You may have heard the phrase, “The military is always preparing to fight the last war.” Any military that has been established for a length of time seems to get dragged down by entrenched ideologies and traditions. This leads them to become very rigid. The United States military is a great example of this. During its War on Terror it has clung to its usual tactics, which work well against other large national militaries but are more or less useless against asymmetrical tactics. It has also proven incompetent at information security, which is no a major component in warfare:
After uncovering a massive trove of social media-based intelligence left on multiple Amazon Web Services S3 storage buckets by a Defense Department contractor, the cloud security firm UpGuard has disclosed yet another major cloud storage breach of sensitive intelligence information. This time, the data exposed includes highly classified data and software associated with the Distributed Common Ground System-Army (DCGS-A), an intelligence distribution platform that DOD has spent billions to develop. Specifically, the breach involves software for a cloud-based component of DCGS-A called “Red Disk.”
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for government transparency and appreciate the military’s current, albeit accidental, dedication to it. However, from a strategy standpoint this is pretty damned pitiful.