Every Marine a Blue-Haired Quasi-Rifleperson?

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://warontherocks.com/2019/08/every-marine-a-blue-haired-quasi-rifleperson/

By Nina Kollars and Emma Moore
warontherocks.com
August 21, 2019

All the U.S. military services suffer a shortage of competent and 
experienced cyber talent. But with a tiny pool of eligible candidates 
willing to do work for the Department of Defense, hiring programs need to 
rely on more than just patriotism to be successful. The most recent 
attempt to shore up cyber capabilities comes from the Marine Corps’ 
announcement that it will create a Cyber Auxiliary. Here too, this program 
runs aground by asking for too much and offering too little. The Cyber 
Auxiliary seeks volunteers willing to provide the “training, education, 
advising, and mentorship” needed within the Marine Corps, and to provide 
hands-on instruction in simulated environments.

The Marine Corps is feeling the pressure for real-world skills and 
training to defend its systems and to conduct offensive operations under 
conditions of competition as well as combat — especially as it continues 
to put flesh on its future warfare concepts, specifically its 
expeditionary access basing operations concepts in the joint fight. 
Whether those capabilities are provided by Cyber Command, or are organic 
to the force itself, the capability to integrate with cyber warriors and 
defend systems — particularly for expeditionary basing — matters. In 
theory, this is what the Cyber Auxiliary will do: guide and train the 
Marine Corps in supporting, conducting, and facilitating those operations. 
The details, though, as with many things in cyber, are scant.

In an innovative move for the Marine Corps, Cyber Auxiliary participants 
refreshingly need not meet the Marine Corps’ physical fitness requirements 
or its grooming standards to join — hair color and pull-ups are no longer 
limiting factors in an institution that places value on conformity, 
personal bearing, and physical fitness. Insofar as this is the case, the 
Corps appears to be trying to move beyond its self-imposed high-and-tight, 
square-jawed image in order to increase the state of the Corps’ cyber 
readiness.

Nevertheless, the authors remain doubtful of its success. The Cyber 
Auxiliary as currently described attempts to entice a community it knows 
nothing about. It is trying to do this as an institution with antithetical 
values and a fundamentally different culture from the community it seeks 
to entice. In short, the program is trying to gain talent without 
accommodating it. While fitness and grooming standards are, perhaps, 
limiting factors to entry for a broader set of occupational 
specializations in the Marine Corps, there are bigger issues with 
recruiting and integrating the current cyber workforce than a penchant for 
mohawks, purple locks, and flowing beards. Cyber Auxiliary mistakes the 
loosening of typical requirements for actual incentives to become part of 
the Marine Corps.

[...]

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