U.S. Defense Budget May Help Fund “Hacking for Defense” Classes at Universities

Re:U.S. Defense Budget May Help Fund “Hacking for Defense” C... by mtgx on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @01:12PM (#14849619)

Hacking for defense? Is that like how the Department of Defense is now more like the Department of War? Will "preemptive hacking" happen a lot, too?

EDIT: Also, this sounds a lot like propaganda to me:

"Don't worry - just because we hack into other nations, doesn't mean we are the bad guys. We're the good guys hacking for our preemptive defense!"

The US gov has had a hard time trying to lure talent for the NSA and such after the Snowden leaks (and for good reason, people finally learned the truth about what they were actually doing), so now they're trying to turn this on its head and trick young people who are already interested in hacking to work for the government "for a good purpose". And then they can pick the really good ones and try to convince them to actually do some of the more obviously nasty and morally questionable stuff.

I can't say it's a terrible plan, but to me the motives seem quite obviously. For the more impressionable 18 year olds, perhaps they won't be, unfortunately.

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Re:U.S. Defense Budget May Help Fund “Hacking for Defense” C... by stenlix on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @02:31PM (#14850549)

I'd like to politely disagree. I took the Hacking for Defense class at my school and had a completely different experience from the one you worry about. I think the most important misunderstanding to clear up is that the hacking in the class is not about hacking in the NSA/cybersecurity sense but rather the process of building something. Just like at a hackathon, students aren't all trying to hack the school's wifi etc., this class is about using a different approach to tackling military problems.

I've attached a link to our class website which contains a superset of the problems that my classmates and I tackled throughout the quarter. Hopefully you'll find it informative.

Class website: http://hacking4defense.stanford.edu/

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Re:U.S. Defense Budget May Help Fund “Hacking for Defense” C... by 3131s on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @02:47PM (#14850698)

> this class is about using a different approach to tackling military problems.

The real problem is the amount of money and human life that are squandered on perceived "military problems" in the US. There are plenty of other hackathons to go to, IMO attending these events and accepting their material support is legitimizing US Department of Defense sponsored terrorism.

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Re:U.S. Defense Budget May Help Fund “Hacking for Defense” C... by micaksica on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @01:48PM (#14850082)

This is exactly what is going on. This is a thinly veiled propaganda/recruitment effort trying to capitalize on students' new-found, Mr. Robot-driven curiosity regarding "hacking".

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Re:U.S. Defense Budget May Help Fund “Hacking for Defense” C... by teklaperry on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @01:56PM (#14850159)

To be clear, "hacking" in this context doesn't mean breaking into other people's computer systems. It means solving a problem using technology in a quick, iterative manner.

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Re:U.S. Defense Budget May Help Fund “Hacking for Defense” C... by pera on Tuesday July 25, 2017 @01:48PM (#14850081)

This is not new: the mission of the DoD (and mostly all agencies) is to protect the interests of the US, morality aside. This includes questionable stuff like foreign industrial espionage, media manipulation/propaganda, and even false flags operations (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods).

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