Pentagon's $20bn war internet will 'cure world hunger'

Talk about cultural differences. While the Finns dismiss computer addicts from their military, figuring them to be useless basketcases and sending them on their way with a firm smack round the chops, the United States has given them a job for life.

These are happy days for people who style themselves as Pentagon contractors. With the nation lulled into a permanent sense of war, and deficit-defying budgets earmarked for anything military, technology companies can't believe their luck.

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In the 1990s, when they pitched for business against the lower reaches of the public sector, IT consultants realized that they were far smarter at managing their contracts than their partners, and so could evade the accountability requirements (like public floggings) necessary when you goof. But to find such bedfellows as IBM and Microsoft and Sun, all in a consortium angling for government pork, you have to suspect that they're pretty desperate people. Or they think it's easy money.

There's another explanation, which we cannot dismiss. Has a small, frustrated class of middle manager asserted its authority in the USA, the class of "knowledge management" experts? If this is the case, then they've clearly got their man installed right at the top, as we noticed with the bloggy Rumsfeld-speak at the website.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/14/dod_global_information_grid/