
Cyberwar Doomsayer Lands $34 Million in Cyberwar Contracts‎ - pinstriped_dude
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/booz-allen/
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ig1
Could someone change the misleading headline ?

Wired came up with the phrase based upon "foster collaboration among
telecommunications researchers, University of Maryland faculty members and
other academic institutions to improve secure networking and
telecommunications and boost information assurance".

That could describe a wide range of things, saying that they're only
developing a mailing list and wiki is highly misleading and probably
libellous.

Yes. We all know consultants are expensive, but this isn't reddit, and having
exaggerated articles that try to push peoples buttons is simply just trolling.

~~~
philk
I might be a little too cynical here but a government agency spending millions
on something that is functionally equivalent to a mailing list and a wiki is
not an unrealistic scenario.

~~~
kgrin
Maybe, but the article doesn't actually present any evidence that _that's_
what's going on.

~~~
philk
I agree completely and it's a poorly written article. However, it's been my
experience that far too often in government/big business you wind up with a
project that costs millions of dollars that could have been pulled off by two
hackers, ~200K and an infinite supply of caffeine.

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cjoh
I get so frustrated with how media reports information out of government. It's
damned irresponsible. This Wired Piece is a derivative of a Washington Tech
article here: [http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2010/04/13/booz-
all...](http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2010/04/13/booz-allen-air-
force-cyber-contracts.aspx)

Most unfortunately, the Washington Tech article doesn't actually cite the
source of the information either. These contracts, and their awards are _on_
fbo.gov, it doesn't take much to find them and cite the source. But the
"mailing list and a wiki" line is, well, unsubstantiated at best, and false at
worst.

~~~
nopal
It may be because I'm unfamiliar with the system, but I can't seem to find the
contracts or awards.

What search criteria did you use to find them?

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gojomo
Long ago at Smalltalk vendor ParcPlace, Booz-Allen was a sometimes
customer/partner on big accounts. One of our consultants had a little sign in
his office, roughly:

 _Corporate Philosophies

ParcPlace: "Everything is an object"

Booz-Allen: "Money is no object"_

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DanielBMarkham
This is an awful story -- "fostering collaboration" is definitely vague and
fuzzy, and part of the reason people get paid lots of money is translating
vague and fuzzy into concrete items. It might be a mailing list and wiki -- or
it might not. I don't know. And sure as hell the author doesn't know either.

Even more disturbing is the editorializing in the piece. I'm not going to
comment on to what degree we actually face a cyber-threat, but I note that
competitors of Booze Hamilton have to be laughing their butts off about now.
It's cheap-shot journalism, and when you do that it's easy to start picking
your targets for whatever motives you might have -- good or bad. In other
words, this guy could have been paid by people who lost the contract to post
this, _and it would read exactly the same way_. That means the tone is has
serious flaws.

~~~
dbaugh
The story is pretty awful from a journalistic standpoint, however how much
money does it really take allow three organizations to communicate with each
other. I am willing to be its not even anywhere close to $14 million dollars.

~~~
psranga
If "fostering collaboration" means a unifying databases, replacing legacy
software etc, then yes it _can_ be close to 14 million. At a previous
employer, changing the bug-tracking system was yearlong project.

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MaysonL
On this topic, there's an interesting debate scheduled June 8 in D.C.

Mike McConnell and John Zittrain versus Marc Rotenberg and Bruce Schneier.

See [http://www.thenewnewinternet.com/2010/04/12/upcoming-
debate-...](http://www.thenewnewinternet.com/2010/04/12/upcoming-debate-on-
the-cyber-war-threat-has-been-grossly-exaggerated/)

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motters
Has anyone studied the relationship between doomsaying and economics? Perhaps
there's a book in there somewhere, or at least a TED talk. Certainly for some,
making protestations of doom - however implausible - appears to be a viable
business model.

~~~
arethuza
A lot of management consulting appears to be based on finding problems that
don't really exist and then being paid to fix them. So yes, this is already an
extremely well established business model.

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marr
The funds are going to, or related to, the IATAC program, depending on your
point of view.

Folks in the DC area might be interested in:
[http://intelligencesquaredus.org/index.php/debates/cyber-
war...](http://intelligencesquaredus.org/index.php/debates/cyber-war-threat-
has-been-grossly-exaggerated/)

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spudlyo
There is a conspicuous lack of Mt. Dew in that photo.

