Pentagon to recruit Russian hackers

The U.S. government has a plan to put the skills of the best hackers in the world to work fighting terrorism and designing security systems for government agencies. John Arquilla, an adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama’s and the man who coined the term “cyberwarfare” told the UK’s Guardian newspaper that the U.S. Defense Department plans to hire about 100 hackers, primarily Russians for the initiative.

Arquilla accused the Pentagon of wasting billions of dollars on “pointless aircraft carriers, tanks and planes at the expense of nimbler, leaner strategy” of spending on experts. He said that as a result the U.S. has fallen behind other superpowers in the global cyber race.

“We intend to set up something like the English Bletchley Park (where the UK ran decryption operations during World War II),” said Arquilla. “We will hire Russians and Asians. They are definitely the best code crackers in the world. I have already established contact with several very influential hackers. I even brought one to meet the CEO of a major company to evaluate the vulnerability of his information systems. He managed to break into the system in just a few minutes.”