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

Those are my classmates! I took the Hacking for Defense class with them this past Spring at Stanford. I found that fundamentally the class trains students to apply the iterative, quick-moving, need-based approach to product development often found in startups to military problems that have traditionally had lots of bureaucratic overhead. We were exposed to a ton of different people through our interviews and were constantly asked to create and improve our minimum viable product as we learned more about our problem space. Overall, I would highly recommend the class.

Israel already does this, both offense and defense. They have university initiatives that teach "cyber" (I hate that term).

It would probably be difficult to get DoD brass to care about this. They're used to their defense products being physical items (warheads, tanks, drones, etc) that are harder to steal. Sure, you can steal the schematics and such, but then you can track purchases of restricted components and guess who's building what.

With software, the schematic/code is the weapon. You don't really have to put it together, but perhaps do some poking around to understand it. This is why it's so devastating when the NSA's arsenal gets scooped up by foreign belligerents.

Still to be charged at the full rate to the student, of course. This is just to get them started.

I have to say, out of all the things the DoD pays for with its massive budget, things like paying the NFL to fly F16s over stadiums, or TV ads, or sponsoring college courses are what really grinds my gears.

Important info from Steve Blank on Hacking for Defense here: https://steveblank.com/category/hacking-for-defense/

Steve's dedication to direct public service is impressive, and sets a high bar for other Silicon Valley leaders to reach.

What's the relevance of watered down SEAL training to H4D?

This is very old news. We've been doing this in the US for at least 15 years.

The first thing I thought of when I read "Hacking for Defense" was Defense against the Dark Arts from Harry Potter :)

This is something we desperately need in the western world in order to combat Chinese hacking/spying offensive.

this could be you

http://dcsymbols.com/movies/emblem.jpg

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.