We live a a new world; a world run by computers. We put computers in our bodies, and we put our bodies in computers. Robotic legs that are improvements not handicaps are no longer science fiction. Cars are nothing more than mechatronic computers, and airplains nothing more than flying networked Solaris boxes. A made the first landing on a aircraft carrier last week. This trend shall continue, the government knows this, and that is why there has been huge investments in cyber-warfare (e.g. . America will have very slim pickings for recruits though. Other countries taking the crown in computing will also mean they take the crown as the worlds leading power. By the time the digital age is over the superpowers will be the determined as the states with the best hackers.
THE DECLINE
America held the crown of the from its conception in 1977 to 1989. After 1989 the U.S. has only won three more challenges; the most recent was ten years ago in 1997. Since then Russia, China, Poland, The Czech Republic, and Canada (In order of number of wins) have been the sole winners. This clearly shows that the U.S. has lost its cyber crown.
Today all that the U.S. has is the most software programmers worldwide. But India is set to take that crown by 2017.There are about 18.2 million software developers worldwide, a number that is due to rise to 26.4 million by 2019, a 45% increase, says Evans Data Corp. in its latest Global Developer Population and Demographic Study. Today, the U.S. leads the world in software developers, with about 3.6 million. India has about 2.75 million. But , versus 4.5 million in the U.S., a 25% increase though that period, Evans Data projects. India's software development growth rate is attributed, in part, to its population size, 1.2 billion, and relative youth, with about half the population under 25 years of age. Rapid economic growth is fueling interest in development. India's services firms hire, in many cases, thousands of new employees each quarter. Consequently, IT and software work is seen as clear path to the middle class for many of the nation's young. For instance, in one quarter this year, Tata Consultancy Services added more than 17,000 employees, gross, bringing its total headcount to 263,600. In the same quarter of 2010, the company had about 150,000 workers.The quality of learning the Indianstudents will receive can also be expected to be substantially better than in America. This is especially true for high school education but also true for College. India hasimplemented the program that is the "World's largest Simultaneous deployment of FOSS(Free and Open Software Systems)initiatives in Education sector." This program runs on GNU/Linux, and GNU/Linux hides no clockwork. The freedom of the system will allow the kids to earn a degree of knowledge that is unachievable using locked down, tyrannical, and proprietary systems like Micro$oft or Apple products. The number of colleges and high schools in the U.S. that run Windows and force Microsoft products on students is disgusting, and nothing could harm the nations future more.
WHY IT HAPPENED
The U.S. may have a large portion of the computer users in the world, and these users may be counted as being computer literate in polls; however, the truth is computer illiteracy is everywhere in America. Also, schools very definition of computer literacy is a joke. Being a user in no way makes you computer literate, and this is where America's delusion of being the most computer literate country comes from.
In America kids grow up with an advantage; they are given all sorts of computers. Ipods, cell phones, hand-held gaming devices, e-readers, game consoles, laptops, and desktops are all readily accessible to kids while growing up. The majority of these run software of the proprietary sort. The sort that is made to be easy to use. The sort that is made to hide away the confusing clockwork from the curious kids. Micro$oft and Apple are the largest dealers in such devices. What this leads to is the kids to doing very impressive things using these computers, but in the end their actual knowledge is very superficial. They can make the mechanical man dance but have no idea about how the clockwork actually functions.
The truth is most parents and teachers are just as if not more computer illiterate. Whats worse the majority of people I have worked with in the technology sector over the last six years have been just as inerudite. All they know how to do is memorize the steps needed to accomplish a task. This leads to very poor understanding, wasted time, and long term frustration. If they had used systems that allowed and even encouraged tinkering as kids the chances that their knowledge would be much more extensive is unquestionably higher. Kids with a combination of curiosity, free time, and motivation to be better at something than their parents will spend their time voluntarily learning.
CYBER-WARFARE
As you can see cyber-warfare has escalated over the years. The timeline is extremely biased though. The U.S. has participated in just as many dirty attacks, if not more, than other states shown on the timeline. The most famous of which is undoubtedly the created by the U.S. and Israel to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.
It is easy to see how these attacks can, in a increasingly computerized world, attack from many different angles, very quickly, and without warning. A very chilling and awakening article in , Eightkay presents in his/her article "Cyber Attacks On Equities Markets: The Real Threat of High Frequency Trading" a warning with the scenario where equities markets are attacked by infiltrating mainframes of High Frequency Trading Companies, Dark Pool Crossings, or Brokerage Companies. The effectiveness that such an attack could have was proved whena algorithm "crashed and stalled our markets for 30 minutes before anyone knew what was going on that day" (29:1). was the largest trader in equities before the malfunction, after the damage it agreed to be acquired by . With an accidental error causing $460 million in damages it is easy to see how if "You control 50 such programs at many HFT firms and you have a weapon of mass destruction"(29:1), and that weapon could wielded to cause a market collapse.
That is only one example of a modern day attack vector that renders all of the military might that America currently throws around completely useless. All it would take is one well coordinated cyber attack to cause enough damage to eradicate the ability for America to maintain its military. In the future there will be many more, and even more devastating attacks. Possibly even attacks that do more than just hijack video feed of drones, they could even actually take control.
HOW IT CAN BE FIXED
The clockwork needs to be exposed for more kids to spend their free time tinkering and learning more than a superficial knowledge of computers. This means migrating to open source. Proprietary software must be eliminated from at the very least schools. The code needs to be open and free for anyone to tinker with from a young age. All walls to the hacker spirit must be torn down.
The (The PDF can be ) needs to be put on a leash, and the needs to be put on a leash. The absolute absurdness of the penalties imposed by the law and bullying by Secret Service thugs will no doubt hamper the amount of freedom kids feel they have to play. Especially after tragedies like that of . A 50 year sentence, one million dollar fine, and being labelled a felon is completely unjust for downloading academic journals from JSTOR, which doesn't even violate copyright, and making them public.
If America doesn't open its eyes, and soon, then it will be lost. As the controls of the government grows, increasingly using extra legal action, the freedoms of computing are compromised. It shall destroy our ability to compete with other nations. We must act fast and as a nation demanding that the problems are fixed. We need to break the addiction to proprietary software and eliminate the absurd laws against hackers that are only seeking to make information available for everyone to learn. We must make learning legal again.
COPYLEFT
This work, like all others on my blog, is licensed under a . Please remix and spread the knowledge.
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