Techies! Britain's defence secretary wants you – for cyber-sniping at Russia Defence secretary Gavin Williamson has called for "people with amazing cyber and IT skills" to join the Armed Forces, as Britain's National Security Adviser confirmed to Parliament today that Russia is the UK's main "strategic threat". In an interview for the Politics Home website, Williamson said: "In this age where there's …
"Defence secretary Gavin Williamson has called for "people with amazing cyber and IT skills" to join the Armed Forces"
I'd rather politicians went to war with themselves and left the rest of us to live our lives happily and without fear of death. But that's too much to ask for apparently.
Let's fight lies with more lies.
In this government - nothing really.
A foreign minister who lies so much that the busy bodies from the FCO have to try to go in and delete thing from Twitter after him.
A home office secretary (now ex) who spent a whole week lying every day in front of the parliament.
A DEFRA secretary who is so pathological in this area that half of the country calls him GoveNoccio (the other half calling him SmeaGove).
A BrExit secretary and his lost assessments homework
A trade secretary
A ... minister
Dunno where do we find them, but they are clearly failing the biggest lesson of the Information age. The lie has short legs. Lie less. Or at the very least do not lie about things that will be published officially or can be found via a one line google search.
I have often thought this would solve a lot of the problems caused by unlimited warfare, Syria is the latest example.
Put the waring leaders in a 5 acre field and let them slug it out!
Although how one stops a tyrant killing parts of his population, perhaps one of you guys out there could come up with suggestions
Put the waring leaders in a 5 acre field and let them slug it out!
If we heed your suggestion, the whole of Western Europe will have to recite: "Help me Boiko One Kenoby, you are my only hope". Judging by the Bulgarian obejctions related to the most recent couple of NATO exercises it will be in vain as well.
Namely, what will the rest of NATO politicians do if Boiko and Rumen Radev(*) turn sides and join Putin to match the Bulgarians' historic allegiances? What do you think will be the result of let's say Teresa May and Gavin the Fireplace Salesman facing this lot in a death match in a 5 acre field?
We can even throw in Boris for good measure and entertainment to add colourful lexics to brawl.
(*)Here is an example including a video of Radev having some fun while inspecting the parachute commando regiments. While is clearly more dangerous with a fighter in his hands (one of the less than 10 people in the world who can run a Mig29 though a full Cobra and not lose it), he can probably fend for him self mano-a-mano as well.
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I believe he already said where Russia should go in Parliament. So, now, what? It does not quite want to do that? It told him, and quite justifiably so, "Пшел на хуй?"
So he needs people to actually do that job for him while in possession of less than 10% of the resources they need, having absolutely no legal framework enforce the infrastructure security needed to defend the country if the bear retaliates and being on top of that paid one quarter of what they should be getting for that work. All of that while he is feeding fat cats through a Quinetic/BAE revolving door. Screw that idea sidewise.
By the way - the above applies across the board - RAF, Navy, Army, etc - everything. Not just psyops and IT.
I have absolutely zero sympathy to any of his initiatives. One needs to know what is fit and proper what is not fit to be spoken by the defence minister of a country in possession of a nuclear deterrent (*).
* I am tempted to say something about secretaries and fireplaces, but I will desist... regardless of how hard it is...
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I think that if a country with a GDP the size of Italy is our main strategic threat, we've really come down in the world.
Perhaps he should indicate the seriousness of the position by expelling a few Conservative donors of a Slavic persuasion and investigating their financial affairs in respect of offshore holdings? That would demonstrate some actual commitment, rather than a group of eccentrics posting knitting patterns with small but annoying errors on vkontaktye.
it might have a gdp of Italy, but you forgot about this minor issue of nukes (and the plural isn't "two or three", nosir). Another minor issue is a long-term disregard for human life against "state interest" in those quarters (which they've been very clever to explore). Combine those (and a few other factors), and - the world pays attention.
On his other wishlist item - top separate the two topics.
He has already achieved that - what else the f*** does he want? Goebbels/Stalin level?
