Clancy Urges CIOs: Seek Out the 'Smart People'

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1114813,00.asp

By Dennis Fisher
June 2, 2003 

WASHINGTON - In a rambling and somewhat odd keynote speech at the
Gartner IT Security Expo here Monday, author Tom Clancy urged the
assembled security specialists and CIOs in the audience to seek out
experts in other fields and apply their knowledge to the IT world.

"The world is full of smart people, and when you find out what some of
them are doing, you get smarter," Clancy said. "Everyone knows at
least one thing you can learn from them. So go learn."

Asked where he gets the information on the gadgets and technologies
that populate his novels, Clancy said that it's all out in the open,
and it's simply a matter of legwork and research. In the age of
information, when virtually anything you want to know is a few clicks
away, Clancy said there is no excuse for not finding what you need to
do your job better.

"There are no secrets in the world. The only hard part is finding the
right person to ask," he said. "If you have a phone, you can find out
anything you want in under 60 minutes. With the Internet, it's even
faster."

The idea, Clancy said, is to not limit yourself to one subject, to
broaden the scope of your intellectual activity.

"Fortune favors the prepared mind, as Louis Pasteur said. The best
guys are the ones who can cross disciplines," Clancy said. "The
smartest ones look at other fields and apply them to their own."

As Clancy veered from subject to subject - touching on issues as
diverse as Bill Clinton, baseball, the charm of Macs, and the relative
levels of corruption in Washington and Hollywood- the Gartner analysts
tasked to moderate his talk tried to steer him back to technology
topics. But they had little luck.

In what amounted to more of a collection of one-liners and anecdotes
than a speech, Clancy revealed himself to be a master name-dropper and
a man who is perpetually unhappy with the people on Capitol Hill.

After relating an anecdote about a congressman who dismissed an
expert's objections to a particular technology by saying, "Don't give
that laws of physics stuff," Clancy had this to say: "They don't have
an intelligence test for members of Congress. But I guess that's kind
of obvious."

After his monologue, two Gartner analysts came on stage and asked
Clancy to sit down with them for a discussion. "I have to sit down,
huh? I'll be on the extreme right," Clancy quipped.

Among Clancy's other verbal gems:

* "The one nice thing about being rich and famous is you get to meet 
  all kinds of interesting people. Actually, you meet all sorts of idiots 
  too, but you discard them." 

* "An extremist is someone who doesn't agree with you and does so 
  loudly." 

* "The president of the United States wanted to do away with Fidel 
  Castro, and he asked the CIA to do it. They of course failed 
  because they hired the Mafia to do it, and Castro wouldn't sit in 
  the front seat." 

* "That's why I'm a Mac driver: You don't have to know anything about 
  computers." 



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