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NSA Official: We Need to Prepare for the Future of War

156 points by ajay-d 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pluma 7y ago
Maybe the US would do well to obsess a little less about wars? After spending 90%+ of its time existing on being at war, it sure would seem like a good time to take a break and stop attacking other countries maybe.
- TheCryptoTengu 7y ago
  If only however the military industrial complex is to big. I think America is more like a hired gun never at home hence why home is not in best of shape.
- booleandilemma 7y ago
  When you’re on top, everyone else is going to try to take you down. And make no mistake, we’re still very much on top.
  - celticninja 7y ago
    When you are on top you think everyone else is trying to take you down.
  - Nevermark 7y ago
    We are going to seem to be on top, on the surface, long after we Have lost that position in actual practice. Right now we are escalating the debt to extreme levels during the longest economic expansion in US history. I.e. we seem to be planning to bankrupt ourselves. In the meantime, trade differences and trade wars are complex, but the net effect of the tensions with China is it is adapting away from any dependency from us, while are allies are of little help because we dropped our agreements with them. In the meantime, the US has been falling down the country lists for health, longevity, and education for some time. And our recent deference to authoritarian regimes over democratic allies is eroding our political power. The US is undergoing a steep decline and a turnaround in the current divisive hyper-polarized political climate seems very unlikely. The decline is being accelerated by the current political climate.
  - pluma 7y ago
    Haha, no.
  - rolltiide 7y ago
    I like the US' market's liquidity, that seems unparalleled I like the US' diversified portfolio of industries and stewardship of resources Its military seems wasteful and unnecessary, perpetuated by cultural paranoia and its domestic infrastructure for actually living seems to exist in a parallel world where it is compared to the worst countries in existence whenever challenged, operating with seeming unawareness of what other G20 countries have. when compared to a mixture of legal frameworks to support human rights across countries that have actively made inroads in this area, US seems to lag. The comparisons being just some mostly European countries in the G20. The US seems to lack consensus on supporting its existing human rights and lacks consensus on expanding what they are. when people say "on top", and further reflect that in its leaders masqauarading the US as a moral beacon in the world, I find this to be the exact kind of double speak that George Orwell described. given how many attributes countries have, it further seems like the US is number one in a race only it competes in. At least in this century. The things I like about the US, number one in market liquidity, aren't really what people talk about. Perhaps given that its capital class is so relatively small to its population, their voices aren't what I hear. Deriving confidence from number aircraft carriers around the world just seems to lack perspective, or perhaps this is again related to the size of its working class that required the option of military duty to get by, people that must comply and be a soldier to obtain subsidized schooling, trades, healthcare and housing from the government. The military is a kind of cool technical feat but given the costs and lack of threat its like really? this century? Those are my main thoughts so by which metrics is the US on top specifically, for you?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - sangnoir 7y ago
      > people that must ... be a soldier to obtain subsidized schooling, trades, healthcare and housing from the government. Sounds like joining the army is one way of getting these special citizenship benefits. Would you like to know more?
      - rolltiide 7y ago
  - marcyb5st 7y ago
    Based on which metric? Your comment remind me of this video -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqcLUqYqrs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqcLUqYqrs
  - stronglikedan 7y ago
    Not to mention that, if we're not the world police, then someone else will be, so we may as well be, since we're the best suited for the job.
    - mikejb 7y ago
      "World police" sounds nice, but the US military is what it is: the military force of a country, ensuring that countries interests, and little else.
  - mrmonkeyman 7y ago
    Nah, you are just paranoid. Nobody is taking anyone down because you don't matter anymore. Interesting stuff is happening on the Asian continent. Like the Roman Empire you are just falling, slowly, but steadily and nobody will give a shit. Just like France, UK, etc.
- input_sh 7y ago
  Then what are they gonna do with all their toys and what reason will they have to request an increased budget year after year?
- chapium 7y ago
  Perhaps? I'm not surprised a branch of the military is hawkish however.
- situational87 7y ago
  We just admitted defeat in Afghanistan after 18 years of.. what was the mission again? Build a government? Build the Afghan National Army? We cut out both of those groups from peace talks with the Taliban this year. We tried to keep the talks secret from the government you're negotiating peace about. I can't imagine a more awkward way to discover that mission has been a failure. This has turned into a Vietnam-scale boondoggle, and now we're just supposed to accept the utter failure of the DoD and State and NSA and just listen to their demands for resourcing for future boondoggles? Why? How about we try saying no for once instead of rewarding incompetence over and over again? If we lived in an alternate reality where the State Department had a good track record and today people were posting pictures about their awesome vacations to Tripoli and Kabul and we were talking about new businesses and schools opening that would be one thing, but unfortunately it's just one failure after another with almost nothing to show for it.
  - gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
    People generally disagree with me, but I think the absolute failure of our administrative state to get _anything_ right poured gasoline on the fire that is general distrust in government. It was way too easy for someone like Trump to just repeat "Iraq" on stage to remind everyone that "the experts" have failed us in spectacular ways.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    > unfortunately it's just one failure after another with almost nothing to show for it. I really urge you to read Catch-22. It is only a failure until you inspect the books, and then you will realize the genius of it all. Lots of people made out like the bandits they are over this.
  - PorterDuff 7y ago
    I think you could make an argument for a 'war', but you need to think less like a Roman and more like a Byzantine.
  - turk73 7y ago
    Make a lot of money, dispose of some excess population.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  And do what with it? Spend it on healthcare and infrastructure and NSF research grants? Bah!
- mar77i 7y ago
  I don't get why Trump gets slammed by the media for talking to Kim Yong and walking back on Iran, or even trying to set up meetings with Taliban this month. Just because he's negociating doesn't mean negociating in itself is wrong, so I find that peculiar.
  - justaman 7y ago
    Its very telling of our inability to attribute positives to someone who holds an alternative political ideology. We need to be able to compliment one another somehow if we are ever to bridge the ever increasing gap between political parties.
    - Angostura 7y ago
      I think that's a reasonable goal. Of course the current president seems very content to rip up initiatives of the previous president simply because he was the previous president - see the Iran deal, for example.
  - Angostura 7y ago
    On the Iran side, he was slammed because there was already a deal, which according to independent observers was working reasonably well. In terms of North Korea, it might have been a reasonable strategy if there was any evidence of a lasting deal. As it is, it looked like a PR dance by both leaders. Who knows what was going on with the Taliban.
  - wonderwonder 7y ago
    Its not that he is negotiating that is the issue, its the fact that he is doing it badly. NK wanted to meet with the president of the US in order to gain international recognition for their leader. They got what they wanted in return the US got nothing, and in the mean time NK has produced more nuclear weapons and continued their missile tests. We have also alienated SK our traditional ally. Regarding Iran, Iran had verifiably held nuclear enrichment to a set level. This was a deal that was working and Trump just pre-emptively left it and re-applied sanctions, and now everyone is mad / surprised that Iran is once again raising its enrichment level. There are essentially no or very limited ongoing negotiations with Iran. The point of the original deal was to prevent a nuclear Iran and it was working. Once Iran gets Nukes the international stage is very different. From an outsider perspective it very much appears that we have stepped back from the deal in order to find a reason to go to war.
_Understated_ 7y ago
I've often thought about what the next "Great War" would look like. Not researched it or anything but mulled it over. I honestly think the enemy will take out our power stations via malicious code that may already be sitting there waiting to go off right now. A few days after that, when people are still in total darkness and the supermarket shelves are empty then we will turn on ourselves and our "leaders" because we are cold, hungry etc: we'll destroy ourselves first. I don't even think a shot will need to be fired!
- mapcars 7y ago
  >then we will turn on ourselves and our "leaders" I don't think in such case normal people would be able to reach "leaders" in their bunkers or whatever they prepare.
  - nexuist 7y ago
    There are various tiers of leaders, each of which gets their own subset of authority. Perhaps the President and Congress gets their own bunkers, but I sincerely doubt mayor X in Y town in Ohio is getting flown out to a mountainside retreat. Coincidentally with the increase in military equipment being sold to local police departments these days, said mayors will have some firepower to work with if they ever do decide to convince their townspeople to go rogue and play for keeps.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >There are various tiers of leaders, each of which gets their own subset of authority. Perhaps the President and Congress gets their own bunkers, but I sincerely doubt mayor X in Y town in Ohio is getting flown out to a mountainside retreat. So people will do what, attach the mayor? Not really responsible for the mess, and not really such a big shot to be worth it...
      - nexuist 7y ago
        Oh, I wasn't thinking people would attack the mayors, I was more so referring to mayors using their power to attack the people in the bunkers.
LilBytes 7y ago
I can't find any links on the first or second Google search pages to circumvent the pay wall?
- tk75x 7y ago
  block javascript. works for most paywalls
HenryKissinger 7y ago
> There are four key implications of this revolution that policymakers in the national security sector will need to address: > The first is that the unprecedented scale and pace of technological change will outstrip our ability to effectively adapt to it. Second, we will be in a world of ceaseless and pervasive cyberinsecurity and cyberconflict against nation-states, businesses and individuals. Third, the flood of data about human and machine activity will put such extraordinary economic and political power in the hands of the private sector that it will transform the fundamental relationship, at least in the Western world, between government and the private sector. Finally, and perhaps most ominously, the digital revolution has the potential for a pernicious effect on the very legitimacy and thus stability of our governmental and societal structures.
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  > > The first is that the unprecedented scale and pace of technological change will outstrip our ability to effectively adapt to it. Second, we will be in a world of ceaseless and pervasive cyberinsecurity and cyberconflict against nation-states, businesses and individuals. Third, the flood of data about human and machine activity will put such extraordinary economic and political power in the hands of the private sector that it will transform the fundamental relationship, at least in the Western world, between government and the private sector. Finally, and perhaps most ominously, the digital revolution has the potential for a pernicious effect on the very legitimacy and thus stability of our governmental and societal structures. Sounds like the cyberpunk dystopia is come to pass. Just waiting on a "Screaming Fist" type incident...
