Airforce now hiring slovenly hackers with checkered pasts to defend nation from cyber-threat
April 15, 2008
Because really, what kind of computer skills are a bunch of square-jawed g.i. joes going to have?
In an interview with techie forum Slashdot in early March, he was asked if hackers with checkered pasts, and overweight geeks who couldn’t pass a physical training test, were candidates to join the growing ranks of cyber soldiers. “I believe even the most unlikely candidate, when working for a cause bigger than himself, turns out to be a most loyal ally,” the general wrote.
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A visit to the embryonic Air Force Cyber Command at Barksdale by BusinessWeek reporters in March shows how the Air Force’s current ad campaign is more a Hollywood-version of Cyber Command. In an aging former recreation building on Barksdale’s leafy grounds, fatigue-clad airmen—some with the physiques of couch-potato hackers—use off-the-shelf PCs to monitor Air Force computer network traffic.
Recruiting for the Cyber Wars | BusinessWeek
