As defense tech goes commercial, does national security miss out?

Insufficient attention has been paid to the national security implications of private enterprise taking over from government as the main source of innovation for defence and intelligence applications, according to a panel at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)'s Sydney Dialogue on Tuesday. "I think we've seen a …

[amanfromMars 1]

Take US to your leader[s] .... if you have one[any]

So, now that government knows that it does not lead with private enterprise as the main source of innovation for defence and intelligence applications, and be assured and/or terrified in equal measure that private enterprise taking over from government as the main source of innovation for defence and intelligence applications is fully aware of its national, international and internetional security implications, what would be governments' best course of future action to prevent its almighty failure, for private enterprise today which has evolved and is revolting and flexing ITs Muscles is asking and ready to deliver .... as was shared with you again as recently as yesterday, here on El Reg via Food for Thought and to Choke Over

Purchase it might be a good first option to try, seeing as how it is the normal human default go to form of command and control exercised by systems in distress or in avaricious awe of opposition and competition, and it’s only pretty printed paper you’ll be exchanging/spending/expending/expanding, so nothing at all of any real value. Nobody can say that is not a fantastic bargain.

Give somebody/something/anybody/anything that which it wants or needs to seed and feed and you will remotely command and control them ...... and they you too ..... which is a nice mutually beneficial Synergy verging on a Singularity of Purpose ... and with Advanced IntelAIgents in Live Operational Virtual Environments, a Great Reset to Honour and Deserve.

[amanfromMars 1]

Don’t Panic ..... :-) It’s only a status quo honey bear man trap

Doom and gloom in the rank and file is just so typical of the depressed and intellectually challenged and the usually oppressed and unusually terrified of novel change and rapid progress ...... https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/if-we-go-ahead-everyone-will-die-warns-ai-expert-calling-absolute-shutdown

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Historically ?

>Historically the role for innovation, particularly in Deep Tech, has always lain with government

In the last century's global unpleasantness it seems that the side relying on commercial development from Messers Rolls, Royce, DeHavilland, Supermarine and Boeing seems to have produced better toys than those whose defence research agencies began with Reich...

In more recent belligerent toy shopping it seems that cooperative multinational government programs produced, when they produced anything at all, high-albedo pachiderms.

[Paul Crawford]

Re: Historically ?

An upvote for "high-albedo pachyderms"

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Historically ?

"In the last century's global unpleasantness it seems that the side relying on commercial development from Messers Rolls, Royce, DeHavilland, Supermarine and Boeing seems to have produced better toys than those whose defence research agencies began with Reich..."

And yet it took the combined force two superpowers as well as a number of smaller countries, all relying on these commercial developments from Messers Rolls, Royce, DeHavilland, Supermarine and Boeing, to defeat that single medium-sized country whose defence research agencies began with Reich...

I'm not sure that this really lends credit to the argument that stuff made by Rolls, Royce, DeHavilland, Supermarine and Boeing was in any way superior to what the German war machine was producing, only that the Germans ran out of resources sooner than the allied forces.

Also, if your statement was true then America wouldn't have been so eager to collect all this German technology, scientists and engineers after the war to prop up its own defence industry.

[Peter2]

Re: Historically ?

And yet it took the combined force two superpowers as well as a number of smaller countries, all relying on these commercial developments from Messers Rolls, Royce, DeHavilland, Supermarine and Boeing, to defeat that single medium-sized country whose defence research agencies began with Reich...

This is mostly because of "never again" and thinking that just because we didn't want a war nobody else would either. "peace in our time" meant that military equipment went downhill after WW1; the peace movement actually succeeded in getting the allies to destroy heavy artillery before WW2 because it might upset the Germans. The result was that without modern equipment armies couldn't really stand up to the modern military equipment that the Germans had produced enmasse in secret and started off on the back foot still retooling to military production during the war.

After taking Europe the third Reich had appropriated their military equipment and defence industries, as well as the raw material production, so it took a few years to catch up.

Before WW2 the Americans didn't really have a defence industry with any advanced equipment; they were a bit put out to discover that their front line fighters were relegated to being advanced trainers in Britain because flying them into combat would be a death sentence, and similar stories existed with their tanks. and truth be told, half the reason for the US Operation Paperclip was that them picking up German scientists prevented the Soviets doing the same.

