I hereby claim I made up everything in this column. Everything. It’s the only way I can satisfy the paranoia of my totally fictional USAF source.

So anyway, my totally fictional source told me a cute story. “I work at a comm[unications] unit” stationed in a fictional overseas country “and we all showed up for commander’s call.” His fictional Lt Colonel took the stage. Like many fictional commanders, he likes to give pep talks to his fictional troops.

“What we do here in cyberspace will reverberate throughout history,” the fictional commander told his fictional audience. “Someday they’re going to name a base after a comm[unications] hero,” he insisted.

A fictional person sitting behind my fictional source blurted out with “is that before or after we name bases for all the guys who walked on the moon?”

Again, I insist I made up everything in this column. A total work of fiction. Any similarity to any commander living or dead is purely coincidental.

I honestly never thought I’d use the phrase “continuing series” about a military CIO’s totally stagnant website. You jab ‘em in a column, they get off their duffs, then you move on … yet here I sit, writing once more about visible stagnation in the office of the Air Force Chief Information Officer.

Lt Gen William Shelton, the outgoing CIO, has nailed a promotion if you can believe it — in part for failing to get anyone in his office to do anything with his official “bully pulpit 2.0″ website. Is this guy ROAD or what?

If, as a child, you ever found a mosquito nursery in an old tire, then you know how I feel right now. “Grandma, where do you keep the chlorine bottle? I found some stagnant waterweb pages…”

Seriously, folks: how can one top cyber-warrior after another ignore such a vital marketing tool? I quote myself from my previous column in this continuing series:

“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…”

“C’mon, Rob, it’s just a website. Is it really such a big deal?” Yes. It goes all the way up to the office of the Secretary of the Air Force, who warned that “just as Billy Mitchell endeavored to prove the potential of air power to a skeptical nation, we must now prove the critical importance of cyberspace as a war fighting domain.” He clearly wants a CIO with enough drive to to use the bully pulpit for its intended purpose— oops! The cited URL used Billy Mitchell’s name in vain re: a new email policy. Hmph. It pains me when USAF insinuates Mitchell spoke legalese with a bureaucratic accent. If you’ll let me start over, I promise to cite a much better URL…

Is this guy ROAD or what?

“C’mon, Rob, it’s just a website. Is it really such a big deal?” Yes. It goes all the way up to the office of the director of the National Security Agency, who lamented that “there is no modern Billy Mitchell.” The last two generals to hold the title of “Air Force CIO” certainly embody this lament — ironically at a time when USAF needed them to pound their fists on the digital lectern.

Memo to the Secretary of the Air Force: you really need to pick a CIO with at least enough drive & vision to use a “bully pulpit 2.0″ for its intended purpose. Capisce?

Okay. So. Michael Peterson never did anything as CIO if we’re to believe the official website. Nor did William Shelton. Up next for the job: William T. Lord, who will pin on a third star after his own aborted effort to launch “AFCYBER.”

“Rob, do you think Lord will leave the CIO website in stagnation like his predecessors did?” No. If my sourcehunch proves right, Lord will finally turn the CIO website into a bully pulpit. He seems to enjoy the limelight, you know. (I’ll bet he got seriously miffed when General Kevin Chilton discussed cyberspace on the Charlie Rose show.)

Memo to General Lord: Let’s make this the last column in my “continuing series” about a stagnant USAF CIO website. Deal?

If you listen to the aggrandizing press releases and the generous media hoopla, you’d think Air Force Major General William T. Lord will go down in history as a “pioneer” who made it possible to “fly and fight in cyberspace.”

Lord is so important to the militarization of cyberspace that he’s even got a bio page on Wikipedia.

Then there’s retired Air Force Colonel Herbert E. Carter. USAF recently published a photo of him titled “Remembering the Tuskegee Airmen.” The caption reads as follows:

Retired Col. Herbert E. Carter shakes hands with an [unidentified] Airman who he just gave the oath of re-enlistment to Oct. 11 at Moton Field in Tuskegee, Ala. Colonel Carter is one of the original members of the Tuskegee Airmen and was on hand for the opening of the Tuskegee Airmen National Historic Site. Moton Field in the 1940s was the only primary flight training facility for the first African American pilot candidates in the Army Air Corps, these pilots are known as the Tuskegee Airmen. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Christine Jones)

Colonel Carter has no bio page on Wikipedia. It appears his pioneering contributions to racial desegregation aren’t as important to society as General Lord’s pioneering contributions to the militarization of cyberspace.

