--- begin forwarded text
Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 11:31:24 -0400
To: Philodox Clips List
From: "R.A. Hettinga"
Subject: [Ryan Lackey in Iraq] Wiring the War Zone
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.09/posts.html?pg=2
Wired
Issue 13.09 - September 2005
Wired 13.09: POSTS
Wiring the War Zone
It's a typical morning at Camp Anaconda, the giant US military base 50
miles north of Baghdad - light breeze, temperatures heading to 100 degrees,
scattered mortar fire. Ryan Lackey is getting ready for today's assignment:
installing a pair of satellite Internet connections at Camp Warhorse about
30 miles away.
Lackey, 26, is founder and CTO of Blue Iraq, a war zone startup that has
operated out of Anaconda since December. It's a bootstrap operation - three
employees, tent accommodations, Army chow - that has been profitable from
its first day. "The military's a great market," he says. "They have lots of
money, and they know what they want." His customers are mostly base
commanders and DOD contractors, plus the occasional group of soldiers who
chip in to get Internet access.
Lackey dons body armor and a Kevlar helmet and heads out to the flight
line. A pair of Blackhawk helicopters is making a run to Camp Warhorse this
morning, and Lackey is hitching a ride. He packs his equipment and tools
into one helicopter and climbs into the other. Inside, everything is
painted black. Door gunners sit behind machine guns mounted on flexible
arms. The crew chief distributes earplugs, the passengers strap themselves
in, the rotors start to turn, and the ground falls away. But not too far.
Blackhawks fly just 100 feet above the ground, at 200 mph. It's a smooth,
exhilarating ride, landscape zooming past like a dream of flying. As
wartime commutes go, it can't be beat.
Lackey has been taking risks since he dropped out of MIT at 19 to work at a
startup on the Caribbean island of Anguilla. Two years later he moved to
Sealand, a North Sea oil rig, where he cofounded a data storage outpost
that claims sovereignty and is theoretically beyond the reach of any
nation's laws. (It was the subject of a Wired cover story in July 2000.) He
is happy to cash in on what he calls risk arbitrage. "There's sort of a
dark calculus when people are afraid," he says. "Prices for everything go
up. And if you understand the risk better than they do, you can price that
into everything."
The Blackhawk touches down at Camp Warhorse, a 1,000-soldier forward
operating base near the insurgent stronghold of Baqouba. In a freak
accident at the helipad, the rotor wash hurls one of the boxed satellite
dishes into Lackey's chest like a massive Frisbee. His armor saves him from
anything worse than bruises.
The first of two installations takes a few hours. Lackey sets up a
4-foot-diameter dish on the ground outside the base HQ, then assembles the
metal support arms that hold the satellite electronics at the focus of the
dish's parabolic arc. He has to be careful: After five minutes in the
midday Iraqi sun, metal can sear an ungloved hand. Cables run from the dish
to a modem indoors that in turn connects to a local area network. Ryan
hooks his laptop up to the modem and adjusts the dish's elevation and
azimuth until his software confirms the system is locked on to the correct
satellite. Just like that: the Internet. The iDirect system is robust
enough for Iraq's extreme heat, dust, and wind, and even handles
voice-over-IP calls.
The second install takes longer. Anti-radar camouflage netting overhead
interferes with the signal. By the time he's done, Lackey has missed his
helicopter lift home. He winds up stranded at Warhorse for two days before
catching a ride back to Anaconda on an armored convoy. This means spending
an hour in the back of a truck traveling through some of the most active
insurgent territory in Iraq.
Back in Anaconda, he has to deal with Blue Iraq's literal cash flow
problem. The military pays in greenbacks, meaning he routinely has to fly
on a cargo plane to deposit thick wads of currency at his bank in Dubai.
That's the cost of doing business here. And business is expanding: He
foresees cell service, ATM networks, and expansion into Afghanistan, and,
he says with a bleak grin, "any other markets the US military opens up for
us."
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R. A. Hettinga
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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--
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R. A. Hettinga
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'