  - longtom 7y ago
    > "Screaming Fist" type incident... What's that?
    - KineticLensman 7y ago
      From Neuromancer [0], William Gibson's 1984 genre-defining cyberpunk novel > "Operation Screaming Fist," which planned on infiltrating and disrupting Soviet computer systems from ultralight aircraft dropped over Russia. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer
thanatropism 7y ago
Cf. Manuel de Landa, "War in the age of intelligent machines". https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83650.War_in_the_Age_of_Intelligent_Machines https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83650.War_in_the_Age_of_... Delanda was very interesting in the beginning but didn't quite find or found his community and began talking in an echo chamber that impoverished his thought. Still, "War...", "Intensive science and virtual philosophy" and "A thousand years of nonlinear history" are respectively a very promising start, an impressive peak and an early mature book. Too bad I can't recommend anything from "Philosophy and simulation" forward.
HenryKissinger 7y ago
That states like China and Russia can recruit the best cybersecurity talent in their respective countries, and force them to work for the government, while the United States can't, is a problem. If I were the president, I would focus on talent recruitment and retention. Google is paying its top cyberstaff 700k? Offer them 1M. Also get rid of archaic hiring practices like drug tests, and streamline the process to obtain a clearance.
- g00s3_caLL_x2 7y ago
  I get what you're saying, but do you want you top minds working while high, or better yet, needing to depend on them while they are high? Some things just require a clarity 24/7. Wouldn't nation security fall under that?
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Sounds like an interesting plan.
  - birdyrooster 7y ago
    Congress loves giving more money to the military.
- spunker540 7y ago
  I’m not biased at all, just a patriot, and I think the government should inflate the wages of all software engineers in the entire nation to $1M in the name of national defense.
  - lioeters 7y ago
    Software Engineeer: We Need to Prepare for a Complete Rewrite (and Significant Salary Increase)
  - logfromblammo 7y ago
    I am also not biased at all, but I feel strongly that we need to support the deliberative efforts of our nation's software-building infrastructure-protecting heroes by giving them all individual offices with doors that can close and lock, also ensuring that the occupant of the office has a key for it. And nice, high-backed office chairs. And dual monitors for each workstation, with the computation hardware refreshed at least every three years--to include a real graphics card, that actually works with virtualization, because of 3D mapping. And the kitchenettes should also be enclosed in their own rooms, so microwaved fish or broccoli smells don't permeate all the offices at lunch time. Not that I definitely know that's a thing that actually happens, but I imagine that if it did, if might break a software developer's concentration. Every. Danged. Time. For national security! Should probably recommend these "critical security precautions" to all of our allies, too. And potential allies. And probably the adversaries will copy them, but not much we can do about that. ~
buboard 7y ago
Another Manhattan Project? Guess who has to pay for it
g00s3_caLL_x2 7y ago
I find it hard to believe we are not ALREADY preparing for new war fronts. The end result will be the same. Death and conquering.
raxxorrax 7y ago
Since the NSA and similar agencies don't seem to have the flexibility to evaluate their own influence on developments, I do seriously think they are a greater threat to overall national security compared to some propped up countries that were named here. So they want to ramp up surveillance again... better get ready for my new side job as insurgent against the state. Having an agency that sees everything as a threat should not have the competence to determine civil interactions or should be shackled to a more severe degree. The lack of trust in western societies doesn't seem to be a factor in their threat analysis. Maybe not worth it for budget discussions... idiotic... > in a vast databank of personally identifying information about its citizens, from iris and facial recognition to DNA data. That is antithetical to our values. I think this is a lie. It is not against their value. On the contrary these are exactly values espoused as per evidence acquired by people currently residing in very dark cells. > Our innovative and entrepreneurial society affords us a unique advantage in dealing with those implications. Some people hire whores, some people hire security firms. But it too often is to stick your dick into something. > our society could consider greater coordination between government and the private sector to combat unruly citizens... This would be a great opportunity for the new york times to show some of their critical investigative abilities. This is plainly painting a threat to the wall to justify spying on citizens. Even if this show deep ineptitude, I fear it might be working
ajay-d 7y ago
Does any company use quantum-resistant encryption in practice?
- orbz 7y ago
  In theory usage of SHA-256 or SHA3-256 should be secure against current known quantum attacks.
Merrill 7y ago
The article is full of conventional thinking that extrapolates directly from current trends. Most likely the critical IT need in the Next World War will be bioinformatics to identify pathogens being used in biowarfare and to design, produce and distribute vaccines, drugs, and other countermeasures. The second IT need will be to enable society to function without the movement of or physical contact between people in order to limit contagion.
- tinco 7y ago
  So you counter their conventional thinking that extrapolates from 2019 trends with conventional thinking extrapolating from 1989 trends. A bit unconventional but sure.
Fillsev 7y ago
Hey!wats happened?
14 7y ago
Such a bleak picture of the future where the only solution is for all of us to give up our privacy and allow the government to watch us so they can keep us safe. There are so many rants I could go off on this article I would not even know where to start but I will say this. What about the option of peace building? Why not put 1/3 of your insane military budget towards a new mission of going into the places you have the worst reputation, the places you have wronged the most and start building up their infrastructure like water plants and schools? The only options this article gave was to give up all our freedoms so the government can keep us safe which to any person with half a brain (hint even my kids know this and their vote is coming one day) this only stops the average citizen from remain anonymous. Link to neat video explaining how to easily encrypt a message on a piece of paper. "Bear in mind if we are talking about banning encryption, we are talking about banning mathematics". I love that line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRa_zzQOEe8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRa_zzQOEe8
- zzzeek 7y ago
  > Why not put 1/3 of your insane military budget towards a new mission of going into the places you have the worst reputation, the places you have wronged the most and start building up their infrastructure like water plants and schools? The critique you refer towards is familiar when we talk about terrorism operations that spin off from less powerful nations, and for many years the "war on terror" has been about detecting such small scale operations that can definitely be traced to all the nasty things the US has done for many decades. However, this article is mostly referring to Russia and China as the most critical actors in this style of warfare; these are relatively large and powerful nations who have shown to be adversarially aggressive to the US and many other nations so I'm not sure how there would be "peace" with them other than allowing them to continue to wreak havoc in their neighboring nations and territories unchecked, not to mention that they would continue to launch direct attacks on our internal processes, which wouldn't actually prevent a world conflict from occurring, only hasten its arrival. We have already been attacked quite severely in this regard with great success.
  - 14 7y ago
    Instead of fighting the world we could go around making allies and all stand together against any aggression China and Russia make would be how I envision it but perhaps even that would not work. I just have to believe there is a better future then everyone fighting each other winner take all. Our earth is god damn dying and these people want to convince us the only solution is to get ready for the fight of our life. We are already in it. We need to work together to save the earth not destroy each other.
rafaelvasco 7y ago
No, in my opinion, we need to start working so that wars don't even make sense. A concept of the distant past. A future in which our descendants don't even know what wars are. In my vision there are no legitimate reasons for wars to exist at all. Of course this concept will sound alien and completely nuts for the majority, who are still in the fear based mindset; But then you can ask: So how do we protect ourselves from those that are attacking us ? The day we can answer this question without violence in the mindset is the day we evolve as humanity;
- jcranmer 7y ago
  Because that turned out so well when we tried it 100 years ago. Instead, we got WW2, the most destructive war in history in absolute terms.
  - rafaelvasco 7y ago
    The problem is that humanity in general is still in a mindset which facilitates conflict, destruction, killings etc;
  - imglorp 7y ago
    No, we tried isolationism before WW2, different from GP is asking for.
    - jcranmer 7y ago
      The "we" here is not the US government but the wider anti-war movements that helped push for such acts as the League of Nations and the Washington and London Treaties.
    - isoskeles 7y ago
      Britain didn’t try isolationism.
    - rafaelvasco 7y ago
      Yeah, isolationism absolutely isn't the way; Quite the contrary;
decoyworker 7y ago
This is huge and is a subject I feel strongly about- especially for defense software. Parts of the US Government are already sounding the alarm over this. see- https://innovation.defense.gov/software/ https://innovation.defense.gov/software/ Basically, we are too slow. The contract acquisition process and waterfall development moves at a glacial pace. I have some serious doubts we will ever adapt since it would require a restructuring of the way our defense industry operates.
- ak217 7y ago
  Part of the NSA's mission (which they have failed at, and an acknowledgment of that failure is conspicuously absent from this article by the NSA's general counsel) is to help secure domestic information infrastructure against attack. They are supposed to lead the way in developing security standards, scanning for vulnerabilities, advising businesses and local governments on how to protect themselves. In a perfect world, Project Zero would have been based at the NSA. Instead they have let the wiretapping crew take over everything.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  Wouldn't it be possible to build the next generation of technology to be much less hackable? Right now we're all pretty dumb about cybersecurity, but if plays a major hand in shaping human events even stodgy Pentagon types might start taking things like air gaps and not writing your passwords out on a sticky note more seriously.
  - SiempreViernes 7y ago
    The tragedy of the mundane reality is that more cyber systems will be put out of commission by things like botched patch tuesdays and techs pulling the wrong cable because they were mislabelled than any hack.
  - repolfx 7y ago
    It's possible. People wouldn't like it. Mandate that all software - everywhere - is written in Java or Rust with no unsafe blocks (but, oops, you can't realistically do that in Rust). Make it illegal to use web apps to administer infrastructure. Desktop GUIs all the way (no XSS there ...). Then mandate that this infrastructure can't be administered from Windows, but only some locked down new OS that required iOS style code signing from top to bottom. Then forbid the use of passwords for authenticating to anything, no matter how trivial. Think many geeks would get excited about that? People write insecure software because they can't/won't accept the fact that they enjoy building software in ways that are very insecure. For a lot of coders you'll prise C out of their cold dead hands, and they'll continue making hackable IoT devices until you do.
