Haft of the Spear

… as applied by the competition.

One down, a couple more to go …

… when this event would not have been a private endeavor.

Authorized in ‘06, pilot in ‘08, FOC in ‘12.

Moving at the speed of government. What can red, white and blue do for you?

Still, kudos for making the effort. Now, for the intelligence reserve.

… when you read stories like this, that it’s cyber war we need to worry about.

You are about to put for the proposition that the way forward in the field of X is to transition to a 2.0 model (an upgrade in general, not necessarily a given technical solution). A certain logic would seem to dictate that one should disseminate this proposition in a 2.0 fashion (dog-fooding of a sort). On the other hand, given the dominance of the 1.0 approach would it not make more sense to first pursue dissemination via a dead tree (the preferred medium of those whose lapels you are virtually shaking) for maximum impact?

Thoughts?

Had a very, very modest role in the crafting of the paper behind this presentation (PDF) on ‘Net backbone defense by the I3P (via PNNL).

Now, off to dust off my mad Bourne shell scripting skillz … ;-)

Long overdue, but still very smart.

When the Department of Defense needed the ability to push the technological envelope they developed the Advanced Research Projects Agency. Recognizing the value in that approach – about fifty years later – the intelligence community formed its own advanced R&D capability. The community nurtures the development of advanced IT solutions through its venture capital firm In-Q-Tel. All well and good for major technology solutions, but what good is all this to your average general-schedule working stiffs who are just trying to get their little $2, $5, $10 million dollar projects off the ground?

Not much.

Nap time is over. The alarm has gone off. Don’t hit the snooze button.

// I was going to try and retool for pub in a dead tree, but decided to go the digital route after all. What the heck: you eat your own dog food or you don’t. Available in PDF as well. //

I’m tired of hearing about all the “new” things going on in the cyber-war, cyber-terrorism, cyber-insert-your-term-here business. Nothing I’ve read on these issues in the last few years is any different from anything I read fifteen years ago. Issues that make headlines today were actually new when the IBM XT was a hot piece of hardware. So as a public service your author provides you with five factors to evaluate when deciding on whether or not to buy the next book or magazine with an article that suggests iDeath or e-horror is imminent. Take a pass if you detect any two in a scan of the dust jacket or lede.

Everynerds favorite crypto-guru uses both well-worn barrels:

Cyber-extortion is certainly on the rise; we see it at Counterpane. Primarily it’s against fringe industries — online gambling, online gaming, online porn — operating offshore in countries like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. It is going mainstream, but this is the first I’ve heard of it targeting power companies. Certainly possible, but is that part of the CIA rumor or was it tacked on afterwards?

And here’s list of power outages. Which ones were hacker caused? Some details would be nice.

I’d like a little bit more information before I start panicking.

He joins the voices of other professional contrarians (keep waiting for “Dick Destiny” to sound off) about how this is all rumor, fear-mongering, lies, or worse.

Wow, look at all the things you can’t learn in a virtual environment.

Yup, I’m the SL-hating jerk here. Keep that in mind when this blows up and everyone else acts shocked, shocked that VR can facilitate bad things.

Clay Osborne, vice president of human resources and diversity at Bausch & Lomb, based in Rochester, N.Y., said the findings matched what his own company has discovered. Programs that work, he said, focus on the business advantages that come with diversity of thought, (emphasis mine) and that requires having people with diverse backgrounds.

perhaps more important, when you consider that the leadership of the intelligence community has placed such a fantastic emphasis on diversity:

…training is likely to be effective only in the context of an organization genuinely interested in cultural and structural change.

I’m not the problem; I see the bigger picture; I’m doing it right. And to a lesser extent: form is just as important as function.

If that were truly the case, then the solution is better communication from the top down. If they want to leave after being fully informed then that’s on them, but odds are all those friendly, narrowly-focused Captains are just being told to STFU and drive on. As I pointed out before, you won’t have anyone worth holding on to if you keep beating them down.

One of the saner articles on dealing with the online threat.

Let the panic begin.

The FBI would like to build a giant biometrics database.

The Director of National Intelligence is about to argue that the intelligence community should gain access to all Internet traffic transiting the US.

These and other grabs for data are decried by privacy advocates and those who fear the rise of a police state in the US. This isn’t an unreasonable concern but it is largely unwarranted, for reasons I’ll get to in a minute.

I cooked up the same idea on a legal pad during a break at Claremont. Someone else managed to code it first. Just happy to see it alive.

Kip Hawley, the head of TSA, thinks air security would be so much easier if it weren’t for all the passengers. We’re all just “disgruntled,” “amateur security experts” (not that he’s got any security credentials).

An excellent point, via The Tank:

Philip Agee, a former CIA case officer, is dead. Most commentary on the situation focuses on his writing Inside the Company: CIA Diary and his outing of numerous CIA agents in his old haunts in Latin America (some of who subsequently received bullets in the back of the head).

If the computer system doesn’t eat the evidence against you,the mold will.

(H/T DangerRoom)

The original (if post-dated)milblogger.

Stephen Coughlin was until recently an Islamic law scholar on the Joint Staff. He was sacked, reportedly for his extreme opinions. As expected, a number of folks who tend to take a hard line on these issues have risen to his defense.

Based on this bio you would be hard pressed to view Mr. Islam as some kind of Islamo-(insert term of choice here), but then the PAO isn’t in the habit of publishing negative pieces about its own. Nevertheless, the photo in the background is a pretty solid credential.

… eventually he’ll leave …

From a fellow Claremont classmate comes an instructive and familiar tale:

Paying off terrorists doesn’t work; it only encourages more terrorism. The same is true with nuclear proliferators. They tend to take the bribe and hide the program, and the next thing you know, they’re testing nuclear weapons. That was why so many nonproliferation experts welcomed the Bush administration’s repudiation of the 1994 “agreed framework” with North Korea. It is also why, after nearly five years of working on nonproliferation issues in the Bush administration, I chose to leave government.

I argued - successfully - these same points when building a MEDEX project:

“Electronic storage devices function as an extension of our own memory,” Judge Pregerson wrote, in explaining why the government should not be allowed to inspect them without cause. “They are capable of storing our thoughts, ranging from the most whimsical to the most profound.”

So, once again I’m reminded that I need to get off my tail and look into a group calendar of events of interest to us and those like us. Three things:

- I’m not aware that one exists (fill me in if I’m wrong)
- If I decide to build one (think the Nat’l Sec Studies wiki Chirol and I did) who is with me?
- Thoughts / ideas on the best application to use (gotta be free and freely accessible)

I’ve said as much, just not as comprehensively or as wellas Matt does here.

If someone in DC is not putting together a custom-made job announcement, they’re wrong.

… and so can you!In the Army sleeping on guard duty gets you - best-case-scenario - some wall-to-wall counseling. Sounds like Wackenhut could stand to GI-up.

When you remember things like this, news like this doesn’t give one that warm, fuzzy feeling.

The Pentagon’s work to combat weapons of mass destruction has been so splintered and uncoordinated that officials cannot be sure what spending is accomplishing, whether “U.S. interests are protected” or even whether America “can properly respond to attack.”

40 offices, almost $10 billion, and no one single entity knows WTH is going on.

Not that on IA caucus day I’m advocating for a particular candidate or party (ahem) but (theoretically speaking) you know how to vote if you want more of this, or some Chainsaw Jack action.

Reason #498: WhirledView: The Bloggers Develop Nuclear Weapons Policy – The First Round