It's the stuff of science fiction. Or science fiction parody, anyway. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/us/politics/29cyber.html?_r=1&hp
WASHINGTON The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials said Thursday, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare. (more at the link, and all interesting) OK, try to imagine the scene. It's 2012, the apocalypse that many here hoped for because it would take away the pressure of having devoted their lives to pursuing enlightenment and never finding it has not occurred, and a war is on. In the control room sit the front-line troops who fight this war. Crack cadets all, they man their weapons as they ready for battle. Dozens of pimply-faced teenagers, recruited into this Special Ops unit as an alternative to doing time for hacking, leap into battle. One, using a joystick instead of a mouse because he's faster on the joystick, shouts: "Gotcha, you cyberloser...that'll teach you to mess with the Red Baron Of Cyberspace!" His buddy at the next desk says, "Heh heh. Heh heh heh. He said 'cyberloser.'" Rations of Jolt cola and Red Bull and Cheetos are brought directly to the troops' desks so that they never have to leave them. (Not that they would anyway, because none of them have lives.) They are brought around on carts by buxom young babes who all look like Pamela Anderson, and who have been trained to flirt with the Cyberwarriors and hint that they might get lucky if they just bring down that pesky server in Beijing that been such a nuisance lately. (In actuality none of the nerds ever *have* gotten lucky, but just like TMers and their myths about people who have levitated, they refuse to lose faith in the *possibility* that they might get lucky... someday...if they just crash enough enemy servers or identity-theft the enemy's leaders into submission or bankruptcy.) Unlike the regular Army, which has had trouble finding new recruits for decades because of the possibility of...uh...getting your ass killed, this new cadre of Nerd Warriors is never lacking for new fodder. They say it's the promise of possibly getting lucky with one of the serving wenches that inspires them to enlist, but personally I think it's the free Cheetos.