ativzzz 7y ago
The author's last key implication, > Finally, and perhaps most ominously, the digital revolution has the potential for a pernicious effect on the very legitimacy and thus stability of our governmental and societal structures. But they then proceed to say things like > Will Western liberal democracies, already straining under the combined demands of decaying civil infrastructure, aging populations, upgrading militaries and so on, be able to afford these investments? Given that there is no specific forcing event to require greater resources, but rather a trend, history suggests that we will appreciate the seriousness of the underinvestment only when a crisis has occurred. Meaning that currently, our system of government is simply not built to deal with modern technology. Yet they state that the fundamental threat of forcing change within societal and governmental structure is 'ominous', while at the same time implying that it is absolutely necessary. Discarding stability and tradition for the sake of progress is inevitable, and will happen either deliberately, through policy (this rarely happens), or by revolution.
sailfast 7y ago
This opinion piece is borderline screed and I'm not sure what to make of it. Part of the piece is "OMG China!" with some pretty dubious assumptions, especially things like their GDP being bigger than the US is an existential threat. "The world is scary" is not a narrative I will respond to. Of course it is - it's bloody frightening. But have you tried framing the discussion in a way that is not so warfare and zero sum-focused but rather collaborative? The rest of this piece contains the kind of Cold War logic that, while understandable from someone whose job it is to solve these problems, is also alarming to see in what is supposed to be a "new approach" to preparedness from an agency. This seems like a backdoor argument to compromising privacy, asking politely for businesses to be friendlier, while at the same time asking for more money than their already astronomical budget. The obvious first step here is to Fix. Your. Own. House. Become more transparent about what you are doing. Don't talk about secret bunkers in the first paragraph but instead about what you are going to do in order to share more with industry, and the kinds of investments you are going to make to ensure government can keep up. Included in that is staffing proposals, workforce management changes, being more lenient with behaviors that are not relevant to your ability to hold a clearance to broaden recruitment, doing more work in the open and possibly a new imperative to focus on privacy and help protect privacy for all Americans despite best attempts of companies to destroy it. Some of that was alluded to but I find it really hard to take this piece seriously.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  > have you tried framing the discussion in a way that is not so warfare and zero sum-focused but rather collaborative? We live in extraordinarily peaceful times. Those have cropped up throughout history. They have never lasted because balances of power shift. We are not at the end of history. We are a footnote in a history book written a thousand years from now. I hope you're right, though.
  - sailfast 7y ago
    I'm with you - you prepare for this stuff. You stand ready, but there are two (OK probably more haha) approaches to mitigating the risks in the world: One approach is to ensure that you have relationships / commonalities / connections tight enough that extensive conflict does not help either party and work on the relationship. This balance has a lot of proxy wars and holds OK...until something upsets the balance. But if you have dialog in place maybe you don't blow up the world. Another is to invest everything in the thing that will upset the balance: countries racing to the next version of a nuclear weapon - in this piece that is AI / Cyber. Shifting everything as a society involves a lot of sacrifice that has (historically) also destabilized the society to the point that it collapses as a result. I think there's wiggle room here, and when I say "collaborative" I don't mean that we're all sharing technology but rather that we are on a single planet and we already are codependent and maybe let's see the obvious benefits instead of immediately jumping to weapons. In terms of tone I'd also wonder which tone is better for recruitment? "Kill the hun!" or "Build the future"? If they want me to work there, it's the latter.
rblion 7y ago
Does anyone else here feel WWIII is inevitable?
- coldtea 7y ago
  Well, wars historically never stopped. World wars happened when powers have global reach and means. In the 20th century they had that. In the 21st, even more so. That said, in the early 20th the old European global powers were demoted from superpowers, and US/USSR emerged in their place. But at the time the USSR leaders knew it wasn't as strong (to risk a major war with the US) and both sides had nukes, complicating the logistics. So no direct war between them (but plenty of proxy wars globally). Today there's US, China, India as wannabe big player, Russia (still not as strong, and worse off than USSR), and a few other minor players. (A single "pan-global" single-"country" or central government also wont stop wars. It will just make all wars civil wars and rebellions).
- jacquesm 7y ago
  On a long enough time scale most things that could happen will happen, especially sequentially numbered items of which we already have multiple instances in recent memory.
CommieDetector 7y ago
The next war will be the Communists an there allies vs the free world. And by communists i mean leftist
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
anewguy9000 7y ago
what does he know? isn't he more lawyer than technologist? this reads like rhetoric. aka "we need more power, because computers!"
say_it_as_it_is 7y ago
Funny. Halliburton said the same sort of things prior to 9/11. They drafted the Patriot Act, which all but one policymaker objected to. Yesterday's Halliburton is today's Palantir, Blackwater, Amazon. There's a lot of money to be made in war.
ggg3 7y ago
put a million dollar bug bounty on bgp. that will be fun to watch at least.
zabana 7y ago
Unrelated (kind of): do you guys/girls recommend books (especially novels) that cover the subjects of futurism, espionage, cyber warfare and other related topics ? I find the current situation to be very dystopic and would love to read more about it. Thanks in advance !
- Fnoord 7y ago
  Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Jennifer Government. Also, read through the thread. I saw Neuromancer recommended already :)
- bluntfang 7y ago
  William Gibson's Neuromancer and Sprawl Trilogy and other works. Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash
- crucini 7y ago
  Dark Territory, by Fred Kaplan. Same topic as this thread. Also either Puzzle Palace or Body of Secrets by James Bamford. Topic: NSA.
motohagiography 7y ago
We could call this historical period a great dis-integration where the consensus that formed the equilibrium of the last 60 years has been disrupted by tech, and we're looking at a period of volatility before reaching a new equilibrium. I've argued before that U.S. critical infrastructure vulnerability will prevent it from intervening in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Its lack of a strong homeland defensive posture on infrastructure has emboldened regional powers like China, Russia, and Iran to assert themselves over local NATO allies without fear of US retaliation. e.g. The US isn't going to risk a dam flooding or a long term grid failure over a distant minor ally. Arguably, NATO made sense when partners could defend their infrastructure, but the mutual aid commitment becomes a suicide pact when your cities can be turned into tribal warzones by depriving them of power, payments, and fuel. Nobody wants to get drawn into that by a minor ally. That's the weakness that creates the power vacuum into which warring parties pile in. We do indeed live in interesting times.
- throwawaymanbot 7y ago
  Tech has made it easier for the Steve Bannons and Vladimir Putins of the world to weaken Democracy. I wouldnt just blame tech though.
- gbasin 7y ago
  I agree, and this may arguably be a good thing. A relatively painless way of rolling back the empire of Team America: World Police. We may be trending back towards a time of strong regional powers rather than global hegemony.
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    > a time of strong regional powers rather than global hegemony A.K.A. a time of war, like the ones that rocked Europe and the rest of the world through the 19th and early 20th century, as regional powers struggle to become the new global hegemony. Those who desire an end to the Pax Americana, be careful what you wish for.
  - cmurf 7y ago
    More likely an end to the nation-state, and a return to the more stable city-state. Once a society is on the path to regression, you don't exactly get to choose where the ball stops rolling. It's going to end up at the most stable location, and nation-states have a short history compared to city-states but also more volatile.
ak217 7y ago
I have a lot of trouble taking this guy seriously given the amount of hand-waving and fearmongering in this article, especially around "A.I.". Last time I checked, the NSA did very little to fulfill its mission to help secure existing US assets against cyberattack, much less help improve security in emerging technology. As Snowden showed us, they are far more interested in wiretapping everything.
crb002 7y ago
DOD needs to harden common Linux ecosystem shotgun parsers with formal parsers.
avmich 7y ago
> And even if we could detect a missile flying at low altitudes at 20 times the speed of sound, we have no way of stopping it. Looks like author doesn't know what he's talking about here?
- HeXetic 7y ago
  What's the problem with that? He's talking about the future, where hypersonic missiles will be a reality. Anti-missile defences like the Phalanx CIWS have a range of only a couple of miles. A theoretical missile flying at Mach 20 will cover that range in less than half a second, making it extremely difficult to shoot down. A Phalanx only fires at 50 rounds per second. We're talking about a few dozen bullets on target which have got to shred or detonate the warhead or else it's going to head. Granted we are not at mach 20 missiles or even mach 5 missiles yet, but this is an article about the future, after all.
  - avmich 7y ago
    But low altitude? I'd consider that, say, 5 km or even less; why a hypersonic missile would be low-flying cruise missile? Why confront that awful aerodynamic drag?
    - HeXetic 7y ago
      > Why confront that awful aerodynamic drag? Mainly for exactly the reason of making the missile too difficult to detect until it's far too late to do anything about it. IIRC there's also two additional reasons: striking from a low angle means a better chance of damaging the ship at or below the waterline in order to sink it, and because sea-skimming means the sensors have a much easier time picking out the ship from the sea.
      - avmich 7y ago
        I mean, the aerodynamic drag is going to be forbidding high. One can't today make a low flying 20M cruise missile, no such technologies by a long shot.
mikewarot 7y ago
It is possible to make secure operating systems, doing so has been discouraged since the demise of multics. A sense of futility is now endemic to the Information Technology community, because they think such a thing is impossible, they won't even try, and actively deride anyone who states otherwise. The security research required to build multi-level secure operating systems was completed in response to information processing requirements during the Vietnam conflict... there are multiple models which work... none of which are implemented. It doesn't have to be this way... look up capability based security.
- repolfx 7y ago
  Capability based security isn't a panacea by itself. It suffers from the confused deputy problem, for one. If subsystem A has a capability to read every file, and exports an API that takes a file path and opens it, returning the opened fd, then you lose. "But that's a stupid/buggy app!" you cry. Well yes, but that's a simplified scenario. Confused deputies that can be tricked into using their own privileges on the behalf of others are a common security bug pattern in pure cap systems. That said, I agree with you it's possible to do vastly better than we do today. Security isn't a priority. If it was nobody would use HTML for user interfaces, but they do because installing apps is inconvenient and HTML is nicely vendor neutral. It's also free. Convenience and price win out over security every time.
turk73 7y ago
Dear NSA, you can't protect America by destroying it.
jimmyyaime 7y ago
Yes indeed

