Richard Clarke: US is becoming too reliant on network technology in war-fighting

[sabra]

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/04/09/1175971018555.html

The pervasive use of off-the-shelf IT in national defence may pose a nightmarish security risk, former White House staffer Richard A. Clarke tells Patrick Gray.

IF MICROSOFT'S Windows operating system crashes and gives you the "blue screen of death", it's a pain in the proverbial, but it's hardly life-threatening. In 1998, however, a United States Navy destroyer, the USS Yorktown, was left stranded and vulnerable when its Windows NT-based control system failed.

The tale of the stranding of the Yorktown is a true story former White House staffer Richard A. Clarke cites as a warning. "(It) was out on an initial shakedown cruise. The Microsoft software that it was running in its control system went kafluey, and the entire ship stopped dead in the water and they had to send tugs out to pull it back ... (it was running) Windows," Mr Clarke told The Age.

Mr Clarke, the former United States National Co-ordinator for Security and Counterterrorism, who also served as President George Bush's adviser on cyber security until 2003, says the US is becoming too reliant on network technology in war-fighting.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. Is that what happened on 9/11? The blue screen of death?

something had to have gone wrong?

[TomInTib]

3. No, this is what happened...

next time you have twenty minutes, watch this.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5224963246223576086

[Rosa Luxemburg]

4. I think Richard Clarke has a lot more to tell us?

[tk2kewl]

2. reminds me of that Garmin ad...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brNX4xqlXJE