India Bans Al Jazeera for Broadcasting 'Wrong' Maps of Kashmir

By Ankit Panda

April 25, 2015

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Yesterday, the Indian government banned Qatar-based Al Jazeera English from broadcasting within the country for five days after the channel showed a map of Kashmir that showed parts of the territory as belonging to Pakistan and China.

According to Agence France-Presse, any Indian viewers attempting to tune in to Al Jazeera English were instead left with a screen noting that “As instructed by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, this channel will not be available.”

The episode highlights the Indian government’s continued reliance on censorship in dealing with politically touchy subjects in the media and sensitivity to the representation of Kashmir in the media.

US-India Collaboration on Aircraft Carriers: A Good Idea?

By Ankit Panda

April 24, 2015

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Yesterday, my colleague Franz-Stefan Gady covered the main takeaways from a new Carnegie Endowment for International Peace report, authored by Ashley Tellis, that calls for, among other things, broader cooperation between the United States and India on developing the latter’s naval capabilities. Specifically, Tellis focuses on carrier aviation and recommends that the United States ensure that India fields a more robust carrier capability than China. India has a Vikrant-class carrier in the works: the 65,000 ton nuclear-powered INS Vishal will launch in the next decade. Tellis’ report has drawn attention for good reason, and I’d like to herein address two points that stood out to me.

10 lodestars from Xi's Pakistan visit

April 23, 2015

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'The Modi government's lurch toward America has not brought it any dividends so far. The Western world is simply not in a position to make big investments in India... India needs to take a leap of faith vis-a-vis China,' says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.

Looking at it from any angle, Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Pakistan last week has been an extraordinary event. To be sure, Pakistan experienced the 'Midas touch.'

Almost overnight, there is buzz that Pakistan is an overlooked reform story without reform valuations. And this is according to the prestigious London-based Renaissance Capital. But Xi's visit was not exclusively business-driven, either, since whatever China touches today -- even a new bank -- also becomes 'political.' Beijing can’t help it.

And, of course, anything China does with Pakistan also affects India and a wide arc of countries in the South and Central Asian regions (where the United States also happens to be an embedded superpower lately). In sum, Xi's Pakistan visit becomes a moveable feast for strategic analysts. I spotted ten lodestars. They are:

Kashmir’s War, on Drugs

BY MICHAEL EDISON HAYDEN

APRIL 24, 2015 

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SRINAGAR, India — A.N. was waiting for the school bus to take him home one day in 2005 when four masked men carrying AK-47s sprinted out from a white coupe and unloaded a storm of bullets. They tore apart a man, dropping him flat onto his back in front of a nearby pharmacy. A.N. remembers the blood spilling out of the victim’s torso onto the ground behind the bus stop. He remembers listening to the sound of the getaway car screeching away as onlookers from a market started to gather. And he remembers going home that night and crying to his father, harboring a sense of panic so intense that he felt feverish.

Ten years later, A.N., now 24, spends most of his day looking for jobs online and meditating on what he calls his “lost years” — from roughly 2006 until 2010 — when he dropped out of school and started abusing opiates. A polite, pensive man with a round face, jet-black hair, and delicate features, A.N. sips chai and chats with friends like M.M., 32, another ex-opiate user, and Yasir Arafat Zahgeer, 30, a social activist and counselor who advised both men in their recovery from addiction. In Srinagar one evening in December 2014, as they walk along the dimly lit pavement of the Habba Kadal bridge, known by many locals as the “suicide bridge” because of its attraction to jumpers, their conversation switches among politics, cricket, and news stories like those of the region’s slow recovery from the September 2014 flood. They also speak about trauma and the unanswerable question of what life could have been like had they been born in a less violent place with simpler politics — somewhere other than Kashmir.

Iran and Pakistan Agree to Enhance Bilateral Trade

By Ankit Panda

April 24, 2015

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Pakistan is having a productive diplomatic week. Hardly two days after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s departure, Islamabad concluded a five-year trade facilitation plan with neighboring Iran. The deal is expected to yield a $5 billion growth in trade volumes between the two countries.

