Patriot-Hackers Needed
Wanted: Independently wealthy, top tier computer science graduate with hacking experience. Must be able to receive a high-level security clearance (no bitTorrent, folks), be comfortable interacting with military personnel, sign a long-term commitment and work long hours for little pay.
For the last few weeks, I have been discussing institutions and strategies of cyberpower, while largely ignoring the personnel involved. In doing more research for my paper, I have found a few articles that mention this other, very very serious issue. In order to have any kind of serious cyberpower capabilities, you need some top level hackers working for the government. Top level, highly trained, highly motivated computer guys. Unfortunately, these same guys are going to want to work for the private sector, where they will be able to make multiples more money, work less hours (most likely) and not have their lives (which might include some nefarious activities on the Internet) monitored by the clearance process. This is a problem.
After reading an article in Foreign Affairs called “Virtual Defense”, I did a little more research on this problem and came up with some interesting results.
First I took a look at Monster and Yahoo! Hotjobs. I searched for jobs in the defense/intelligence sector (much as I had been doing prior to working at my current job). Now though, rather than hundreds of Pashto/Dari speakers wanted, 30-40% of the jobs seemed to be for systems integrators and computer programmers, many of them for aerospace companies.
I also found an article in Career World Magazine that explicitly mentioned the problem and how the government is now offering a variety of scholarships for computer guys to get their M.A.s in return for a 3-5 commitment ot government service. In a few years, I’ll be interested to see if those requirements drop, as they have been for language training-government internship-type jobs.
I’m not sure how this fits into my overall paper topic, but it is definitely worth mentioning.