156 points by ajay-d 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Maybe the US would do well to obsess a little less about wars? After spending 90%+ of its time existing on being at war, it sure would seem like a good time to take a break and stop attacking other countries maybe.

TheCryptoTengu 7y ago
If only however the military industrial complex is to big. I think America is more like a hired gun never at home hence why home is not in best of shape.
booleandilemma 7y ago
When you’re on top, everyone else is going to try to take you down. And make no mistake, we’re still very much on top.
- celticninja 7y ago
  When you are on top you think everyone else is trying to take you down.
- Nevermark 7y ago
  We are going to seem to be on top, on the surface, long after we Have lost that position in actual practice. Right now we are escalating the debt to extreme levels during the longest economic expansion in US history. I.e. we seem to be planning to bankrupt ourselves. In the meantime, trade differences and trade wars are complex, but the net effect of the tensions with China is it is adapting away from any dependency from us, while are allies are of little help because we dropped our agreements with them. In the meantime, the US has been falling down the country lists for health, longevity, and education for some time. And our recent deference to authoritarian regimes over democratic allies is eroding our political power. The US is undergoing a steep decline and a turnaround in the current divisive hyper-polarized political climate seems very unlikely. The decline is being accelerated by the current political climate.
- pluma 7y ago
  Haha, no.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  I like the US' market's liquidity, that seems unparalleled I like the US' diversified portfolio of industries and stewardship of resources Its military seems wasteful and unnecessary, perpetuated by cultural paranoia and its domestic infrastructure for actually living seems to exist in a parallel world where it is compared to the worst countries in existence whenever challenged, operating with seeming unawareness of what other G20 countries have. when compared to a mixture of legal frameworks to support human rights across countries that have actively made inroads in this area, US seems to lag. The comparisons being just some mostly European countries in the G20. The US seems to lack consensus on supporting its existing human rights and lacks consensus on expanding what they are. when people say "on top", and further reflect that in its leaders masqauarading the US as a moral beacon in the world, I find this to be the exact kind of double speak that George Orwell described. given how many attributes countries have, it further seems like the US is number one in a race only it competes in. At least in this century. The things I like about the US, number one in market liquidity, aren't really what people talk about. Perhaps given that its capital class is so relatively small to its population, their voices aren't what I hear. Deriving confidence from number aircraft carriers around the world just seems to lack perspective, or perhaps this is again related to the size of its working class that required the option of military duty to get by, people that must comply and be a soldier to obtain subsidized schooling, trades, healthcare and housing from the government. The military is a kind of cool technical feat but given the costs and lack of threat its like really? this century? Those are my main thoughts so by which metrics is the US on top specifically, for you?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - sangnoir 7y ago
    > people that must ... be a soldier to obtain subsidized schooling, trades, healthcare and housing from the government. Sounds like joining the army is one way of getting these special citizenship benefits. Would you like to know more?
    - rolltiide 7y ago
- marcyb5st 7y ago
  Based on which metric? Your comment remind me of this video -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqcLUqYqrs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMqcLUqYqrs
- stronglikedan 7y ago
  Not to mention that, if we're not the world police, then someone else will be, so we may as well be, since we're the best suited for the job.
  - mikejb 7y ago
    "World police" sounds nice, but the US military is what it is: the military force of a country, ensuring that countries interests, and little else.
- mrmonkeyman 7y ago
  Nah, you are just paranoid. Nobody is taking anyone down because you don't matter anymore. Interesting stuff is happening on the Asian continent. Like the Roman Empire you are just falling, slowly, but steadily and nobody will give a shit. Just like France, UK, etc.
input_sh 7y ago
Then what are they gonna do with all their toys and what reason will they have to request an increased budget year after year?
chapium 7y ago
Perhaps? I'm not surprised a branch of the military is hawkish however.
situational87 7y ago
We just admitted defeat in Afghanistan after 18 years of.. what was the mission again? Build a government? Build the Afghan National Army? We cut out both of those groups from peace talks with the Taliban this year. We tried to keep the talks secret from the government you're negotiating peace about. I can't imagine a more awkward way to discover that mission has been a failure. This has turned into a Vietnam-scale boondoggle, and now we're just supposed to accept the utter failure of the DoD and State and NSA and just listen to their demands for resourcing for future boondoggles? Why? How about we try saying no for once instead of rewarding incompetence over and over again? If we lived in an alternate reality where the State Department had a good track record and today people were posting pictures about their awesome vacations to Tripoli and Kabul and we were talking about new businesses and schools opening that would be one thing, but unfortunately it's just one failure after another with almost nothing to show for it.
- gnusty_gnurc 7y ago
  People generally disagree with me, but I think the absolute failure of our administrative state to get _anything_ right poured gasoline on the fire that is general distrust in government. It was way too easy for someone like Trump to just repeat "Iraq" on stage to remind everyone that "the experts" have failed us in spectacular ways.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > unfortunately it's just one failure after another with almost nothing to show for it. I really urge you to read Catch-22. It is only a failure until you inspect the books, and then you will realize the genius of it all. Lots of people made out like the bandits they are over this.
- PorterDuff 7y ago
  I think you could make an argument for a 'war', but you need to think less like a Roman and more like a Byzantine.
- turk73 7y ago
  Make a lot of money, dispose of some excess population.
blaser-waffle 7y ago
And do what with it? Spend it on healthcare and infrastructure and NSF research grants? Bah!
mar77i 7y ago
I don't get why Trump gets slammed by the media for talking to Kim Yong and walking back on Iran, or even trying to set up meetings with Taliban this month. Just because he's negociating doesn't mean negociating in itself is wrong, so I find that peculiar.
- justaman 7y ago
  Its very telling of our inability to attribute positives to someone who holds an alternative political ideology. We need to be able to compliment one another somehow if we are ever to bridge the ever increasing gap between political parties.
  - Angostura 7y ago
    I think that's a reasonable goal. Of course the current president seems very content to rip up initiatives of the previous president simply because he was the previous president - see the Iran deal, for example.
- Angostura 7y ago
  On the Iran side, he was slammed because there was already a deal, which according to independent observers was working reasonably well. In terms of North Korea, it might have been a reasonable strategy if there was any evidence of a lasting deal. As it is, it looked like a PR dance by both leaders. Who knows what was going on with the Taliban.
- wonderwonder 7y ago
  Its not that he is negotiating that is the issue, its the fact that he is doing it badly. NK wanted to meet with the president of the US in order to gain international recognition for their leader. They got what they wanted in return the US got nothing, and in the mean time NK has produced more nuclear weapons and continued their missile tests. We have also alienated SK our traditional ally. Regarding Iran, Iran had verifiably held nuclear enrichment to a set level. This was a deal that was working and Trump just pre-emptively left it and re-applied sanctions, and now everyone is mad / surprised that Iran is once again raising its enrichment level. There are essentially no or very limited ongoing negotiations with Iran. The point of the original deal was to prevent a nuclear Iran and it was working. Once Iran gets Nukes the international stage is very different. From an outsider perspective it very much appears that we have stepped back from the deal in order to find a reason to go to war.