(I don’t have a bio page on Wiki, either. But that’s probably just because I’m a new-generation Tuskegee Airman…)

In the first three parts of this topic, I insisted we can’t take “cyber-war” or “cyber-terrorism” seriously until certain people agree to take on pivotal roles, and until the world’s militaries develop a brevity code for their cyberspace weapon systems.

But we need more than just role models and brevity codes. As bizarre as it may sound, “cyber-war” and “cyber-terror” must also address society’s innate desire for military museums.

Nearly everyone knows what a museum is but few of us can describe it in formal terms. Let’s consult Wikipedia for a formal definition:

A museum is a “permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment, for the purposes of education, study, and enjoyment”, as defined by the International Council of Museums.

Mankind is both curious and martial by nature: people will go out of their way to see historic military artifacts, specimens, reproductions, and dioramas. So let’s look at this Air Force museum photo. It augments a press release; the caption itself reads:

Cele­bra­tion recog­nizes 100 years of mili­tary aviation: Visitors inspect a repro­duc­tion of the 1908 Wright air­craft Sept. 6, at Fort Myer, Va., during a Cen­ten­nial of Mili­tary Aviation cele­bra­tion. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Master Sgt. Matt Proietti)

Let’s face it, folks. From a military perspective, the Wright Brothers’ powered-flight exploits strike us as antiquated and (dare we say it?) somewhat absurd. “A soldier actually thought he could wage war with this contraption?” Actually, no — military museums only pay tribute to the Wrights for historical context, as U.S. aerial missions first took shape in 1861 during the Civil War.

Yes: the Wrights ushered in a new era of powered flight. Yes: an aircraft first engaged in combat in Libya in 1911. But the world’s militaries needed to experiment for decades to bring aerial warfare up to par with land & naval warfare. Military museums point to WWII as the true tipping point for “aero-war,” a time when men fought in the air for control of the air.

To be honest: no mili­tary museum will high­light General Lord a hun­dred years from now — because there’s no photo of him flying or fighting in cyber­space. But don’t lose hope! A sena­tor from Lou­i­si­ana might spon­sor a bill to name an IPv6 mili­tary subnet in his honor…

One hundred years from now, from a military perspective, General Lord’s PowerPoint exploits will strike museum visitors as antiquated and (dare we say it?) somewhat absurd. “A flag officer actually thought he could wage war with this contraption?” Actually, no — military museums will only pay tribute to Lord’s exploits for historical context, as U.S. cyber missions first took shape in … well, that’s all highly classified if we’re to believe the many hundreds of experts who love to brag about it.

Yes: Al Gore ushered in a new era of cyber flight. Yes: USAF suffered its own Pearl Harbor at the hands of one teenage hacker in 1997. But the world’s militaries will need to write experimental software for decades to bring cyber warfare up to par with land & naval & aerial warfare. Tomorrow’s military museums will point to some horrifying global conflict as the true tipping point for “cyber-war,” a time when men will fight in cyberspace for control of cyberspace.

(And here’s the kicker, folks. That horrifying global conflict will also spark the first real war in outer space. “Moving along, children, you can see a molten piece of the International Space Station that survived re-entry after a hunter-killer satellite blew it up and killed everyone on board at the start of WWIII…”)

Folks, we can’t take “cyber-war” or “cyber-terrorism” seriously until it can address society’s innate desire for military museums. Any museum artifact, specimen, reproduction, or diorama up to now can only describe context, not combat.

