Right now I'm re-reading Churchill's The Gathering Storm, which covers the pre-WWII era and ends with him being appointed PM. Just past the part where Hitler tells a British official that Germany had achieved air parity, which was true, which was a shock since the government had been insisting they were far behind. But this was in the mid-30s, about the right time for the government to start ordering large numbers of Hurricanes and Spitfires. Nazi Germany didn't become really dangerous until a few years later ... and with a little will and force (unfortunately, France had structured her army so that the latter wasn't an option without total mobilization, see this excellent and short book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0811714608/) could have been stopped at that stage and for a while later, but....
Now, we're swimming in a sea filled with the Internet of Shit and evidently a greater potential for ugliness for which we don't have things like Hurricanes, Spitfires and Chain Home radar as an answer. Hmmm, Chain Home development also started around then, 1935, and was barely ready in time for the Battle of Britain, and early use of the first few systems revealed a need for coordination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowding_system.
Then again, maybe we can hack up stuff reasonably quickly, do major league routers still use FPGAs for flexibility at speed? But we should start now, like the Brits did when they got serious in the mid-30s.
Right now I'm re-reading Churchill's The Gathering Storm, which covers the pre-WWII era and ends with him being appointed PM. Just past the part where Hitler tells a British official that Germany had achieved air parity, which was true, which was a shock since the government had been insisting they were far behind. But this was in the mid-30s, about the right time for the government to start ordering large numbers of Hurricanes and Spitfires. Nazi Germany didn't become really dangerous until a few years later ... and with a little will and force (unfortunately, France had structured her army so that the latter wasn't an option without total mobilization, see this excellent and short book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0811714608/) could have been stopped at that stage and for a while later, but....
Now, we're swimming in a sea filled with the Internet of Shit and evidently a greater potential for ugliness for which we don't have things like Hurricanes, Spitfires and Chain Home radar as an answer. Hmmm, Chain Home development also started around then, 1935, and was barely ready in time for the Battle of Britain, and early use of the first few systems revealed a need for coordination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dowding_system.
Then again, maybe we can hack up stuff reasonably quickly, do major league routers still use FPGAs for flexibility at speed? But we should start now, like the Brits did when they got serious in the mid-30s.