Last week the Pentagon announced that it has appointed former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to lead a new Defense Innovation Advisory Board. What the Defense Department hopes Schmidt can do is update its aging information technology infrastructure, which like most of our government bureaucracies’ it infrastructure is woefully inadequate. Hopefully Schmidt and his colleagues can do something about that. Not least are the hacking threats to which the outdated systems are suseptible. Esquire’s Charles Pierce notes that this is not the first time the American military has turned to C-level talent to fix its problems. During the First World War Bernard Baruch ran the War Industries Board to bring the woefully unprepared American Expeditionary Force up to speed for its task at hand.

(image/Library of Congress)