No, you don't want random people running around with knowledge about your country's cyber capabilities. Cyber attacks target strategic companies and infrastructure, so a proper cyber defense would work to impose good security regulations and practices. If they need offensive capabilities, countries should invest in a standing teams that know what they are doing and are properly vetted.
I don't know why everyone assumes the US should be picking sides in wars half way around the world. We've been doing that for quite a while and it only seems to make things worse.
HN has been flooded with green usernames for a few weeks now. I assume (but do not accuse) that a large part of them are building reputation for online influence in wake of recent events in Eastern Europe. A common characteristic of the recent green usernames is predisposition to associate any comment or thread with the conflict.
Of course, I do realize that my own comment is a borderline rule break.
I could see that. When a popular Reddit sub banned me I considered doing the same, but decided that they were not really worthy of my vast insight. For what it's worth, I've also noticed that anyone challenging the popular media's narration of events are immediately pounced upon.
I am Israeli, I don't trust popular media's reporting of events at all. All the recent slander of Russia has all the same characteristics that does slander of Israel. Including the armies of online Dislike-Clickers who chastise any question or display of today's villian's perspective.
Agreed, HN has value. That's why I'm cautious about the flood of green usernames. But I could see how you or even I could wind up with new green accounts all things considered. I'd love a link to a comment that in your opinion led to a user being banned, for curiosity's sake.
When Russia sends SMS messages and drops pamphlets and duds to let civilians know to evacuate targeted buildings, then it could be said that Russia is "bombing civilians like Israel". Ever wonder how the Gazans have so much HD video of buildings being destroyed?
That said, yes, Israel has been made a pariah and now the same is becoming of Russia. So it's the "Facebook for Foo" phenomenon of associating "this new thing" with "that thing you've been told all along".
Draft makes sense because soldiers are effectively a commodity (I don't mean this disrespectfully, I have a strong respect for the military and front line troops in particular, I'm talking about how a broad draft takes advantage of human power).
There could no doubt be targeted government recruiting of people with certain expertise, as I assume there was in the past among nuclear or rocket scientists. This is not the same as a draft, it's driven by special skills, not a broad need for manpower.
> This is not the same as a draft, it's driven by special skills, not a broad need for manpower.
How has the military (US, or other) historically managed to recruit and retain their medical corps, or the Army Corps of Engineers? Has there just not been a situation in modern memory where there weren't doctors sufficient to keep the gears of war turning?
I've worked with quite a few Federal and DOD "hacker" types over the years in the capacity of a hacker in the private sector. The impression that I have is such that your average ruck-humping Joe will not be able to do it, but it's not so special (as contrasted with a civil engineer or doctor) that you couldn't take high-aptitude recruits and bootstrap their knowledge to a sufficient operational capacity in the amount of time as a typical post-boot AIT timeframe as you might a Corpsman or linguist.
Our not-quite-aptly named SOC would routinely engage in legally grey operations to disable cyber-criminals servers whose hosting providers were non-responsive to our standard, legal course of take down. The majority of the staff had a Bachelors in an unrelated domain, several with an associates in general IT work, and a few with nothing more than a programming bootcamp.
The tale that we're so special as to not be meaningfully draftable is, I feel, egotistical.
> How has the military (US, or other) historically managed to recruit and retain their medical corps, or the Army Corps of Engineers? Has there just not been a situation in modern memory where there weren't doctors sufficient to keep the gears of war turning?
The problem I saw when I was in was that the retention problem was one of incentives. Enlisted folks who work on offensive cyber are sitting next to people who are making far more than they are for nearly the exact same job, minus the aspects of being a soldier (long hours, no OT, tasks outside your core job). Being a contractor just pays more for less, so they have little reason to stay in when the promise of a better life isn't quite what their recruiter told them.
You don't want to turn random infantry into hackers. Alternatives (in the UK at least) include temporary call-up of reservists who have civilian experience and offloading offensive cyber ops to other branches of the government (e.g. GCHQ). The military then coordinate with the other government agencies to synchronise kinetic and cyber effects.
