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2005-09-09 Home Front: Tech

Missile Defense: Losing Software Supremacy

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Posted by Greger Spack9143 2005-09-09 15:23|| || Front Page|| [11131 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 GS9143 -- disturbing, this is the second piece on this topic in recent days, particularly as it relates to ChiCom advances.

Posted by Captain America 2005-09-09 17:34|| 2005-09-09 17:34|| Front Page Top

#2 Fred Brooks in the Mythical Man Month first described the diseconomies of scale in software development fourty years ago. Despite what the author assumes, more SW engineers does not equal more software. I have worked with many software engineers from both India and China and they are years behind the West in understanding the key to software development which is process. And BTW both have very significant cultural problems to overcome in getting there.

Posted by phil_b 2005-09-09 17:53|| 2005-09-09 17:53|| Front Page Top

#3 A million monkeys will not produce better software.

Posted by Sock Puppet OÂ´ Doom 2005-09-09 17:59|| 2005-09-09 17:59|| Front Page Top

#4 Why can't the DOD setup a decoupled Internet that is independent, with no interface with the attack and virus infected Internet?

Posted by Thuger Omaitle6694 2005-09-09 18:16|| 2005-09-09 18:16|| Front Page Top

#5 The DOD has SIPRNET (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network) that is used for classified transmissions and is not physically connected to the internet.

Posted by ed 2005-09-09 18:21|| 2005-09-09 18:21|| Front Page Top

#6 The articles are based on two unproved premises:

1) That China is outprodicing scientists

2) and that China is making better use of more women.

China is a closed society. Where are the numbers? I doubt there are numbers, just a lot of interviewees the writer was lucky enough to get to say we are behind.

My main concern in military computing is being able to detect and to counteract low tech attempts by the Chinese to defeat high tech. That is where China will far more likely cause damage.

Posted by badanov 2005-09-09 18:21|| http://www.freefirezone.org]">[http://www.freefirezone.org] 2005-09-09 18:21|| Front Page Top

#7 Thuger, here's hoping that DOD does... and phil_b, re: your last sentence -- what cultural problems?

Posted by Flock Gromp2363 2005-09-09 18:21|| 2005-09-09 18:21|| Front Page Top

#8 Insert obligatory Skynet joke here.

Posted by badanov 2005-09-09 18:22|| http://www.freefirezone.org]">[http://www.freefirezone.org] 2005-09-09 18:22|| Front Page Top

#9 China already produces 4 times the number of science and engraduates as the US, and the gap is widening. While US graduates are steady or slightly decreasing at 60,000/year, China is at about 240,000 and increasing as they get richer. The same trend applies wrt India.

In addition, many experienced US engineers move to different jobs where the money is better and/or the stress less. Where the US makes up is by importing large numbers of foreign technical talent (many Indian and Chinese, but also European, esp. in the sciences). I have worked with many companies where the engineers and scientists were over 50% foreign (at 80-130K salaries for worker bees). Not only are these well paying jobs, but the amount of technical and design leakage to overseas competitors is incredible. This even applies (to a lesser extent) to the military weapons companies/labs.

Posted by ed 2005-09-09 18:45|| 2005-09-09 18:45|| Front Page Top

#10 Fact is that China is buying Russian S300 systems. They cannot develop anything comparable.

Likewise for India. They have bought a few S300s, wish to buy the Israeli Arrow and are now looking at a US Patriot PAC3 purchase.

Posted by john 2005-09-09 18:54|| 2005-09-09 18:54|| Front Page Top

#11 FG, there is a long answer and a short answer to your question. I'll give you the short answer. Scaling up SW development is an extremely hard problem, but a large part of the answer is a culture of cooperative independence. People have to work in loosely coupled groups with high levels of personal responsibility and group commitment. That is they must work to solve problems as individuals, and within and between groups. Getting the right balance is hard.

At the risk of a gross simplification, Chinese and Indians have the opposite problem. You have to tell the Chinese everything, whereas you can't tell the Indians shit, especially the men (Indian women are much better at working cooperatively). The Chinese are averse to taking personal responsibility and shift problems onto the group or other groups whereas the Indian men have trouble facing up to problems they are unable to fix themselves and need to be shared with the group.

