Cyberwar Doomsayer Lands $34 Million in Cyberwar Contracts‎

Could someone change the misleading headline ?<p>Wired came up with the phrase based upon "foster collaboration among telecommunications researchers, University of Maryland faculty members and other academic institutions to improve secure networking and telecommunications and boost information assurance".<p>That could describe a wide range of things, saying that they're only developing a mailing list and wiki is highly misleading and probably libellous.<p>Yes. We all know consultants are expensive, but this isn't reddit, and having exaggerated articles that try to push peoples buttons is simply just trolling.

I get so frustrated with how media reports information out of government. It's damned irresponsible. This Wired Piece is a derivative of a Washington Tech article here: <a href="http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2010/04/13/booz-allen-air-force-cyber-contracts.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2010/04/13/booz-all...</a><p>Most unfortunately, the Washington Tech article doesn't actually cite the source of the information either. These contracts, and their awards are <i>on</i> fbo.gov, it doesn't take much to find them and cite the source. But the "mailing list and a wiki" line is, well, unsubstantiated at best, and false at worst.

Long ago at Smalltalk vendor ParcPlace, Booz-Allen was a sometimes customer/partner on big accounts. One of our consultants had a little sign in his office, roughly:<p><i>Corporate Philosophies<p>ParcPlace: "Everything is an object"<p>Booz-Allen: "Money is no object"</i>

This is an awful story -- "fostering collaboration" is definitely vague and fuzzy, and part of the reason people get paid lots of money is translating vague and fuzzy into concrete items. It might be a mailing list and wiki -- or it might not. I don't know. And sure as hell the author doesn't know either.<p>Even more disturbing is the editorializing in the piece. I'm not going to comment on to what degree we actually face a cyber-threat, but I note that competitors of Booze Hamilton have to be laughing their butts off about now. It's cheap-shot journalism, and when you do that it's easy to start picking your targets for whatever motives you might have -- good or bad. In other words, this guy could have been paid by people who lost the contract to post this, <i>and it would read exactly the same way</i>. That means the tone is has serious flaws.

On this topic, there's an interesting debate scheduled June 8 in D.C.<p>Mike McConnell and John Zittrain versus Marc Rotenberg and Bruce Schneier.<p>See <a href="http://www.thenewnewinternet.com/2010/04/12/upcoming-debate-on-the-cyber-war-threat-has-been-grossly-exaggerated/" rel="nofollow">http://www.thenewnewinternet.com/2010/04/12/upcoming-debate-...</a>

Has anyone studied the relationship between doomsaying and economics? Perhaps there's a book in there somewhere, or at least a TED talk. Certainly for some, making protestations of doom - however implausible - appears to be a viable business model.

The funds are going to, or related to, the IATAC program, depending on your point of view.<p>Folks in the DC area might be interested in: <a href="http://intelligencesquaredus.org/index.php/debates/cyber-war-threat-has-been-grossly-exaggerated/" rel="nofollow">http://intelligencesquaredus.org/index.php/debates/cyber-war...</a>

There is a conspicuous lack of Mt. Dew in that photo.