According to Dawn, a major Pakistani newspaper, the deal was finalized in Tehran on Wednesday, at the seventh Pakistan-Iran Joint Trade Committee meeting. Pakistan’s delegation was spearheaded by Commerce Minister Khurram Dastagir Khan while Reza Nematzadeh, Iran’s Minister for Industry, Mines and Trade led Tehran’s contingent.

The Pakistani side expressed its concern regarding certain protectionist Iranian policies, including import bans, onerous tariffs on textiles, and an overly bureaucratic authorization system for imports.

Pakistan and Iran signed a Preferential Trade Agreement in 2004 that came into effect in September 2006.

The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor Is Easier Said Than Done

By Akhilesh Pillalamarri

April 24, 2015

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China has recently extended Pakistan a much-needed economic lifeline, announcing infrastructure projects that could boost trade and investment. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) will connect the western Chinese city of Kashgar with the Pakistani port of Gwadar, in the province of Balochistan, near the Iran-Pakistan border. The project would give Pakistan’s poorest province an economic boast and China access to another route to the Indian Ocean and the Middle East, while connecting many Pakistani cities in between.

Many in Pakistan have hailed the corridor as proof of the eternal and amazing friendship between China and Pakistan, though obviously realpolitik is more likely at work here than anything. After all, a recent article notes that while China has proved a reliable and steady partner for Pakistan, many Chinese do not think highly of Pakistan. China has also proposed economic corridors the Indian Ocean through India and Myanmar.

The Humble Beginnings of China's Space Program

By Shannon Tiezzi

April 25, 2015

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In a fascinating piece yesterday, Xinhua traced theorigins of China’s space program, an exercise inspired by the 45th anniversary of China’s first satellite launch. The Dongfanghong-1 was launched on April 24, 1970, the culmination of years of research – and far from the end of China’s fervent quest to prove itself worthy of membership in the “space club.”

The Xinhua piece emphasizes the hardships and obstacles facing China’s early aeronautics engineers. Wang Xiji recounted how, in an early attempt to design a sounding rocket, “researchers had to calculate their computations by hand or by abacus… The computing papers were stacked higher than their desks.” In addition to the difficulty of performing scientific tasks in primitive conditions, scientists also had to scramble to meet political requirements, such as figuring out how to have the satellite broadcast “The East Is Red” (or “Dongfang Hong,” a song praising Mao Zedong, and the source of the satellite’s name) and how to artificially inflate its size to make it visible from Earth. The scientists even had to get special permission from Premier Zhou Enlai to remove Mao badges from the satellite equipment when they discovered that the extra weight posed a problem.

The Real South China Sea Crisis: An Environmental Time Bomb

Richard Javad Heydarian

April 24, 2015

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China’s accelerated construction activities in the South China Sea have understandably alarmed countries across the region and beyond. In particular, Southeast Asian claimant states such as Vietnam and the Philippines are deeply worried about the prospects of an irreversible Chinese consolidation of its sweeping maritime claims, more expansive Chinese paramilitary patrols in the area, and, perhaps most alarmingly, the establishment of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) across the South China Sea. Meanwhile, the U.S. seems to be primarily concerned with how China’s ambitious and sophisticated construction activities could pose a threat to its national interest in term of freedom of navigation and overflight in the area.

A Big Deal: China Reveals Its South China Sea Strategy

Bonnie S. Glaser

April 24, 2015

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Growing international criticism of China’s land reclamation in the South China Sea and the publication of detailed images of China’s dredging and construction activities prompted the Chinese government to explain in greater detail than ever before the purpose of these activities. In response to U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s charge that China has “intensified the militarization in the islands and reefs in the South China Sea and escalated regional tension,” and the release of a series of satellite photos by CSIS of recent dredging and construction activities on Mischief Reef, Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying issued a lengthy statement on April 9. In addition to repeating prior positions that China has “indisputable sovereignty” over the Spratly Islands and adjacent waters, and that China’s construction is “fair, reasonable, and lawful,” Hua stated that China’s activities aremainly for civilian purposes, but also are intended to serve “necessary military defense requirements.”

