[MichaelCrawford]

The goverment has known how to vet their systems since well before 1989, when I attended a class taught by a security consultant for the DoD.

For example, your aged grandfather used to run ethernet through pressurized conduit. If that pressure ever dropped some heavily armed men would turn up.

The IP packet header has fields for security classification as well as compartment. If I design warheads and you design rocket engines, our computers are in different compartments so the router between us will drop packets if you and I attempt to discuss our work. However I could invite you to lunch.

What Bradley Manning did was simply not possible. Or rather it would not have been without the Congressional COTS mandate: Common Off-The-Shelf Computers. Rather than design special hardware or write special software for military computing the avionics for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter were purchased online from Alibaba.

[engi_nerd]

Then why does Lockheed have hundreds of people involved with writing and testing avionics software for this aircraft? Why does Northrop Grumman have hundreds of engineers working on avionics hardware? Why does Lockheed Martin have an entire B737 that it heavily customized to test all of this hardware and software? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_CATBird

[MichaelCrawford]

You have a wooden head.

[engi_nerd]

...No need to be insulting and condescending. I understand that you were making a joke. But the fact is, your joke example was poorly chosen.

[MichaelCrawford]

I can see your point.

However a problem we really do have is that we have lost our expertise. The COTS mandate lead to less demand for the kinds of engineers who could have prevented this breach.

My friend Murray Sims is a naval civil service coder. He rang me up once to beg me to work for the navy:

"People are dying because of software bugs."

Id love to but I get a little loopy sometimes so have no hope of getting a clearance, instead I write technical articles.

http://www.warplife.com/tips/

[engi_nerd]

I admit I was a little saddened to be insulted by someone whose work I admire.

Your friend definitely has a point. People are dying because of software bugs. And process bugs. And outdated hardware.

I agree with you that we have lost our expertise. I think the defense industry in general has a demographics problem. There's a lot of old guys who are about to retire. A lot of young, inexperienced people. And not enough of the mid-career engineers.

[MichaelCrawford]

Is there some way I could do military computing without a clearance?

I applied to the US Air Force Cyber Command as well as all manner of military computer security jobs. I received but one response, that my application to be an encryption machine trainer was declined.

http://www.warplife.com/mdc/resume/

[MichaelCrawford]

I offer my heartfelt and humble apology for insulting you.

That was not my intention though I do understand why you took it that way.

I intended to insult the United States Congress.

[comrade1]

Humor is not allowed on HN. It's for our own protection - most of the people here are so autistic a simple ironic statement could lead to the end of the internet as the HN readers spaz out all at once.