Satellite dishes mark the main gate of Fort Gordon, eggshell white and lasering up at the moon. It’s a modest shrine, as these things go. Many military bases put machines of might on the front porch—tanks or helos or jumbo artillery guns—but the dishes fit Fort Gordon just fine. They’re subtle. They’re quiet.

Inside the gates it’s more of the same. Fort Gordon sits in a soft Georgian basin, the traditional home of the US Army Signal Corps. Signal has been around since the Civil War and has long been responsible for military communications—flags and torches back in the day, radios and cables and mesh networks in the more recent past. Recently, this staple of warfare started sharing its digs with a new branch: cyber. Find the right Signal old-timer, maybe one feeling cranky or deep in their cups in a bar along the dark Augusta riverfront, and they’ll talk candidly about this new branch. They say it with envy, and sibling affection. Still, though. They say it.

“Damn showboats.”

Maybe there’s some truth to that; maybe it’s just bureaucrat territorialism. Either way, what’s happening at the US Army’s new cyber branch headquarters marks a change for Fort Gordon. For the surrounding community too, with civic leaders hoping to turn Augusta and its neighboring cities into a national cybersecurity hub. Hell, what’s happening with cyber might be changing warfare itself.

And the soldiers charged with carrying it out don’t even carry rifles on missions. Their minds are their weapons, they say.

Silly? It can sound that way. Accurate? It is.

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April 2018. Subscribe to WIRED. Nik Mirus

At any given moment at Fort Gordon, instructors in khakis are teaching soldiers at every stage of their career—shiny new privates, steely-eyed noncoms, cherry lieutenants, surly captains. Different courses tailored for different ranks, for months at a time, on how to wage war through computer networks in ways both offensive (disabling enemy networks is one potential tactic) and defensive (trying to find vulnerabilities in US military systems before an adversary can). Meanwhile, elsewhere on the base, about 900 cyber operators who’ve already passed through a form of this training—70 percent of the Army’s 1,300 active-duty cyber soldiers—are doing these very things for real.

Well. As real as this kind of thing can be.

Joining the military as a young person has been a rite of passage since time immemorial. See the World. Protect and Defend. Endless war adds something else to the calculus of service. An all-volunteer force adds another something else. And drones and computer hacking adds even yet another something else.

The aimless kid who becomes a stud infantry grunt is a stereotype we know well from tales of Americana. Same with the brash overachievers who learn to thrive in the cockpit. But who joins the military to hack computer networks? What does this new type of warfare mean for soldiers, and how does it shape their training? While we’re at it, how does this reflect on us all, as citizens of a republic?

Big questions. Messy answers.

So. Through the Fort Gordon gates, past the Holiday Inn Express, beyond the stark Signal Towers building, seemingly built for the Warsaw horizon after World War II. Hang a left at Domino’s Pizza, then a right at the barracks bursting with young soldier angst. There lies a squat red-brick building. HEADQUARTERS, the sign reads. UNITED STATES ARMY CYBER SCHOOL.

Don’t let the plainness of the building fool you, though. Inside is a laboratory of ideas and ambitions and a home to the Army’s most ardent cyber apostles. Young aspirants can be part of it too. If they’re smart enough. If they’re creative enough. If they’re ready for physical training before dawn. Even Uncle Sam’s hackers need to be fit and trim.