“I was screaming, ‘Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me.’”
As the Australian government struggled to calm growing anger in India, a fatigued Baljinder Singh — the third Indian student to be stabbed in a week in the south-eastern Australian city of Melbourne — told Hindustan Times on Saturday that he was “very scared” to leave home.
The 25-year-old hospitality graduate was stabbed in the stomach after handing over his cash to two attackers, who took the money but knifed him anyway.
Singh, who spoke to HT from a small Melbourne flat he shares with three other Indians, is one of 93,000 Indians who contributed Australian $2 billion (Rs 7,500 crore) to the Australian economy in the last financial year.
As Singh recovers, Sravan Kumar Theerthala (25), is fighting for his life, after being stabbed in the head at a party last weekend in Melbourne, where Sourabh Sharma, 21, fractured his cheekbone and broke a tooth after being beaten on a train earlier this month.
In March, HT reported that there have been as many as 60 attacks in Melbourne — a city of 3.9 million, Australia’s second largest — over the past six years on Indian students, who suffered broken bones and required stitches.
The Indian student community in Melbourne, capital of the province of Victoria, was “apprehensive” and the atmosphere “tense” according to Amit Menghani, president of its national student body, the Federation of Indian Students in Australia.
Many Indian students HT spoke to said they were scared.
Pooja Thaker, a Masters student at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, said she was “feeling insecure” about going out, meeting people or using public transport.
Thaker said three of her friends had experienced physical violence, including one who was attacked by a group of men and women while waiting for a tram.
“It makes us think for sure that it’s not safe to live in this country in the future,” said Puneet Gulati, a student in community welfare at a private Melbourne college. “We don’t see ourselves settling down in this country for a long period with our families.”
Gulati said many parents in India were asking their children to return home.
With many cases unreported, former Australian Trade Commissioner in Mumbai, Shabbir Wahid, said the issue was “quite complex”; with Indian student-recruitment agents providing inadequate briefings.
“Students come from a different culture to the one in Melbourne and they have a poor knowledge of the role of authorities,” Wahid said.
The Indian mission is preparing an advisory to inform future Indian students about living, studying and working in Australia, said Indian consul-general Anita Nayar. The advisory will be posted on all relevant websites “as soon as possible”.
Wahid said while Indians have featured “highly in the statistics of assault”, physical violence of the kind that injured Singh, Sharma and Theerthala, “is not restricted to Indians.”
Indian students will march for peace and harmony from the Royal Melbourne Hospital to the Victorian parliament on Sunday.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
Can poor people be protected by global warming laws?
Heat waves, droughts and floods affect poor people disproportionately, according to a new report that recommends legislation to alleviate the impact as the climate warms.
African Americans living in Los Angeles have a projected heat-wave mortality rate that is nearly twice that of other Los Angeles residents, according to researchers from the University of Southern California and the University of California Berkeley who focused on the growing field of "environmental justice." And Latinos are the primary population in many neighborhoods and regions, including Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley, that have the worst air quality in the nation.
The report, "The Climate Gap, Inequalities in how Climate Change hurts Americans and How to Close the Gap" comes as the California Legislature and the U.S. Congress are grappling with how to design systems to control greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. And how they are designed will have a major impact on low-income neighborhoods located near refineries, power plants and other industrial facilities that also spew unhealthful conventional pollutants.
"People of color will be hurt the most -- unless elected officials and other policymakers intervene," said Rachel Morello-Frosch, a UC Berkeley researcher.
Next week, the California Assembly is expected to take up a bill, AB 1404, that would drastically limit the amount of greenhouse gases that polluters could offset by paying emitters in other regions to cut their gases. Under loose guidelines adopted by the California Air Resources Board under the state's landmark global warming law, up to 49% of greenhouse gas pollution could be reduced through offsets such as planting trees or capturing landfill gases.
But AB 1404, introduced by Assembly members Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) and Manuel Perez (D-Coachella), would limit offsets to 10% and charge fees to fund careful verification of their integrity. "The big loophole in California’s otherwise exemplary global warming program would allow polluters to buy “offsets” — credits that polluters can buy for emission reductions elsewhere as a substitute for making reductions themselves, "said Erin Rogers of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. "California’s big global warming polluters should invest in local solutions instead of buying offsets and continuing to pollute as usual."
More than 60 California public health groups and labor unions -- who want to maintain green jobs in the state rather than allow offsets to occur outside California -- support the legislation.
But it is opposed by industrial groups who want flexibility in meeting greenhouse gas targets. "An arbitrary limit..would result in higher costs for energy and infrastructure providers that would be passed along to state and local governments," according to a letter to legislators from the Western States Petroleum Assn., the California Chamber of Commerce and other business groups.
A battle is looming in Congress over whether offsets to federal limits on greenhouse gases are overly broad. The principal legislation, sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly HIlls) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) would allow U.S. industries to offset up to 2 billion metric tons of gases per year, and a majority of the offsets could come from projects outside the U.S.
The Climate Gap report recommends that federal and state legislation force industries to purchase permits to emit greenhouse gases through an auction system, or a fee system. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week proffered the same advice to a state working committee that is designing the system.
According to the researchers, offering fewer free pollution permits to oil facilities, which are mostly located in minority and low-income neighborhoods, would be particularly effective in cleaning up unhealthful air that is linked to heart disease and respiratory illness
African Americans living in Los Angeles have a projected heat-wave mortality rate that is nearly twice that of other Los Angeles residents, according to researchers from the University of Southern California and the University of California Berkeley who focused on the growing field of "environmental justice." And Latinos are the primary population in many neighborhoods and regions, including Los Angeles and the San Joaquin Valley, that have the worst air quality in the nation.
The report, "The Climate Gap, Inequalities in how Climate Change hurts Americans and How to Close the Gap" comes as the California Legislature and the U.S. Congress are grappling with how to design systems to control greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. And how they are designed will have a major impact on low-income neighborhoods located near refineries, power plants and other industrial facilities that also spew unhealthful conventional pollutants.
"People of color will be hurt the most -- unless elected officials and other policymakers intervene," said Rachel Morello-Frosch, a UC Berkeley researcher.
Next week, the California Assembly is expected to take up a bill, AB 1404, that would drastically limit the amount of greenhouse gases that polluters could offset by paying emitters in other regions to cut their gases. Under loose guidelines adopted by the California Air Resources Board under the state's landmark global warming law, up to 49% of greenhouse gas pollution could be reduced through offsets such as planting trees or capturing landfill gases.
But AB 1404, introduced by Assembly members Kevin De Leon (D-Los Angeles) and Manuel Perez (D-Coachella), would limit offsets to 10% and charge fees to fund careful verification of their integrity. "The big loophole in California’s otherwise exemplary global warming program would allow polluters to buy “offsets” — credits that polluters can buy for emission reductions elsewhere as a substitute for making reductions themselves, "said Erin Rogers of the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group. "California’s big global warming polluters should invest in local solutions instead of buying offsets and continuing to pollute as usual."
