Cyber Warfare- the United States’ kryptonite

In the post cold war era, few would argue the U.S.’s position as the world’s most dominant military nation. Take a look at some reinforcing statistics below:

PERSONNEL
Total Population: 303,824,640 [2008]
Population Available: 144,354,117 [2008]
Fit for Military Service: 118,600,541 [2008]
Reaching Military Age Annually: 4,266,128 [2008]
Active Military Personnel: 1,385,122 [2008]
Active Military Reserve: 1,458,500 [2008]
Active Paramilitary Units: 453,000 [2008]


ARMY
Total Land-Based Weapons: 29,920
Towed Artillery: 5,178 [2001]



AIR FORCE
Total Aircraft: 18,169 [2003]
Helicopters: 4,593 [2003]
Serviceable Airports: 14,947 [2007]


NAVY
Total Navy Ships: 1,559
Merchant Marine Strength: 422 [2008]
Major Ports and Harbors: 10
Aircraft Carriers: 11 [2008]
Destroyers: 50 [2008]
Submarines: 75 [2008]
Frigates: 92 [2008]
Patrol & Coastal Craft: 100 [2008]
Mine Warfare Craft: 28 [2008]
Amphibious Craft: 38 [2008]

LOGISTICAL
Labor Force: 153,100,000 [2007]
Roadways: 6,465,799 km
Railways: 226,612 km


FINANCES (USD)
Defense Budget: $515,400,000,000 [2009]
Foreign Exch. & Gold: $70,570,000,000 [2007]
Purchasing Power: $13,780,000,000,000 [2007]


OIL
Oil Production: 7,460,000 bbl/day [2007]
Oil Consumption: 20,800,000 bbl/day [2005]
Proven Oil Reserves: 21,760,000,000 bbl [2006]


GEOGRAPHIC
Waterways: 41,009 km
Coastline: 19,924 km
Square Land Area: 9,826,630 km




Sources: US Library of Congress; Central Intelligence Agency

Last Updated: 2/12/2009

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In addition to having one of the largest militaries in the world, U.S. weapons technology has been noted as being 5-7 years ahead of everyone else’s. In 2009, the U.S. spent $712 Billion dollars on military expenditures, 46.5% of the total global distribution on military expenditures (see below).

(US spending: Laicie Olson, Growth in U.S. Defense Spending Since 2001, Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, March 11, 2009. Other nations’ spending: SIPRI)

The Question: What will U.S. aircraft carriers, nuclear weapons, tanks, and soldiers do to protect your bank account? Social Security? Utilities? Telecommunications? 401k? Data network? Transportation? Military and Government systems?

Answer: Absolutely nothing.

The U.S. is completely vulnerable to Cyber Warfare. The emergence of the next generation network, cloud computing, social media, and mobile communications is connecting everything to the internet and making us more susceptive to Cyber attacks every day.

What was an obscure idea from the latest Die Hard movie is now a legitimate threat for warfare in the future. SANDS fellow and former CIA operative James Gosler highlights


"You can have vulnerabilities in the fundamentals of the technology, you can have vulnerabilities introduced based on how that technology is implemented, and you can have vulnerabilities introduced through the artificial applications that are built on that fundamental technology," Gosler says. "It takes a very skilled person to operate at that level, and we don't have enough of them." Gosler estimates there are now only 1,000 people in the entire United States with the sophisticated skills needed for the most demanding cyber defense tasks. To meet the computer security needs of U.S. government agencies and large corporations, he says, a force of 20,000 to 30,000 similarly skilled specialists is needed.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128574055

We see evidence of this threat every day. How many times have you seen hacking related incidents in the news recently? Imagine the panic created when the financial markets crash, utilities are shut off, transportation is unavailable, and all communications channels are down. How does the U.S. organize and deploy its military resources then?

Making matters worse, China has been developing Cyber Warfare specialists for years. China recognizes the importance of Cyber warfare and actively recruits cyber warriors at early ages. They invest in intelligence programs, certification structures, and education geared toward Cyber Warfare. According to Alan Paller, a SANS fellow and colleague of Gosler’s, “In the most recent round of the International Collegiate Programming Contest, co-sponsored by IBM and the Association for Computing Machinery, Chinese universities took four of the top 10 places. No U.S. University made the list. The Chinese government, in fact, appears to be systematically building a cyber warrior force”. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128574055

How do we fend off the growing Cyber threat of the Chinese?
• Leverage leading U.S. Tech companies (Intel, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Cisco, HP, etc…). These companies already foster huge talent pools of Engineers, all they need are forums for instructors to come in and lead certification programs, teaching the engineers of today how to apply their talent differently.
• Incentivize Cyber Security, DOD, CIA, and related jobs in the U.S.
• Build Cyber Security curriculum into our leading technical school systems (MIT, CM, Cal Tech, etc…)
• Communicate threats related to Cyber Security; motivate the youth to get involved.