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Now let’s ask a philosophical question. What will our ancestors see when they visit a military cyberspace museum one hundred years from now? Do you honestly think the caption will read “Visitors inspect a reproduction of Major General William T. Lord’s 2008 Windows XP SP3 ‘Cyber Surfer’ weapon system at Barksdale Cyber Base, Louisiana, during a Centennial of Military Cyber Operations celebration…”

“Every computer IS a weapon system,” insist the hypemeisters. To hear them say it, the military museums of tomorrow will show off antique “qwerty” keyboards and reproductions of cubicles. I can already hear a museum curator speaking to millions of children wandering the exhibits in cyberspace…

Moving along, boys and girls, we come to Major General William T. Lord’s actual desk where he flew combat cyber missions in 2008. Do you see the holes on either side of the front corners? Those holes were for wires. In the old days, all military cyber craft were “tethered” to a cabinet or desk with cables and wires. These wires would connect to a keyboard (that’s what they used to call a hand bud), and a video monitor (that’s what they used to call an eye bud), and a microphone (that’s what they used to call an ear bud), and a headset (another type of ear bud). Even a pointing device called a “mouse” (another type of hand bud) was tethered to the desk by a wire. That’s a lot of wires!

Believe it or not, children, in General Lord’s day, all cyber pilots had two Fones tethered to their desks. Fones were very primitive in those days: you couldn’t even see the person you were talking to. And transfer data? Forget it, those Fones were just for your voice. The military back then believed they needed different Fones for different levels of security. If you were a powerful man like General Lord, you would have a third Fone that made “faxes” on real tree paper. That’s all it would do. In theory you could talk on it, but no one ever did.

And Fones were very expensive back then, children! People couldn’t toss them in the recycle bin like we do. Every time a cyber pilot was assigned to a new base, or even to a new office, all of their Fone noms had to be changed. A nom was tied to a specific desk if you can believe it, not to a specific person. In fact the idea of a nom was completely unheard of back then. And get this, kids. A nom was composed of a bunch of numbers back then. You couldn’t Fone anybody with a picture or a voco.

In General Lord’s day, tens of thousands of sergeants would be deployed to dangerous combat zones where they stretched wires between buildings just so people could use Fones. Wire stretching was such an important job that General Lord insisted that his sergeants should be treated like aircraft mechanics. But as we all know, children, the world doesn’t need to tether a Fone to a desk with wires strung between buildings. The need for combat wire stretchers eventually went away.

And children, did you know General Lord used to view documents on real tree paper? It’s true! He had a second “printer” on his desk just for that purpose. Back then, the world was a lot like the Babylonians who viewed documents on papyrus. Like everything else, both of his printers were tethered to his desk with wires. General Lord’s desk was cluttered with wires and tree paper back then.

Now, boys and girls, do any of you know how powerful your Fone is? General Lord would need 63 billion wire-tethers and 17 billion desks just to equal what your little Fone can do. And even that’s not enough! You see, General Lord couldn’t even tell his Fones what to do: Fones weren’t powerful enough to understand voice commands in his day. He had to enter each command with his fingers and he had to put up with many different types and styles of hand buds.

And get this, kids. The entire military had tens of millions of Fones back then, but they couldn’t even boinc out a solution for any problem they faced…

As you may know, USAF downgraded their cyberspace role from its important status as a major command … to the mundane status of just a numbered air force.

Out of curiosity … did Major General William T. Lord have a “flying exec”?

The implosion of “AFCYBER” means I may never know the answer to a simple question. I’ve always wondered if commanding general William T. Lord had a flying exec like other flag officers in operational positions.

A “flying exec” is slang for an Air Force combat pilot who pulls double duty, flying both an aircraft and a desk. They serve as an executive assistant to a colonel or a general — yet they continue to slip the surly bonds of earth.

So. If General Lord had a flying exec … what did he/she fly & fight with? Perhaps a Dell 2950 rack-mounted server, flown from a ClearCube ground-control station…

The U.S. Air Force routinely holds a “Corona” meeting where top generals make course corrections for their military branch. At their latest shindig, they downgraded cyberspace from the “mission essential” status of a major command … to the “mission component” status of a numbered air force.

