Defense Secretary Doesn't "Do E-mail"

By Noah Shachtman June 22, 2007 | 8:28:12 AMCategories: Paper Pushers & Powerpoint Rangers

The U.S. military is the most technologically-sophisticated fighting force on the planet. And it is being lead by a man less computer-savvy than my 93 year-old grandmother.

You see, Lucile Shachtman has been e-mailing -- or, as she likes to say, "on the e-mail," since the turn of the century. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, on the other hand, says, "I don't do e-mail. I'm a very low-tech person."

Not to get overly-serious here -- it is Friday, after all. But isn't it kinda screwed up that the Pentagon is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on "network-centric warfare" -- the idea that speedy information flow may be the most crucial advantage in combat -- while its head honcho is wasting his time writing off notes in long-hand?

Not that Gates' predecessor -- net-centric drum-beater-in-chief Donald Rumsfeld -- was any better. He never figured out how to get "on the e-mail," either.