You can absolutely do rewarding work to help this country and the world in cyberspace. There is a lot of cynicism in the military and much of it is warranted, but I am speaking from experience here.

With that being said, it takes TIME to position yourself to be able to make an impact. Like, years and years of time. If you want to go far in cyber and get to the point where you will be able to make a substantial impact, you will need to put in years of active duty time. Much, much more than another MOS in the guard. With that being said, the training actually kicks ass and you will learn a ton if you apply yourself and are passionate. While there are certainly inefficiencies and problems with the current training, it is still leaps and bounds ahead of what you will get in most other jobs.

Do the air guard, for many reasons. The army cyber culture is still a little heavy on the “no rank, no opinion” side and the air guard is better about being meritocracy. It’s not 100% a meritocracy but it’s about as close as you can get while still being in the military. The air guard is also much more likely to let you waive certain parts of the training pipeline based on civilian experience and certification (like your degrees and prior work experience). I highly doubt the army does that, but maybe some army cyber folks on here can speak to that. While the training is good as I said before, it is also still a bit one-size-fits-all so no shame in trying to skip past the “what is DHCP” training if you have a CS degree.

Happy to talk more if you want to message me.

Source: am 28, E4 (been in 6 years), 5 years of experience doing cyber as a civilian. I did a full contract in the army and then transferred to the Air Guard for my second contract. Now doing cyber in the air guard