I have a Dilbert mousepad. I'm not ashamed to admit it. It's sitting right there with a provocative statement on it: "Technology-no place for wimps." Sure, it's funny because Dilbert is the epitome of wimp, a potato-shaped, bespectacled nerd whose tie has more spine than he does. But in the not-too-distant future, the front lines of warfare may be occupied more by Dilbert types than the classic G.I. Joes, confirming what my mousepad has asserted all along.

Cyber warfare is emerging as a significant threat - an asymmetric one at that - and the Pentagon is responding by recruiting poorly dressed twentysomethings with a penchant for Mountain Dew and black t-shirts. With excellent timing, the military is luring away talented young programmers and computer whizzes who might otherwise have gone to Silicon Valley jobs in meatier economic days. Some of the biggest military contractors, including Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, and Lockheed Martin, are receiving billions of dollars in order to hire the cream of the hacker crop in order to shore up the nation's cyber security.

These companies are taking advantage of both the recession and new, lucrative government contracts in order to buy up smaller security firms, pump money into academic research, and even (according to the New York Times) run advertisements for "cyberninjas", hiring when most companies are doing what the pointy-haired boss would call "reorganization."

This comes not a moment too soon, however. Just last Friday, President Obama gave a speech in which he detailed how dependent our nation's economy, government and military are on linked computer systems and how determined our enemies are to disrupt them. The president went so far as to say that "this cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation."

Now, we're not exactly talking a "Die Hard 4" scenario here, but it is becoming more and more clear that the Internet and other linked computer systems are military and terrorist targets. So-called "white hat" hackers are hired by government contractors to probe weaknesses in federal hardware and software ranging from the Pentagon to the FDIC. These hackers do everything in their power to break down security defenses to get to sensitive data, just like a criminal hacker would, and then turn around and either fix the vulnerabilities themselves, or turn over their results to the agency's in-home experts so that they can fix them.

Not all programming is involved with defense, however. One of the hottest areas in cyber national security is developing offensive capabilities. Long classified, the Air Force will be the first department to grant a contract explicitly for creating technology that can break into enemy computer systems and wreak havoc. Even grunt soldiers are being trained in how to properly attack and defend computer systems on the physical battlefield.

Tech guys often talk about paradigm shifts - dramatic changes in the way people think. Technologies like metal armor, firearms, and air power have all prompted military paradigm shifts, and the networked world of cyberspace is absolutely a military paradigm shift in its own right. When you think about it, a good deal of technology has been created for the purpose of killing people, so really, technology has never been a place for wimps. Dilbert was right all along.

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