More than 60 California public health groups and labor unions -- who want to maintain green jobs in the state rather than allow offsets to occur outside California -- support the legislation.
But it is opposed by industrial groups who want flexibility in meeting greenhouse gas targets. "An arbitrary limit..would result in higher costs for energy and infrastructure providers that would be passed along to state and local governments," according to a letter to legislators from the Western States Petroleum Assn., the California Chamber of Commerce and other business groups.
A battle is looming in Congress over whether offsets to federal limits on greenhouse gases are overly broad. The principal legislation, sponsored by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Beverly HIlls) and Edward Markey (D-Mass.) would allow U.S. industries to offset up to 2 billion metric tons of gases per year, and a majority of the offsets could come from projects outside the U.S.
The Climate Gap report recommends that federal and state legislation force industries to purchase permits to emit greenhouse gases through an auction system, or a fee system. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger last week proffered the same advice to a state working committee that is designing the system.
According to the researchers, offering fewer free pollution permits to oil facilities, which are mostly located in minority and low-income neighborhoods, would be particularly effective in cleaning up unhealthful air that is linked to heart disease and respiratory illness
Gay marriage a minefield for candidates for California governor
From the start of his run for governor, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has tried to show there is more to his career than the gesture that won him worldwide fame: his 2004 decree legalizing same-sex marriage.
Yet there he was Tuesday on CNN's "Larry King Live," speaking out for gay rights after the state Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban that Californians passed in November.
For Newsom and five major-party rivals, the resurgence of the same-sex marriage issue has added a new complication to the race for governor.
If gay rights groups get their way, the nominees to succeed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will share the November 2010 ballot with a measure to repeal Proposition 8, turning an emotionally charged cultural issue into a central focus of the campaign.
Across the nation, the subject has grown more challenging for candidates of all kinds as the mere concept has given way to the reality of tens of thousands of married gay couples. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine and Iowa have legalized same-sex marriage.
Voters have also shifted their views. In April, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 49% of Americans said gay marriage should be legal, and 46% said it should be illegal. Three years earlier, 36% had said it should be legal, and 58% had said it should not.
"The trajectory of public opinion on this issue has been dramatic," said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman.
In California, where Newsom's rebel edict in 2004 touched off the court battles that spawned some 18,000 marriages that were declared valid Tuesday, candidates for governor face multiple dangers on the issue. Although support for gay marriage has risen over the last decade -- the 52% yes vote on Proposition 8 was down from 61% on a similar measure in 2000 -- the issue still sharply divides Californians.
"People care about this one -- a lot -- on both sides," said Steve Smith, a Democratic strategist who worked on the campaign to defeat Proposition 8.
A Field Poll taken three months ago affirmed stark generational and ideological splits on same-sex marriage.
Younger voters were far more likely to approve of it than older voters. And Democrats overwhelmingly favored it, while Republicans were strongly opposed.
In that environment, candidates for governor are juggling wildly different needs for the primaries and the general election.
To score points with partisan voters in the June 2010 primary -- regardless of party -- is to risk harm in the broader arena of the general election.
So Newsom or any other Democrat who gets too bold about same-sex marriage in the primary could face a backlash if running as party nominee come November, said Republican strategist Frank Schubert.
"In the general election, it's a huge problem, because it identifies you so closely with a polarizing issue that could define your candidacy," said Schubert, who led the campaign for Proposition 8.
Schubert said blacks and Latinos, both strong Democratic constituencies that have largely opposed gay marriage, will be targets of opportunity for the Republican nominee -- particularly if a marriage measure is on the same ballot. Likewise, Democrats believe that a staunchly anti-gay marriage stance could limit a Republican nominee's success in appealing to the moderates whose support is necessary for victory.
So far, the candidate taking the biggest gamble on the issue is a Republican, Tom Campbell of Orange County. The former Silicon Valley congressman supports gay marriage, putting him starkly out of sync with the conservatives who hold sway in GOP primaries. (That is not a surprising position for Campbell, who is also touting higher taxes as a way out of the state's fiscal mess.)
Republican rival Meg Whitman, a former EBay chief executive, supported Proposition 8. But she too has vexed conservatives, in her case by saying the 18,000 same-sex marriages that occurred before the measure passed should stay legal.
"That's very troubling," said Karen England, a key state Republican Party leader. England also faulted another GOP candidate, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, for not speaking out sooner and more forcefully for Proposition 8.
On the Democratic side, a spat has broken out between Newsom and state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown over which man has been a stronger supporter of same-sex marriage.
In a tack apparently aimed at undercutting Newsom among backers of gay marriage, Brown waged a court fight to overturn Proposition 8. It was an unusual move for an attorney general, who typically defends initiatives passed by voters, and the state Supreme Court rebuffed him Tuesday.
But Newsom, in turn, has cast Brown as late to the gay-marriage cause. Newsom strategist Garry South hammered Brown for a bill that he signed into law as governor in 1977; it defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
In an interview, Brown brushed the bill off as a technical clarification of previous laws. "I saw it as codifying legislative intent," he said.
South, however, said Brown "is responsible for the fact that California defines marriage as between a man and a woman." And for a man who often "blabbers" about being a forward-looking governor in the 1970s, South said, "there's a certain irony to that."
This week, Newsom made clear that he would not shy from the gay-marriage issue, even as he tries to familiarize Californians with his record on healthcare, education and other issues.
"It sets him apart as a politician in terms of doing what he thought was right," South said.
Another potential candidate, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, has also made a point of speaking out for gay marriage as he weighs whether to run. On Tuesday night, he took part in a West Hollywood protest against the California Supreme Court's ruling.
Yet there he was Tuesday on CNN's "Larry King Live," speaking out for gay rights after the state Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban that Californians passed in November.
For Newsom and five major-party rivals, the resurgence of the same-sex marriage issue has added a new complication to the race for governor.
If gay rights groups get their way, the nominees to succeed Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will share the November 2010 ballot with a measure to repeal Proposition 8, turning an emotionally charged cultural issue into a central focus of the campaign.
Across the nation, the subject has grown more challenging for candidates of all kinds as the mere concept has given way to the reality of tens of thousands of married gay couples. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Maine and Iowa have legalized same-sex marriage.
Voters have also shifted their views. In April, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 49% of Americans said gay marriage should be legal, and 46% said it should be illegal. Three years earlier, 36% had said it should be legal, and 58% had said it should not.
"The trajectory of public opinion on this issue has been dramatic," said Democratic pollster Mark Mellman.
In California, where Newsom's rebel edict in 2004 touched off the court battles that spawned some 18,000 marriages that were declared valid Tuesday, candidates for governor face multiple dangers on the issue. Although support for gay marriage has risen over the last decade -- the 52% yes vote on Proposition 8 was down from 61% on a similar measure in 2000 -- the issue still sharply divides Californians.
"People care about this one -- a lot -- on both sides," said Steve Smith, a Democratic strategist who worked on the campaign to defeat Proposition 8.