[martinusher]

Re: Historically ?

>the side relying on commercial development from Messers Rolls, Royce, DeHavilland, Supermarine and Boeing seems to have produced better toys than those whose defence research agencies began with Reich...

The toys and tactics of the other side were superior but were overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stuff produced by the Allies. Post WW2 there was a wholesale adoption of the other side's technology and tactics.

That doesn't mean that it was all good or al bad, just trying to draw parallels with today is pointless. Governments can't afford the kind of scale that commercial provides so you end up with very long, very expensive, things that don't necessarily work that well. (Even the Germans found out about this late in the war.)

[Pascal Monett]

Hmm

""the pace of change is so fast that controlling it at the institutional level is just not possible anymore"

Well, and this is just a thought, maybe the institutional level didn't need to hop on to the bandwagon ?

If the Government was still working on mainframe with dedicated workstations on amber or green CRTs, I'm guessing that hackers, Russian, Chinese, Nork or otherwise, would be having a much harder time getting in.

Oh, and those pesky defense consultants with unlicensed Office versions would too. And we wouldn't be hearing so much about how TikTok is being "banned".

Now, I'm not saying that no change would have been preferable. By all means replace the CRTs with monochrome LED displays and a 1GB/s Ethernet connection, by all means. And upgrade the mainframe, or replace it with an AS/400 for sure.

But you didn't really need to get Windows.

[Doctor Syntax]

"Meanwhile other speakers called on entrepreneurs to shift mindsets to take on the role of protecting national security themselves."

How did they see this applying to multi-national companies?

[Michael Wojcik]

I suppose they'd protect multinational security.

[Anonymous Coward]

If private enterprise are leading the way, why when they are comprehensively broken into do they claim it was such a clever hack that it must have been "state-level actors" ?

[Peter2]

"Historically the role for innovation, particularly in Deep Tech, has always lain with government – even up until maybe 30 or 40 years ago. But really over the last two maybe three decades, four perhaps, we have seen a shift where private companies are really taking the lead in a lot of areas – innovation that traditionally would have been in remit of a government,"

It has? That's news to everybody interested in history.

Even going back to the days of wooden ships and muzzle loading cannons the design improvements were on the part of private industry. The ships had a copper bottom covering created by private industry and The Carron company created what amounted to being a "sawn off cannon" which could lob an incredibly big cannon ball over short range and so doing more damage while weighing less than a comparable cannon; hence why Britain cleared house at sea. Later improvements in the range/accuracy/power of cannons were as a result of machinery for creating steam cylinders for the industrial revolution and related improvements in metallurgy.

Post Napoleonic wars the railways were built by hundreds of separate railway companies, and the government didn't have any involvement until WW1, where after seizing control of everything they created 4 companies to take control of it, and ended up nationalising those after WW2.

Even the electricity network was created by private industry and then nationalised post WW2.

Government involvement in innovation is a massive historical abnormality; look up the history of any industry you care to investigate.

The only time that governments have ever exerted a role in innovation is during WW2 during a total war where industry was subordinated to the war effort and shortly afterwards in the Cold War when stuff invented in the labs in WW2 was being put into production (and related shootoffs like the space programme)

The result of government nationalised industries in any marketplace when they are later exposed to outside competition shows exactly how well governments actually manage R&D.

[amanfromMars 1]

So ....

..... in other words of a few syllables, Peter2, democratically elected Parliamentary type governments are fcuking useless at novel speedy innovative developments.

Hear! hear! .... well said, good sir! I concur wholeheartedly. In experimental ground-breaking fields they can be relied on for absolutely nothing .... nor trusted with anything sensitive or top secret.

[Cliffwilliams44]

When governments become charities

"I think we've seen a significant change in the last 15–20 years where we've really moved from where government was the owner and controller of the best technology because they had deep pockets and things cost a lot"

This is because western governments have, over the last 70 years, changed from being governments concerned with the safety and sovereignty of their nations and promoting conditions that secure the prosperity of their people, into giant charities whose primary goal is the keep those dependent on the charity dependent and the money flowing into the charity to finance the lifestyles of the charities leadership!

This is why the Chinese will defeat the west without firing a shot!