“We ripped the guts out of your project at the last possible second. Con­grat­u­la­tions! You get a medal…”

Indeed, the brand-new Secretary of the Air Force didn’t even mention cyber in his top five near-term priorities. This guy seems far more concerned about a wayward nuke than a wayward network. Go figure.

Still, AFCYBER managed to pump out an upbeat press release. Commanding general William T. Lord — the man who fathered a stillborn MAJCOM — did his best to explain how “the operation was a success even though the patient died.” But hey, they at least gave him another patient to work on. That should keep him occupied for awhile.

To be honest: Lord’s got a point about the “success” of his efforts. His mothballed Strategic Air Command would have taken on new life as Communications Cyberspace Command … if USAF hadn’t ironically fumbled SAC’s old nuclear football.

So. When it’s all said & done, USAF will pin medals on the midwives who delivered this stillborn. I anticipate the following quotas:

• E3-E5 and O1 will receive an Achievement Medal;
• E6-E7 and O2-O3E will receive a Commendation Medal;
• E8-E9, O4-O5, plus “lesser” O6 will receive a Meritorious Service Medal; and
• Senior staffers will receive more gratuitous medals that rank above the Bronze Star.

And everybody’s performance report will, of course, make it sound like he/she actually did stand up a major command.

In all fairness, I shouldn’t criticize the medals; nor should I criticize the performance reports. Why? Because the decision to gut this project came from USAF’s very highest eschelon. Everyone involved — even Lord — can honestly say “it all occurred way above my pay grade.” When something like this happens, you issue a press release to say the Corona decision “makes sense” and then you move on.

Yes yes yes, so their production got whacked at the eleventh hour. Yes yes yes, so the scope of their objective got cut from a MAJCOM to a NAF. But that’s no reason not to celebrate! Bartender, a round of cyber medals for everyone…

I recently took a quick glance at Air Force Policy Directive 13-3 signed by the now-fired Secretary Michael Wynne. Then I did a double-take. And then I took a long, hard look at it.

This important product lays out some bureaucratic groundwork for USAF’s new cyberspace mission. These documents usually exhibit a banal quality and this one proves no exception … but AFPD 13-3 concerns me for a very important reason. In a word: “grammar.”

It’s a bad sign when you find multiple grammar errors in a short document with overarching policy certified by a three-star general and signed by the Secretary of the Air Force.

It’s a bad sign when you find mul­tiple grammar errors in an over­arching policy docu­ment certi­fied by a three-star general and signed by the Secre­tary of the Air Force.

Of lesser note, I noticed the inconsistent use of a comma to separate the final item in a series (e.g. “strategic, operational, and tactical” in paragraph 1.1 vs. paragraph 1.2). I found the incorrect use of “which” instead of “that” (e.g. paragraphs 2 and 4.1.1). I noticed an overly passive voice in all paragraphs 4.x. And let’s not overlook the inconsistent second sentence in each subparagraph under 4.1.

These all qualify as lesser grammatical problems—

—but history warns us to distrust any bureaucratic policy that suffers from multiple noun-verb disagreements. AFPD 13-3 includes an obvious “the I-NOSCs directs” in paragraph 3.3; an obvious “for each AFNetOps organizations” in paragraph 4.1; and a subtle plural/singular discord between the first two sentences in paragraph 4.1.3.

Then there’s the problem of the “interchangeable” abbreviations “AFNet” and “AF-GIG.” For such a short document, you’d think the Secretary of the Air Force could at least pick one abbreviation and use it consistently. But, no.

My first Air Force mentor, the late Jay Gowens, summed it up best circa 1983 when he revealed how he tackled the problems our office faced deep inside NATO. “Memorize any policy that serves a mandate and was written by a craftsman. Forget any policy that survived a consensus and was pencilwhipped by a committee.” (Not a verbatim quote but it’s accurate in spirit.) I believe Gowens would forget he ever saw AFPD 13-3.

“Waitaminit, Rob! How can you complain about the use of commas when you refuse to follow correct grammar to use one after ‘e.g.‘ in the fourth paragraph?” You ask a very valid question. The answer is: I don’t write overarching policy for the U.S. military. I’m just one critic with an established personal writing style — and I’m widely regarded as a craftsman who follows a mandate to save a pompous computer security industrial complex from its own incompetence.

