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My Thoughts on the Washingtonian Tech Titans List

I was a bit puzzled when I found out I made the “Washington’s Tech Titans” list assembled by Washingtonian Magazine.   Why in the world would they put me on that list?  Well, it is certainly good press and I’m definitely honored that they would consider me.   Here is what they wrote:

“Bob Gourley, founder and CTO, Crucial Point. As former CTO of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a prolific blogger at his site, CTOvision.com, Gourley is a respected connector and thinker on government tech issues.”

My consultancy Crucial Point LLC serves some great people and great firms and I wonder if any of them grabbed the ear of author Garrett Graff? Or maybe Garrett found my through my blog or my use of Twitter?  I’ll have to corner Garrett at the upcoming reception and and see if he can shed some light on this.

I can think of 1000 folks who are my tech mentors and leaders and visionaries who should be given this credit.  If the criteria is the amount of tech influence in DC an uncountable number have more than me.   So I have to admit there must be a flaw in the process that put me in the pages of Washingtonian (but please Garrett, don’t remove me from your list!).

But one thing is for sure.  Now that they put me in the company of those great techies I’m finding it very motivating.  I really am honored to be on that list, and that makes me want to work even harder to make a difference in the DC tech world.   I have always, like most other human beings, taken great pleasure in working on things bigger than myself, and now this is even more encouragement to keep that up.

Another way to think of this is the succinctly put statement by Tim O’Reilly that we need to “Work on Stuff That Matters.”

So, I might never know how I got on the Washingtonian’s Tech Titan’s list and I’m the first to say I’m really undeserving.   But I do know this.  It is going to motivate me to keep pressing ahead where ever I think I can make a difference.

Other CTOvision Awards and Recognition:

Discussion with Justin Rattner of Intel

This post is a follow-on to my previous report on the 21 April 2009 Xeon 5500 kickoff event hosted by Intel corporation (see: Intel’s New Chip ).   My previous post talked about the new “Intelligent Processors” being fielded by Intel.  With this post I want to provide a bit more information on a key presenter there, Justin Rattner.

You can find background on Justin from two credible sources, his official bio at Intel and a Wikipedia entry on him.

It turns out  Justin works for a pretty cool company.  While talking with Justin and Nigel Ballard (Intel’s Federal Marketing Manager) I mentioned that I run a blog focused on technologists and they invited me to attend a small session with members of the press (this is another great reason to run a blog, you can elbow your way into all sorts of places!).

Some of what I learned from this session with Justin follow:

The new Nehalem chip may very likely change the security game.  We got hints of that at the presentation earlier in the day when he talked about the enhanced ability to support encryption on the chip.  When we were able to ask follow-on questions he underscored something that many of us in the profession have come to realize—encryption is just one of many capabilities that must be brought to bear against the threat.  The best approach is a defense in depth approach.

As part of a defense in depth approach, the new management capabilities of Nehalem provides an ability to watch what is going on in the processor.  Little chips on the processor watch the big chips on the processor.  That enables review of the code that is executing.

When fully taken advantage of, this capability will significantly mitigate the ability of bad guys or malicious code to install and run root kits, for example.  No anti-virus capability can detect a well masked rootkit.  None of the OS guys can do this.  It must be done on the chipset.  The management module on the new Nehalem chip can provide that ability.  It can scan memory and watch processes and compare against known valid code and take action.  In Justin’s words:  “It has become painfully obvious that none of the current defenses are adequate.”  A stand alone management system that can command other processor components is a fundamental solution that will change the game.

I asked Justin one of my favorite questions about Moore’s law.  We all know no mere mortal should ever try to predict its death, but it is time to predict its loss of relevance, I believe.   Afterall, the performance statistics provided by Justin in his opening session showed dramatic, exponential performance enhancements that are far greater than the Moore’s law driven increase in number of transistors on a chip over time.  So I asked Justin to comment.  I asked, if Intel is blowing past the performance predictions of Moore’s law, isn’t Moore’s law less relevant?  Shouldn’t some sort of “Core’s Law” be cited instead, where the number of cores double every two years?  Isn’t that a better predictor of performance?

Justin’s comment: Intel has now realized that Moore’s law is no longer about performance.  Moore’s law is remarkable in terms of predicting the number of transistors, but the number of transistors it takes to increase performance count has grown geometrically.  In general, a 2x increase in performance might require a 4x increase in transistors.  Smarter design is required.  Smarter design, like multi-core and multi-thread gives dramatic increase in performance and many other benefits as well, including an ability to manage thermal and power budget on the chip, or adding virtualization support on the chip.  Doing things like this requires transistors, but it also enhances overall performance.