A Field Poll taken three months ago affirmed stark generational and ideological splits on same-sex marriage.
Younger voters were far more likely to approve of it than older voters. And Democrats overwhelmingly favored it, while Republicans were strongly opposed.
In that environment, candidates for governor are juggling wildly different needs for the primaries and the general election.
To score points with partisan voters in the June 2010 primary -- regardless of party -- is to risk harm in the broader arena of the general election.
So Newsom or any other Democrat who gets too bold about same-sex marriage in the primary could face a backlash if running as party nominee come November, said Republican strategist Frank Schubert.
"In the general election, it's a huge problem, because it identifies you so closely with a polarizing issue that could define your candidacy," said Schubert, who led the campaign for Proposition 8.
Schubert said blacks and Latinos, both strong Democratic constituencies that have largely opposed gay marriage, will be targets of opportunity for the Republican nominee -- particularly if a marriage measure is on the same ballot. Likewise, Democrats believe that a staunchly anti-gay marriage stance could limit a Republican nominee's success in appealing to the moderates whose support is necessary for victory.
So far, the candidate taking the biggest gamble on the issue is a Republican, Tom Campbell of Orange County. The former Silicon Valley congressman supports gay marriage, putting him starkly out of sync with the conservatives who hold sway in GOP primaries. (That is not a surprising position for Campbell, who is also touting higher taxes as a way out of the state's fiscal mess.)
Republican rival Meg Whitman, a former EBay chief executive, supported Proposition 8. But she too has vexed conservatives, in her case by saying the 18,000 same-sex marriages that occurred before the measure passed should stay legal.
"That's very troubling," said Karen England, a key state Republican Party leader. England also faulted another GOP candidate, state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, for not speaking out sooner and more forcefully for Proposition 8.
On the Democratic side, a spat has broken out between Newsom and state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown over which man has been a stronger supporter of same-sex marriage.
In a tack apparently aimed at undercutting Newsom among backers of gay marriage, Brown waged a court fight to overturn Proposition 8. It was an unusual move for an attorney general, who typically defends initiatives passed by voters, and the state Supreme Court rebuffed him Tuesday.
But Newsom, in turn, has cast Brown as late to the gay-marriage cause. Newsom strategist Garry South hammered Brown for a bill that he signed into law as governor in 1977; it defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
In an interview, Brown brushed the bill off as a technical clarification of previous laws. "I saw it as codifying legislative intent," he said.
South, however, said Brown "is responsible for the fact that California defines marriage as between a man and a woman." And for a man who often "blabbers" about being a forward-looking governor in the 1970s, South said, "there's a certain irony to that."
This week, Newsom made clear that he would not shy from the gay-marriage issue, even as he tries to familiarize Californians with his record on healthcare, education and other issues.
"It sets him apart as a politician in terms of doing what he thought was right," South said.
Another potential candidate, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, has also made a point of speaking out for gay marriage as he weighs whether to run. On Tuesday night, he took part in a West Hollywood protest against the California Supreme Court's ruling.
A Promise to Be Ethical in an Era of Immorality
When a new crop of future business leaders graduates from the Harvard Business School next week, many of them will be taking a new oath that says, in effect, greed is not good.
Nearly 20 percent of the graduating class have signed “The M.B.A. Oath,” a voluntary student-led pledge that the goal of a business manager is to “serve the greater good.” It promises that Harvard M.B.A.’s will act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their “own narrow ambitions” at the expense of others.
What happened to making money?
That, of course, is still at the heart of the Harvard curriculum. But at Harvard and other top business schools, there has been an explosion of interest in ethics courses and in student activities — clubs, lectures, conferences — about personal and corporate responsibility and on how to view business as more than a money-making enterprise, but part of a large social community.
“We want to stand up and recite something out loud with our class,” said Teal Carlock, who is graduating from Harvard and has accepted a job at Genentech. “Fingers are now pointed at M.B.A.’s and we, as a class, have a real opportunity to come together and set a standard as business leaders.”
At Columbia Business School, all students must pledge to an honor code: “As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.” The code has been in place for about three years and came about after discussions between students and faculty.
In the post-Enron and post-Madoff era, the issue of ethics and corporate social responsibility has taken on greater urgency among students about to graduate. While this might easily be dismissed as a passing fancy — or simply a defensive reaction to the current business environment — business school professors say that is not the case. Rather, they say, they are seeing a generational shift away from viewing an M.B.A. as simply an on-ramp to the road to riches.
Those graduating today, they say, are far more concerned about how corporations affect the community, the lives of its workers and the environment. And business schools are responding with more courses, new centers specializing in business ethics and, in the case of Harvard, student-lead efforts to bring about a professional code of conduct for M.B.A.’s, not unlike oaths that are taken by lawyers and doctors.
“I don’t see this as something that will fade away,” said Diana C. Robertson, a professor of business ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s coming from the students. I don’t know that we’ve seen such a surge in this activism since the 1960s. This activism is different, but, like that time, it is student-driven.”
A decade ago, Wharton had one or two professors who taught a required ethics class. Today there are seven teaching an array of ethics classes that Ms. Robertson said were among the most popular at the school. Since 1997, it has had the Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research. In addition, over the last five years, students have formed clubs around the issues of ethics that sponsor conferences, work on microfinance projects in Philadelphia or engage in social impact consulting.
“It’s been a dramatic change,” Ms. Robertson added. “This generation was raised learning about the environment and raised with the idea of a social conscience. That does not apply to every student. But this year’s financial crisis and the downturn have brought about a greater emphasis on social ethics and responsibility.”
At Harvard, about 160 from a graduating class of about 800 have signed “The M.B.A. Oath,” which its student advocates contend is the first step in trying to develop a professional code not unlike the Hippocratic Oath for physicians or the pledge taken by lawyers to uphold the law and Constitution.
Part of this has emerged by the beating that Wall Street and financiers have taken in the current economic crisis, which can set the stage for reform, Harvard students say.
“There is the feeling that we want our lives to mean something more and to run organizations for the greater good,” said Max Anderson, one of the pledge’s organizers who is about to leave Harvard and take a job at Bridgewater Associates, a money management firm.
“No one wants to have their future criticized as a place filled with unethical behaviors,” he added. “We want to learn from those mistakes, do things differently and accept our duty to lead responsibly. Realistically, we have tremendous potential to affect society for better or worse. Let’s humbly step up. We are looking out for our own interest, but also for the interest of our employees and the broader public.”
Bruce Kogut, director of the Sanford C. Bernstein & Company Center for Leadership and Ethics at Columbia, said that this emphasis did not mean that students were necessarily going to shun jobs that paid well. Rather, they will think about how they earn their income, not just how much.
At Columbia, an ethics course is required, but students have also formed a popular “Leadership and Ethics Board,” that sponsors lectures with topics like “The Marie Antoinettes of Corporate America.”
