Readers will recall I critiqued USAF CIO Lt. General Michael Peterson in August for letting his website grow stagnant at a time when USAF desperately wanted to codify a DoD-centric cyberspace mission. This CIO, more than anyone else, should have used his website to hawk his agency’s cyberspace prowess. And yet the other military CIOs put him to shame with their updated content.

Why did USAF’s CIO finally update his stag­nant web­site with five civilian news­paper stories?

Peterson let his official website rot on the vine for a half-year. Go figure.

Well! His subordinates finally got around to updating the website in early October. What, pray tell, did the USAF CIO choose to highlight? Answer: five civilian newspaper articles. They were:

USAF's CIO finally updated his stagnant website ... with reprints of civilian newspaper articles

• “Future security: keeping TSAT on track is essential” (archived here), written by Loren B. Thompson of the Lexington Institute and originally published here.
• “Air Force pursues Cyber Command again” (archived here), written by Bob Brewin of NextGov and originally published here.
• “Cyber, nuclear missions shift in Air Force” (archived here), written by John Andrew Prime of the Shreveport Times (with Michael Hoffman of Air Force Times) and originally published here.
• “Air Force scraps plans for Cyber Command in favor of new nuclear organization” (archived here), written by Marina Malenic of Defense Daily and originally published here.
• “Officials want to add 13,000 airmen by 2010” (archived here), written by Erik Holmes of Air Force Times and originally published here.

Did USAF’s CIO obtain the reprint rights? Or is this a blatant copy­right violation?

Peterson’s update left me scratching my head. “Why,” I wondered, “did USAF’s CIO choose to reprint five civilian news items?” You’ll find “public affairs officers” assigned at every air base around the globe who routinely issue press releases on Air Force information technology. Peterson could have chosen to highlight any or all of these recent organic stories:

• Gen. Carlson stresses importance of information technology
• Air Force leaders work to develop cyberspace roadmap
• Secretary Donley visits the CAOC
• Upgrade makes electronic forms more user friendly
• Air Force senior leaders take up key decisions
• Deployed Airman witnesses daughter’s birth via Internet
• Cyber Airman credited with rescuing survivors of a downed Army helicopter from the comfort of her cubicle
• Airmen share information via new blog
• Air Force IT Conference highlights education

The long stagnation of Peterson’s website leads me to wonder if he actually bothered to obtain the rights to reprint all those stories. I guess I’ll have to write a letter asking him to confirm or deny my suspicions. Stay tuned for an update to this column…

Update 8 Dec 08: Peterson spoke at an AFCEA conference last week where he announced his intention to retire. “That may have something to do with his focus, or lack of, on the web site,” a SecurityCritics.org reader noted…

Popular Mechanics filed a nice PR story on the burgeoning new Air Force Cyberspace Command. Reporter Glenn Derene included this priceless observation:

There are no physical connections between [NIPRNET and SIPRNET] anywhere in the Defense Department’s 5 million–computer network, yet in the AFNOC, the Ethernet jacks are only 1½ in. apart. That proximity got me wondering. “What if someone connected them?” I asked information officer 2nd Lt. Mike Forostoski. He laughed in disbelief, as though I had asked him what would happen if a flaming nuclear blimp headed for the building. Then he answered with cautious understatement: “That would be bad. What would happen, of course, is a national-security breach that would probably be an act of treason.”

If you hold any Cisco certifications, then you know the absurdity of declaring a “national-security breach” if a sleepy Airman links two disparate networks with a patch cord. The routers at each end of the wire won’t know how to transfer packets. BGP, EIGRP, etc. will need a lot of tweaking and you’ll need administrator access to each router. You can theoretically do it, but it’ll take a lot more than just a piece of wire to commit treason. Ah, but I digress…

Derene goes on to abbreviate Air Force Cyberspace Command as “AFCC” — practically a four-letter word to the folks at Barksdale AFB. Seriously! Call them “AFCC” and they’ll act like you slapped them in the face. “We are not AFCC and in fact that agency will report to us when AFCYBER stands up in October…”

Yet there’s the rub: someone way high up in the Pentagon has put AFCYBER on hold. The Register quotes a story in NextGov that cites a leaked directive to suspend the big kickoff. NextGov then drops this bomb:

The Cyber Command hyped its capabilities on TV, in Web video advertisements and in a series of high-profile presentations conducted by [commanding general William T.] Lord. The hard sell may have been the undoing of the Cyber Command, which seemed to be a grab by the Air Force to take the lead role in cyberspace…

The decision to ratchet back the Cyber Command may have come from Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who wants to see a greater role for the Navy in cyberspace, said an Air Force source.

So, do I think AFCYBER is its own worst enemy? Actually, no — it’s the bureaucrats who want their agencies to reorganize under AFCYBER for self-serving reasons. Those bureaucrats used their muddled groupthink to concoct a pathetic marketing strategy best seen in the early 1980s when Air Force Communications Command pitched a self-serving idea to merge with Air Force Data Automation— oops!

—a pathetic marketing strategy best seen in Intercom magazine, a glossy news organ of the Air Force Communications Agency (the real “AFCC”). I quote myself from more than a year ago: “[their] award-winning ‘Intercom’ magazine perpetuates the notion of ‘cyber’ as a support function,” not an operational mission.

The photo at right is a perfect example of poor marketing. When you see airmen updating their antivirus software, does it inspire you to hunt down the terrorists involved in the World Trade Center attack? Of course not — this photo highlights a support function, not an operational mission.

If your daughter and your wife and your mother can update antivirus software on their PCs, then it’s not a military operation. That’s poor marketing.

At the end of his story, reporter Glenn Derene admits “the awed kid in me” wanted to see the B-52 bombers sitting on the tarmac. “We drove out to the airfield, and there they were, perhaps the most massive attack planes ever created, the very symbol of American megapower, each one capable of devastating an entire city.”

Derene wrapped up by comparing the old days of air combat to the new days of cyber combat. But really, folks — if he had to choose between standing around in a computer room or flying around in a nuclear bomber, do you think he would have written about the short distance between those Ethernet connections? That’s poor marketing for you.

If you remember Air Force Communications Command in the early 1980s, then you know what I mean when I say “history is repeating itself with Air Force Cyberspace Command.”

So, kudos to whoever yanked the parking brake at AFCYBER. I said it before and I’ll say it again — their muddled groupthink has turned a “hot project” into a cancerous quest for an Einstein-ish unification theory that homogenizes Military Intelligence with Communications under a single major command.