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This policy directive hints at a subtle-yet-fundamental problem in the race between the U.S. military services to codify a DoD-centric cyberspace mission. I describe this problem as a “hot project syndrome.” Let’s talk about the notion of a hot project so you can see the problem for what it is.

I’ve said it before (in so many words). USAF needs a new docu­ment called Fifty Cyber­space Questions Every Airman Can Answer.

The F-117 stealth fighter grew out of a very hot project in its day. It attracted the best design engineers, the best Air Force maintenance crews, and of course the best pilots. It attracted the best logistics officers, the best avionics technicians, and the best administrative personnel. If you flew the F-117 in its “black” phase, or worked on it, or supported it, then you were one of the elite. You belonged to a very hot project.

Likewise, the SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft grew out of a very hot project in its day. It attracted the best design engineers, the best Air Force maintenance crews, and of course … well, you get the hint. If you flew the SR-71 in its “black” phase, or worked on it, or supported it, then you were one of the elite. You belonged to a very hot project.

The Air Force “cyberspace” mission has grown (devolved?) from a hot project that has attracted the best career-minded officers, the best on-verge-of-retirement senior NCOs, and of course the best entrenched civilians. That’s the real problem.

When it comes to things like the F-117 and SR-71, bureaucrats end up serving the needs of the hot project. But when it comes to cyberspace, the hot project ends up serving the needs of the bureaucrats. That’s the real problem.

Great military doctrines and policies evolve from a focused single vision, not a muddled groupthink consensus. The grammar in AFPD 13-3 tells us too many people inserted themselves into the writing & approval chains and then exercised their right to pencilwhip it into consensus. So, if the Secretary of the Air Force can’t get a high-level policy document right…

Listen to me, folks. USAF has no focused single vision for cyberspace — only a bunch of poorly mouthed self-promoting videos. Indeed, Defense Secretary Robert Gates pointed out their muddled vision in a different core mission area when he explained his reasons for firing his top two leaders. Let’s modify Gates’ quote from “nuclear” to “cyber” and see if it doesn’t ring a bell:

“The Air Force does not have a clear, dedi­cated autho­rity respon­sible for the nuclearcyber enter­prise who sets and main­tains rigorous stan­dards of operations.”

USAF has failed for fully twenty years to solve their virus woes despite throwing (by my guess) upwards of $100 million at that single problem. If they ever had a clear, dedicated authority with responsibility over cyberspace, he/she would have long ago recognized USAF’s real virus problem — and his/her focused single vision would have reverberated throughout the Pentagon by now.

If USAF ever had a clear, dedi­cated autho­rity with respon­si­bility over cyber­space, he/she would have long ago recog­nized USAF’s real virus problem.

USAF’s 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. But hey, that’s what you get when consensus steers the Air Force in some new direction.

And it’s a nail in the coffin every time a pencilwhipping committee leave multiple grammar errors in an overarching Air Force policy document. (Did you catch the noun-verb disagreement?)

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Groupthink encourages its participants to assert themselves outside the group structure. They’ll preface their opinions with phrases like:

• “I’m deeply involved with the standup of Headquarters Cyberspace Command, and I believe we should…”
• “I was picked by the Chief of Staff to be a founding member of the Air Force Cyberspace Task Force, and it’s obvious that…”
• (my favorite) “I have an SCI clearance and it pains me to say ‘I know a secret,’ but you just aren’t fully aware of…”

I’ve been amazed consistently since 1996 at blue suiters who brag about their intimate familiarity with cyberspace doctrine & policy — yet who stare at you like a deer in the headlights when you ask them something as simple as “what is the title of Air Force Doctrine Document 2-5?” You can safely ignore any flyboy who doesn’t know the two words splattered on the cover of USAF’s Cyber Bible.

“Okay Rob, you’ve babbled long enough about the past & present. Time for you to predict the future.” Cyberspace Command loves to brag about their itchy trigger finger. Read up on the root causes for the Bay of Pigs debacle. Then imagine Barney Fife with a loaded gun — twice.