I asked Justin about the internal tensions between people who are both consumers of tech and high tech workers. As consumers they are receiving more and more capabilities, from handhelds to desktops to cloud services.  Then they go to work and as enterprise workers they are served with sub standard IT.  He knows this tension well and knows it is occurring everywhere, but sees big gains being made in servers available to enterprises and believes now is the moment to upgrade to provide increase enterprise capability to workers.  He believes in establishing private clouds, but also realistically knows public clouds will be with us forever.

I asked Justin about the handheld market.  There are over 3.3 billion active cell phone subscriber accounts, for example, and only 1.2 billion PCs.   Justin was clear in this:  Intel recognizes this market and is coming.  Expect their continued pursuit of a wide range of consumer products, building on success of their Atom chip and netbooks.   Look for Intel moving faster into embedded computing.  Opportunities are expected to “explode” in digital signage, automobiles, healthcare, and personal ecommerce.

I asked about Twitter.  It is in use by many folks at Intel, and there are internal collaborative tools and social media inside the corporation.  It seemed clear that they are not designing chips by 140 character Twitter micro-blog bursts, but they are enhancing internal coordination and cooperation.  And that is good for all of us IT users.

Overall I found Justin to be a world class tech leader and I felt honored to be in the same room with a person who is changing the world in such a huge way.  Thanks Justin for the time.

Cyberpower and National Security

Last week at the InfowarCon my friend Dan Kuehl handed me a copy of Cyberpower and National Security.  Cyberwar has been a topic Dan has been exploring in some detail for quite a while.  I first met Dan in 1996 when I was a student at the USMC Command and Staff College, and at that time Dan was already writing and exploring concepts related to cyber power and information warfare.  His deep focus and insights into this still emerging mission area continues today.

About the book, it is big. Not just in pages (it weighs in at 642 pages). It is big in info. Chapters are written by some of the greatest thinkers of the Cyber War mission area. Folks like Dan Kuehl, Edward Skoudis, Greg Rattray, Martin Libicki, Irving Lachow, Tim Thomas, Tom Wingfield and of course the editors Franklin Kramer, Stuart Starr and Larry Wentz. These and the other contributors are all well respected thought leaders and each provide insights I believe will be of use to today’s strategic planners.

As for the content, it starts with a great foundation and overview of what is meant by Cyberspace (building on Dan Kuehl’s well articulated definition) and also spells out key issues that policy makers and national security strategists must tackle. It then analyzes and explores changes in cyberspace including projections into the near future, and ends with an analysis of the impact of all these changes- including the considerations we must think through in our strategic deliberations.

I now consider this book a critical foundational work that should be studied by anyone who seeks to dialog on modern national security issues.  This book does for the strategic domain what the Common Audit Guidelines did for the operational cyber domain.

I know NDU will continue to examine these topics, and look forward to more material from them.  I also look forward to continuing to engage with others in academia via the Cyber Conflict Studies Association, a group that includes many of the authors of this Cyberpower and National Security work.

More CTOvision Reporting of Interest:

For more on these topics see the CTOvision Guide to National Security Technology and

Intel’s Next Generation Chip Architecture

On 21 April 2009 Intel corporation held an “Intelligent Processors” event which highlighted Intel’s next generation chip architecture and the industry leading companies who are incorporating this technology into their products.   The event, pulled together by Nigel Ballard of Intel, included demos by companies like Endeca, Cisco, Cray, Dell, HP, Oracle, VMware, Microsoft and Sun.  Nineteen hardware partners showed off Xeon 5500-based server products at this event.  Clearly Nigel is a man with convening authority.  When he calls, the big guns of the IT community come.

There were two other big draws at this event.  One was the Intel CTO, Justin Rattner.  I’ll be running a separate article on my interview of Justin shortly.  For now I’ll just say it was great having the new Nehalem Microarchitecture placed in context by a CTO of his stature.  He provided a keynote that underscored not only the technology of this smart server processor, but hit on the importance of innovating in a downturn.  His message was very clear and it is one I believe.  Now is the time to transform computing.

Eric Doyle, Intel’s enterprise Marketing Manager, provided a deeper dive into the power of real offerings based on the new chip, especially the Intel Xeon 5500 (I meant to ask Eric if he can shed some light on why the codename for this project was called Nahelem, since he said he lives in Oregon I wonder if he named it?).

The following are a few notes that combine things Justin Rattner and Eric Doyle said:

The Xeon 5500 based on the Nehalem project is  really the next era for computer chips, providing the biggest jump in productivity and efficiency since the Pentium Pro.    The Nehalem is hitting the market right now (you can get one for your house if you buy a MacPro).  The server based on the Nehalem is Xeon 5500.

