The US military could begin drafting 40-year-old hackers

The US military could begin drafting 40-year-old hackers(thenextweb.com)

19 points by jstoiko 8 years ago | 16 comments

redspectre 8 years ago |

The military is the antithesis of hacking culture: - Play by the rules, even if they don't make sense, because I said so. - Listen to people above your paygrade, even if they are clueless, because that's the way we do things around here. - There's a simple rulebook and checklists to follow to complete your task, and if you don't follow the rules you get punished. - Low pay for extraordinary work. - Endless meetings and powerpoint slides.

I know a lot of security folk, and none of them like any of these things. I don't know a single one who would enjoy making 40k a year while shining their boots for some drill instructor.

What a total joke. You want to get good hackers? You gotta pay up and stay the out of their way. This is not a problem you can throw bodies at, and you can't coerce people to be good at hacking.

dfsegoat 8 years ago | |

You are misinformed my friend. With respect to innovation and talent, and the military - One of the top officers in command of the US Marine Corps said this a few days ago, about the technical talent that the corps has been attracting [1]:

"My eyes are watering with what our young people can do right now..I have an engineering background, but I’m telling you, some of these 21- and 22-year-olds are well ahead of me"

and

"The men and women in uniform, they’re impressing us, they’re really smart and they’ve got a lot of really good ideas,” Neller said. “We would be well served to turn them loose. I saw that at the Innovation Challenge.”

They go on to describe how the USMC reduced an 18-month / $1500 maintenance operation for an M1 abrams tank, to 7-days / $50 by using 3D printing. That is remarkable when you know how wasteful the military acquisition process is.

This post was about security, but my point is - the thinking is changing, and it doesn't matter whether the 'domain' is cyber, or land warefare (as above) - the top leadership is ready to leverage every ounce of the technical talents that these new generations have to offer, and as an American - that makes me feel great.

Further, you can look at the US special operations command (SOCOM) and DARPA as other examples of military organizations which have discarded with bureaucratic process and traditional military organizational structures in order to attract the most talented people in the interest of national security.

I have no horse in this race btw. I work for a private company, but I found your assessment unfair and worthy of reply at length.

[1] - https://breakingdefense.com/2018/03/marines-love-affair-with...

redspectre 8 years ago | | |

I found your assessment out of context. The context of this article was essentially: "Should we force hackers to come work for us via selective service, even if they are older than the current cutoff age? Should we change the cutoff age to make this legal?"

Yes, the military might be doing "impressive" things with people who VOLUNTARILY join, but I can assure you, if you draft hackers to work for the military in the same way you draft truck drivers and infantryman back in the 60s, you will get few if any good hackers. I know exactly zero hackers who think joining the Marines is an appealing venture. That was the essence of my comment.

Nice try though, appreciate the propaganda about using 3D printers to waste less money killing people in other countries that never attacked us though. Thank god we are saving big money doing that.

Synaesthesia 8 years ago | |

It’s up to intellectuals to tell the truth. The military has nothing to do with democracy, it’s an authoritarian system all the way. People often misunderstand the military, thinking for example, that military rule might enhance democracy in Egypt. That’s not how the military works.

King-Aaron 8 years ago |

Honestly asking - surely this isn't something that the United States would seriously consider in this day and age, is it?

jcranmer 8 years ago | |

It's unlikely that the military is going to ask for a return to mandatory conscription mechanisms. The main advantage of conscription is that it gives you lots and lots of bodies to throw at a problem, but the quality suffers as a result, particularly since conscription is usually on shorter terms than enlistment (so you spend more of your time in training as opposed to in the field).

Synaesthesia 8 years ago | |

The NSA has had a long history recruiting elite cryptographers and keeping secrets from the public.

Given today’s prevailing attitudes towards China and Russia (ie Cold War 2.0),I’m not shocked.

King-Aaron 8 years ago | | |

Hackers being involved with the government isn't what surprises me, moreso the consideration of bringing a draft back, after the public backlash from Vietnam. I would have expected it to be politically suicidal to even utter the word?

brudgers 8 years ago |

Changing Selective Service rules is a long way off. Changing the rules is even further from instituting a draft. Instituting a draft across the universe from the sort of arbitrary conscription implied by the article. Arbitrary conscription of people from a well paid industry with the resources to hire good lawyers...yes it's a logical possibility. However the premises of the logical possibility include a centralization of state power in a way that excludes the interests of capital. Basically, conscription of forty year old IT professionals would require US political culture to become more like a Stalinist state. And a change to US military culture which has been built to maximize the benefits of a volunteer army, like better motivation than conscripts.

squozzer 8 years ago |

>On a side note, I once melted the face off of a GI Joe with a magnifying glass, burying him in a shallow grave in the backyard in an attempt to conceal the crime. That GI Joe, I presume, is now rolling over in his grave.

Oh yeah? I used to destroy those cheap green "armymen" with firecrackers and sometimes gasoline.

With respect to military culture, its rigidity is all over the map, and mostly depends on the nature of the unit's mission.

cafard 8 years ago |

Drafting or enlisting? I don't think that anyone born after 1953 ever was drafted.

jsjohnst 8 years ago | |

I agree, the last year someone could’ve been born and drafted was 1952, but how does that change anything? I thought the article was talking about reinstating the SSS.

cafard 8 years ago | | |

It does--I hadn't bothered to read it, sorry.

Still, I think it the plan impractical. Trying to draft those with the most resources to fight the draft is just not going to work well.

The article is incorrect about radios and TVs. It was the very end of the draft era that the birthday lottery was introduced, and young men listened with great attention to see whether they came in under 100 (likely to be drafted) or over 300 (most unlikely).

dsq 8 years ago |

this could be a way of silencing dissent, by drafting 'troublemakers' and putting them under martial law. Seems farfetched today, but in a situation of external threat, who knows?