilian counterparts. You seem to be making the same assumption that many others in this thread have: that all Soldiers are infantrymen of less than average intelligence.

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