_Understated_ 7y ago

I've often thought about what the next "Great War" would look like. Not researched it or anything but mulled it over. I honestly think the enemy will take out our power stations via malicious code that may already be sitting there waiting to go off right now. A few days after that, when people are still in total darkness and the supermarket shelves are empty then we will turn on ourselves and our "leaders" because we are cold, hungry etc: we'll destroy ourselves first. I don't even think a shot will need to be fired!

mapcars 7y ago
>then we will turn on ourselves and our "leaders" I don't think in such case normal people would be able to reach "leaders" in their bunkers or whatever they prepare.
- nexuist 7y ago
  There are various tiers of leaders, each of which gets their own subset of authority. Perhaps the President and Congress gets their own bunkers, but I sincerely doubt mayor X in Y town in Ohio is getting flown out to a mountainside retreat. Coincidentally with the increase in military equipment being sold to local police departments these days, said mayors will have some firepower to work with if they ever do decide to convince their townspeople to go rogue and play for keeps.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >There are various tiers of leaders, each of which gets their own subset of authority. Perhaps the President and Congress gets their own bunkers, but I sincerely doubt mayor X in Y town in Ohio is getting flown out to a mountainside retreat. So people will do what, attach the mayor? Not really responsible for the mess, and not really such a big shot to be worth it...
    - nexuist 7y ago
      Oh, I wasn't thinking people would attack the mayors, I was more so referring to mayors using their power to attack the people in the bunkers.

