from Hacker News

Exploring the Potential of a US Cyber Force

by willswire on 3/23/24, 3:53 AM with 3 comments

  • by wolverine876 on 3/23/24, 5:07 AM

    In the US military, the function of the military services - Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Space Force - is to recruit, train, and equip forces to fight in particular domain - land, sea, etc. I.e., the services prepare them to fight in their domain; the combatant commands, which are geographically organized, responsible for regions of the world, actually employ the forces jointly (i.e., mixing services) in military opreations. For example, Central Command used forces prepared by the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force in order to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

    It's clear that orbit is really a very different domain to recruit, train, and equip for than the air, and thus to many, a separate Space Force made sense.

    Is any domain more different than the electronic domain? Recruiting, training, and equipping 'hackers' seems entirely different in all three aspects than it would for land, sea, air, or orbit.

    A word on names:

    I despise cyber, which sounds like marketing-speak for a cheap sci-fi movie. It's really electronic warfare, all the way up the OSI layer model from physical - such as jamming and jamming counter-measures on wireless comms, tapping cables, etc. - to network routing, to applications; and then to device hardware and software; etc. (Maybe the new Electronic Warfare service should partly organize itself according to OSI layers.) Electronic Warfare Service also is more anodyne, the best military tradition - stop glorifying and glamorizing war; humans have enough problems with those instincts; it's not a movie or anything like one.

    Also, the service members need a title, like soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen, guardians. (Note the awkward fit of the last one, for the Space Force - which should have been called Orbital Force - like a Marvel movie.) But what? While 'hackers' would be awesome for many reasons, obviously not that for my and other reasons. 'Engineers' isn't bad, if not entirely precise. 'Technicians'? A bit vague. Part of the problem is that IT world has always lacked a general term - what do we call ourselves, the equivalent of doctor, lawyer, accountant, plumber, ...? 'IT professional' is awkward too.