{"id":13277,"date":"2016-03-30T15:02:03","date_gmt":"2016-03-30T15:02:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/uncategorized\/2016\/03\/30\/an-untapped-cyber-weapon-old-geeks\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T17:49:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T17:49:45","slug":"an-untapped-cyber-weapon-old-geeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/c4isrnet\/opinion\/the-compass\/net-defense-blogs\/2016\/03\/30\/an-untapped-cyber-weapon-old-geeks\/","title":{"rendered":"An untapped cyber weapon: Old geeks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If you were 15 years old<span class=\"rte rte-comment\">,<\/span>\u00a0when you were <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">being <\/span>fascinated by your school&#8217;s Commodore PET in 1979\u00a0and are still <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">are <\/span>in IT, you have almost 40 years <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">37 years <\/span>of experience. You have seen it all: IBM XT, Pentium 2, LOTUS 1-2-3, O\/S2, <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">\u00a0to <\/span>cloud computing and mobile apps. Why do I say it like this? I have a simple reason: We look at <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">on <\/span>IT professionals with the metrics of the 19th century. Naturally, you needed to be young, strong<span class=\"rte rte-comment\">,<\/span> and quick to be one of the riders in the &#8220;Army on the Frontier&#8221; dashing across the Rockies, but things have changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cyber is not your traditional war<span class=\"rte rte-comment\">, as we have seen it since the first recollection of the war when the Sumerians beat the Elamites in 2700 BC and forward <\/span><span class=\"rte rte-comment\">to early 2000s<\/span>. In cyber we don&#8217;t walk for days, endure thirst and intense sunshine.<span class=\"rte rte-comment\">,<\/span> Instead we shout &#8220;Is there a slice over for me?&#8221; when the pizza is ripped apart by hungry nerds in an air-conditioned environment.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The fact that we have individuals who<span class=\"rte rte-comment\"> that<\/span> are in their early 50s with almost 40 years of IT experience is a national asset \u2014 and we have a lot of them. You can just visit any major tech conference where they flock <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">as ants on a lump of sugar <\/span>around the next new cutting-edge technology like ants on a lump of sugar. There are thousands and thousands of mature tech nerds.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span class=\"rte rte-comment\">Money may not be is not the only factor these individuals consider. They may <\/span><span class=\"rte rte-comment\">might<\/span><span class=\"rte rte-comment\"> even be so old-fashioned that they are ready to do something that doesn&#8217;t pay that much but is a real contribution to their fellow Americans and <\/span><span class=\"rte rte-comment\">become<\/span><span class=\"rte rte-comment\"> citizen cyber soldiers. <\/span>What if we could create<span class=\"rte rte-comment\"> Why can&#8217;t we create<\/span> Department of Defense\u00a0reserve cyber units that are Network Engineering-Resilience and Defense (NERD) units? They might not meet the DoD\u2019s height and weight ratio \u2014 and they are over normal recruiting age \u2014 but I believe they could <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">do a real contribution, especially to <\/span>help the 6,000 counties and 50 states that face the same cyber challenge as the federal sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We address the weapons of mass destruction threat with <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">the <\/span>civil support teams<span class=\"rte rte-comment\"> (WMD-CST)<\/span>, and we could address cyber for state and local government with creating a <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">Network Engineering-Resilience and Defense (<\/span>NERD<span class=\"rte rte-comment\">)<\/span>-unit in each state, <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">and <\/span>several platoons in larger states, and <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">with the\u00a0<\/span>a core of full-time military cyber personnel and an ability to scale up with additional mature qualified members slightly older than the traditional soldiers. The unit stays in the state and is never deployed, which would allow<span class=\"rte rte-comment\">s the unit<\/span> it to accept geeks who <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">that <\/span>don&#8217;t meet the regular military standards for physical ability, agility<span class=\"rte rte-comment\">,<\/span> and endurance. There is no need to train to reach a common body of knowledge or general IT technology, the old geeks come with all their certifications already, and the idea is that their cyber defense is a state-wide resource.<span class=\"rte rte-comment\"> In the early days of the Second World War, America was very innovative and unconventional, as when Commander Whitehead put forward that naval aviator training on flat-tops was better off training on the shores of Chicago out of reach from German submarines than in the Atlantic were they should been sitting ducks for the Germans, which broke away from traditional thinking.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Cyber needs a push toward <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">forward from <\/span>untraditional thinking.\u00a0<span class=\"rte rte-comment\">Only <\/span>Just because someone remembers Betamax, DOS 3.2\u00a0and still thinks a 14.4 modem was decently fast doesn&#8217;t remove the fact that the older IT professionals could be <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">\u00a0geeks are <\/span>powerful in today&#8217;s cyber battle space \u2014 and we have plenty <span class=\"rte rte-comment\">of old geeks <\/span>to militarize and fill the ranks in the national cyber defense. The need is there and we have the resource: We need just to acknowledge and organize.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Jan Kallberg is a research scientist with the website cyberdefense.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The fact that we have individuals who are in their early 50s with almost 40 years of IT experience is a national asset \u2014 and we have a lot of 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