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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

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.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  >They have never lasted because balances of power shift This is often the result of one side claiming everyone is about to attack them and massively increasing their military budget.
  - nickpinkston 7y ago
    The "Thucydides Trap" https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/09/the-thucydides-trap/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/09/the-thucydides-trap/
- ak217 7y ago
  The way to prepare for changes is by communicating, building alliances, and demanding security standards. Being able to keep secrets is important, but keeping too many things secret and compartmentalized is self-defeating. You want the US to continue to be globally dominant? Stop over-regulating drones, for one thing. The lack of viable drone business models is a serious setback for training the next generation of aerospace engineers.
- nickpinkston 7y ago
  You're optimistic about there being history in 1000 years, or hell - even people to read it!

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.
boomboomsubban 7y ago
>They have never lasted because balances of power shift This is often the result of one side claiming everyone is about to attack them and massively increasing their military budget.
- nickpinkston 7y ago
  The "Thucydides Trap" https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/09/the-thucydides-trap/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/09/the-thucydides-trap/
ak217 7y ago
The way to prepare for changes is by communicating, building alliances, and demanding security standards. Being able to keep secrets is important, but keeping too many things secret and compartmentalized is self-defeating. You want the US to continue to be globally dominant? Stop over-regulating drones, for one thing. The lack of viable drone business models is a serious setback for training the next generation of aerospace engineers.
nickpinkston 7y ago
You're optimistic about there being history in 1000 years, or hell - even people to read it!