R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
You’d never have a terrorism exercise without a former terrorism expert on the roster. You wouldn’t have a bio-related exercise without someone with M.D. after their name. You wouldn’t have a nuke exercise without someone with Ph.D. after their name. Cyber is the only sort of crisis drill that doesn’t get the same respect for the discipline(s) involved.
Not taking anything away from the assembled expertise. Not saying that dealing with a crisis writ large means needing to know about bits and bytes. Just saying you have special teams players on a roster for a reason.
Mike,
The same strange force is at play in the Pentagon as well. You wouldn’t tell a Navy dentist, for example, to pilot a B-52. You wouldn’t take a seasoned brigade commander and tell him is is now chief engineer of the USS Nimitz. You wouldn’t take a submarine squadron commander and tell him he is now to plan and execute the second battle of Fallujah (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_Fallujah).
But we take an astronaut and tell him is is now STRATCOM and in charge of all things cyber?
One day things will be different.
But, as Dwight Eisenhower said: things are more like they are now than they have ever been.