Okay, now it’s time for you to do me a favor: print a copy of this column and mail it to USAF’s newly selected Chief of Staff. Defense Secretary Gates told him right to his face that “none of the services easily accept honest criticism from outside their branch, or scrutiny that exposes institutional shortcomings. This is something that must change across the military.” That change can begin with this column. Be anonymous if you must, but mail it to the new USAF Chief of Staff. Tell him “USAF needs a focused single vision for cyberspace.”

(For the record: I do not have a focused single vision for cyberspace. I’m just a critic who realizes USAF needs such a person. And it’s not Major General William T. Lord.)

The council on Foreign Relations held a roundtable with Major General William T. Lord, the top digital pilot at Air Force Cyberspace Command. The press gave him some ink over the following quote:

“Perhaps we need a different kind of warrior in this domain. Today, all of our armed forces have a physical fitness test… Perhaps that’s not the right construct for these kinds of kids in the future… How do you attract the brains of some of this crowd that you might not want to wire up to a polygraph, but yet use their wonderful innovative ability. But they’re not the same kind of folks that perhaps you want to march to breakfast in the morning.”

It sounds like the general subscribes to a Hollywood version of hackers who’d be declared “4F” if not for their amazing criminal minds. This, my friends, is just one more thing I find wrong with today’s “cyberspace” leadership.

Lord wants you to think the Air Force only just started to look at hackers. Bah! When I enlisted as a “3C0X2″ (computer programmer) in 1982, I was surrounded by socially inept hackers with acceptable physical standards who started off the day with a can of soda back when coffee was the only acceptable morning beverage. Computer programmers were a unique species even back then, having been specifically trained at Tech School to ask “why?” whenever someone told them to do something a certain way.

And guys like me, who got to write software for NATO Intelligence? I assure you we were the weird ones in our crowd. We’d wear dickies with our fatigue uniforms just because NATO allowed it. If eight of us wanted lunch, we’d march all the way to the chow hall in formation just to screw with traffic. Naturally, our formations always crossed against the red lights.

And yes: we crashed that multimillion-dollar production NATO mainframe (twice!) to demonstrate a flaw deep within in its NSA-approved MLS OS.

As my career matured into the 1990s, I watched the same kids as me coming through the pipeline. They drank sodas in the morning just like I did and they couldn’t date a girl to save their life. They took great pride in messing around with the Air Force bureaucracy.

At the end of my career in 2003-07, I watched the new batch come through the pipeline and they’re exactly like the guys I hung out with. Sure: they can buy more toys than I grew up with, and they can type on a mobile phone almost as fast as I type on a keyboard, and they’ve racked up some “tent time” in the barren lands of Iraq & Afghanistan (just like I did). But deep down, they’re the same as always — a bunch of nerdy little dweebs who can look at the back of a malfunctioning Cisco router and instantly realize it has exceeded its bandwidth limit for serial plane zero … yet who turn into Forrest Gump whenever they bump into a cute female airman wearing pink lipstick.

Ignore General Lord and listen to me, folks. I have absolutely no doubt the Air Force will find the kids they need to wear a uniform. They’ve been putting kids like me into uniforms for decades! As for the hackers who can’t survive two months of basic training? Bah. Let them pick up a military contractor job with Microsoft or Symantec — if their rap sheets don’t stop them from getting a security clearance in the first place.

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USAF RIGHT NOW is cluttered — dare I say “choked”? — with bureaucrats. Choked with people like General Lord who subscribe to the Hollywood view of what their troops should be. Choked with people like Captain Goza who don’t even know what “cyber” means. And then there are the worst of the bunch: people who drool at “cyber” as a means to pad their officer evaluations and civilian performance reports. They don’t have a clue how to bring it all together but hey, the Chief of Staff told them to stand up a cyber mission and they’re going to be the ones who get a Meritorious Service Medal for doing it!

