Raytheon needs Cyber Ninjas

The age of hackers with security clearances has officially arrived:

NYT: CYBERWAR: Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for the United States

At a Raytheon facility here south of the Kennedy Space Center, a hub of innovation in an earlier era, rock music blares and empty cans of Mountain Dew pile up as engineers create tools to protect the Pentagon’s computers and crack into the networks of countries that could become adversaries. Prizes like cappuccino machines and stacks of cash spur them on, and a gong heralds each major breakthrough.

And at Dallas-based Raytheon Cybersecurity Solutions, they're hiring:

Information Security Solutions is Hiring Cyber Professionals

Raytheon Information Security Solutions, which helps protect the nation’s critical infrastructures and networks, has more than 150 positions open for engineers, information security professionals and business development managers.

We call these employees our cyber professionals, those who exercise their dexterity and hand-eye coordination through tackling complex cyber security problems, and build their biceps lifting Red Bull and Mountain Dew cans hundreds of times a day to fight the digital cyber war.

The jobs are in a variety of locations, including:

Linthicum/Fort Meade, Md.
Melbourne, Fla.
Northern Virginia (various locations)
Garland, Texas

Relocation assistance may be available.

Positions include:

Information Operations/Information Assurance– cyber professionals
Software engineers/developers – JAVA/J2EE/, JAVA/XML, C++
FPGA expertise
Software security engineers
Test engineers
Software testers
Systems administrators - Linux, Solaris, Unix, Red Hat, VMware (Certifications are preferred)
Systems engineers - CNO, CNA, CNE, NOC, Requirements management
Network and security engineers - CISSP
Cyber and information security
Program management
Capture management
Business development
Vulnerability assessment engineers
Intrusion detection engineers
Information systems security engineers
Certification and accreditation engineers
Project managers - information systems
Oracle/Sybase database administrators
Web developers (HTML, Java)
Help desk
Data modeling engineers
Technical writers
Reverse engineers
Kernel developers
Secure network engineers
System integrators engineers
Configuration management - ClearCase/ClearQuest
Deployment engineers
Media sanitation specialists
Site security specialist - IT focused
Former military personnel

A variety of security clearance levels are required for these positions, up to a TS/SCI clearance with a fullscope polygraph.

America's Most Wanted: Supermax Edition

While Tweeting (@ NB_Chris) the other day about the curious semiotics of the ongoing debate about whether the Guantanamo detainees should be relocated to the "Alcatraz of the Rockies" (properly know as the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility (ADX) Florence, affectionately SUPERMAX), I decided to look and see if I could find any information about who is currently imprisoned there. And discovered a completely mind-blowing roster at the dedicated Wikipedia page. So as you read the debate unfolding in the daily news, consider whether the addition of KSM and co to this mix wouldn't make for the ultimate prison flick. Can you imagine this crew collaborating on a breakout? Casting the big screen version? Batman: Arkham ADX?


Omar Abdel-Rahman, "The Blind Sheik"


Ted Kaczynski, "The Unambomber"


Black Panther H. Rap Brown ("violence is as American as cherry pie)


Enron CFO Andy Fastow


John Walker Lindh, "the American Taliban"


Timithy McVeigh co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing, Terry Nichols


FBI traitor Robert Hanssen


Zacarias Moussaoui, "the twentieth hijacker"


Mexican drug lord Francisco Javier Arellano Felix, aka "El Tigrillo"


Serial killer Michael Swango, the doctor who killed his patients


Shoe bomber Richard Reid


Japanese Red Army bomber Yu Kikumura*


John Gotti lieutenant Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano


Escape artist Richard Lee McNair


Abortion bomber and wilderness survivor Eric Rudolph


Lucchese crime family underboss Anthony "Gaspipe" Casso


Queens druglord Kenneth "Supreme" McGriff


White supremacist Matt Hale


World Trade Center bomber and Operation Bojinka plotter Ramzi Yousef

Down the street from SUPERMAX is the Colorado Prison Museum, which sells "inmate arts and crafts" in the gift shop. What I wouldn't pay to see what these guys come up with in wood shop.

*(recently released)

IN MEMORIUM

Glad for a Memorial Day respite in our way-too-busy schedules, I had a nice dinner with a friend. When I arrived at her house I greeted her in the name of the holiday, and for the rest of the evening our conversation wound in and out of remembering the dead—including the duck on the dinner table.

