Defense Secretary Defends Microsoft

[nobody@zor.hut.fi]

And here we have Cohen thanking Microsoft for installing 
backdoors in the form of convenient bugs into Windows...

This is really much bigger than the Crypto-AG thing.

http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/msftdoj/TWB19990219S0003

Defense Secretary Defends Microsoft
(02/19/99, 10:54 a.m. ET)
By Stuart Glascock, Computer Reseller News 

Microsoft is under heavy fire from the U.S. Department of Justice, but
the top gun at the U.S. Department of Defense backs the software
giant.

During a brief visit Thursday to the Redmond, Wash., headquarters of
Microsoft, Secretary of Defense William Cohen praised the company's
products and innovations, then trained his sites on other high-tech
companies.

"There is a sense that in many places beyond this campus -- from
Sunnyvale to Silicon Valley to Silicon Alley -- that some in the
digital world dismiss the importance of the national security world,"
Cohen told about 200 Microsoft employees and U.S. Army IT managers who
were meeting with Microsoft.

"That some soldiers in the high-tech revolution do not fully
understand or appreciate the soldiers in camouflage," Cohen continued.
"That tanks and guns are somehow rusty relics of the past, nearly
obsolete in the new information-based world that will carry us into
the future."

Cohen, sharing the podium with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and chief
operating officer Bob Herbold, devoted most of his talk to the value
of partnerships with companies such as Microsoft.

However, Cohen also launched a broad salvo at an unnamed Silicon
Valley executive, recently quoted in the New York Times as saying,
"Money is extracted from Silicon Valley and then wasted by
Washington."

Cohen said he could see how people could view the world in that
fashion, adding, "The intellectual property and virtual assets of
Yahoo are more highly valued by Wall Street than the oil reserves and
supertankers of Texaco. It can be easy to forget this global
marketplace was neither created by magic nor will it be kept by
marketing."

Before speaking, Cohen met privately with Gates and discussed how the
government can work with private-sector companies to secure the
"critical information infrastructure" that manage power grids,
telecommunications, and highway, aviation, and other transportation
systems. They also discussed Microsoft's Skills 2000 program, which
provides a number of training and educational opportunities in
technology.

Cohen never directly spoke about the long-running U.S. government
antitrust trial against Microsoft, but he clearly praised the
company's contributions to the "economic dynamism of the American
information technology economy."

"I am here today because I believe Microsoft does understand the
crucial connection between our national security and our national
prosperity," he said.

The Defense Secretary's trip to Seattle, which included a tour of an
assembly line at airplane manufacturing giant Boeing Co., was billed
as part of a campaign to spread the message that public and private
sector cooperation are essential.

He warned about the vulnerabilities of the country's national
infrastructure, from terrorist bombs to cyberterrorists to biological
warfare, and asked for the computer industries' help in solving the
problem.

Gates, agreed the potential for disruption of large-scale networks was
an "unsolved problem."

He called the meeting an opportunity to thank one of "our biggest
customers in the world," and suggested government and industry should
work closer.

"Over the years, we've had a very strong partnership with the
Department of Defense," Gates said. "DOD has all the challenges and
opportunities of a very large enterprise. Coordinating those
activities is an opportunity that pushes our software to the limit."

Following the talk, Gates and Cohen took no questions and exited the
stage under heavy security.