I’ve bumped into heaven-knows-how-many idiots who claim they were the first ones to kick-start the Air Force cyberspace mission in some obscenely obscure fashion. “Well, not to brag, but I’m the guy that wrote that classified ‘just thinking outside the box’ email to JJ (that’s retired chief of staff John Jumper, back then just the commander of 9th Air Force) asking him why his folks were doing X instead of Y, and I’m happy to say that JJ wrote me back to say that was a great idea and he’d put one of his best light-birds right on it…”

The Air Force suffers from too many shallow thinkers in cyberspace. You can identify them by the way they answer a single question. “What does USAF mean by ’sovereign options’ in cyberspace?” The shallow ones will start off with a bunch of hemming & hawing, followed by gobbledygook. “Well, you see, um, the Air Force cyberspace operations give us the ‘pointy end of the spear,’ helping us to synergistically complement and coalesce all kinetic and non-kinetic weapon systems at our disposal…” Try not to smirk when you identify them. It ruins the mood of the moment.

But when you do identify these people, I implore you to drive a knife into their egos. “That’s very interesting! You know, security critic Rob Rosenberger argues that USAF will all but lose its first cyberwar due to a fundamental flaw in its ’sovereign options’ doctrine. What’s your opinion of that flaw?” Again, try not to smirk. It ruins the mood of the moment.

Mark my words. We’re going to pay life insurance for some people in uniform in a real cyberwar. We’re going to lose lives tomorrow thanks to today’s shallow self-serving bureaucrats — and if you recall my prediction from 2002, I said we’ll lose lives twice thanks to those very same self-serving bureaucrats. I want those bureaucrats to get out of the way so the real cyber warriors can reshape the Air Force.

“Okay Rob, who are the real cyber warriors and who are the fakes?” Excellent question. I’ll paraphrase George Carlin. If you’re in cyberspace and you feel like you’re part of the solution, then you may very well be part of the solution. But if you run around in public telling people “I’m in cyberspace and I’m part of the solution,” then you’re part of the problem. Get out of the way.

Air Force Cyberspace Command (AFCYBER) runs a website as you’d expect. But it’s not like the ones run by its sister commands.

AFCYBER’s home page differs dramatically from that of Air Mobility Command (AMC), Air Combat Command (ACC), Air Education & Training Command (AETC), Air Forces in Europe Command (USAFE), Space Command (AFSPC), Materiel Command (AFMC), Reserve Command (AFRC), Special Operations Command (AFSOC), and Pacific Air Forces Command (PACAF).

The difference is that AFCYBER offers commercial advertising and provides links to foreign news sites right on the home page. I kid you not.

Major General William T. Lord, the commander of AFCYBER, graciously provides advertising space to the Air Force Association so you can learn about an upcoming corporate cyber symposium.

Lord also provides links on the home page to both a ZDNET-ASIA news story and a ZDNET-UK news story. (Britain I can understand, but — Asia?!?)

General Lord gives you a direct link to a PBS video on “Cyber War.” If foreign policy is your hobby, General Lord invites you to click on a commercial interview with Richard Clarke. General Lord hopes you’ll visit ArsTechnica.com. There’s also a link to a Macon, Georgia newspaper if you like the Air Force Reserves.

Naturally, Lord’s got a link to the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association. Who doesn’t?

Click on “Archived stories” and you’ll find a slew of links to commercial enterprises. Here you’ll find links to CNN, Wired, Federal Computer Week, and Euractive (a European conglomerate). If you click on the link to the Free Republic news feed, you can choose not to donate. And you can choose to skip the ad if you click on the link to Dark Reading (don’t worry: it’s a news site).

So! What links won’t you find at AFCYBER’s website? Well, you won’t find a link to SecurityCritics.org. And you certainly won’t find a link to usaf.HumorControl.org. Nor will you find a link to CHairforce.com…

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The camera fades in to a young female face in closeup. The view pulls back. It’s an Airman standing in a sharp-looking uniform. The view pulls back some more. She’s holding a green box with blinking lights and network cables.

The young woman begins to speak. “When AFCYBER warriors hit the battlefield, they need the best weapons in their arsenal. That’s why we go to war with a Cisco 3800 series router. Cisco gives us the ammunition we need to stop deadly terrorists and hostile nation-states…”