Memorial Day began to honor the dead of the Civil War, the fallen soldiers on both sides. It evolved in some parts of the country into Remembrance Day when people put flowers on the graves of all of their loved ones. Once when I visited my father's second wife in Idaho over the Memorial Day weekend, she helped me put flowers on my father's and paternal grandparents' graves. Sales of potted mums were booming that weekend in that part of the country. Every cemetery was adorned with flowers.

In my friend's kitchen this weekend, as she prepared the meal, we thought about our country's servicemen and service women, especially the casualties of the wars in our own lifetimes, Vietnam and Iraq. It struck us a lot of dying to remember. During the leisurely, lovely meal—she is an excellent cook and gracious hostess—my friend's deceased husband was also on our minds. He died several years ago after a valiant struggle with disease. His body became the battleground. Not all of our heroic dead are felled by armed combat in distant lands.

And then there was the duck. It was a pastured duck: locally raised with real time in the out of doors. My friend won't eat factory-raised poultry, not after the time when she and her husband happened to drive by a chicken-transport truck crammed with birds on a hot West Texas highway. She saw one white leghorn in such a pose of abject suffering that it made her cry. She's not an excessively sentimental woman, but that was one of those coincidental moments that can brand a person's conscience for life. No more factory-raised fast-food chicken meals for her.

Our dinner duck had had a good life. According to the rancher who raised it, during the recent heavy rains in our area, the ducks rejoiced. They couldn't be brought into the duck house the night of the rain because they were all swimming in the middle of the rain-swollen pond. Roasted and served with a simple sauce of current jelly spiked with Meyer lemon juice and thyme, it was a delicious duck. It gave us sustenance to for the work we have to do. Innumerable chickens, and cows, and pigs would never have existed if it wasn't for human need and want. But they should not live lives of abject suffering as grist for the mill of Food, Inc. For one thing, Big Food is all about big profits, not good nutrition for people, much less the well-being of the Earth. And for another thing, even a hopeless white leghorn is a fellow sentient creature.

Does a chicken matter as much as a military veteran? No, of course not. And yet, yes. It's an abominable continuum, I think, from a bird being grist in the mill of Big Food to a human becoming fodder for the cannons of War, Inc. Deaths such as that are something that we should remember with great honor, and remember over and over, until it never happens any more, and then remember forever so it never happens again.

Diplomacy

On the weekend Terminator: Salvation opens, check out this article in New Scientist on "Nine Games Computers are Ruining For Humanity." We're basically looking at the usual suspects--chess, checkers, tic-tac-toe, and more recently poker. My thought on this has always been: Wake me up when the machines start kicking ass at Diplomacy. 

For those who didn't waste their early years under the thumb of The Avalon Hill Game Company, Diplomacy, first published in 1959, is a social experiment in the guise of a World War I era wargame. Each player is one of the Great Powers, from Britain in the West to Turkey in the east.  Each turn represents a season of the year in which the player may move his armies and navies a limited distance on the board. Warfare is a simple matter: the country with the most armies or navies in support of its move wins. The genius of the game is that the Powers' strengths are calibrated to the point that it is impossible to win or even survive without alliances. As the rules politely state, "Diplomacy is a game of promises kept, and promises broken."

The game builds in a period between each turn for players to negotiate: 30 minutes before the first turn and 15 minutes between subsequent turns. This makes Diplomacy interminable face to face, but with adjustments it has proven perfect for playing by mail (and nowadays by e-mail). Anyway, after the negotiation period, players submit their orders in a specific language developed for the game. If an order is not expressed correctly, it does not occur. A simple example would be that if Turkey wanted to move an army to Constantinople to Bulgaria, the order would have to read A Con-Bul. If the army moving from Constantinople was moving to support an attack of another army, it would add an S and then list the army it was moving to support (A Con-Bul S A Rum-Bul). Orders are open and read and carried out if possible. Needless to say, this required specificity means that one of the most effective ways to stab someone in the back and retain some plausible deniability has always been to screw up the order on purpose. Head to Boardgame Geek for examples of Diplomacy perfidity. (My favorite is probably the father who taught his son how the world really works by solemnly sealing an alliance, showing him his written orders, and then through slight of hand, replacing the order with a blank piece of paper). 

Programming the computer in the Dip "language" would be easy enough. Additionally, there has to be an optimal play for each Power in each turn, and no doubt that could also be determined. I would think that the problem might be, as I said above, that you are almost never in a position to make the optimal move on your own. Establishing what should be done is the easy part; convincing another player or a group of players to assist is the difficulty. So assuming you played by e-mail, the computer would have to be programmed to propose alliances, analyze proposed alliances from other players, decide when to abandon a partnership, determine when a partner is about to deliver a well timed stab in the back (how do you express "untrustworthy son of a bitch" in binary?) and how to respond to that action. 