LilBytes 7y ago

I can't find any links on the first or second Google search pages to circumvent the pay wall?

tk75x 7y ago
block javascript. works for most paywalls

HenryKissinger 7y ago

> There are four key implications of this revolution that policymakers in the national security sector will need to address: > The first is that the unprecedented scale and pace of technological change will outstrip our ability to effectively adapt to it. Second, we will be in a world of ceaseless and pervasive cyberinsecurity and cyberconflict against nation-states, businesses and individuals. Third, the flood of data about human and machine activity will put such extraordinary economic and political power in the hands of the private sector that it will transform the fundamental relationship, at least in the Western world, between government and the private sector. Finally, and perhaps most ominously, the digital revolution has the potential for a pernicious effect on the very legitimacy and thus stability of our governmental and societal structures.

blaser-waffle 7y ago
> > The first is that the unprecedented scale and pace of technological change will outstrip our ability to effectively adapt to it. Second, we will be in a world of ceaseless and pervasive cyberinsecurity and cyberconflict against nation-states, businesses and individuals. Third, the flood of data about human and machine activity will put such extraordinary economic and political power in the hands of the private sector that it will transform the fundamental relationship, at least in the Western world, between government and the private sector. Finally, and perhaps most ominously, the digital revolution has the potential for a pernicious effect on the very legitimacy and thus stability of our governmental and societal structures. Sounds like the cyberpunk dystopia is come to pass. Just waiting on a "Screaming Fist" type incident...
- longtom 7y ago
  > "Screaming Fist" type incident... What's that?
  - KineticLensman 7y ago
    From Neuromancer [0], William Gibson's 1984 genre-defining cyberpunk novel > "Operation Screaming Fist," which planned on infiltrating and disrupting Soviet computer systems from ultralight aircraft dropped over Russia. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuromancer

thanatropism 7y ago

Cf. Manuel de Landa, "War in the age of intelligent machines". https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83650.War_in_the_Age_of_Intelligent_Machines https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/83650.War_in_the_Age_of_... Delanda was very interesting in the beginning but didn't quite find or found his community and began talking in an echo chamber that impoverished his thought. Still, "War...", "Intensive science and virtual philosophy" and "A thousand years of nonlinear history" are respectively a very promising start, an impressive peak and an early mature book. Too bad I can't recommend anything from "Philosophy and simulation" forward.

HenryKissinger 7y ago

That states like China and Russia can recruit the best cybersecurity talent in their respective countries, and force them to work for the government, while the United States can't, is a problem. If I were the president, I would focus on talent recruitment and retention. Google is paying its top cyberstaff 700k? Offer them 1M. Also get rid of archaic hiring practices like drug tests, and streamline the process to obtain a clearance.

g00s3_caLL_x2 7y ago
I get what you're saying, but do you want you top minds working while high, or better yet, needing to depend on them while they are high? Some things just require a clarity 24/7. Wouldn't nation security fall under that?
bilbo0s 7y ago
Sounds like an interesting plan.
- birdyrooster 7y ago
  Congress loves giving more money to the military.
spunker540 7y ago
I’m not biased at all, just a patriot, and I think the government should inflate the wages of all software engineers in the entire nation to $1M in the name of national defense.
- lioeters 7y ago
  Software Engineeer: We Need to Prepare for a Complete Rewrite (and Significant Salary Increase)
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  I am also not biased at all, but I feel strongly that we need to support the deliberative efforts of our nation's software-building infrastructure-protecting heroes by giving them all individual offices with doors that can close and lock, also ensuring that the occupant of the office has a key for it. And nice, high-backed office chairs. And dual monitors for each workstation, with the computation hardware refreshed at least every three years--to include a real graphics card, that actually works with virtualization, because of 3D mapping. And the kitchenettes should also be enclosed in their own rooms, so microwaved fish or broccoli smells don't permeate all the offices at lunch time. Not that I definitely know that's a thing that actually happens, but I imagine that if it did, if might break a software developer's concentration. Every. Danged. Time. For national security! Should probably recommend these "critical security precautions" to all of our allies, too. And potential allies. And probably the adversaries will copy them, but not much we can do about that. ~

buboard 7y ago

Another Manhattan Project? Guess who has to pay for it

g00s3_caLL_x2 7y ago

I find it hard to believe we are not ALREADY preparing for new war fronts. The end result will be the same. Death and conquering.

raxxorrax 7y ago

Since the NSA and similar agencies don't seem to have the flexibility to evaluate their own influence on developments, I do seriously think they are a greater threat to overall national security compared to some propped up countries that were named here. So they want to ramp up surveillance again... better get ready for my new side job as insurgent against the state. Having an agency that sees everything as a threat should not have the competence to determine civil interactions or should be shackled to a more severe degree. The lack of trust in western societies doesn't seem to be a factor in their threat analysis. Maybe not worth it for budget discussions... idiotic... > in a vast databank of personally identifying information about its citizens, from iris and facial recognition to DNA data. That is antithetical to our values. I think this is a lie. It is not against their value. On the contrary these are exactly values espoused as per evidence acquired by people currently residing in very dark cells. > Our innovative and entrepreneurial society affords us a unique advantage in dealing with those implications. Some people hire whores, some people hire security firms. But it too often is to stick your dick into something. > our society could consider greater coordination between government and the private sector to combat unruly citizens... This would be a great opportunity for the new york times to show some of their critical investigative abilities. This is plainly painting a threat to the wall to justify spying on citizens. Even if this show deep ineptitude, I fear it might be working

ajay-d 7y ago

Does any company use quantum-resistant encryption in practice?

orbz 7y ago
In theory usage of SHA-256 or SHA3-256 should be secure against current known quantum attacks.

Merrill 7y ago

The article is full of conventional thinking that extrapolates directly from current trends. Most likely the critical IT need in the Next World War will be bioinformatics to identify pathogens being used in biowarfare and to design, produce and distribute vaccines, drugs, and other countermeasures. The second IT need will be to enable society to function without the movement of or physical contact between people in order to limit contagion.

tinco 7y ago
So you counter their conventional thinking that extrapolates from 2019 trends with conventional thinking extrapolating from 1989 trends. A bit unconventional but sure.

Fillsev 7y ago

Hey!wats happened?