Example. UK government lies (according to current government 300M per week standard) in the UN that the Russians are preventing the OPCW mission to reach the site of suspected chemical attack in Douma. Media parrots obligingly. What was ordered and requested. It after that keeps its mouth shut when 4 days later the OPCW publishes a report which clearly shows that the UK govt lied at the UN Security council. As ordered. Again. As nice well behaved media should do.
it was better to try to stop an arms race rather than ratchet it up
But this is one where the UK has a vast advantage.
The UK relies a fragile infrastructure with security cobbled together by the lowest PPI bidder, a government totally free of STEM minds and a plea for anyone technical to volunteer for a sort of digital dad's army to defend it
While on the other side you have China, N. Korea and Russia (and if we are honest S. Korea, Japan, Israel and the USA)
The UK relies a fragile infrastructure with security cobbled together by the lowest PPI bidder,
You cannot play this game without appropriate defenses.
We may scream about the undemocratic laws being passed by the Russian parliament because someone read one paragraph and got fixated on "disconnect from the Internet". If you read the whole law, however, it is exactly that - establish a defensive perimeter and mandate duties to companies who serve national infrastructure regarding security, resilience, independence of operation, etc. Turning off is just one paragraph in that.
The Russians are not the only ones. Israel is following what they are doing quite closely and there are other countries behind it.
So what do we do instead? Talk of fake news and posture on creating them ourselves.
So what will be the result when and if the proverbial sh*t hits the rotating appliance on the ceiling? It will be a the Charge of the Light Brigade, but instead of a some cannons and infantry the cavalry will be charging against T-90s, BMPT-1 Terminators or something worse. With the obvious result.
Instead of asking for geeks to go and poke the bear our dear ex-fireplace salesman should actually ask for someone to translate the Bear's latest legal work and remap it from Napoleonic onto Common law terms. It is well done and worth plagiarizing - so that some defenses can be built and a fight (if it ever happens) is on equal terms and not on Charge of the Light Brigade terms.
You cannot play this game without appropriate defenses.
....So what do we do instead?
Introduce laws to secretly track cellphones and website visits of 60M UK citizens and use the results to track school applications.
Dedicate undercover police officers to infiltrating families of victims of police killings to get some dirt on them.
I'm glad I'm not a real patriot because if I was I would be making some nasty plans in respect of certain members of the British Government. When the National Anthem says "O Lord our God arise, smite thou her enemies and make them fall," the present list seems to include May, Gove, Johnson, Fox, Williamson, Rees-Mogg, Farage and numerous others. Confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks indeed!
Because it isn't Putin who has stirred up hate for immigrants, illegally expelled citizens, let homeless people freeze to death in doorways, cut mental health provision, lengthened NHS waiting lists, lied on buses and then tried to weasel out of it, allowed rents to rise beyond affordability, and generally kicked in the teeth anybody with a net worth under a million.
But Russia is a convenient attention deflector.
"There lies their problem. They need people smart enough to be able to do the job, yet dumb enough to do it for what they can offer."
Yup. One of my relatives left GCHQ over pay and conditions. A friend did the same, quite a long time ago. Both did very well out of the decision. Both, amusingly, had been expensively trained to spy on the Russians. It would seem not much changes.
Whatever you do; never click on any queens_shilling.txt attachment!
I think the armed force's main problem will be that the people they want will be the people they don't want. They struggled with taking women into the ranks so I don't know how they'll cope with recalcitrant hippies and hipsters, sandals, beards, and a flexible approach to time keeping.
They'll probably end up outsourcing it to India. There is precedent.
If they do manage to learn how to cope with hippies, hipsters, sandals and beards, the catering corps had better learn how to make a decent pizza and the NAAFI hand crafted ales.
That aside I don't see much enthusiasm from the techies in these columns for learning how to march.
Maybe they don't approve of the tune or earning a shilling.
I'd rather our armed forces defend our country from those who are actually invading, occupying and/or taking over, rather than exacerbating relations with foreign nations who aren't doing the above.
