When Bush said 'internets' he knew of plans for new military internet

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Pentagon Envisioning a Costly Internet for War
Saturday, November 13

The Pentagon is building its own Internet, the military's world wide web for the wars of the future.

>>>>>The Pentagon calls the secure network the Global Information Grid, or GIG. Conceived six years ago, its first connections were laid six weeks ago. It may take two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars to build the new war net and its components.

>>>>"This is sort of like Star Wars, where the policy was, 'Let's go out and build this system,' and technology lagged far behind,'' he said. "There's nothing wrong with having ambitious goals. You just need to temper them with physics and reality."

>>>>>Every member of the military would have "a picture of the battle space, a God's-eye view," he said. "And that's real power."

>>>>>Military contractors - and information-technology creators not usually associated with weapons systems - formed a consortium to develop the war net on Sept. 28. The group includes an A-list of military contractors and technology powerhouses: Boeing; Cisco Systems; Factiva, a joint venture of Dow Jones and Reuters; General Dynamics; Hewlett-Packard; Honeywell; I.B.M.; Lockheed Martin; Microsoft; Northrop Grumman; Oracle; Raytheon; and Sun Microsystems. They are working to weave weapons, intelligence and communications into a seamless web.

full NYT article:
http://www.intl-news.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1629