“The courses make people aware that the financial crisis is not a technical blip,” Mr. Kogut said. “We’re seeing a generational change that understands that poverty is not just about Africa and India. They see inequities and the role of business to address them.”
Dalia Rahman, who is about to leave Harvard for a job with Goldman Sachs in London, said she signed the pledge because “it takes what we learned in class and makes it more concrete. When you have to make a public vow, it’s a way to commit to uphold principles.”
Nearly 20 percent of the graduating class have signed “The M.B.A. Oath,” a voluntary student-led pledge that the goal of a business manager is to “serve the greater good.” It promises that Harvard M.B.A.’s will act responsibly, ethically and refrain from advancing their “own narrow ambitions” at the expense of others.
What happened to making money?
That, of course, is still at the heart of the Harvard curriculum. But at Harvard and other top business schools, there has been an explosion of interest in ethics courses and in student activities — clubs, lectures, conferences — about personal and corporate responsibility and on how to view business as more than a money-making enterprise, but part of a large social community.
“We want to stand up and recite something out loud with our class,” said Teal Carlock, who is graduating from Harvard and has accepted a job at Genentech. “Fingers are now pointed at M.B.A.’s and we, as a class, have a real opportunity to come together and set a standard as business leaders.”
At Columbia Business School, all students must pledge to an honor code: “As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.” The code has been in place for about three years and came about after discussions between students and faculty.
In the post-Enron and post-Madoff era, the issue of ethics and corporate social responsibility has taken on greater urgency among students about to graduate. While this might easily be dismissed as a passing fancy — or simply a defensive reaction to the current business environment — business school professors say that is not the case. Rather, they say, they are seeing a generational shift away from viewing an M.B.A. as simply an on-ramp to the road to riches.
Those graduating today, they say, are far more concerned about how corporations affect the community, the lives of its workers and the environment. And business schools are responding with more courses, new centers specializing in business ethics and, in the case of Harvard, student-lead efforts to bring about a professional code of conduct for M.B.A.’s, not unlike oaths that are taken by lawyers and doctors.
“I don’t see this as something that will fade away,” said Diana C. Robertson, a professor of business ethics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. “It’s coming from the students. I don’t know that we’ve seen such a surge in this activism since the 1960s. This activism is different, but, like that time, it is student-driven.”
A decade ago, Wharton had one or two professors who taught a required ethics class. Today there are seven teaching an array of ethics classes that Ms. Robertson said were among the most popular at the school. Since 1997, it has had the Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research. In addition, over the last five years, students have formed clubs around the issues of ethics that sponsor conferences, work on microfinance projects in Philadelphia or engage in social impact consulting.
“It’s been a dramatic change,” Ms. Robertson added. “This generation was raised learning about the environment and raised with the idea of a social conscience. That does not apply to every student. But this year’s financial crisis and the downturn have brought about a greater emphasis on social ethics and responsibility.”
At Harvard, about 160 from a graduating class of about 800 have signed “The M.B.A. Oath,” which its student advocates contend is the first step in trying to develop a professional code not unlike the Hippocratic Oath for physicians or the pledge taken by lawyers to uphold the law and Constitution.
Part of this has emerged by the beating that Wall Street and financiers have taken in the current economic crisis, which can set the stage for reform, Harvard students say.
“There is the feeling that we want our lives to mean something more and to run organizations for the greater good,” said Max Anderson, one of the pledge’s organizers who is about to leave Harvard and take a job at Bridgewater Associates, a money management firm.
“No one wants to have their future criticized as a place filled with unethical behaviors,” he added. “We want to learn from those mistakes, do things differently and accept our duty to lead responsibly. Realistically, we have tremendous potential to affect society for better or worse. Let’s humbly step up. We are looking out for our own interest, but also for the interest of our employees and the broader public.”
Bruce Kogut, director of the Sanford C. Bernstein & Company Center for Leadership and Ethics at Columbia, said that this emphasis did not mean that students were necessarily going to shun jobs that paid well. Rather, they will think about how they earn their income, not just how much.
At Columbia, an ethics course is required, but students have also formed a popular “Leadership and Ethics Board,” that sponsors lectures with topics like “The Marie Antoinettes of Corporate America.”
“The courses make people aware that the financial crisis is not a technical blip,” Mr. Kogut said. “We’re seeing a generational change that understands that poverty is not just about Africa and India. They see inequities and the role of business to address them.”
Dalia Rahman, who is about to leave Harvard for a job with Goldman Sachs in London, said she signed the pledge because “it takes what we learned in class and makes it more concrete. When you have to make a public vow, it’s a way to commit to uphold principles.”
No Mere Walk in the Park
Adrian Benepe, 52, has been the New York City parks and recreation commissioner since 2002. He and his wife, Charlotte Glasser — they were married in Central Park — live on the Upper West Side with their son Erik, 18. Their other son, Alex, is 22. ALAN FEUER
RISE AND SHINE I’m up pretty early — usually by 8 o’clock. I’ve lost the ability to sleep late in middle age. The first thing I do is have a cup of coffee, make some sort of breakfast and look at the paper. I usually cook myself an omelet: jalapeño peppers, onions, scallions and some kind of cheese.
THE SUNDAY PAPER I have this bad habit, according to my wife, of squirreling away the sections I haven’t read yet. Right now, the pile’s about a foot and a half tall. If I have a light weekend and I’m not working, I’ll go through 50 or so old papers and clip out photographs. I save them for decorating presents. I wrap the gift with regular paper, then put a picture on it and make some sort of comment. It’s kind of a family tradition.
THE WORKOUT Generally, in the late morning or early afternoon, I’ll get in some extended vigorous exercise, usually a long run or a bike ride or a walk in Central Park or Riverside Park or the Hudson River waterfront.
AND THE WORK The only problem is, I can’t relax in a park. My wife went walking with me recently in Central Park and said, “This isn’t a walk. This is a sector patrol.” It’s way beyond taking mental notes. My BlackBerry has a camera, which has actually become the bane of all parks department employees. I take pictures and e-mail them to people right away. Or I’ll see someone stomping through a flower bed or letting their dog run where it shouldn’t and I have to get involved. When people ask me “Who are you,” I usually tell them I work for the parks department.
AND THE PAPERWORK Every Sunday, I go through the biweekly reports from my senior managers. When the weather’s nice, I’ll take it outdoors and sit on a bench and watch people go by. Riverside Park is my backyard. I once read a piece about a guy who wrote a novel on a bench in Riverside Park. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that guy.
FOOD I don’t do brunch. I just can’t see spending too much time indoors on a Sunday and I can’t see drinking alcohol that early. But Sundays are one of the few nights at home when I actually have time to cook. I’ll make a homemade spaghetti sauce, heavy on vegetables, or a tomato sauce with something interesting like ginger, anchovies, capers and hot peppers — sort of an arrabbiata-puttanesca combination. My wife doesn’t eat meat, so it’s always vegetarian or, if we’ve thought about it in advance, I’ll cook some seafood. Occasionally, in the winter, I’ll make a beef stew.