> How has the military (US, or other) historically managed to recruit and retain their medical corps, or the Army Corps of Engineers?
The US military will pay for someone's medical school education, and also offers significant signing bonuses for doctors, who then enter the military as officers. Which I imagine is enough to keep a steady pipeline in regular times.
These days so much of US military work is done by contractors, that I imagine they'd just pay contractors whatever was necessary to attract what they needed for specialized non-combat roles. (Heck, contractors end up being in effectively combat roles these days too, even if formally not. Wikipedia says as of 2012, 1,569 US contractors had been killed in Iraq, compare to ~4500 soldiers).
Back when there was a draft in the US, they drafted doctors along with everyone else, and had them be doctors in the military. (Some of my family members were such in WWII). I think they just had draft numbers that came up like everyone else's though, I don't think there was a specific doctor draft.
Draft only makes sense if your country is actually being invaded. Otherwise it is a massive waste of resources to force people into service they do not wish to perform, nobody gets anything useful out of that.
No soldier is a commodity. Every soldier is a life, and someone's son or daughter. Each also costs millions to train.
Some MOSs are scarcer though. Cyber is in a sense a form of special operations because it requires elite uncommon skills applied in war through unconventional means requiring exceptional enabling personnel and tools.
I don't think OP was commenting on the value of a soldier's life, just the fact that general infantry is a job pretty much any healthy individual can do. If you wander down the streets and pick the first 1,000 people you see, chances are a good number of them would qualify.
But if you try to give those same 1,000 people a software job, most of them would be terrible. Hell, most people employed as software engineers seem kind of bad at it. It isn't the type of job that lends itself to a draft.
Of course, you aren't limited to just the first 1,000 people you see. Maybe you ask FAANG for a list of their engineers, and randomly take 10% of them. Good goddamned luck with that. Google has had trouble getting their own engineering teams on board with DOD work. You try to draft those engineers? You will see a vindictive pettiness unmatched in human history. It would be the least productive engineering team ever assembled.
[1] Well, that used to be true. The general health of the American public isn't great right now, either.
I find it interesting that you've used the exact word that they use, "special skills draft".
I was on the draft board in my county during the Iraq war. To be clear-- the draft board was never activated, but I had found out that you could apply to be on it, and I was selected because basically nobody knew about it or wanted to do it.
The reason I wanted to be on it, was there was lots of talk about a "special skills" draft for nurses and technical people. The idea was they could slip this one under the radar because the bulk of Americans wouldn't be concerned. Then it becomes much easier to expand the draft.
I reasoned that if I was ON the draft board I couldn't get drafted, and that I could try to treat people compassionately.
In an uncertain world it only makes sense to provide training to certain specialists whose skills are useful in modern combat. So not just cybersecurity, but I could imagine pro gamers being trained in operating combat drones or other unmanned vehicles.
Do you mean specifically for engineers, when there isn't a draft otherwise? Also no.
Back when there was a draft in the USA, everyone was drafted (well, all men of relevant demographics), and people with specialized skills (say, doctors) were drafted into relevant positions.
It's more a question of what are the ressources needed Vs what is available. When there was still a draft in my country some people were assigned to telecommunications and electronic warfare, so I don't see why there should not be for cyber war
If there were, it would probably operate similar to the Manhattan project where contractors and companies were hired to do spec work by cover organizations without knowing what the true extent of what they are contributing to is. Though writing code, it would be a bit obvious they getting work to make some kind of exotic alloy meeting some spec.
You can probably get volunteers to do it as a job. Ordinary draft is useful to get large masses of people. You don't need that, you need a few motivated specialists.
Of course. But what do you propose to do when war is brought to you? The only way to avoid it in that case is just to surrender, but I'm not sure if that's what you mean.
There should never be a draft. If a country can't defend itself with volunteers and a professional army, it doesn't have the necessary support of the people to remain a country.
If we take this seriously, doesn't it come down to something close to "might makes right"? In other words, if a country can't defend itself it doesn't deserve to exist.
There's a difference between "support" and "willing to fight and die".