China's Coming Nuclear Power Boom

By Shannon Tiezzi

April 24, 2015

http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/chinas-coming-nuclear-power-boom/

Get ready for China’s nuclear industry to boom (no pun intended): The China Nuclear Energy Association (CNEA) predicts that eight new nuclear reactors will begin operation this year. If so, that will mark the largest single-year increase in nuclear power production in China’s history.

China is looking to more than double the number of nuclear power plants in operation — there are currently 23 operating, with 26 under construction. If all the projects are completed as planned, it would bring China’s nuclear energy capacity up to 49.9 gigawatts, compared to the current capacity of 21.4 gigawatts. Plus, CNEA expects an additional six to eight nuclear energy projects to be approved this year.

Red Tide: China in the Caribbean

By David Volodzko

April 24, 2015

http://thediplomat.com/2015/04/red-tide-china-in-the-caribbean/

A communist power is yet again perched at America’s doorstep, only this time it may be for the benefit of all. China’s growing presence in the Caribbean will only be a boon, however, if it can learn to work in harmony with locals.

Last month Colombian officials detained Wu Hong, captain of the Chinese vessel Da Dan Xia, en route to Cuba. The ship’s cargo, listed as grain, was actually 100 metric tons of gunpowder, 3,000 cannon shells, and 3 million detonators. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying called it “a normal cooperation in military trade.”

China’s think tanks need deeper understanding to reach audience overseas

2015-4-23

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/918391.shtml

Kenneth Lieberthal, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution

In foreign policy, it requires not only you understand what the other government's policies are, but what shapes these policies. My experiences in China and the US show that both countries use the same words but understand them very differently. Each side has very few people who understand the political system, society and cultures on the other side.

If you want to foster cooperation and minimize misunderstanding, you need to have people who have deep knowledge of the way the other system functions, their concerns and meaning of words they use.

What China does influences tremendously our interests both directly and indirectly on major global issues, so we have interest in high-quality decision-making in China and understanding why China adopts a decision as it is and how it understands what we are doing because there is often considerable misunderstanding and accompanying distrust.

We can't totally eliminate that, but think tanks can act in a way that governments cannot do and can go deeply into understanding the thinking, concerns and assumptions that the other side is preparing to do. They can speak in a way that government officials cannot in deep dialogues and join research projects, which is vital.

China’s AIIB Recasts Development Finance — and U.S. Influence

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China’s success in securing 57 founding members for its new regional lending institution, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), signals the real limits of U.S. influence in the region in the post-Cold War era. As of the March 31 deadline for initial applications to join the AIIB, among major industrial powers only U.S. ally Japan, so far, has spurned Beijing’s plan.

Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and South Korea are among the dozens of countries that have signaled their intention to be founding members of the new bank. China’s coup in economic diplomacy comes as negotiations for the U.S.-backed Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, once again appear stalled, with little prospect for a consensus in coming months.

Chindia can drive 21st century Asia

By Swaran Singh

2015-4-23

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/918394.shtml

Chinese President Xi Jinping's successful visit to Pakistan this week, especially his promise to invest over $46 billion, compared to $20 billion he promised for India last year, has briefly revived the perennial "Pakistan factor" of China-India relations and it is likely to color the thinking of Indian interlocutors as they prepare for the coming China-India summit in Beijing in May.

What makes China's continued indulgence of its "all-weather" strategic partner Pakistan seem such a formidable trend is the fact that, in the last five years, China's trade with Pakistan grew from $9 billion to $16 billion.

