The past couple of decades haven’t been particularly kind to people like experts of anti-submarine warfare. The Taliban doesn’t have submarines, or a coastline even.
Since the end of the Cold War, a lot of transitions have come, with the military focusing more on counter-insurgency and the CIA moving away from spying to focus on assassinating people.
When US officials call the annexation of Crimea a crisis, what many of them really hear is opportunity, a chance to start up a new Cold War, and a chance for the aging cold warriors to find their specialties relevant once more.
That’s particularly true for spies with expertise in Russia, who are hoping to see a scramble back into a field that was lavished with funding for decades, but which in recent years just wasn’t as sexy as aiming drone strikes at people in rural parts of Pakistan.
Wanna dodge getting sucked dry by US spending ostensibly on foreign competition, real and imagined? Two Words: Janissary Option.
Does this mean the computer geeks in Las Vegas are going to be retrained as field operatives, taught Russian and be sent to Siberia?
Cold War.The second?Interesting?Oh my god.