14 7y ago

Such a bleak picture of the future where the only solution is for all of us to give up our privacy and allow the government to watch us so they can keep us safe. There are so many rants I could go off on this article I would not even know where to start but I will say this. What about the option of peace building? Why not put 1/3 of your insane military budget towards a new mission of going into the places you have the worst reputation, the places you have wronged the most and start building up their infrastructure like water plants and schools? The only options this article gave was to give up all our freedoms so the government can keep us safe which to any person with half a brain (hint even my kids know this and their vote is coming one day) this only stops the average citizen from remain anonymous. Link to neat video explaining how to easily encrypt a message on a piece of paper. "Bear in mind if we are talking about banning encryption, we are talking about banning mathematics". I love that line. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRa_zzQOEe8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRa_zzQOEe8

zzzeek 7y ago
> Why not put 1/3 of your insane military budget towards a new mission of going into the places you have the worst reputation, the places you have wronged the most and start building up their infrastructure like water plants and schools? The critique you refer towards is familiar when we talk about terrorism operations that spin off from less powerful nations, and for many years the "war on terror" has been about detecting such small scale operations that can definitely be traced to all the nasty things the US has done for many decades. However, this article is mostly referring to Russia and China as the most critical actors in this style of warfare; these are relatively large and powerful nations who have shown to be adversarially aggressive to the US and many other nations so I'm not sure how there would be "peace" with them other than allowing them to continue to wreak havoc in their neighboring nations and territories unchecked, not to mention that they would continue to launch direct attacks on our internal processes, which wouldn't actually prevent a world conflict from occurring, only hasten its arrival. We have already been attacked quite severely in this regard with great success.
- 14 7y ago
  Instead of fighting the world we could go around making allies and all stand together against any aggression China and Russia make would be how I envision it but perhaps even that would not work. I just have to believe there is a better future then everyone fighting each other winner take all. Our earth is god damn dying and these people want to convince us the only solution is to get ready for the fight of our life. We are already in it. We need to work together to save the earth not destroy each other.

rafaelvasco 7y ago

No, in my opinion, we need to start working so that wars don't even make sense. A concept of the distant past. A future in which our descendants don't even know what wars are. In my vision there are no legitimate reasons for wars to exist at all. Of course this concept will sound alien and completely nuts for the majority, who are still in the fear based mindset; But then you can ask: So how do we protect ourselves from those that are attacking us ? The day we can answer this question without violence in the mindset is the day we evolve as humanity;

jcranmer 7y ago
Because that turned out so well when we tried it 100 years ago. Instead, we got WW2, the most destructive war in history in absolute terms.
- rafaelvasco 7y ago
  The problem is that humanity in general is still in a mindset which facilitates conflict, destruction, killings etc;
- imglorp 7y ago
  No, we tried isolationism before WW2, different from GP is asking for.
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    The "we" here is not the US government but the wider anti-war movements that helped push for such acts as the League of Nations and the Washington and London Treaties.
  - isoskeles 7y ago
    Britain didn’t try isolationism.
  - rafaelvasco 7y ago
    Yeah, isolationism absolutely isn't the way; Quite the contrary;

decoyworker 7y ago

This is huge and is a subject I feel strongly about- especially for defense software. Parts of the US Government are already sounding the alarm over this. see- https://innovation.defense.gov/software/ https://innovation.defense.gov/software/ Basically, we are too slow. The contract acquisition process and waterfall development moves at a glacial pace. I have some serious doubts we will ever adapt since it would require a restructuring of the way our defense industry operates.

ak217 7y ago
Part of the NSA's mission (which they have failed at, and an acknowledgment of that failure is conspicuously absent from this article by the NSA's general counsel) is to help secure domestic information infrastructure against attack. They are supposed to lead the way in developing security standards, scanning for vulnerabilities, advising businesses and local governments on how to protect themselves. In a perfect world, Project Zero would have been based at the NSA. Instead they have let the wiretapping crew take over everything.
asdfman123 7y ago
Wouldn't it be possible to build the next generation of technology to be much less hackable? Right now we're all pretty dumb about cybersecurity, but if plays a major hand in shaping human events even stodgy Pentagon types might start taking things like air gaps and not writing your passwords out on a sticky note more seriously.
- SiempreViernes 7y ago
  The tragedy of the mundane reality is that more cyber systems will be put out of commission by things like botched patch tuesdays and techs pulling the wrong cable because they were mislabelled than any hack.
- repolfx 7y ago
  It's possible. People wouldn't like it. Mandate that all software - everywhere - is written in Java or Rust with no unsafe blocks (but, oops, you can't realistically do that in Rust). Make it illegal to use web apps to administer infrastructure. Desktop GUIs all the way (no XSS there ...). Then mandate that this infrastructure can't be administered from Windows, but only some locked down new OS that required iOS style code signing from top to bottom. Then forbid the use of passwords for authenticating to anything, no matter how trivial. Think many geeks would get excited about that? People write insecure software because they can't/won't accept the fact that they enjoy building software in ways that are very insecure. For a lot of coders you'll prise C out of their cold dead hands, and they'll continue making hackable IoT devices until you do.

ativzzz 7y ago

The author's last key implication, > Finally, and perhaps most ominously, the digital revolution has the potential for a pernicious effect on the very legitimacy and thus stability of our governmental and societal structures. But they then proceed to say things like > Will Western liberal democracies, already straining under the combined demands of decaying civil infrastructure, aging populations, upgrading militaries and so on, be able to afford these investments? Given that there is no specific forcing event to require greater resources, but rather a trend, history suggests that we will appreciate the seriousness of the underinvestment only when a crisis has occurred. Meaning that currently, our system of government is simply not built to deal with modern technology. Yet they state that the fundamental threat of forcing change within societal and governmental structure is 'ominous', while at the same time implying that it is absolutely necessary. Discarding stability and tradition for the sake of progress is inevitable, and will happen either deliberately, through policy (this rarely happens), or by revolution.

sailfast 7y ago

This opinion piece is borderline screed and I'm not sure what to make of it. Part of the piece is "OMG China!" with some pretty dubious assumptions, especially things like their GDP being bigger than the US is an existential threat. "The world is scary" is not a narrative I will respond to. Of course it is - it's bloody frightening. But have you tried framing the discussion in a way that is not so warfare and zero sum-focused but rather collaborative? The rest of this piece contains the kind of Cold War logic that, while understandable from someone whose job it is to solve these problems, is also alarming to see in what is supposed to be a "new approach" to preparedness from an agency. This seems like a backdoor argument to compromising privacy, asking politely for businesses to be friendlier, while at the same time asking for more money than their already astronomical budget. The obvious first step here is to Fix. Your. Own. House. Become more transparent about what you are doing. Don't talk about secret bunkers in the first paragraph but instead about what you are going to do in order to share more with industry, and the kinds of investments you are going to make to ensure government can keep up. Included in that is staffing proposals, workforce management changes, being more lenient with behaviors that are not relevant to your ability to hold a clearance to broaden recruitment, doing more work in the open and possibly a new imperative to focus on privacy and help protect privacy for all Americans despite best attempts of companies to destroy it. Some of that was alluded to but I find it really hard to take this piece seriously.