IDLE, AND HAPPY Sunday is the one day I can count on not doing something. I’m usually at functions five nights a week and I’m always doing something even on a Saturday. It might be taking 50 economic-development people from Amsterdam on a bike tour down the West Side waterfront, but it’s still work. Sundays, I relax.
RISE AND SHINE I’m up pretty early — usually by 8 o’clock. I’ve lost the ability to sleep late in middle age. The first thing I do is have a cup of coffee, make some sort of breakfast and look at the paper. I usually cook myself an omelet: jalapeño peppers, onions, scallions and some kind of cheese.
THE SUNDAY PAPER I have this bad habit, according to my wife, of squirreling away the sections I haven’t read yet. Right now, the pile’s about a foot and a half tall. If I have a light weekend and I’m not working, I’ll go through 50 or so old papers and clip out photographs. I save them for decorating presents. I wrap the gift with regular paper, then put a picture on it and make some sort of comment. It’s kind of a family tradition.
THE WORKOUT Generally, in the late morning or early afternoon, I’ll get in some extended vigorous exercise, usually a long run or a bike ride or a walk in Central Park or Riverside Park or the Hudson River waterfront.
AND THE WORK The only problem is, I can’t relax in a park. My wife went walking with me recently in Central Park and said, “This isn’t a walk. This is a sector patrol.” It’s way beyond taking mental notes. My BlackBerry has a camera, which has actually become the bane of all parks department employees. I take pictures and e-mail them to people right away. Or I’ll see someone stomping through a flower bed or letting their dog run where it shouldn’t and I have to get involved. When people ask me “Who are you,” I usually tell them I work for the parks department.
AND THE PAPERWORK Every Sunday, I go through the biweekly reports from my senior managers. When the weather’s nice, I’ll take it outdoors and sit on a bench and watch people go by. Riverside Park is my backyard. I once read a piece about a guy who wrote a novel on a bench in Riverside Park. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen that guy.
FOOD I don’t do brunch. I just can’t see spending too much time indoors on a Sunday and I can’t see drinking alcohol that early. But Sundays are one of the few nights at home when I actually have time to cook. I’ll make a homemade spaghetti sauce, heavy on vegetables, or a tomato sauce with something interesting like ginger, anchovies, capers and hot peppers — sort of an arrabbiata-puttanesca combination. My wife doesn’t eat meat, so it’s always vegetarian or, if we’ve thought about it in advance, I’ll cook some seafood. Occasionally, in the winter, I’ll make a beef stew.
IDLE, AND HAPPY Sunday is the one day I can count on not doing something. I’m usually at functions five nights a week and I’m always doing something even on a Saturday. It might be taking 50 economic-development people from Amsterdam on a bike tour down the West Side waterfront, but it’s still work. Sundays, I relax.
On Diverse Force, Blacks Still Face Special Peril
Two black police officers stand outside the 70th Precinct station in Brooklyn and consider the disastrous turn of events the night before: an off-duty black officer dead in a Harlem street, felled by the bullets of a white officer who mistook him for a threat.
One runs his hand across his corn-rowed scalp; he is disgusted. “Same deal always,” he says of the deadly encounter between colleagues on Thursday night. “They’ll say it’s about training.”
A block away, a Latino officer with six years on the force acknowledges being conflicted. “Tell you the truth, I feel bad for the shooter. It happens so fast, and now he has got to live with this.” His voice trails off.
At the Newkirk Avenue subway station, a black officer of many years’ experience stares straight ahead. “There’s your training and there’s your reaction,” he says quietly of such split-second tragedies. “That’s two different things.”
Its serried ranks are more diverse than ever, its training and rules on the use of force more rigorous than in the past, yet the New York New YorkPolice Department still struggles with the problem of fraternal shootings across the color line. Beginning with the first such shooting in 1940, when white officers in Harlem mistook a black officer, John A. Holt Jr., for a burglar and shot him dead in his own apartment building, these relatively rare shootings come attended by an air of political ritual: protesters march, panels are appointed and reforms are most often accepted by police commissioners.
After a white officer shot and killed an undercover detective, William Capers, in 1972, the department drew up guidelines intended to prevent fraternal fire and undercover officers began wearing their badges on strings around their necks.
In 1994, after a white officer fired shots into the back of a black undercover transit officer, Desmond Robinson, the police commissioner, William J. Bratton, acknowledged what seemed painfully obvious to black undercover officers — the department needed to appoint a panel to examine the racial assumptions of their white colleagues.
“It’s a reality,” Mr. Bratton said. “Minority officers are at risk.”
New York City has fewer fatal police shootings per officer than any other large police department in the nation, according to a department official. Since 1990, fewer than a half-dozen police officers have been shot by other officers in New York. And the Police Department has consistently tightened rules governing when and how officers should use firearms. But a 25-year-old police officer, Omar J. Edwards, now lies in a city morgue, and his death imposes its own reality. Anguish and tears come accompanied by questions about whether too many officers harbor too many assumptions and fire too quickly.
“This is the most Shakespearean aspect of policing,” said State Senator Eric Adams of Brooklyn, who is black and a former police captain. “Your greatest fear is to be shot and slain on duty, and that’s only matched by your fear of shooting another officer.”
He added, “If you speak with nine out of 10 officers of color they would tell you that when they hear sirens, in their head they are thinking: ‘I hope these cops know that I’m one of the good guys.’ ”
That worry comes embedded in a paradox: The New York New Yorkepartment never has been so diverse. A majority of the cadets in the last rookie police class were members of ethnic and racial minorities, offering a rainbow cross-section of the city itself. Over all, 47.8 percent of the city’s officers are white, 28.7 percent Hispanic, 17.9 percent black and 5.4 percent Asian.
But, replenished although this department is, its very youth and diversity present a challenge. Officer Edwards had been on the force for two years; the officer who shot him, Andrew P. Dunton, had been for 4 ½ years. Younger officers, say their instructors, are more likely to experience surges of judgment-blurring testosterone and adrenaline.
In Officer Edwards’s case, the young, off-duty officer apparently had drawn his weapon and was chasing a man who had tried to break into his car when he encountered his on-duty colleagues, who according to their initial testimony saw his gun, shouted “Police!” and fired when he turned to face them. Such actions might have been in violation of departmental protocols.
“The department has very good training on use of force and firearm simulators,” said Maria Haberfeld, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a specialist in the use of force. “The physiological impact on the officer is great. It’s very detrimental to solid judgment. Your adrenaline is pumping, and your visual skills are impaired.
“It’s not a situation you can replicate in a classroom.”
On Diverse Force, Blacks Still Face Special Peril
Sign in to RecommendSign In to E-Mail Print Single Page Reprints ShareClose
LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkPublished: May 30, 2009
(Page 2 of 2)
The city is a measurably safer place than it was two decades ago, when the number of homicides hovered around 2,000 each year. Last year, the city recorded 516 homicides. When former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani folded the transit and housing police forces into the New York New Yorkepartment in the mid-1990s, he eliminated much of the confusion that came with balkanized forces. But particularly for young officers, whose training comes in high-crime precincts, New York City can cast a confusing, even threatening shadow.
