West Point Cybergeeks Do It Again!

From the New York Times:

The competition was a final exam of sorts for a senior elective class. The cadets, who were computer science and information technology majors, competed against teams from the Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Merchant Marine as well as the Naval Postgraduate Academy and the Air Force Institute of Technology. Each team was judged on how well it subdued the threats from the N.S.A.

Did you catch that? They're not only competing against their peers at the other service academies, but against graduate students as well. And how did our fearless cadets perform?

West Point emerged victorious in the games last month. That means the academy, which has won five of the last nine competitions, can keep the Director’s Cup trophy, which is displayed near a German Enigma encoding machine from World War II. Cracking the Enigma code helped the Allies win the war, and the machine is a stark reminder of the pivotal role of technology in warfare.

Congratulations to the cadets and their instructors!

Now let's get some of that same winning spirit on the football team!

Update, 5/12/09: Turns out one of the team members is a graduate of the school at which I teach. He took a Cisco-sponsored networking class at school, and emailed the teacher to tell him that he used what he learned in that class during this exercise. Isn't that great news, and just what a teacher wants to hear?

Also, I thought back to this recent piece in which the author said that West Point provides only a junior college education because so many of its instructors have only masters degrees instead of doctorates. Somehow, though, these cadets--who are working on only bachelor's degrees--beat people working on master's degrees. Junior college education, indeed. Tom Ricks, bite me.