It could also create an interesting Turing situation--should the human players even be made aware that one or more of the countries in the game would be played by software? They probably shouldn't. Honestly, one of the things you have to deal with in Diplomacy is the meta-game--the emotional effect, i.e. simmering rage, your action will have on your opponent. If you know what you do will have no such effect on one of the players, and also no impact on her later dealings with you, you would probably feel freer to backstab her versus another player. (To be fair, if you know that one of your opponents will never renege on an agreement once made, that is temporarily a point in favor of that player, but to win the game, eventually you will have to abandon an agreement, or at least be able to entertain the possibility.) 

So bumbling through this, the key here isn't so much the number crunching because that part of the game is simplified enough (there are not that many pieces in the game and the situation on the game board is open) that it can be easily grasped by the human mind; the machine doesn't have its usual advantage in that area. What a computer would need to compete in Diplomacy is the ability to read human beings' intentions (which is no doubt coming) and the ability to mimic human behavior by convincingly lying its ass off, which one hopes is a little further down the road. 

DEVOUR APOCALYPTIC ICE

Yes, 7-Eleven is now selling apocalypse-themed Slurpees. The above Schwarzeneggerian command is bannered across the location near my home, and is the first 7-Eleven sign that has gotten my attention in some time.

This blood-orange Slurpee® drink flavor awakens the machine in you with a sweet, citrus taste. Fill your Terminator Salvation collectible Slurpee cup with the Apocalyptic Ice Slurpee drink. It is sure to keep you cool as the weather begins to heat up.



Apparently this Terminator-themed product placement effort goes further than death Slurpees and demonic cyborg collector straws. 7-Eleven paid good money to be featured as one of the landmarks of the post-apocalyptic future:

7-Eleven stores will make the most of their virtual destruction following a nuclear attack in the upcoming Terminator Salvation. The Dallas-based convenience retailer announced what it called its "biggest participation ever in a major motion picture," beginning today (Friday). That participation includes a wrecked store standing in the background as two "mega-machines" battle humans in a major fight scene, toys and video games, an online sweepstakes, and lots of Terminator Slurpee items, including an orange-lychee Slurpee drink called Apocalyptic Ice, produced especially for the 7-Eleven-Warner Bros. tie-in by the Coca-Cola company. The movie is set to open on May 21.

When I go to the mall, I always make a point of imagining it as a post-apocalyptic ruin. And I have purchased inedible cheese dogs and strange foreign foods in some of the world's most dangerous 7-Elevens in my day*, usually in cracked-out hoods. What would be seriously cool—if 7-Eleven created a product placement flagship store, a location in a scary-ass neighborhood that was a perfect simulation of a freshly discovered post-apocalyptic 7-Eleven, partially stocked, including an inventory of dusty vintage magazines from the future, and the last cold beer on the planet. I would totally siphon my gas there.

(*Speaking of which, a tour guide of the world's most dangerous convenience stores would kind of rock.)

Quantum entangled prayer?

As a rule, I'm quite skeptical of supernatural and paranormal phenomena. I don't dismiss that in many instances there is some strange effect at work--personal experience is a great convincer--but I'm steadfast in my belief that the strange and mystical can be explained by natural forces, with no "super" prefix required. That doesn't mean such forces must be presently known or understood. Cosmology and quantum mechanics show that the more we learn, the more we understand how stunningly little we actually understand about how the universe works.

So you can understand how my interest would be piqued yesterday when I heard an NPR report--part of an ongoing "The Science of Spirituality" series--on Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person? One study in particular was striking, because it seemed to imply that couples separated by some distance maintain some sort of undefined "connection" with each other:

As the session begins, Dean Radin, a senior scientist here, watches as a computer shows changes in J.D.'s blood pressure and perspiration. When J.D. sees the image of his wife, the steady lines suddenly jump and become ragged. The question is: Will Teena's nervous system follow suit?

"Notice how here … see, there's a change in the blood volume," says Radin, pointing to a screen charting Teena's measurements. "A sudden change like that is sometimes associated with an orienting response. If you suddenly hear somebody whispering in your ear, and there's nobody around, you have this sense of what? What was that? That's more or less what we're seeing in the physiology."

An hour later, Radin displays Teena's graph, which shows a flat line during the times her husband was not staring at her image, but when her husband began to stare at her, she stopped relaxing and became "aroused" within about two seconds.