The design of Nahalem is based on quad core design with two executable threads per core.  The design also provides an added degree of intelligence to how things are done on the chip.  Little processors on the chip oversee and manage the big processors in the chip and that concept allows for some very significant improvements to computing.  For example, energy efficiency is far more adaptable/configurable.  When you don’t need full processing power, less power is drawn.  New virtualization capabilities are also enabled with this approach.

The result is that the Xeon 5500 provides the largest jump in computer performance in Intel’s history.  In fact, this jump is the greatest performance leap in computer history.  This jump is not just because of more transistors on the chip, it is because of a very smart design involving more cores.

This chip also provides features that will enhance trustworthy computing.  I found this especially interesting and the whole discussion left me feeling far more upbeat about the future of IT.   I have no doubt security will still be a constant battle well into the future, but with this new design the ability to run cryptographic algorithms is sped up significantly.  This design enables a 40% improvement in OpenSSL performance and a 50% improvement in RSA2048, for example.  New capabilities will soon be enabled that leverage the chip’s management capabilities to attest to true endpoint state.  This will enable enhanced defenses against rootkits.

A few other bullets on Nehalem, from the Intel website:
Intel® microarchitecture, codenamed Nehalem, offers the latest in processor innovation, including:

  • Dynamic scalability, managed cores, threads, cache, interfaces, and power for energy-efficient performance on-demand.
  • Design and performance scalability for servers, workstations, notebooks, and desktops with support for 2-8+ cores and up to 16+ threads with Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology (Intel® HT Technology), and scalable cache sizes, system interconnects, and integrated memory controllers.
  • Intelligent performance on-demand with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology taking advantage of the processor’s power and thermal headroom. This enables increased performance of both multi-threaded and single-threaded workloads.
  • Increased performance on highly-threaded applications with Intel HT Technology, bringing high-performance applications into mainstream computing with 1-16+ threads optimized for new generation multi-core processor architecture.
  • Scalable shared memory features memory distributed to each processor with integrated memory controllers and Intel QuickPath Technology high-speed point-to-point interconnects to unleash the performance of future versions of next-generation Intel® multi-core processors.
  • Multi-level shared cache improves performance and efficiency by reducing latency to frequently used data.

What is the “so what” of all the above?  Upgrade your old servers now.  It will save energy, it will save space, it will reduce operating cost, it will increase security, and it will enable more advanced applications.

As for the many demos seen at this event, my favorite was the one presented by my friends at Endeca.  Endeca is one of the first companies fielding capabilities that can take maximum advantage of Nehalem.   The speed, scale and scope of the data they can parse and enable interaction with is incredible.  If you are considering an Endeca deployment, consider Xeon 5500.  Ask Endeca for the demo and you will see why.  It just makes total sense.

Soon I’ll post a few more thoughts based on my interview of Justin Rattner.  Say tuned and happy computing!

My Opinion: NYT wants cyber security to be a divisive issue.

I just read an article that seems designed to keep spreading FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) about the US government and the NSA.   The article is titled “Control of Cybersecurity Becomes Divisive Issue “.  It starts with an assertion stated as if it were a fact that says “The National Security Agency has been campaigning to lead the government’s rapidly growing cybersecurity programs”.

I bump into all sorts of people in the beltway, and there is a huge amount of buzz regarding cyber.  There is also a huge amount of pontification and rumor and hype, and I think Risen and Lichtblau have fallen for some of that.

I guess I should not be so hard on Risen and Lichtblau.  They are writing about stuff they have no real experience in (other than as writers) and their sources probably have their own biases or in some cases probably have no access to what is really going on.

Maybe I should just repeat something that all of us citizens should already know.  Don’t believe everything you read.

If I were writing the article, I think I would have started it out by saying “The National Security Agency has impressive security expertise and a long history of doing the right thing.  Their sensitive mission is conducted with great care and extensive oversight and they have great processes in place to continually improve what they do. They save lives and protect our privacy and do so with great honor.”  I would also have, as Risen and Lichtblau did, quoted my old friend Dale Meyerrose who said “They are probably the premier cybersecurity, cyberorganization in the world.”

There are plenty of other quotes by friends in that article.  All seem to agree that NSA should not be in total command of all aspects of cybersecurity.  OK, there are many many options on how the nation can do this.  But I really think it was wrong to start off the article with the assertion that the NSA is campaigning for anything.