Posted by phil_b 2005-09-09 18:55|| 2005-09-09 18:55|| Front Page Top

#12 Someone seems to forget that the US makes up in engineers by immigration. The number of 1HB visas is now over 200k a year. I remember when it as around 10K a year. Do you see the worlds best minds immigrating to China? to India? Gee, I wonder why. Just remember all the foreign minds who migrated to the US just before and during WWII [and yes after, thank you Mr. Von Braun].

Posted by Greter Cranter2502 2005-09-09 19:51|| 2005-09-09 19:51|| Front Page Top

#13 The visa issue?
That's why skilled US born engineers like myself and others I know can't find work in the US.
ITS BS. The visa guys are scab labor!

Posted by 3dc 2005-09-09 21:09|| 2005-09-09 21:09|| Front Page Top

#14 I know a lot of great software engineers in the US - I also know a lot that are unemployed or switched to other fields, because their job was sent offshore. All that education and training - down the drain.

One day we may find ourselves facing a crisis with mainland China. And when the phones suddenly stop working, the power goes out, and the software in the US military vessels and C&C centers 'malfunctions' - we may regret outsourcing our country's software industry.

Posted by AJackson 2005-09-09 22:14|| 2005-09-09 22:14|| Front Page Top

#15 Like I said before, wiggins, the nation ought to come before the idols of "free trade" mammon.

The gentleman is correct that native American engineers are being deliberately unemployed by American corporations, not just with H1B, but with "offshore" arrangements that pump up foreign mind muscle, at the expense of an atrophied domestic one. This is all being done for short term shareholder happy news.

American corporations such as IBM are selling "enabling" technologies like "MultiSite," which allows US companies to gradually shift their code base to foreign shores, while veiling the activity as necessary for mere "supplemental" development work to the handful of Americans needed to keep applications alive during the transition.

Senior IT execs in most of America's big firms do not give a rat's ass about the impact on American national security, they only care about doing what they have always done cheaper than yesterday.

My experience of H1B s/w developers is that very few of the 35 - 45 year old Chinese can be viewed as potential converts to America. If you share a few beers, you soon learn that the attitude is pretty much "we are going to fuck you up." Senior IT execs know that this attitude is prevalent, and don't care.

The younger Chinese developers seem to have a different attitude. A great many of them appear to be happy to be on these shores, and have no desire to go back. Perhaps there is some hope in that, but I am not sanguine.

The Indians are another kettle of fish. They are often as homebound as their ChiCom counterparts, but are rather direct about their attitudes, and while posing a threat to America's long term engineering capacity, they generally do not have a hard on for the Great Satan.

I am a pathological despiser of the dhimmicrat party, but the GOP is doing our nation no favors in its idiotic embrace of so-called "free trade," while intellectual capital, as well as equity, drains out to places that are an existential threat : red China.

Hell, we've seen this crap before, as when IBM sold Hollerith equipment to the Nazis, and Ford made trucks for the Wehrmacht.

Posted by IT Insider 2005-09-09 23:37|| 2005-09-09 23:37|| Front Page Top

#16 Thuger

Its already been done. Years ago. And I am not talking SIPRNET. This is far more secure. Got some really hairy detection cybernetics stuff on it straight out of the Terminator movies.

Posted by OldSpook 2005-09-09 23:39|| 2005-09-09 23:39|| Front Page Top

23:47 Cheaderhead
23:44 Captain America
23:43 AJackson
23:43 ed
23:42 ed
23:39 OldSpook
23:37 IT Insider
23:35 Bomb-a-rama
23:35 Jan
23:35 ed
23:28 Jan
23:28 Tony
23:26 Bomb-a-rama
23:22 Alaska Paul
23:08 Alaska Paul
22:59 JosephMendiola
22:45 Phil Fraering
22:36 DanNY
22:34 Rafael
22:20 JosephMendiola
22:14 AJackson
22:11 Alaska Paul
22:08 Alaska Paul
22:00 JosephMendiola