Officers, many of whom grew up in segregated neighborhoods, find themselves challenged to remember daily that their own come in every shape and color.
“There was a time if you were a cop you could grab your gun and go into the streets and count on a stereotype to protect you,” said Eugene J. O’Donnell, professor of law and police studies at John Jay and a former officer. “Now the cops look like everybody, and everybody looks like a cop.
“So stereotypes,” he said, “offer no protection at all.”
Sorting out the shooting of one officer by another, not least the role played by race, is complicated. In a few cases, gunman and victim share an ethnicity. In 2006, a gang brawled with an off-duty police officer, Eric Hernandez, at a White Castle restaurant in the Bronx. Officer Alfredo Toro responded to a 911 call and shot Officer Hernandez, not realizing he was a colleague. Officer Hernandez later died.
It “is naïve to assume that our department is driven by racism,” Dr. Haberfeld says. “Your experience will be based on what you encounter, and it’s natural to build up a profile.”
But some black officers and academics counter that this is too easy. “If it was just a mistake, we would see more of these mistakes with officers of different colors,” said Prof. Delores Jones-Brown, director of John Jay’s Center on Race, Crime and Justice.
Instinctual judgments about race and crime are woven into the culture of the streets. “We tend to pretend in the police force that we don’t see race, we don’t see ethnicity, but we do,” said Senator Adams, the former police captain. “One of my cops once said that if he sees a non-uniformed black man with a gun, he takes precautions for himself; if he sees a white guy with a gun, he takes precautions for both because he knows it could be a fellow cop.”
Desmond Robinson lived this experience. In 1994, in the confusion of the 53rd Street subway station, he chased a teenager with a gun. Another undercover officer, Peter Del-Debbio, who is white, came from the other direction and fired at Officer Robinson, the last few shots pumped into his back at close range.
Officer Del-Debbio was convicted of second-degree assault and sentenced to five years’ probation. Officer Robinson recovered and left the force.
“Everyone carries baggage subconsciously and retraining the mind takes lots of work,” said Mr. Robinson, who lives in Florida. “There are a lot of black undercovers out there, and officers need to understand that not every black man with a gun is a criminal.”
Amid Mourning, Circumspection
As New York City prepared for the funeral of Officer Omar J. Edwards, who was fatally shot by another officer in East Harlem on Thursday, his relatives and elected and civic leaders called for consideration of the split-second decisions officers must make. Article, nytimes.com/nyregion.
One runs his hand across his corn-rowed scalp; he is disgusted. “Same deal always,” he says of the deadly encounter between colleagues on Thursday night. “They’ll say it’s about training.”
A block away, a Latino officer with six years on the force acknowledges being conflicted. “Tell you the truth, I feel bad for the shooter. It happens so fast, and now he has got to live with this.” His voice trails off.
At the Newkirk Avenue subway station, a black officer of many years’ experience stares straight ahead. “There’s your training and there’s your reaction,” he says quietly of such split-second tragedies. “That’s two different things.”
Its serried ranks are more diverse than ever, its training and rules on the use of force more rigorous than in the past, yet the New York New YorkPolice Department still struggles with the problem of fraternal shootings across the color line. Beginning with the first such shooting in 1940, when white officers in Harlem mistook a black officer, John A. Holt Jr., for a burglar and shot him dead in his own apartment building, these relatively rare shootings come attended by an air of political ritual: protesters march, panels are appointed and reforms are most often accepted by police commissioners.
After a white officer shot and killed an undercover detective, William Capers, in 1972, the department drew up guidelines intended to prevent fraternal fire and undercover officers began wearing their badges on strings around their necks.
In 1994, after a white officer fired shots into the back of a black undercover transit officer, Desmond Robinson, the police commissioner, William J. Bratton, acknowledged what seemed painfully obvious to black undercover officers — the department needed to appoint a panel to examine the racial assumptions of their white colleagues.
“It’s a reality,” Mr. Bratton said. “Minority officers are at risk.”
New York City has fewer fatal police shootings per officer than any other large police department in the nation, according to a department official. Since 1990, fewer than a half-dozen police officers have been shot by other officers in New York. And the Police Department has consistently tightened rules governing when and how officers should use firearms. But a 25-year-old police officer, Omar J. Edwards, now lies in a city morgue, and his death imposes its own reality. Anguish and tears come accompanied by questions about whether too many officers harbor too many assumptions and fire too quickly.
“This is the most Shakespearean aspect of policing,” said State Senator Eric Adams of Brooklyn, who is black and a former police captain. “Your greatest fear is to be shot and slain on duty, and that’s only matched by your fear of shooting another officer.”
He added, “If you speak with nine out of 10 officers of color they would tell you that when they hear sirens, in their head they are thinking: ‘I hope these cops know that I’m one of the good guys.’ ”
That worry comes embedded in a paradox: The New York New Yorkepartment never has been so diverse. A majority of the cadets in the last rookie police class were members of ethnic and racial minorities, offering a rainbow cross-section of the city itself. Over all, 47.8 percent of the city’s officers are white, 28.7 percent Hispanic, 17.9 percent black and 5.4 percent Asian.
But, replenished although this department is, its very youth and diversity present a challenge. Officer Edwards had been on the force for two years; the officer who shot him, Andrew P. Dunton, had been for 4 ½ years. Younger officers, say their instructors, are more likely to experience surges of judgment-blurring testosterone and adrenaline.
In Officer Edwards’s case, the young, off-duty officer apparently had drawn his weapon and was chasing a man who had tried to break into his car when he encountered his on-duty colleagues, who according to their initial testimony saw his gun, shouted “Police!” and fired when he turned to face them. Such actions might have been in violation of departmental protocols.
“The department has very good training on use of force and firearm simulators,” said Maria Haberfeld, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a specialist in the use of force. “The physiological impact on the officer is great. It’s very detrimental to solid judgment. Your adrenaline is pumping, and your visual skills are impaired.
“It’s not a situation you can replicate in a classroom.”
On Diverse Force, Blacks Still Face Special Peril
Sign in to RecommendSign In to E-Mail Print Single Page Reprints ShareClose
LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkPublished: May 30, 2009
(Page 2 of 2)
The city is a measurably safer place than it was two decades ago, when the number of homicides hovered around 2,000 each year. Last year, the city recorded 516 homicides. When former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani folded the transit and housing police forces into the New York New Yorkepartment in the mid-1990s, he eliminated much of the confusion that came with balkanized forces. But particularly for young officers, whose training comes in high-crime precincts, New York City can cast a confusing, even threatening shadow.
Officers, many of whom grew up in segregated neighborhoods, find themselves challenged to remember daily that their own come in every shape and color.
