Security Pie

OK. So this blog is both not about security at all and all about security at the same time. That is like catching two stones with one bird.

My inbox today carried a fresh bit of news from CIO magazine. An opinion column by Eric Lundquist, labelled “We need a national CIO, not a CTO” stipulated that CIO are a better match for US national role than a CTO. To paraphrase Lundquist’s message, CIO’s are firmly planted in the business realities of the day, while CTO focus on technologies “looking for uses”. Reminds me of the old adage of “legs firmly planted” vs. “head in the clouds”.

I firmly disagree.

Now I understand that I read CIO magazine and that is why I received this message. I also assume that by the nature of politics, all kinds of special interest groups raise their heads, so I would expect a similarly opinioned “Shepard’s Weekly” would have discussed a similar topic ”We need a national shepard, not a CTO” and that the international association of circus performers would like to propose “We need a national court jester, not a CTO”.

Joking aside, Mr. Lundquist put forth some good arguments. He stipulated that CIO can better manage a project. That CIOs hold the business first and technology second. To quote “Technologists are great at creating new companies, new products and new markets. They are not great at orchestrating lots of conflicting opinions, managing projects or – especially in the political realm – settling on the best possible choice given budget constraints and political realities.”. Mr. Lundquist is correct, but altogether misses the point.

YAPM (Yet another project manager) is NOT what the US needs. In a former life I frequented Crystal City often. There were many project managers there. 25% of them were very good. 50% were mediocre. 25% were awful. But there were lots of them. They crammed public transportation, caused the beltway to jam, and filled the cafeteria’s at lunch. You could not throw a rock without hitting a project manager for some obscure government entity.

The US needs a future. To be driven, its future needs to be based on a seemingly unachievable target. We had been driven like that many times in the past. The US developed the trasistor and the chip (which 40 years later made our lives mobile). The external combustion engine for the torpedo (which crammed power into tiny spaces). Composite materials for space exploration (and which later improved our golf and tennis games). It was a government sponsored program (DARPA) that created the Internet. Not Google, nor Microsoft, nor Facebook. Nor was it rear view mirror preening dudes on Sand Hill road on their way to their ranches outside Bozeman in a well appointed G5. No. It was the government. And for all the wrong reasons. A lot of it was due to the US government chasing the Soviet’s dream of ruling space. How I miss the Soviet’s for that reason (if only for that reason!).

While both the technology industry and the venture capital industry oppose “leapfrog” technologies (they can ”eat your cheese” and thus risky for business and are difficult to predict and thus risky for VCs, respectively), the US government should indeed drive technology forward. But not on a predictable, linear trajectory, as Sand Hill road does with social networking and other “me too” technologies, but in a hockey stick fashion. Sending a man to mars. Cloning sheep. Really analyzing our climate. Teleportation. Whatever.

For that you need a visionary CTO with a set of brass balls. Not a Cisco kowtowing CIO. And to address Mr. Lundquist’s example of the revolving doors for the national cybersecurity czar: Nor does the standard Symantec or McAfee worshipping CISO make a good cybersecurity czar.

And to conclude, Eric Lundquist is, however correct (even if for the wrong reason) in identifying the fallacy in the current dredge of proposed CEOs. None of the proposed CEO’s is a visionary. Sure, they navigated their ships admirably through the murky tempramental waters of the American economy, but none have really shown a vision for disruptive innovation. They have been keen followers, seeking the market scouts and then bearing down upon their cheese with their mighty heft. Cheese snatching should never be confused with vision and innovation. For that you need the likes of J. Craig Venter or even some “down to earth” science fiction writers. People who’d invest even if the future is still murky and the benefits, for now, unclear.

/al

PS – The opinions expressed are my own. Not my employer’s, Barack Obama’s, nor Cisco’s. As an entrepeneur and business man, I like my customers to stick with me. I dislike churn, except my competitor’s churn. I therefore dislike the term disruptive.

But I also know that healthcare for generations X Y and Z, as well as fuel costs, etc. are liable to eat up a vast chunk of our GDP, and the only way to prevent that is to increase our GDP. To increase GDP we need disruptive technologies, techniques and methodologies. I also know that the linear thinking preferred by the bankers that manage industry in general favors baby steps within established markets and does not foster disruptive technology.

Hence the opinion piece.