R. A. Ratcliff
Auteur de Delusions of Intelligence: Enigma, Ultra, and the End of Secure Ciphers
A propos de l'auteur
R.A. Ratcliff, who currently lives and consults in the hills above Silicon Valley, has taught history and rhetoric at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of San Francisco and has lectured at the National Security Agency's intelligence school. In addition to working in the afficher plus high-tech industry, Dr. Ratcliff has written articles for Cryptologia, Intelligence and National Security, and the NSA's internal newsletter. afficher moins
Œuvres de R. A. Ratcliff
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Nom légal
- Ratcliff, Rebecca Ann
- Date de naissance
- 1963
- Sexe
- female
Membres
Critiques
Listes
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 1
- Membres
- 43
- Popularité
- #352,016
- Évaluation
- 3.7
- Critiques
- 2
- ISBN
- 2
First, the author (a woman, btw, not a man as posited in a previous review) was funded for her research, in part, by the NSA and she has published in their journal and taught at their intelligence school. I think this biases what she can say. Whether if biases what she wants to say or not, I'm not sure.
Second, this was written after 9/11 but before the Snowdon leaks, so it's mostly focused on how the US might better defeat the "bad guys," than the central government being the bad guy.
The third point is that some of this book was previously published (and I suspect used as lecture notes). The author hasn't done a very good editing job and sections of the book are extremely repetitious. (Perhaps this was at the behest of the NSA, since they wouldn't have to re-vet material that hadn't been changed??)
Her main thesis is that the Allies, and in particular Britain, were successful at breaking German codes and protecting their own because they put together a spectacular engineering project which combined the skills and dedication of a huge number of people to not only participate in the work, but to keep it secret. The German culture (military, academic and Nazi) did not provide a conducive climate to assemble such a project, nor did they deem it necessary (perhaps because they saw themselves as on the offensive, rather than needing every resource for defense).
Things she doesn't say but that were clear to me:
- if your intelligence is divided into sub-groups that don't talk to each other, you are not going to get good intelligence. I'm not sure that Homeland Security has digested that one yet. (Perhaps because they are fighting an offensive war and don't see the need???)
- to keep a huge engineering project a secret you have to convince people that the project is vitally necessary for their lives and the lives of the people they love. This was much easier to do in Britain under the blitz, than in the US under the threat of terrorist attacks that are only happening very rarely in large cities. It's especially hard if you have people who start questioning whether your methods are worth the results. (The Bletchley Park people knew they were helping to prevent bombings and working to get vital supplies across the ocean.)
An interesting book for anyone interested in cryptography or large, successful engineering projects.… (plus d'informations)