[Ryan Lackey in Iraq] Wiring the War Zone

[R.A. Hettinga]

--- begin forwarded text


 Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 11:31:24 -0400
 To: Philodox Clips List <clips at philodox.com>
 From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
 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."

 --
 -----------------
 R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
 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'

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
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'