The NSA has great capabilities that the nation will almost certainly take advantage of as we enhance our cyber security.  That doesn’t mean they are lobbying to be in command of everything.  If they were placed in total command then the country would place the right amount of checks and balances to ensure it worked well, and I would be totally fine with that.  If they are not in command then the country should place the right amount of coordination mechanisms in place to ensure the mission is served well, and I would be totaly fine with that.

What I would not be fine with is if we keep kicking the can down the road and keep a model where we are slow to react and cannot mount as vigorous of a defense as we should.

A hypothetical question to ask ourselves:  Which path would the Russian Business Network, a criminal group described by Verisign as “the baddest of the bad”, want us to take? They would probably want to see us fiddle around for as long as possible without taking clear action.  As for me, I want clear, decisive action that moves us forward.  And I don’t see anything coming from NYT that will help us embark on that path.

Related Reading

Would you like the truth about the NSA? Watch this one minute video

NSA and 60 Minutes: If You Want To Know The Culture of NSA This May Be Your Best Source

National Security and Technology

Widespread Cyber Espionage: More evidence and what to do about it

This week the New York Times and CNET ran a story by John Markoff titled “Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries”

It reads in part:

“A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers have concluded. In a report to be issued this weekend, the researchers said that the system was being controlled from computers based almost exclusively in China, but that they could not say conclusively that the Chinese government was involved.

The researchers, who are based at the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto, had been asked by the office of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader whom China regularly denounces, to examine its computers for signs of malicious software, or malware.

Their sleuthing opened a window into a broader operation that, in less than two years, has infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries, including many belonging to embassies, foreign ministries and other government offices, as well as the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile centers in India, Brussels, London, and New York.”

The full report is available here:  “Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network.”

The report itself is well worth a read by any technologist and by most technology users.  We should all know what we are up against.

Another technical view of the research is available at “Snooping Dragon”

I’d also like to offer my opinion that many or even most of the attack vectors can be reduced or mitigated by smart technologists.  And other attack vectors can be reduced or mitigated by smart users trained to recognize when they are being fooled by social networking attacks.

For more on how to reduce threat vectors see:

This only touches on the technological paths into your systems, but it is a great start.

I would also like to offer the opinion that attack paths can be reduced by the smart use of open source technologies.  Open source technologies have fewer vulnerabilities.  They must also be smartly managed and must be well patched (although some few vulnerabilities are detected, when they are detected they need to be addressed right away).  But, the use of foundational secure systems like SE Linux and Trusted Open Solaris is a smart way to reduce your attack surface.

 

For more on these topics see the CTOvision Guide to National Security Technology and

Responding Strategically to Cyber Attacks

The last 12 months has seen a significant amount of progress in our nation’s awareness of cyber threats and in our collective actions to address the security of our IT systems.  However, a huge amount of work remains to be done.

In a cyber context, the situation is a little like the one Winston Churchill described when he said: “This is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end.  But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” We in the cyber world have taken some serious blows, and we are shoring up our defenses.  But there is a long long way to go before our objectives are met.

With this post I want to provide a snapshot of some of the progress of late.

1) CNCI: The Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative provided a kickstart to many elements of the federal enterprise and facilitated coordination action by multiple agencies.  It was also an important evolution for Congress.  The changes to the federal budget and the intentions of agencies was very positive.  It is my opinion that the CNCI made a lasting positive difference in reducing unauthorized access into the federal enterprise and in enhancing resiliency of our systems. For more info see:

2) The CSIS report and related actions/studies: This 8 Dec 2008 report is the result of hard work and collective study by some of the best brains in the cyber security world.  Commissioners on the study are a who’s-who of security and the quality of this report is a direct reflection of this fact.  The report offers recommendations on multiple hard areas and should be referenced by anyone making decisions in the IT arena.  A recent related development is the posting by SANS of the Common Audit Guidelines.  This is a fantastic step towards providing guidelines to enhancing security and functionality. For more info see:

3) GAO Reports: Never in my life have I been so pleased with the quality of GAO reporting.  They have been doing fantastic work pulling together information on a wide range of technology issues.  Key among them is reporting on cyber security.  For example, the 10 March 2009 report on “National Cybersecurity Strategy.” This report captures a statement by David Powner, Director of Information Technology Management Issues for GAO. The report recommends twelve key strategy improvements needed now, most of which are in total consonance with the CSIS report.

4) The Obama Administration Review: Being true to promises during the campaign, the Obama administration began a review of cyber in a way that is open and is proactively seeking out inputs from all quarters.   Great work in liaison with industry, academia and internal in the federal government is underway.   This type of liaison has immediate benefit in building bridges with large teams of people who need to work well together to engineer enduring solutions, so it has already delivered benefits. For more info see:

The four topics above are all things that are translating to real action to improve the security posture of both the federal IT enterprise and the critical infrastructures of the nation.  In my opinion, great progress is being made.