I take your argument seriously. To a large extent it's simply a fact that a country populated by people willing to die on its behalf will outlast a country whose citizens lack that quality.
My point is that that's not a moral observation. It has nothing to do with "deserve". We can imagine a pacifistic country focused on art and technology that is conquered by a country of brutal philistine knuckle-draggers focused on war. Does the latter country "deserve" to conquer the former?
There already is, and has been since the 90s. It's called a sting operation. They catch a hacker, tell him he now works for a TLA for X years in return for the charges going away at that time. In my limited experience, by the time the Xth year rolls around the guy is liking the money and normalcy, and knows he's going to be watched like a hawk for the rest of his life.
If you are talking about a widespread draft, it wouldn't work I think, because hacking a system is as much an art as dance, and is a kind of improv dance. You can learn to be an ok hacker, especially if you ride on the wings of great tools, but to be a great hacker takes a born talent for the perception of patterns and how they react, kind of what Gibson called nodal thinking.
You'd be better off finding people like that at as young an age as possible and inducing them in every positive way possible to come work in cyber. An example of one possible inducement is the NSA's NCAE-C program[1].
Drafting software engineers would be an utter failure. Trying to get a team of well-paid, motivated engineers on the same page can be like herding cats. Getting a team of bitter engineers working against their will, possibly on a project they don't morally agree with, will never, ever, ever work.
Just think about the possibility for sabotage. How are you going to tell the difference between a commit that is broken because Bob is kind of incompetent, and a commit that is broken because Larry had to leave his $195K per year, work from home job to maintain your shitty targeting app? Are you going to court martial someone because their integration tests break?
The US government definitely has a problem recruiting young talent, but that could be solved almost overnight by paying better and legalizing marijuana, no draft required.
I think the enemy should draft engineers, the more the better, nothing will slow them down more so than a bunch of grumpy devs trying to work together, likely kick off a civil war!
53 comments
[ 7.3 ms ] story [ 119 ms ] thread> We've ...
Of course, I do realize that my own comment is a borderline rule break.
I am Israeli, I don't trust popular media's reporting of events at all. All the recent slander of Russia has all the same characteristics that does slander of Israel. Including the armies of online Dislike-Clickers who chastise any question or display of today's villian's perspective.
I could see doing that with Reddit, but I like HN. I think we'll both find the truth eventually and I shouldn't leave.
That said, yes, Israel has been made a pariah and now the same is becoming of Russia. So it's the "Facebook for Foo" phenomenon of associating "this new thing" with "that thing you've been told all along".
I really don't think HN is big enough to be a worthwhile target for sockpuppets.
There could no doubt be targeted government recruiting of people with certain expertise, as I assume there was in the past among nuclear or rocket scientists. This is not the same as a draft, it's driven by special skills, not a broad need for manpower.
How has the military (US, or other) historically managed to recruit and retain their medical corps, or the Army Corps of Engineers? Has there just not been a situation in modern memory where there weren't doctors sufficient to keep the gears of war turning?
I've worked with quite a few Federal and DOD "hacker" types over the years in the capacity of a hacker in the private sector. The impression that I have is such that your average ruck-humping Joe will not be able to do it, but it's not so special (as contrasted with a civil engineer or doctor) that you couldn't take high-aptitude recruits and bootstrap their knowledge to a sufficient operational capacity in the amount of time as a typical post-boot AIT timeframe as you might a Corpsman or linguist.
Our not-quite-aptly named SOC would routinely engage in legally grey operations to disable cyber-criminals servers whose hosting providers were non-responsive to our standard, legal course of take down. The majority of the staff had a Bachelors in an unrelated domain, several with an associates in general IT work, and a few with nothing more than a programming bootcamp.
The tale that we're so special as to not be meaningfully draftable is, I feel, egotistical.
The problem I saw when I was in was that the retention problem was one of incentives. Enlisted folks who work on offensive cyber are sitting next to people who are making far more than they are for nearly the exact same job, minus the aspects of being a soldier (long hours, no OT, tasks outside your core job). Being a contractor just pays more for less, so they have little reason to stay in when the promise of a better life isn't quite what their recruiter told them.
