What's Brewin: The Super Cyber Command

Rumors, tips and sheer speculation about the ultimate structure of Defense Department cyber forces keep pouring into the What's Brewin HQ adjacent to the Sangres de Cristos Mountains in New Mexico.

Comment on this article in The Forum.Two of my sources close to the Defense Information Systems Agency tell me the super cyber command structure will incorporate the DISA network operations center and the Homeland Security Department's National Cyber Security Center, along with some help from the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Md.

Oversight of this interesting, if rather ungainly lash-up, will fall under the U.S Strategic Command, I'm told.

Cyber missions will be carried out by units within the three military departments, including the Air Force Cyber Command, the planned Navy Cyber Forces Command and the provisional Army Network Warfare Battalion,. The battalion was tantalizingly mentioned (with few details) by Army Chief Information Officer Lt. Gen. Jeff Sorenson in a series of speeches this summer, including this one at an Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association lunch in August.

Maybe GovExec and Nextgov should start a cyber command so we don't feel left out.

Lockheed's Cyber-Game-Croom Card

Lockheed Martin Corp. confirmed early last week that it had hired former DISA director Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Croom (and for some odd reason would not tell me his job title).

Later in the week, Lockheed said Croom will lead an overall companywide cyber strategy as vice president of cybersecurity solutions. Lockheed said it also hired Lee Holcomb, former chief technology officer at DHS and former NASA CIO, to head the Center for Cyber Security Innovation, which will centrally manage all stuff cyber for the company.

I think Croom and Holcomb will be very busy during the next few months. The timing on these hires could not be better.

Defense, UPS Cultural Training Model

Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speaking on Oct. 10 at the Marine Corps University in Quantico, Va., said Defense faces challenges in cultural and language training for its forces and leadership deployed abroad.

Cartwright said UPS, the international delivery company, provides a great model of success in these training programs that Defense could emulate, including putting employees into the program before they are sent overseas. "We've got to get in the same boat," Cartwright said.

That will require some long-term planning, based on my conversation with John Valeri, UPS vice president for international human resources.

According to Valeri, who says he is a talent scout for personnel who have the mojo to work abroad, the scouting starts early in a manager's career with interviews and psychological tests to determine if a candidate -- and his or her spouse -- has the ability to work and live in different cultures as part of a succession planning effort.

UPS strives to identify talent that can meet this test and then nurtures it, he said. This includes the ability to have a true worldview, not a myopic one, Valeri added.

Foreign language skills come second, and UPS will fund training in different languages for an employee and spouse. It also will sponsor a monthlong session with a family abroad.

Before an overseas assignment (and in UPS terms, this could be an American posted to Asia or an Asian posted to Europe), UPS sends the employee and family for what he called a "look see" in the country that could be their assignment to make sure they can handle cultural differences. The visit includes trips to everything from grocery stores to schools to potential homes, to check if the family will be comfortable.

Valeri said the basis of the UPS international executive talent search -- which he believes can be applied to Defense -- is to identify individuals who adapt well and who have the right stuff to work and live in any country on any continent early in their careers.

Maybe Defense needs a few good international talent scouts of its own.

I Know Past Is Prologue

Readers recently have chided me for not applying a historical perspective in this column, which I find amusing because I am now plowing through three hefty books that definitely provide that perspective.

They are: the biography of World War II spymaster and OSS chief, Wild Bill Donovan: The Last Hero (Times Books, 1982), by Anthony Cave Brown; American Prometheus (Vintage Books, 2006), which is the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who spearheaded development of the atom bomb, written by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (Perseus Publishing, 2005), by Conrad Black, which at 1,280 pages seems to be the book that never ends.

All provide quite relevant insights into events I cover today, particularly Brown's book, which depicts the resistance FDR and his spy chief encountered to establish central control of intelligence at a time when "intelligence shared was power shared," Brown wrote.

In a passage that foreshadows the fight over control of the cyber domain, Brown wrote the Army and Navy wanted to be in charge of intelligence in World War II because they felt they would be "badly disadvantaged if any other than they were put in charge of the new organization."

I'd love to write a book to update intelligence battles. But since the last one -- Vietnam on Trial: Westmoreland vs. CBS (Atheneum, 1987) -- took three years to write and returned about a dollar a day, I'll pass.

I need this gig so I can pay a lot of taxes, which in return will be used to bail out the banks that lent too many people too much money to buy too much house.

Beyond the Rough Draft of History

My favorite description of newspapers is they provide a "rough draft of history."

Now some bright soul needs to come up with a definition of where Web stories and columns fit in to the development of the historical record.

Then there's the two word description of newspapers: fish wrap, which harkens back to the day when fish and chip vendors wrapped that day's fish-to-go in the previous day's newspaper.

Think of this as digital fish wrap, if you like.