The next major war is certain to have a Cyber aspect to it. Will we be prepared?

-Karl Laughton

Artificial Intelligence B2C Plays

AI Consumer Plays

I found an interesting interview from gizmodo with Intel's CTO Justin Rattner (below)

http://tinyurl.com/23wfcos

Rattner highlights Intel's vision of smarter consumer products in the future. What he's really talking about is commoditizing Artificial Intelligence. One thing the Iphone was supposed to do over time was learn the habits of its owner (preferred apps, sites, texting behaviors, etc...), but after owning the Iphone 3G since it came out, I can agree, as mentioned in the article, that it doesn't. In fact, none of the hardware devices I own possess automated personalization functionality.

Imagine picking up your device (Phone, Flip video camera, TV remote, Tablet, etc....) and it already knows who you are, where you are, what your favorite websites are and how to update you, what kind of music to play for you, your schedule, preferred tastes and clothing, the opportunities are limitless...

Rattner also mentions that all the functionalities consumers expect from their devices can't happen in the cloud because there simply aren't enough servers out to support that kind of bandwidth. These struggles have already been seen in some of our large service providers, and will only continue to get worse. Producing hardware with AI functionalities can help pull some of this bandwidth off the cloud and support balance in the network.

How do netoworking companies enable their service providers to keep up with bandwidth demands that are growing exponentially as society leans on mobile communications? Is it worth their time to explore partnerships in this market? Are they too immature in the B2C market to make aggressive moves like this?

What are your thoughts?

Karl

Exectweets » 34 More of the Smartest Things Ever Said About Business and Life

Exectweets » 34 More of the Smartest Things Ever Said About Business and Life:

Inspirational quotes from thought leaders of the past and present. Some of my favorties:

"A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds" -Francis Bacon

"For Business success, do what you do better. And do more of what you do." D.J. Schwartz

"People may not get all they work for, but they must work for all they get." Frederick Douglass

Keep It Simple Stupid - Effective Business Intelligence Management

With thousands of employees, multiple product families, suppliers, manufacturers, and functional processes, what's the best approach of leveraging Business Intelligence tools to run a fortune 500 company?

BI teams are openly accommodating metrics requests from their business partners without understanding the business justification behind it.

The result: Thousands of metrics which over time become outdated, unused, and obsolete. Changes in the business mean changes in objectives and measures of productivity.

A BI solution needs to be flexible, require justification, and align to objectives of the management team. Dashboards and scorecards are supposed to allow management to measure, monitor, and grow their business by making fact-based decisions. Too many times have I seen dashboards and scorecards that host hundreds of metrics which aren't seen by senior management, aren’t used in operational reviews, and cost a ton to maintain and operate.

Keep It Simple Stupid

•Where does the buck stop? Scale back BI solutions to the decision maker level, those who can really make an impact in the business.
•BI team must understand how metrics requests will allow the business to measure, monitor, and grow their business more effectively than the previous model.
•Revisit dashboards & scorecards on an annual basis. Determine which metrics are still in scope/ which aren't, and EOL anything which doesn't have significant impact as a KPI or facilitate the comprehensive behavior change of an organization.

Large organizations tend to overthink things, it's important to take a step back from time to time and think about where the real impacts in the business are made. If you find yourself overthinking a problem just remember K.I.S.S.

Generation Y - Implications for the workforce of the future

I'd like to welcome you all to my opening blog. Thank you for taking the time to hear my thoughts. Open forums of this nature make it easy to brainstorm on an enterprise-wide level, and exemplify the power of web 2.0 technologies.

Advances in mobile video, conferencing, internet, and 2.0 applications (Facebook, Twitter, etc...) are changing the way the workforce interacts with each other. These changes are part of the next generation of the internet and hold invaluable potential for how the workforce of the future will become more flexible, technology forward, and collaborative.

The problem: The management of today is mostly built on Generation X members who have yet to embrace the technologies their employees (Generation Y) grew up on. This is creating a communication gap between management and employees, producing an efficiency loss that stems from the opportunity cost of Not leveraging 2.0, video, or mobile communication channels.

Running late for a meeting? Shoot a text to your team.

Giving a quarterly readout? Turn on that web camera.

Want to help build a professional network within your team? Get on LinkedIn.

I'm not saying that everyone is not using video, 2.0, etc... Don't get me wrong, I'm simply saying that there are so many collaboration vehicles evolving as the next gen internet rolls out that can be used to shorten the communication gaps existing in siloed operational process architectures, that companies should take advantage of them.

Shortening communication gaps between management and employee cross functionally will supplement new operational models of boards and councils, integrate the traditional management style of Generation X with the next gen communication habits of Gen Y, and allow organizations to become more progressive on the whole.