After running 36 couples through this test, the researchers found that when one person focused his thoughts on his partner, the partner's blood flow and perspiration dramatically changed within two seconds. The odds of this happening by chance were 1 in 11,000. Three dozen double blind, randomized studies by such institutions as the University of Washington and the University of Edinburgh have reported similar results.

Obviously, Alfred Bester would be tickled by these kinds of studies. Telepathy is, after all, a long-cherished science fiction trope, albeit one that's tolerated despite a lack of substantial scientific credibility. But how then (assuming the results are indeed valid) could science explain such seemingly paranormal double-blind test results? By invoking the decidedly SFnal phrase quantum entanglement.

Here's how it works. Once two particles have interacted, if you separate them, even by miles, they behave as if they're still connected. So far, this has only been demonstrated on the subatomic level.

But Radin wonders: Could people in close relationships — couples, siblings, parent and child — also be "entangled"? Not just emotionally, and psychologically — but also physically?

"If it is true that entanglement actually persists, by means of which we don't understand," he says, "if they are physically entangled, you should be able to separate them, poke one, and see the other one flinch."

This idea — that we may be connected at some molecular level — echoes the words of mystics down the ages. And it appeals to some scientists.

This is, simply put, amazing stuff. Even though skeptics rightly point out that quantum entanglement as we know it doesn't function in this manner, quantum entanglement is so poorly understood ("Magic to us," as Sir Arthur C. Clark might have said) that there may be undiscovered tangential loopholes that will allow for effects such as this. And even if quantum entanglement proves a dead end, it at least serves as a valid starting point for future research, until either new avenues of investigation are found or the initial studies are discredited. Whichever come first.

This conflation of the supernatural with quantum physics brings to mind an African missionary who celebrated mass as a visiting priest at my church some years back. Oddly enough, the priest bore more than a passing resemblance to SF author Samuel R. Delany, complete with a thick white beard. He wore one of those black knit cuffy skull caps, and had an enthusiastic personality, literally bubbling over with energy.

When he began his homily, he caught my attention right away by discussing the creation of the universe during the Big Bang "13 billion years ago," and how the evolution of the universe is evidence of God's majesty. Rather than viewing science as an enemy of theology, he embraced it and used it as an ally (which isn't always the case in Texas, as evidenced by recent shenanigans perpetrated by the Texas State Board of Education). Then he did something I never expected to hear in church. He invoked Max Planck:

"All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this minute solar system of the atom together....We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. The mind is the matrix of all matter." --Max Planck

He finished his homily with a wonderful metaphore. If God is present in the subatomic, quantum physics level of matter (and the point of his arguement is that He is) then we are suffused and awash in God's presence as a fish is awash in water.

The universe is a wondrous thing, be you a theist, atheist or agnostic. Science is the single best tool we have for learning about and understanding this universe (or any other). How anyone, of any particular belief could hold otherwise is, frankly, beyond me.

Besides, it's great fodder for SFnal story ideas. What's the over/under on the first appearance of "Quantum entanglement telepathy" fiction?

MEMORY: 37

First
Previous

“Flavius!” Acaona screamed.

The foothead reared back suddenly. As it did so, a dark fissure snaked its way across the mottled skin. A great crescent slice of jaw fell away, streaming purple blood. Neatly bisected lip-to-lip, the foothead thrashed wildly, jagged teeth gnashing against others no longer there.

Flavius stood in the same spot, drenched in purple blood. The point of Memory had buried itself a good foot into the ground from the momentum of Flavius’ stroke. Flavius twisted his wrist to free the sword, holding it defiantly overhead.

“I am Flavius MacDuff, of Clan MacDuff,” he bellowed, his words echoing off the palace walls, “descended of Bellona's bridegroom, the great Thane of Fife who slaughtered the Norse and Cawdor, and toppled the tyrant MacBeth! I am the bane of both the Whistard Holdchau and the Phatrical of Koor! Death has claimed me a thousand times over, and I jam my thumb into his rheumy eyes and rise to live another day! Yer chase ends here, beastie. I am yer doom!”

Screaming to wake the dead, he charged the moirontea. The great beast stomped at him with a snarling foothead, but Flavius neatly pivoted and with an upswing nearly severed it from the leg. He stabbed upward, Memory slicing though the knobby hide as if it were paper. Violet blood rained down. The moironteau howled in agony, lurching and stumbling to escape its tormenter. A quick slice here laid open a hip joint, and the foothead slumped to the ground, crippled. Another foothead bit into the air, desperately hoisting the beast’s enormous bulk away from danger. But Flavius leapt up onto the crippled foothead, and from there struck the other with Memory, splitting the jaw. It’s extra-dimensional hold faltered. Flavius leapt away as the moironteau crashed to the ground.

