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Essay: Dumb-dumb bullets – July 2009 – Armed Forces Journal
When this is what passes for good analysis of technology by a leader in contemporary military thought…well, let’s just say the “dumb-dumb” takes on a whole different meaning.
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Every year, the services spend millions of dollars teaching our people how to think. We invest in everything from war colleges to noncommissioned officer schools. Our senior schools in particular expose our leaders to broad issues and historical insights in an attempt to expose the complex and interactive nature of many of the decisions they will make.
Unfortunately, as soon as they graduate, our people return to a world driven by a tool that is the antithesis of thinking: PowerPoint. Make no mistake, PowerPoint is not a neutral tool  it is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making. It has fundamentally changed our culture by altering the expectations of who makes decisions, what decisions they make and how they make them. While this may seem to be a sweeping generalization, I think a brief examination of the impact of PowerPoint will support this statement.
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Costs of War: Chasing Cyberghosts – Annotated
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The North Koreans “need to be sent a strong message, whether it is a counterattack on cyber, [or] whether it is more international sanctions,†said Republican Rep Peter Hoekstra, a ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. “The only thing they will understand is some kind of show of force and strength.â€ÂÂ
It would be easy to dismiss such opinions, especially from a lawmaker who has something of a reputation for over-statement.
But alarmingly enough, the US military has openly discussed the possibility of retaliating against cyberattacks with real bombs. “You don’t take any response options off the table from an attack on the United States of America,†said Air Force General Kevin Chilton, the head of US Strategic Command, earlier this year. “Why would we constrain ourselves on how we would respond?â€ÂÂ
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cybersecurity fears are hugely overblown, and that the real danger may come from state over-reaction to a threat of which the paucity of public understanding is matched only by the unlikeness that it will ever materialize.
The prospect of unknown attackers disabling banking systems or the power grid, “certainly sounds scary,†Morozov writes, “almost as scary as raptors in Central Park or a giant asteroid heading toward the White House. The latter two are not, however, being presented as ‘national security risks’ yet.”
- Well actually, colliding asteroids have been constructed as a security threat in the past. See…
Mellor, Felicity (2007) ‘Colliding Worlds: Asteroid Research and the Legitimization of War in Space’, Social Studies of Science 37(4): 499-531. – post by TransTracker
- Well actually, colliding asteroids have been constructed as a security threat in the past. See…
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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.