Most of the time I tend to agree with the idea that age brings wisdom. Wisdom, it has always seemed to me, is as much about understanding the context of things as anything else, and nothing provides context like experience. But sometimes that connection breaks down. Sometimes, in a phenomenon we usually refer to as a generation gap, an older generation badly misunderstands new developments, often because the changes themselves represent new contexts entirely outside of the actual experience of previous generations. They are in essence paradigm shifts, but ones that only a new generation can make.
The rise of computer networks is precisely the sort of those context-shifting event I'm talking about. Sure thing, people who were born before the widespread adoption of public networks can both use and understand them, but they'll never be in the unthinking, natural way of those of us who were born into a networked world. For most people born into a world after Wargames, networks are just there. They are, in a way, remarkably unremarkable. And as a result, those generations "get" them in ways that many members of other generations cannot.
Keep that in mind as you read this story:
From electricity grids to subways to nuclear power plants, the United States depends more than ever on Internet-based control systems that could be manipulated remotely in a terrorist attack, security specialists say.
The plan calls for the NSA to work with the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies to monitor such networks to prevent unauthorized intrusion, according to those with knowledge of what is known internally as the "Cyber Initiative." Details of the project are highly classified.Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, a former NSA chief, is coordinating the initiative. It will be run by the Department of Homeland Security, which has primary responsibility for protecting domestic infrastructure, including the Internet, current and former officials said.
At the outset, up to 2,000 people -- from the Department of Homeland Security, the NSA and other agencies -- could be assigned to the initiative, said a senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
To someone of McConnell's generation this approach apparently makes sense. Build a huge bureaucracy - 2000 people or more - and set them to the task of "managing" the network. To someone born into the networked world, however, it's almost laughably naive. Not only can it not be done, its likely that in the process of doing you will create far more problems than you solve.
And the reason why is obvious: Build a "cyber initiative" that can protect networks and you b y definition create a system that centralizes them. Centralization makes the job of a hacker far, far easier, not harder. Hack that centralized system and you've got the entire thing under your control. The strength off the network - and the entire premise upon which it was first built - is its decentralization. You can't control it, and so it survives, no matter what you might throw at it. A pre-network generation may not get that, but a post-network one certainly does.
Are there things on the network that need to be protected. Yes, of course. But this isn't the way to do it. Not even close. Networks are a bottom-up phenomenon, not top-down. Without matching our "cyber-initiatives" to that reality, they will do far more harm than good.
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