By John Ballard
It was with some excetement that I came across the name Misha Glenny by someone in my Twitter timeline. I hadn't thought about him for years, having first learned of his meticulous scholarship while doing homework about the unravelling of the former Yugoslavia. I told the story abour five years ago as part of a rambling piece at my old blog.
A woman from Sarajevo who worked briefly with me was surprised when I asked her specific questions about her home country. This was during the time that Yugoslavia was coming apart and Serbs in Belgrade wore bulls-eye teeshirts in one of the most impressive public demonstrations of our lifetime. I had just finished one of Misha Glenny's books and was able to sketch an outline map of what was soon to be referred to as the former Yugoslavia.
Needless to say I have been one of his Twitter followers ever since. So it was from the horse's mouth that this TED talk comes to my attention. He makes a very strong case that rather than tossing cyber-criminals in jail the prudent alternative would be to hire them to work for the betterment of society, perhaps even as part of our national defense network (though I don't think I caught precisely that in what he said) since China and Russia are doing exactly that.
Even if his suggestion goes nowhere (which is likely ) this TED talk is rich with the deails of Misha Glenny's investigation into the dark world of hacking. In my opinionn he's one of the smartest journalists of our generation.
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