Youtube and MRAPs

Sometimes you just can't defend the dumb from the dumber.

Making the rounds today, starting with USFK Commander's B.B. Bell's announcement that youtube/myspace/etcspace would be banned from USFK computers. Fair enough. They drain bandwidth and interfere with military confunctionaters, right?

Except.

It got me thinking about these recent articles where all the HUMVEES in Iraq are going to be replaced by Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles. These MRAPs weren't even a glimmer in the eye of the Acquisition community, a few years back. They were, and remain, a commercial off the shelf solution between soft shelled meat wagons and less than stealthy main battle tanks. Taken from a South African design, and built in South Carolina, the MRAP is to ground forces what the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator is to the Air Force. Namely, a good idea found, not designed.

MRAPs are useful because they fill a capabilities gap on the kinetic battlefield. Same with the Predator, and her more lethal daughter, the Reaper. "Useless" products that found a niche.

Look, Chief Information Officers will always be "the Grinch who Stole Web 2.0." Always yammering on about storage and bandwidth. For my money, they'd do better outsourcing their departments to google (for storage and webbased collaboration) and some stateside provider (for bandwidth). Build security into the contract!

Instead, we get the good idea fairy reaching for the "block/websense/not on me network" button.

Silly.

Over sixty percent of my brain resides on the web (I exaggerate) and having my access cut off would not just make me dumb, it is dumb.

Myspace/youtube etc. are COTS solutions to, currently, damaged information portals. You just have to know where to look.

My gut says this decision will be reversed.

(And yes, this is a different issue from the Blogger Destruction Act 2007 I spoke of earlier)

UPDATE: Sean posts on another rebel with a cause. Sometimes you just have to keep kicking. Otherwise, entropy wins. And that sucks.

UPDATE II: I swear I'm expressively dyslexic. Corrected MARP to MRAP.