Culture War: Making Cyber Career Military Friendly

CONTI: When the dot-com bubble burst, we did not really see a decline in our numbers, so they've been quite solid all the way through in the number of people majoring in technical subjects here. We are graduating them into the Army. I don't have statistics but it would be very interesting to look at how many are we retaining after they leave and how are they being utilized. Often times, the people we get are very passionate about their technical discipline, so it would be really interesting to look at the numbers five years out, seven years out, what were there reasons for leaving? Did they leave after the commitment or are they still in? If we can get a viable cyberwarfare career field that is lifetime - this isn't all about officers, too, from the enlisted all the way up - so you have a complete career path (and) once that is in place and people feel like they have a home, I am certain retention will go up.

CHABROW: Anything else you would like to add to our discussion?

CONTI: There's a famous quote from Gen. Douglas MacArthur's farewell speech that goes:

"On the fields of friendly strife are sewn the seeds, that on other days and on other fields, will bear the fruits of victory."

He was referring to football. I would like to think about our cyberwarfare defense exercise and activities we have going on here are competitions in the cyberwarfare realm as on the networks of firmly strife are sewn the seeds that on other days and on other networks will bear the fruits of victory. With apologies to Gen. MacArthur, I think it really applies to what we're trying to do here.