asdfman123 7y ago
> have you tried framing the discussion in a way that is not so warfare and zero sum-focused but rather collaborative? We live in extraordinarily peaceful times. Those have cropped up throughout history. They have never lasted because balances of power shift. We are not at the end of history. We are a footnote in a history book written a thousand years from now. I hope you're right, though.
- sailfast 7y ago
  I'm with you - you prepare for this stuff. You stand ready, but there are two (OK probably more haha) approaches to mitigating the risks in the world: One approach is to ensure that you have relationships / commonalities / connections tight enough that extensive conflict does not help either party and work on the relationship. This balance has a lot of proxy wars and holds OK...until something upsets the balance. But if you have dialog in place maybe you don't blow up the world. Another is to invest everything in the thing that will upset the balance: countries racing to the next version of a nuclear weapon - in this piece that is AI / Cyber. Shifting everything as a society involves a lot of sacrifice that has (historically) also destabilized the society to the point that it collapses as a result. I think there's wiggle room here, and when I say "collaborative" I don't mean that we're all sharing technology but rather that we are on a single planet and we already are codependent and maybe let's see the obvious benefits instead of immediately jumping to weapons. In terms of tone I'd also wonder which tone is better for recruitment? "Kill the hun!" or "Build the future"? If they want me to work there, it's the latter.

rblion 7y ago

Does anyone else here feel WWIII is inevitable?

coldtea 7y ago
Well, wars historically never stopped. World wars happened when powers have global reach and means. In the 20th century they had that. In the 21st, even more so. That said, in the early 20th the old European global powers were demoted from superpowers, and US/USSR emerged in their place. But at the time the USSR leaders knew it wasn't as strong (to risk a major war with the US) and both sides had nukes, complicating the logistics. So no direct war between them (but plenty of proxy wars globally). Today there's US, China, India as wannabe big player, Russia (still not as strong, and worse off than USSR), and a few other minor players. (A single "pan-global" single-"country" or central government also wont stop wars. It will just make all wars civil wars and rebellions).
jacquesm 7y ago
On a long enough time scale most things that could happen will happen, especially sequentially numbered items of which we already have multiple instances in recent memory.

CommieDetector 7y ago

The next war will be the Communists an there allies vs the free world. And by communists i mean leftist

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

anewguy9000 7y ago

what does he know? isn't he more lawyer than technologist? this reads like rhetoric. aka "we need more power, because computers!"

say_it_as_it_is 7y ago

Funny. Halliburton said the same sort of things prior to 9/11. They drafted the Patriot Act, which all but one policymaker objected to. Yesterday's Halliburton is today's Palantir, Blackwater, Amazon. There's a lot of money to be made in war.

ggg3 7y ago

put a million dollar bug bounty on bgp. that will be fun to watch at least.

zabana 7y ago

Unrelated (kind of): do you guys/girls recommend books (especially novels) that cover the subjects of futurism, espionage, cyber warfare and other related topics ? I find the current situation to be very dystopic and would love to read more about it. Thanks in advance !

Fnoord 7y ago
Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Jennifer Government. Also, read through the thread. I saw Neuromancer recommended already :)
bluntfang 7y ago
William Gibson's Neuromancer and Sprawl Trilogy and other works. Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash
crucini 7y ago
Dark Territory, by Fred Kaplan. Same topic as this thread. Also either Puzzle Palace or Body of Secrets by James Bamford. Topic: NSA.

motohagiography 7y ago

We could call this historical period a great dis-integration where the consensus that formed the equilibrium of the last 60 years has been disrupted by tech, and we're looking at a period of volatility before reaching a new equilibrium. I've argued before that U.S. critical infrastructure vulnerability will prevent it from intervening in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Its lack of a strong homeland defensive posture on infrastructure has emboldened regional powers like China, Russia, and Iran to assert themselves over local NATO allies without fear of US retaliation. e.g. The US isn't going to risk a dam flooding or a long term grid failure over a distant minor ally. Arguably, NATO made sense when partners could defend their infrastructure, but the mutual aid commitment becomes a suicide pact when your cities can be turned into tribal warzones by depriving them of power, payments, and fuel. Nobody wants to get drawn into that by a minor ally. That's the weakness that creates the power vacuum into which warring parties pile in. We do indeed live in interesting times.

throwawaymanbot 7y ago
Tech has made it easier for the Steve Bannons and Vladimir Putins of the world to weaken Democracy. I wouldnt just blame tech though.
gbasin 7y ago
I agree, and this may arguably be a good thing. A relatively painless way of rolling back the empire of Team America: World Police. We may be trending back towards a time of strong regional powers rather than global hegemony.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  > a time of strong regional powers rather than global hegemony A.K.A. a time of war, like the ones that rocked Europe and the rest of the world through the 19th and early 20th century, as regional powers struggle to become the new global hegemony. Those who desire an end to the Pax Americana, be careful what you wish for.
- cmurf 7y ago
  More likely an end to the nation-state, and a return to the more stable city-state. Once a society is on the path to regression, you don't exactly get to choose where the ball stops rolling. It's going to end up at the most stable location, and nation-states have a short history compared to city-states but also more volatile.

ak217 7y ago

I have a lot of trouble taking this guy seriously given the amount of hand-waving and fearmongering in this article, especially around "A.I.". Last time I checked, the NSA did very little to fulfill its mission to help secure existing US assets against cyberattack, much less help improve security in emerging technology. As Snowden showed us, they are far more interested in wiretapping everything.

crb002 7y ago

DOD needs to harden common Linux ecosystem shotgun parsers with formal parsers.

avmich 7y ago

> And even if we could detect a missile flying at low altitudes at 20 times the speed of sound, we have no way of stopping it. Looks like author doesn't know what he's talking about here?

HeXetic 7y ago
What's the problem with that? He's talking about the future, where hypersonic missiles will be a reality. Anti-missile defences like the Phalanx CIWS have a range of only a couple of miles. A theoretical missile flying at Mach 20 will cover that range in less than half a second, making it extremely difficult to shoot down. A Phalanx only fires at 50 rounds per second. We're talking about a few dozen bullets on target which have got to shred or detonate the warhead or else it's going to head. Granted we are not at mach 20 missiles or even mach 5 missiles yet, but this is an article about the future, after all.
- avmich 7y ago
  But low altitude? I'd consider that, say, 5 km or even less; why a hypersonic missile would be low-flying cruise missile? Why confront that awful aerodynamic drag?
  - HeXetic 7y ago
    > Why confront that awful aerodynamic drag? Mainly for exactly the reason of making the missile too difficult to detect until it's far too late to do anything about it. IIRC there's also two additional reasons: striking from a low angle means a better chance of damaging the ship at or below the waterline in order to sink it, and because sea-skimming means the sensors have a much easier time picking out the ship from the sea.
    - avmich 7y ago
      I mean, the aerodynamic drag is going to be forbidding high. One can't today make a low flying 20M cruise missile, no such technologies by a long shot.

mikewarot 7y ago

It is possible to make secure operating systems, doing so has been discouraged since the demise of multics. A sense of futility is now endemic to the Information Technology community, because they think such a thing is impossible, they won't even try, and actively deride anyone who states otherwise. The security research required to build multi-level secure operating systems was completed in response to information processing requirements during the Vietnam conflict... there are multiple models which work... none of which are implemented. It doesn't have to be this way... look up capability based security.

repolfx 7y ago
Capability based security isn't a panacea by itself. It suffers from the confused deputy problem, for one. If subsystem A has a capability to read every file, and exports an API that takes a file path and opens it, returning the opened fd, then you lose. "But that's a stupid/buggy app!" you cry. Well yes, but that's a simplified scenario. Confused deputies that can be tricked into using their own privileges on the behalf of others are a common security bug pattern in pure cap systems. That said, I agree with you it's possible to do vastly better than we do today. Security isn't a priority. If it was nobody would use HTML for user interfaces, but they do because installing apps is inconvenient and HTML is nicely vendor neutral. It's also free. Convenience and price win out over security every time.

turk73 7y ago

Dear NSA, you can't protect America by destroying it.

jimmyyaime 7y ago

Yes indeed