The US military will pay for someone's medical school education, and also offers significant signing bonuses for doctors, who then enter the military as officers. Which I imagine is enough to keep a steady pipeline in regular times.
These days so much of US military work is done by contractors, that I imagine they'd just pay contractors whatever was necessary to attract what they needed for specialized non-combat roles. (Heck, contractors end up being in effectively combat roles these days too, even if formally not. Wikipedia says as of 2012, 1,569 US contractors had been killed in Iraq, compare to ~4500 soldiers).
Back when there was a draft in the US, they drafted doctors along with everyone else, and had them be doctors in the military. (Some of my family members were such in WWII). I think they just had draft numbers that came up like everyone else's though, I don't think there was a specific doctor draft.
Some MOSs are scarcer though. Cyber is in a sense a form of special operations because it requires elite uncommon skills applied in war through unconventional means requiring exceptional enabling personnel and tools.
But if you try to give those same 1,000 people a software job, most of them would be terrible. Hell, most people employed as software engineers seem kind of bad at it. It isn't the type of job that lends itself to a draft.
Of course, you aren't limited to just the first 1,000 people you see. Maybe you ask FAANG for a list of their engineers, and randomly take 10% of them. Good goddamned luck with that. Google has had trouble getting their own engineering teams on board with DOD work. You try to draft those engineers? You will see a vindictive pettiness unmatched in human history. It would be the least productive engineering team ever assembled.
[1] Well, that used to be true. The general health of the American public isn't great right now, either.
I find it interesting that you've used the exact word that they use, "special skills draft".
I was on the draft board in my county during the Iraq war. To be clear-- the draft board was never activated, but I had found out that you could apply to be on it, and I was selected because basically nobody knew about it or wanted to do it.
The reason I wanted to be on it, was there was lots of talk about a "special skills" draft for nurses and technical people. The idea was they could slip this one under the radar because the bulk of Americans wouldn't be concerned. Then it becomes much easier to expand the draft.
I reasoned that if I was ON the draft board I couldn't get drafted, and that I could try to treat people compassionately.
Do you mean specifically for engineers, when there isn't a draft otherwise? Also no.
Back when there was a draft in the USA, everyone was drafted (well, all men of relevant demographics), and people with specialized skills (say, doctors) were drafted into relevant positions.
Of course. But what do you propose to do when war is brought to you? The only way to avoid it in that case is just to surrender, but I'm not sure if that's what you mean.
Whether or not some external force attacks it or not is orthogonal to that.
I take your argument seriously. To a large extent it's simply a fact that a country populated by people willing to die on its behalf will outlast a country whose citizens lack that quality.
My point is that that's not a moral observation. It has nothing to do with "deserve". We can imagine a pacifistic country focused on art and technology that is conquered by a country of brutal philistine knuckle-draggers focused on war. Does the latter country "deserve" to conquer the former?
But “might makes reality” is quite accurate - if a country cannot defend itself it will indeed cease to exist.
If you are talking about a widespread draft, it wouldn't work I think, because hacking a system is as much an art as dance, and is a kind of improv dance. You can learn to be an ok hacker, especially if you ride on the wings of great tools, but to be a great hacker takes a born talent for the perception of patterns and how they react, kind of what Gibson called nodal thinking.
You'd be better off finding people like that at as young an age as possible and inducing them in every positive way possible to come work in cyber. An example of one possible inducement is the NSA's NCAE-C program[1].
[1] https://www.nsa.gov/Academics/Centers-of-Academic-Excellence...
Just think about the possibility for sabotage. How are you going to tell the difference between a commit that is broken because Bob is kind of incompetent, and a commit that is broken because Larry had to leave his $195K per year, work from home job to maintain your shitty targeting app? Are you going to court martial someone because their integration tests break?
The US government definitely has a problem recruiting young talent, but that could be solved almost overnight by paying better and legalizing marijuana, no draft required.
2004: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Special-skills-draft-on-...
Try to do that with a hacker.
Keep a list, make joining easy and don't go all military bullshit on them and you don't need a draft.