But now is not the time to rest on our laurels.  The battle has just begun.

“This is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end.  But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

A Proposal Regarding High Tech Immigrants to the US

The topic of H-1B visa’s has always been a hot one.  In the current economic climate there are plenty of American tech workers looking for work and therefore this special visa program is under increasing scrutiny.  I have many friends and associates and family members who have either lost jobs or found themselves in positions they would not prefer due to the current economic meltdown and my bias is to side with them on this.  We need to rethink the nation’s objectives regarding the H-1B program (you can read more on the H-1B visa program, including criticisms, at wikipedia).

But there are some other dimensions of job creation and the high tech ecosystem workforce related to immigration that we should consider.

For example, consider the relevance of trends captured by the NSF and presented by the Computing Research Association on PhD degrees by Citizenship:

  • Most computer science PhD’s in the US are being awarded to non-US Citizens. In 1993 about 50% of computer science PhD’s were going to non-US Citizens.  By 2005 it was at over 60%.  And the trend is towards increasing amounts from overseas.
  • Of those, most possess temporary visas.  In 2005, 90% of the non-US Citizen PhD degree students were on temporary visas.  Their intent is to go right back home with their new degree.

Before addressing the above, here are a few other facts I think are relevant to the economy and jobs:

A team of researchers at Harvard led by Vivek Wadhwa have assessed the educational backgrounds and career trajectories of immigrant entrepreneurs in an attempt to draw conclusions relevant to enhancing the competitiveness of the US economy.  Their report, titled “Education, Entrepreneurship and Immigration: America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs” provides several interesting conclusions.  The following is from the report abstract:

Census data show that the immigrants who are most likely to start engineering and technology businesses – from India, the UK, China, Taiwan, Japan,
and Germany – are better educated than their native-born counterparts. Our research shows that these company founders are also better-educated than the norm in their respective immigrant groups. In fact, 96 percent of all immigrant entrepreneurs involved in engineering and technology in our study have completed a bachelor’s degree, and 74 percent hold master’s or PhD degrees. The great majority (75 percent) of their highest degrees are in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics-related fields.

Immigrant founders were educated in a diverse set of universities in their home countries and across the United States. No single U.S. institution stands out as a source of immigrant founders. Similarly, those who received their undergraduate degrees in India or China graduated from a diverse assortment of institutions. Even the famed Indian Institutes of Technology educated only 15 percent of Indian company founders.

More than half of the foreign-born founders of U.S. technology and engineering businesses initially came to the United States to study. Very few came with the sole purpose of starting a company.

They typically founded companies after working and residing in America for an average of thirteen years. Immigrant entrepreneurs are concentrated in the nation’s leading technology centers. The regions with the largest immigrant populations also tend to have the greatest number of technology startups.

The report also captures the fact that immigrants have founded and led over half of all Silicon Valley start-ups in the past decade.  These American companies employed more than 450,000 workers.

What does this mean?  It means, among other things, that more immigrants in the high tech world can mean more job creation.

Some suggestions for how to enhance the innovation engines of Silicon Valley were captured in a Washington Post editorial written by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman titled “Let Our Start-Ups Bail Us Out”

Hoffman’s recommendations for optimizing economic recovery include: 1) Encourage small businesses with loans, 2) welcome foreign innovators but smartly tax and incent companies and enhance US education programs, and 3) Match VC and angel investment funds.

Based on the computer science PhD figures I mention above I would like to add one additional proposal to the mix.  I would like the US Congress to pass a law that allows any person granted a PhD in sciences (including computer science) to be granted immediate US citizenship.

I expect, of course, that the law would require attachment to the principles of our Constitution and favorable disposition towards the United States, just like other paths to Naturalization.   But the point of this law is fast-track, dramatically, the granting of citizenship for anyone who completes an advanced science PhD in the US.

Another alternative to consider would be a law granting fast track US Citizenship to anyone from any country who has a PhD in advance science from any recognized, accredited institute of higher learning.  This approach might be a bit more controversial, but it might generate a great flood of innovative thinkers and could help ensure our country maintains its innovative edge well into the future.

Any thoughts?

 

Related Reading:

Former CIA Officer Richards J. Heuer

What the CIA is up to, with CTO, Gus Hunt

Admiral Stavridis: Think, Read, Write and Publish, and Blog Too

Technology and Leadership Lessons From Admiral Archie Clemins

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