“There was a time if you were a cop you could grab your gun and go into the streets and count on a stereotype to protect you,” said Eugene J. O’Donnell, professor of law and police studies at John Jay and a former officer. “Now the cops look like everybody, and everybody looks like a cop.
“So stereotypes,” he said, “offer no protection at all.”
Sorting out the shooting of one officer by another, not least the role played by race, is complicated. In a few cases, gunman and victim share an ethnicity. In 2006, a gang brawled with an off-duty police officer, Eric Hernandez, at a White Castle restaurant in the Bronx. Officer Alfredo Toro responded to a 911 call and shot Officer Hernandez, not realizing he was a colleague. Officer Hernandez later died.
It “is naïve to assume that our department is driven by racism,” Dr. Haberfeld says. “Your experience will be based on what you encounter, and it’s natural to build up a profile.”
But some black officers and academics counter that this is too easy. “If it was just a mistake, we would see more of these mistakes with officers of different colors,” said Prof. Delores Jones-Brown, director of John Jay’s Center on Race, Crime and Justice.
Instinctual judgments about race and crime are woven into the culture of the streets. “We tend to pretend in the police force that we don’t see race, we don’t see ethnicity, but we do,” said Senator Adams, the former police captain. “One of my cops once said that if he sees a non-uniformed black man with a gun, he takes precautions for himself; if he sees a white guy with a gun, he takes precautions for both because he knows it could be a fellow cop.”
Desmond Robinson lived this experience. In 1994, in the confusion of the 53rd Street subway station, he chased a teenager with a gun. Another undercover officer, Peter Del-Debbio, who is white, came from the other direction and fired at Officer Robinson, the last few shots pumped into his back at close range.
Officer Del-Debbio was convicted of second-degree assault and sentenced to five years’ probation. Officer Robinson recovered and left the force.
“Everyone carries baggage subconsciously and retraining the mind takes lots of work,” said Mr. Robinson, who lives in Florida. “There are a lot of black undercovers out there, and officers need to understand that not every black man with a gun is a criminal.”
Amid Mourning, Circumspection
As New York City prepared for the funeral of Officer Omar J. Edwards, who was fatally shot by another officer in East Harlem on Thursday, his relatives and elected and civic leaders called for consideration of the split-second decisions officers must make. Article, nytimes.com/nyregion.
Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for the United States
The government’s urgent push into cyberwarfare has set off a rush among the biggest military companies for billions of dollars in new defense contracts.
The exotic nature of the work, coupled with the deep recession, is enabling the companies to attract top young talent that once would have gone to Silicon Valley. And the race to develop weapons that defend against, or initiate, computer attacks has given rise to thousands of “hacker soldiers” within the Pentagon who can blend the new capabilities into the nation’s war planning.
Nearly all of the largest military companies — including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies.
The companies have been moving quickly to lock up the relatively small number of experts with the training and creativity to block the attacks and design countermeasures. They have been buying smaller firms, financing academic research and running advertisements for “cyberninjas” at a time when other industries are shedding workers.
The changes are manifesting themselves in highly classified laboratories, where computer geeks in their 20s like to joke that they are hackers with security clearances.
At a Raytheon facility here south of the Kennedy Space Center, a hub of innovation in an earlier era, rock music blares and empty cans of Mountain Dew pile up as engineers create tools to protect the Pentagon’s computers and crack into the networks of countries that could become adversaries. Prizes like cappuccino machines and stacks of cash spur them on, and a gong heralds each major breakthrough.
The young engineers represent the new face of a war that President Obama described Friday as “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation.” The president said he would appoint a senior White House official to oversee the nation’s cybersecurity strategies.
Computer experts say the government is behind the curve in sealing off its networks from threats that are growing more persistent and sophisticated, with thousands of intrusions each day from organized criminals and legions of hackers for nations including Russia and China.
“Everybody’s attacking everybody,” said Scott Chase, a 30-year-old computer engineer who helps run the Raytheon unit here.
Mr. Chase, who wears his hair in a ponytail, and Terry Gillette, a 53-year-old former rocket engineer, ran SI Government Solutions before selling the company to Raytheon last year as the boom in the military’s cyberoperations accelerated.
The operation — tucked into several unmarked buildings behind an insurance office and a dentist’s office — is doing some of the most cutting-edge work, both in identifying weaknesses in Pentagon networks and in creating weapons for potential attacks.
Daniel D. Allen, who oversees work on intelligence systems for Northrop Grumman, estimated that federal spending on computer security now totals $10 billion each year, including classified programs. That is just a fraction of the government’s spending on weapons systems. But industry officials expect it to rise rapidly.
The military contractors are now in the enviable position of turning what they learned out of necessity — protecting the sensitive Pentagon data that sits on their own computers — into a lucrative business that could replace some of the revenue lost from cancellations of conventional weapons systems.
Executives at Lockheed Martin, which has long been the government’s largest information-technology contractor, also see the demand for greater computer security spreading to energy and health care agencies and the rest of the nation’s critical infrastructure. But for now, most companies remain focused on the national-security arena, where the hottest efforts involve anticipating how an enemy might attack and developing the resources to strike back.
Though even the existence of research on cyberweapons was once highly classified, the Air Force plans this year to award the first publicly announced contract for developing tools to break into enemy computers. The companies are also teaming up to build a National Cyber Range, a model of the Internet for testing advanced techniques.
Military experts said Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, which have long been major players in the Pentagon’s security efforts, are leading the push into offensive cyberwarfare, along with the Raytheon unit. This involves finding vulnerabilities in other countries’ computer systems and developing software tools to exploit them, either to steal sensitive information or disable the networks.Mr. Chase and Mr. Gillette said the Raytheon unit, which has about 100 employees, grew out of a company they started with friends at Florida Institute of Technology that concentrated on helping software makers find flaws in their own products. Over the last several years, their focus shifted to the military and intelligence agencies, which wanted to use their analytic tools to detect vulnerabilities and intrusions previously unnoticed.
Like other contractors, the Raytheon teams set up “honey pots,” the equivalent of sting operations, to lure hackers into digital cul-de-sacs that mimic Pentagon Web sites. They then capture the attackers’ codes and create defenses for them.
And since most of the world’s computers run on the Windows or the Linux systems, their work has also provided a growing window into how to attack foreign networks in any cyberwar.
“It takes a nonconformist to excel at what we do,” said Mr. Gillette, a tanned surfing aficionado who looks like a 1950s hipster in his T-shirts with rolled-up sleeves.
The company, which would allow interviews with other employees only on the condition that their last names not be used because of security concerns, hired one of its top young workers, Dustin, after he won two major hacking contests and dropped out of college. “I always approach it like a game, and it’s been fun,” said Dustin, now 22.
Another engineer, known as Jolly, joined Raytheon in April after earning a master’s degree in computer security at DePaul University in Chicago. “You think defense contractors, and you think bureaucracy, and not necessarily a lot of interesting and challenging projects,” he said.
