Very familiar security problems, very weak excuses.

https://www.npr.org/2018/10/09/655880190/cyber-tests-showed-nearly-all-new-pentagon-weapons-vulnerable-to-attack-gao-says

Cyber Tests Showed 'Nearly All' New Pentagon Weapons Vulnerable To Attack, GAO Says : NPR

The Pentagon only recently made cybersecurity a priority, the Government Accountability Office says in a new report, which found vulnerabilities in weapons that are under development.

Passwords that took seconds to guess, or were never changed from their factory settings. Cyber vulnerabilities that were known, but never fixed. Those are two common problems plaguing some of the Department of Defense's newest weapons systems, according to the Government Accountability Office.

The flaws are highlighted in a new GAO report, which found the Pentagon is "just beginning to grapple" with the scale of vulnerabilities in its weapons systems.

… The most capable workers – experts who can find vulnerabilities and detect advanced threats – can earn "above $200,000 to $250,000 a year" in the private sector, the GAO reports, citing a Rand study from 2014. That kind of salary, the agency adds, "greatly exceeds DOD's pay scale."

In a recent hearing on the U.S. military's cyber readiness held by the Senate Armed Services Committee, officials acknowledged intense competition for engineers.

Is AI really different or just difficult to understand?

https://www.bespacific.com/brookings-a-blueprint-for-the-future-of-ai/

Brookings – A blueprint for the future of AI

John R. Allen – President, The Brookings Institution: “Emerging technologies of the 21st century are poised to fundamentally transform modern society. Artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, and other emerging technologies are upending everything from transportation to manufacturing to health care, and as these and related technologies mature, they will have far-reaching impacts over our work, our lives, our security, and our politics. From gene-editing to quantum computing, each of these technologies represent substantial challenges and novel solutions to myriad problems, and are just a glimpse of what the future holds. And if society is to fully embrace the full range of social and political changes that these technologies will introduce, then we need to be thinking now about how best to maximize the benefits of these technologies while minimizing the risks to humanity along the way. The research community has a critical role to play in informing policymakers of the coming challenges associated with emerging technologies, and here, Brookings intends to be a leader. As a part of a new effort, an impressive assembly of the Institution’s scholars have stepped forward to address the complex challenges associated with emerging technologies within the context of their relevant areas of expertise. Each of the papers in this series grapples with the impact of an emerging technology on an important policy issue, pointing out both the new challenges and potential policy solutions introduced by these technologies. This compendium showcases in no uncertain terms the enormity of the changes to come, as well as many of the key policy imperatives as we move forward in the 21st century.”

(Related) Helping my students get jobs.

https://hbr.org/2018/10/make-data-a-cornerstone-of-your-team

Make Data a Cornerstone of Your Team

If you were entering the job market in the early 90s, most job descriptions included “Macintosh experience” or “excellent PC skills” in their preferred qualifications. This quickly became a requirement for even the most non-technical jobs, forcing people across every industry and age group to adapt with the changing times, or risk getting left behind.

Today, the bar for computer proficiency is set much higher. There’s an ever-increasing demand for people who can leverage software to analyze, understand, and make day-to-day business decisions based on data. Data Science is now a quickly growing discipline, giving people with any kind of data expertise a serious competitive edge.

Corporate leaders are becoming convinced of the impact that effective data collection and analysis can have on the bottom line, from tracking daily reports against Key Performance Indicators to make informed decisions on where to spend marketing dollars, to monitoring and evaluating customer communications to adjust product offerings. Many are investing heavily in hiring talent with data skills and building out data proficiency across the organization.