Moaning pitiously, the moironteau pawed at the ground, unable to support itself. Flavius quickly and methodically worked his way around the beast, dispatching the remaining four footheads with cold precision. Upon reaching the last one, Flavius held up his right thumb, then, without a moment’s hesitation, jammed it roughly into one of the many cold, black eyes ringing the foothead’s maw.

He climbed atop the moironteau’s body, setting to work with Memory. The beast’s twitches and moans ceased as Flavius located the vital organs. Satisfied, he leapt down from the butchered carcass, wiping his bloody brow.

“God damn, that felt good!” he said, then noticed Acaona, Papantzin and Captain Pacal--still carrying the Empress--gaping at him. “What? These bastards never faced me in a fair fight. Killed me a hundred times or more. I ken I’m entitled to a bit of enjoyment.”

“You... you...” managed Acaona. “How did you do that?”

“Well,” Flavius shrugged, suddenly self-conscious, “Memory here’s a wee bit sharper than most other swords. That helps. And then there’s my memories stored in the bonnie blade. Turns out to be more than just my thoughts. My body’s remembering things...” He grimaced slightly, rubbing his shoulder. “But I ken I’ll be hurting come morning.”

Across the garden, a wall buckled. Smoke rose from the rooftops beyond.

“Ah. That’d be more of the beastie’s friends. I ken we’d best be moving along.”

“Where can we go?” Acaona asked.

“Same place as before, yon opera hall,” Flavius answered. “At least now we dinnae have to worry about the doors being locked.”

They skirted the dead moironteau and made for the gaping hole in the opera hall. The palace shuddered continuously now, punctuated every so often by abrupt lurches. All around, flames flickered among the towers and rooftops and the air stank of bitter smoke. A flight of wejii hummed past overhead, rushing to intercept a moironteau.

“These creatures, they’re everywhere,” muttered Pacal, listening to the fractured communications through his earpiece. “There’s not enough of the Eternal Militia in the palace to turn them back.”

“Which is why I want to find Parric and abandon this cosm,” growled Flavius as he clambered over the rubble into the ruined opera hall. “Lass, tell the captain this is where we part ways.”

Pacal’s face tightened as Acaona relayed the message.

“Absolutely not,” Pacal said. “I cannot hope to defend Her Imperial Majesty against these creatures from otherwhere. My squad is dead, injured, scattered. I’m following him.”

In the distance, bursts of green flame roiled around a rampaging moironteau. The creature ignored the attacking wejii, instead loping across the gardens toward the ruined opera hall.

Flavius glared at Pacal and shook his head. “Hell of a time to start making sense.” The floor of the opera hall had collapsed, offering a treacherous path of broken seats and beams down to the level below, where a gaping hold led to levels still lower. Flavius shoved Acaona roughly down into the wreckage, then Pacal and the Empress, and finally Papantzin. “Quickly, people! Quickly! I ken ya’d all love to see me cut another of them beasties to ribbons, but-- oh, hell. The bastard’s got friends.”

Two more moironteau had joined the fray, one plucking a wejii out of the air and smashing it to bits against the ground. The other wejii fell back out of easy reach of the newcomers, dividing their marginally effective cuayab fire among the three moironteau.

“Damn it, this innae imperial receiving line, people! Move!” Flavius bodily heaved Papantzin to the lower level, and gave Pacal a kick to the bottom as well. Hazarding a glance over his shoulder, he saw the lead moironteau was less than 20 yards away. Flavius leapt down himself.

Acaona knelt at the edge of the jagged opening in the lower floor, trying to find a handhold to lower herself down.

“No! There’s nae time for that,” shouted Flavius, running the opposite direction and dragging Pacal along. “Down this hall--quickly!”

The ceiling above shuddered and groaned as a tremendous weight landed on top of it.

“Keep moving,” Flavius ordered, his claymore held ready in one hand. The hall was a narrow one. If it came down to a fight, his use of Memory would be restricted. “Get as far down the hall as ya--”

The ceiling ahead of them collapsed, sending a cloud of splinters and dust into the hall. Acaona cried out. A fat, green-mottled foothead blocked the way.

“Back!” shouted Flavius. “Back the other way!” No sooner had the words left his mouth then a foothead lunged into the open end of the hall, black eyes gleaming in the flickering light as row upon row of knife-like teeth gnashed and snapped their way toward the trapped party.

Continued