The Pentagon’s interest in cyberwarfare has reached “religious intensity,” said Daniel T. Kuehl, a military historian at the National Defense University. And the changes carry through to soldiers being trained to defend and attack computer and wireless networks out on the battlefield.
That shift can be seen in the remaking of organizations like the Association of Old Crows, a professional group that includes contractors and military personnel.
The Old Crows have deep roots in what has long been known as electronic warfare — the use of radar and radio technologies for jamming and deception.
But the financing for electronic warfare had slowed recently, prompting the Old Crows to set up a broader information-operations branch last year and establish a new trade journal to focus on cyberwarfare.
The career of Joel Harding, the director of the group’s Information Operations Institute, exemplifies the increasing role that computing and the Internet are playing in the military.
A 20-year veteran of military intelligence, Mr. Harding shifted in 1996 into one of the earliest commands that studied government-sponsored computer hacker programs. After leaving the military, he took a job as an analyst at SAIC, a large contractor developing computer applications for military and intelligence agencies.
Mr. Harding estimates that there are now 3,000 to 5,000 information operations specialists in the military and 50,000 to 70,000 soldiers involved in general computer operations. Adding specialists in electronic warfare, deception and other areas could bring the total number of information operations personnel to as many as 88,700, he said.
The exotic nature of the work, coupled with the deep recession, is enabling the companies to attract top young talent that once would have gone to Silicon Valley. And the race to develop weapons that defend against, or initiate, computer attacks has given rise to thousands of “hacker soldiers” within the Pentagon who can blend the new capabilities into the nation’s war planning.
Nearly all of the largest military companies — including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies.
The companies have been moving quickly to lock up the relatively small number of experts with the training and creativity to block the attacks and design countermeasures. They have been buying smaller firms, financing academic research and running advertisements for “cyberninjas” at a time when other industries are shedding workers.
The changes are manifesting themselves in highly classified laboratories, where computer geeks in their 20s like to joke that they are hackers with security clearances.
At a Raytheon facility here south of the Kennedy Space Center, a hub of innovation in an earlier era, rock music blares and empty cans of Mountain Dew pile up as engineers create tools to protect the Pentagon’s computers and crack into the networks of countries that could become adversaries. Prizes like cappuccino machines and stacks of cash spur them on, and a gong heralds each major breakthrough.
The young engineers represent the new face of a war that President Obama described Friday as “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation.” The president said he would appoint a senior White House official to oversee the nation’s cybersecurity strategies.
Computer experts say the government is behind the curve in sealing off its networks from threats that are growing more persistent and sophisticated, with thousands of intrusions each day from organized criminals and legions of hackers for nations including Russia and China.
“Everybody’s attacking everybody,” said Scott Chase, a 30-year-old computer engineer who helps run the Raytheon unit here.
Mr. Chase, who wears his hair in a ponytail, and Terry Gillette, a 53-year-old former rocket engineer, ran SI Government Solutions before selling the company to Raytheon last year as the boom in the military’s cyberoperations accelerated.
The operation — tucked into several unmarked buildings behind an insurance office and a dentist’s office — is doing some of the most cutting-edge work, both in identifying weaknesses in Pentagon networks and in creating weapons for potential attacks.
Daniel D. Allen, who oversees work on intelligence systems for Northrop Grumman, estimated that federal spending on computer security now totals $10 billion each year, including classified programs. That is just a fraction of the government’s spending on weapons systems. But industry officials expect it to rise rapidly.
The military contractors are now in the enviable position of turning what they learned out of necessity — protecting the sensitive Pentagon data that sits on their own computers — into a lucrative business that could replace some of the revenue lost from cancellations of conventional weapons systems.
Executives at Lockheed Martin, which has long been the government’s largest information-technology contractor, also see the demand for greater computer security spreading to energy and health care agencies and the rest of the nation’s critical infrastructure. But for now, most companies remain focused on the national-security arena, where the hottest efforts involve anticipating how an enemy might attack and developing the resources to strike back.
Though even the existence of research on cyberweapons was once highly classified, the Air Force plans this year to award the first publicly announced contract for developing tools to break into enemy computers. The companies are also teaming up to build a National Cyber Range, a model of the Internet for testing advanced techniques.
Military experts said Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, which have long been major players in the Pentagon’s security efforts, are leading the push into offensive cyberwarfare, along with the Raytheon unit. This involves finding vulnerabilities in other countries’ computer systems and developing software tools to exploit them, either to steal sensitive information or disable the networks.Mr. Chase and Mr. Gillette said the Raytheon unit, which has about 100 employees, grew out of a company they started with friends at Florida Institute of Technology that concentrated on helping software makers find flaws in their own products. Over the last several years, their focus shifted to the military and intelligence agencies, which wanted to use their analytic tools to detect vulnerabilities and intrusions previously unnoticed.
Like other contractors, the Raytheon teams set up “honey pots,” the equivalent of sting operations, to lure hackers into digital cul-de-sacs that mimic Pentagon Web sites. They then capture the attackers’ codes and create defenses for them.
And since most of the world’s computers run on the Windows or the Linux systems, their work has also provided a growing window into how to attack foreign networks in any cyberwar.
“It takes a nonconformist to excel at what we do,” said Mr. Gillette, a tanned surfing aficionado who looks like a 1950s hipster in his T-shirts with rolled-up sleeves.
The company, which would allow interviews with other employees only on the condition that their last names not be used because of security concerns, hired one of its top young workers, Dustin, after he won two major hacking contests and dropped out of college. “I always approach it like a game, and it’s been fun,” said Dustin, now 22.
Another engineer, known as Jolly, joined Raytheon in April after earning a master’s degree in computer security at DePaul University in Chicago. “You think defense contractors, and you think bureaucracy, and not necessarily a lot of interesting and challenging projects,” he said.
The Pentagon’s interest in cyberwarfare has reached “religious intensity,” said Daniel T. Kuehl, a military historian at the National Defense University. And the changes carry through to soldiers being trained to defend and attack computer and wireless networks out on the battlefield.
That shift can be seen in the remaking of organizations like the Association of Old Crows, a professional group that includes contractors and military personnel.
The Old Crows have deep roots in what has long been known as electronic warfare — the use of radar and radio technologies for jamming and deception.
But the financing for electronic warfare had slowed recently, prompting the Old Crows to set up a broader information-operations branch last year and establish a new trade journal to focus on cyberwarfare.
The career of Joel Harding, the director of the group’s Information Operations Institute, exemplifies the increasing role that computing and the Internet are playing in the military.
A 20-year veteran of military intelligence, Mr. Harding shifted in 1996 into one of the earliest commands that studied government-sponsored computer hacker programs. After leaving the military, he took a job as an analyst at SAIC, a large contractor developing computer applications for military and intelligence agencies.
Mr. Harding estimates that there are now 3,000 to 5,000 information operations specialists in the military and 50,000 to 70,000 soldiers involved in general computer operations. Adding specialists in electronic warfare, deception and other areas could bring the total number of information operations personnel to as many as 88,700, he said.
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