Here’s a great account by Neil McAllister of one of the most exciting sessions of last week’s O’Reilly P2P and
Web Services Conference: Michael R. Macedonia, Ph.D.’s Network-Centric Warfare.

Peering Into The Future —
The military contemplates
network-centric warfare

The term “cyber warfare” gets thrown around every
now and again. Most often, it comes attached to the
fanciful notion of some virtual battleground of the
near future, one where hackers are the foot soldiers,
worms and viruses are the tools and dominance
over the network is the ultimate military objective.
It’s an idea that owes more to Hollywood than to
reality, however. In truth, bullets, bombs and
control of all-too-real estate are likely to remain
central to warfare for a long time to come.

That’s not to say the US armed forces are letting the
fruits of the Internet Age simply drop from the vine
— far from it. The military is among the first
institutions to recognize the many contributions of
the computing industry to solving real-world
problems. So perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a
surprise when representatives of the armed forces
came looking for ideas among a decidedly
nonmilitary bunch: the geeks, hackers and
codeheads attending last week’s O’Reilly P2P and
Web Services Conference in Washington, DC.