Lol. The OP really doesn't understand what lawyers do all day. Running a a so-called 'hacking back' team isn't done lightly. And instigating an attack, hacking without the 'back', is just plain dangerous. I may not be the sort of lawyer that is sent to openly attack rivals via abusive legal process, but I do have a slide deck of hacking back stories that ended badly. One ends with a panicked call to an attorney after a response team snapped a pic from the webcam of the attacking machine ... an virus infected desktop in a kid's bedroom. That team suddenly found the need for legal process and advice, something they eschewed only minutes previously.
Hackers are the new lawyers
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Re: Hackers are the new lawyers
#12I think this greatly overestimates the importance of IT and high technology in the modern economy. Outside of the pure tech companies that are well known on HN, most technology is used to facilitate the rest of whatever the company in question does. It isn't the business itself. Most economic value is due to labor and tangible products, and cyber attacks can only indirectly touch those. Cyber attacks are unfortunate,…
>It isn't the business itself. Neither is lawyering, that's his point. Lawyers do not (usually) create value, they protect it, same as the hackers he is talking about. >Cyber attacks are unfortunate, sure, but they're hardly all that damaging to the core operations of the organizations they affect, unless, of course, it's something like Stuxnet, where physical damage is done. The Sony hack: http://www.vanityfair.com/…
Additionally, software is eating much of the enterprise. By and large software makes companies more efficient. Lawyering makes them less. Adding hackers doesn't just protect the enterprise, it improves it.
Re: Hackers are the new lawyers
#13This isn't really a statement about the relative importance of certain professions, it's mostly a statement about China. They're a lawless country, and we should probably just disconnect their country from the rest of the internet until that changes. Or at least fine them and issue sanctions until they pay up.
It would be a very bad idea for a US company to start a renegade hacking team that broke into other companies and stole their documents. That would get you thrown in jail, no matter who you were.
It would be an even worse if you started counter-hacking random ips that attacked your machines, because you'd end up with soccer moms crying to politicians on national television about what you did to their kids.
Re: Hackers are the new lawyers
#14I mean...I guess? I can see where this analogy is supposed to go, but I feel the author is dismissing how close corporate espionage toes the line between legal and illegal. Even if it's in a scummy manner, lawyers use the laws at hand to protect IP both offensively and defensively.
Finding business strategy is one thing. "Let's run through their service, deconstruct it, and see how we can make ours better than theirs." That's above board."Find a hole, pivot, take what you can." Pump the brakes there, sweetie.
Or maybe I'm just interpreting this wrong.
Re: Hackers are the new lawyers
#15A hacker is really the red-shirt ensign on the away team
Re: Hackers are the new lawyers
#16I think this greatly overestimates the importance of IT and high technology in the modern economy. Outside of the pure tech companies that are well known on HN, most technology is used to facilitate the rest of whatever the company in question does. It isn't the business itself. Most economic value is due to labor and tangible products, and cyber attacks can only indirectly touch those. Cyber attacks are unfortunate,…
> I think this greatly overestimates the importance of IT and high technology in the modern economy.
On HN? Inconceivable.
Re: Hackers are the new lawyers
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It isn't the business itself. Neither is lawyering, that's his point. Lawyers do not (usually) create value, they protect it, same as the hackers he is talking about. >Cyber attacks are unfortunate, sure, but they're hardly all that damaging to the core operations of the organizations they affect, unless, of course, it's something like Stuxnet, where physical damage is done. The Sony hack: http://www.vanityfair.com/…
Additionally, software is eating much of the enterprise. By and large software makes companies more efficient. Lawyering makes them less. Adding hackers doesn't just protect the enterprise, it improves it.
The point of lawyers is not to make companies "more efficient," so that's a strange criticism of them.
Re: Hackers are the new lawyers
#18How is this getting upvoted?
Re: Hackers are the new lawyers
#19this is a great insight, i have been thinking the same thing for some time. Another angle is the "media image" your company has. I read the book "Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions-Manipulator" after watching some YC videos and was blown away how a few people can use technology (bots, tweets..etc) to influence small local blogs, which influence larger blogs and in turn media outlets like CNN etc.. He talked about using this strategy to shape public opinion which eventually called in the lawyers and caused congress member to resign, and in another case help his friend promote a low budget movie to a national level etc.
I can't help but wonder if the competitors of Theranos understand this idea (use tech to influence media to influence regulators)and used it as a weapon that Theranos has not done a good job of defending against.
It would be fun to run an analysis of all news articles mentioning Theranos and see historically the sentiment analysis of each one, and at what average sentiment point the regulators got involved.
You could extrapolate and see if there is an average media sentiment that can predict when regulators will get involved. Could be a great "weapon" to use.
Re: Hackers are the new lawyers
#20Lol. The OP really doesn't understand what lawyers do all day. Running a a so-called 'hacking back' team isn't done lightly. And instigating an attack, hacking without the 'back', is just plain dangerous. I may not be the sort of lawyer that is sent to openly attack rivals via abusive legal process, but I do have a slide deck of hacking back stories that ended badly. One ends with a panicked call to an attorney after…
>Lol.
lol indeed