We Must Adapt

The pentagon must be willing to reconsider the risk of implementing quickly changing mobile device technology, or else fall further behind in a tech race that they may not even know is happening.

There is a false sort of sacrifice opportunity cost calculation going on in the Pentagon surrounding the implementation of new technology, as Fitzgerald and Sander outline in the essay on “Leveraging Commercial Technology”. The sacrifice is the idea that new tech comes at the sacrifice of safety, and safety comes at the sacrifice of new tech. This is in some ways a false opportunity cost, however, as we see perfect examples of top tech companies implementing cutting edge tech in all their security levels and still remaining some of the most secure environments on the planet.

This phenomenon of the reluctance of tablet and smartphone use is just one more symptom of government organizations being reluctant to incorporate new tech, to a fault. Much of the failure to catch the terrorists responsible for 9/11 was resting in the vastly outdated information intake systems that were set up by FBI and local police. All the pieces of information were there to raise enough questions, yet the infrastructure wasn’t advanced enough to place the pieces together.

This is not to say that another 9/11 will happen if the Pentagon is not willing to adapt smartphone technology, but it should be noted that there are significant government failures because of the lack of adaptation to new technology.

History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.