Conflicts are usually provoked by those who stand to gain. If only our puppet politicians and national media weren't controlled by a few psychos who are ultimately undermining our country (or what's left of it). They probably have their own private nuclear bunkers.
"Defence secretary Gavin Williamson has called for "people with amazing cyber and IT skills" to join the Armed Forces"
Well Gav, you up the pay to about 650 per day, and I'll consider leaving my comfy little office for you, oh, and I don't want to pay tax!
Honestly though, why would anyone leave the comfortably paid civilian IT contracting market and join the Armed Forces, I left them after fifteen years, the pay was awful, the conditions were awful, the equipment was so sub standard we had to borrow the Americans and buy our own. Until there is a massive shift change in how the Armed Forces are treated they will never get the people they keep begging for.
"If you are thinking about booking a Briefing & Assessment day as part of an aspiration to join the Brigade, we are sorry to say that the Brigade is not in a position to assess new civilian candidates until early 2019. This is due to the high volume of applications received and which are currently already being processed."
They don't sound like they're stuggling to recruit.
Let's distinguish here.
There's probably practically no budget for stuff like training and equipment, so from that point of view this is the usual thing where a politician says something is going to happen but six months later it turns out that the pre-pre-pre-meeting meeting is still on indefinite hold for lack of a venue, because that saves money. So in a literal sense they are not struggling to recruit.
But when they start to work through the applications list and need to find some people who would actually be good at the job - then they'll be struggling.
Not at all, this is the oldest trick in the book, to distract from crimes at home invent some imaginary enemy abroad that we need protecting from. Would you please leave such reporting as the above to Faux News and the BBC, who hasn't been a real news organization since it got defanged in the aftermath of the dodgy dossier scandal. The scandal that legitimized the US invasion of Iraq. That dossier being cooked up the UK under instruction of its US masters.
Had a thought about this way in, extra pay, chance to mess a bit with some more interesting pentest/hack/cracking stuff...then realised that perhaps the joint bit wasn't what I thought it could be when I read about the sailor being busted on HMS Queen Liz for peddling.
Sherlocks bong is the nearest thing
In US service we have the LBU-30 leaflet dispensing canister bomb. Those of us on the ground called it the "bullshit bomb". I think your honorable minister must have gotten hit by a BS bomb, because that would explain a lot.
Favorite psyop fail:
A translation problem is mentioned in Noel Barber’s The War of the Running Dogs – The Malayan Emergency 1948-1960, Weybright and Talley, NY, 1971. The author tells of a guerrilla ambush that caused the British commander to immediately fly to the nearest village where he harangued the collected inhabitants:
“You’re a bunch of bastards,” shouted Templer; and Rice, who spoke Chinese, listened carefully as the translator announced without emotion: “His Excellency informs you that he knows that none of your mothers and fathers were married when you were born.”
Templer waited, then, pointing a finger at the astonished villagers to show them who was the “Tuan,” added “You may be bastards, but you’ll find out that I can be a bigger one.” Missing the point of the threat completely, the translator said politely, “His Excellency does admit, however, that his father was also not married to his mother.”
The Information and Intelligence Space is become much contested which is not the same as congested. Indeed, the lack of any freely available and compounding evidence in the mainstream and the heavy hand of censorship and D Notice play in other alternative leading media organs in novel and ultra-effective fields of play .... and here is President Trump thinking to have Uncle Sam the GoTo for a Primary Space Force Source in a Prime Controlling Field ... https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-05-02/space-force-trump-teases-sixth-branch-us-military-again .... would have one conclude the present situation, an Information and Intelligence Space which is not secured, is capable of globally terrorising nations, nation state actors and disenfranchised non-state actors alike.
And such actions are always invariably counterproductive and self-defeating and most indicative of that against which there is no viable defence or available attacking vector.
And it is not a theatre of successful engagement for the less than well enough enabled and endowed. You have been warned. Take care.
Those of us who wore the green suit and were generally treated like shit by the military have since had our own offspring, and we have told them that they are not to consider wearing the green suit under any circumstances, or at least until politicians are sending their sons and daughters into the many wars of choice wearing the green suit.
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