
The US military could begin drafting 40-year-old hackers - jstoiko
https://thenextweb.com/insider/2018/03/13/the-us-military-could-begin-drafting-40-year-old-hackers/
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redspectre
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
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...](https://breakingdefense.com/2018/03/marines-love-affair-
with-3d-printing-small-is-cheap-beautiful/)

~~~
redspectre
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.

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

~~~
Synaesthesia
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
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?

~~~
krapp
>I would have expected it to be politically suicidal to even utter the word?

Backlashes are cyclical and sometimes generational - the hippies against the
beatniks, the yuppies against the hippies, etc. The current political and
cultural zeitgeist in the US seems to be much further right and pro-war than
it might have been 40 years ago.

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brudgers
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.

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squozzer
>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.

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

~~~
jsjohnst
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
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).

~~~
jsjohnst
> Trying to draft those with the most resources to fight the draft is just not
> going to work well.

Agree completely.

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dsq
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?

