
How billions vanish into the security industry - shifte
https://thecorrespondent.com/6229/how-billions-vanish-into-the-black-hole-that-is-the-security-industry/303333613-52f43e22
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secfirstmd
Part of the problem is that genuinely innovative ideas from small businesses
find it impossible to navigate the mess that is EU related funding. Meaning
only the big players can access them. Also, the amount of unnecessary
duplication and crap sold in the security industry is unbelievable.

If you go to the Counter Terrorism Expo in London, you can see this. Dozens of
organisations selling effectively the same stuff.

Much of which is actually pure crap from a security/defence standpoint. How do
they actually manage to sell it? Connections...hiring people who previously
where in side the military/intelligence/Defence Departments etc. The same
process as in the US no doubt. The worse thing is that some of the stuff is
both expensive, useless and occasionally dangerous for the people who require
it.

BAE Systems is the perfect example of this. They are effectively a hidden
British government job scheme. They make crap equipment, overly costly and
rarely on time. There are many cases where UK tax payer would actually save
money by firing the people in the jobs, giving them golden payoffs and buying
more effective equipment elsewhere. Meanwhile their troops would be safer. For
example the SA80, Westland Apache helicopters costing 50% more than their US-
made Longbow equivalents - the list is endless.

I highly recommend the book "Lions, Donkeys And Dinosaurs: Waste and
Blundering in the Military" for a quick overview of that.

~~~
colechristensen
>They are effectively a hidden British government job scheme.

There is inherent value in simply having an existing capable defense
contractor in your own nation. It isn't about dollars and cents, it's about
being capable of fighting a war without outside help (or not being wholly
dependent). So you throw money at the local defense contractor to keep it
alive. It's expensive to do this, but if you don't you pay for it in other
ways because if you buy all of your equipment from foreign defense contractors
they can use that as political leverage against you.

A lot of money is spent being prepared for wars that won't happen _because_
everyone is prepared for them.

~~~
toyg
... and then the contractor turns around and gives you China-built parts and
US-built software to run them, with little meaningful independence gained.

The industrial world by now is too globalized for this sort of approach to
work. We keep pretending otherwise so that money keeps flowing and the general
public doesn't freak out, but I bet even the almighty US cannot certify that
most of their tech is built at home.

~~~
pavement

      I bet even the almighty US cannot certify 
      that most of their tech is built at home.
    

Probably only the shit that matters. The nuclear weapons, first and foremost,
and then an exponential decay in validation as you get less and less lethal.

I gotta figure the F-35 is cover for several substantial black budgets at this
point, and that it's actually much cheaper than the paper trail would have us
believe, simply because I remember reading about the presumed obsolescence of
manned warplanes back when the YF-22 and YF-23 were battling for the F-15
replacement program, before the F-22 won.

My rationale being, if pilots are worthless in airplanes, then it doesn't
actually matter if the program is properly funded, and it becomes an ideal
smoke screen for time and effort diverted elsewhere.

I became even more convinced when I found out the F-22's and the F-35's
avionics both were controlled over a firewire bus.

~~~
nnq
> the F-22's and the F-35's avionics both were controlled over a firewire bus

...and what problem would a firewire bus seem to indicate?

(But overall I'd agree that the widely trumpeted F-35 blunder is kind of a PR
stunt from the US military for the rest of the world: "look, we've just spent
so many billions on top secret military capabilities you know nothing about,
so we have super dope secret weapons that will blow you up, and we believe
your spies aren't even competent enough to figure out that our secret programs
exist, let alone what they do, so we'll "silently" have to brag about labeling
it as "spending blunders" for it for some deterrent value"... the problem with
this shit is that such an international mil policy strategy with it's possible
strategic implications sounds like the prequel of an Apocalypse/WW3 movie...
so let's hope this is not the closest variant to the truth or we're all
fucked)

~~~
pavement
Mostly, the use of a standard interface like firewire (IEEE 1394) seems to
hint at economical choices being made somewhere in the supply chain, in that
it probably allowed lockheed to source off-the-shelf parts, when wiring up the
planes and loading software packages.

They didn't spend extra to develop or patent custom avionics superior to
civilian technologies, or even try to lock secret intellectual property into
the designs, to create a barrier around the fly-by-wire systems. This is a
rare event when it comes to corporations interacting with government programs.
Especially when fielding niche high technology line items with decades-long
lifecycles.

Whether it was stipulated as part of the government program or one of
lockheed's design decisions, there's a sense that the economical option
provides breathing room for false compartments, without reducing superficial
complexity.

~~~
colechristensen
Defense contractors talk a whole lot about COTS (commercial off the shelf)
these days (and in the past few decades). It's a big deal to be able to not
spend money reengineering something equivalent to an existing technology. It
would take _years_ to create a new data comms interface (like FireWire, USB
1,2,3, ThunderBolt, etc etc) and why? The signaling physical layer and cabling
design don't need to be redone do they?

They'll surely have reengineered cables and connectors to survive the aircraft
environment, but who wouldn't rather buy a FireWire PHY from Mouser than
design and manufacture something similar from the ground up?

Decisions like this will have happened at Lockheed and high up / early in the
design phase. (i.e. it's not some subcontractor finding efficiencies but a
fundamental block of the system design)

------
rrggrr
> But has all of this made us safer?

This is the key takeaway from the article. Most of the expense isn't making
anyone safer, and the advantage is held by the aggressor who only has to be
successful once to inflict unpalatable physical, economic and political damage
to defending developed nations.

> The question is whether that funding truly advances the cause of the
> European citizen, or only that of the industry.

The parallels to the drug industry are striking, where often the most
expensive drug is the least effective and billions are spent on duplicative
competitive approaches.

> Let brilliant scientists get down to work, and leave them alone for five
> years

It is interesting the advances smaller, less well funded countries, have made
in defense spending. Swedish Gotland subs, Israeli Iron Dome missile defense,
Norwegian anti-air missles, reputed North Korean advances in EMP weapons, and
reputed Iranian advances in fast torpedos, etc.

Sometimes less means more.

------
kelvin0
And don't forget the Classic ADE 651.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADE_651)
[http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29459896](http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-29459896)

~~~
giancarlostoro
Or the TSA's ridiculous 1.4 million app that randomly picks left or right:

[http://www.geek.com/apps/tsa-paid-1-4-million-for-
randomizer...](http://www.geek.com/apps/tsa-paid-1-4-million-for-randomizer-
app-that-chooses-left-or-right-1651337/)

------
pnathan
The key phrase here I would suggest picking out is the one where the
contractors get to help influence/write the contracts that they bid on. It's
not confined to this sector of the world industry. Would /love/ to see that
made flamingly illegal.

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netman21
The other security industry. Not IT security.

~~~
dokument
The first step to IT security is physical security.

~~~
kmicklas
And when all your physical security tools are electronic the first step to
physical security is IT security :)

~~~
TeMPOraL
It generalizes to national security as well.

[https://xkcd.com/898/](https://xkcd.com/898/)

------
TP4Cornholio
People like to knock on government funded research on security/defense here,
but it is actually one of the reasons the US leads in tech. DARPA produced the
arpanet, the predecessor to the internet. Also, while everyone is aware of
Stanford and silicon manufacturers contributions to making Silicon Valley, the
defense industry also played a big part in SV's early days. And let's not
forget Alan Turing was working for the British government to defeat the nazis.
Funding research is a great idea.

~~~
giancarlostoro
What you're saying is correct, but I must note it doesn't mean there can never
be bad apples. There's always someone ruining the fun for everyone else I
suppose. But yeah there's been all sorts of interesting projects from the
defense / security sector.