Meanwhile, the continued insurmountable Sino-Indian trade deficit, which has now risen to nearly $40 billion, has made India overcautious on all counts, be it China's financing of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, providing Pakistan with eight submarines, or various assessments on how US exit from Afghanistan will bring China and Pakistan even closer and eclipse India's unprecedented presence and investments in that country.

The Yemen Trap

By Fred Kaplan

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The Saudi air force commenced bombing on March 25—and has since been joined by the United Arab Emirates, with the United States providing logistics and intelligence—in an attempt to oust Houthi rebels, who have taken over the Yemeni capital of Sana after ousting President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. The Houthis are Shiite and have reportedly received some arms from Iran; Hadi is Sunni and thus was viewed as a “stabilizing” force—a bulwark against Iranian incursions—on Saudi Arabia’s southern border.

But in fact, this framework distorts the true picture—it’s a Procrustean bed that chops off the root causes, and plausible ways out, of Yemen’s conflicts—and we should abandon our role as enabler as quickly as possible. President Obama seems to be doing just that, pressuring the Saudis to halt the bombing. They briefly complied, putting out the cover story that they’d accomplished their military objectives—but soon after resumed the airstrikes.

Revealed: Russia’s Deadly New Tank Force

By Franz-Stefan Gady

April 24, 2015

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The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) has for the first time officially revealed the Russian Ground Forces’ most advanced armored fighting vehicles, including a brand new main-battle tank, self-propelled artillery, and new armored personnel carrier, ahead of the May 9 Moscow Victory Day Parade (see: “‘Arma Virumque Cano’ – Parades and Militarism in Asia”).

It is important to not that the recently published photos on the Russian MoD’s website revealed prospective military hardware not yet commissioned into the Russian Armed Forces. Additionally, the vehicles displayed on the images have all their their weapon systems covered, which makes the initial analysis of the equipment highly speculative.

America's 5 Best Wartime Presidents

Robert W. Merry

April 25, 2015

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Having recently explored the war decisions of the five worst wartime presidents of American history, we turn now to the country’s five greatest war presidents. Their success, like the failure of their counterparts at the bottom of the spectrum, offers lessons of presidential leadership worthy of notice and even study.

As noted earlier, of the country’s forty-four presidents, thirteen were serious war presidents—Madison, Polk, Lincoln, McKinley, Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Obama. Of these, Truman, Eisenhower, Nixon and Obama inherited wars, while the rest (plus Truman again) initiated them. In all instances, their handling of the conflicts played a key role in the voters’ contemporaneous assessments as well as in history’s subsequent judgment.

U.S. Navy May Turn Every Ship into an Aircraft Carrier

Zachary Keck

April 24, 2015

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The U.S. Navy is seeking to transform every ship into mini aircraft carriers.

Last month the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced the start of the second phase of its Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node (TERN) program. TERN, a joint program between DARPA and the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR), aims to create a system that would enable small ships to operate both intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and combat drones.

“The goal of Tern is to give forward-deployed small ships the ability to serve as mobile launch and recovery sites for medium-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aerial systems (UAS),” DARPA said in a press releaseannouncing Phase 2 of the program. “These systems could provide long-range intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and other capabilities over greater distances and time periods than is possible with current assets.”

Xenophobia in South Africa Blood at the end of the rainbow

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A STREET vendor from Mozambique, Emmanuel Sithole, lay begging for his life in a gutter as four men beat him and stabbed him in the heart with a long knife. Images of his murder have shaken South Africa, already reeling from a wave of attacks on foreigners, mostly poor migrants from the rest of Africa. Soldiers were deployed on April 21st to Alexandra, a Johannesburg township, and other flashpoints to quell the violence, though only after seven people had been killed. Thousands of fearful foreigners, many from Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, have sought refuge in makeshift camps. Others have returned home. 

South Africa has experienced such horrors before. During widespread anti-foreign violence in 2008, 62 people were killed and some 100,000 displaced. Photographs of the murder of another Mozambican man, Ernesto Nhamuave, whom a jeering mob burned alive in a squatter camp, led to declarations that such atrocities would never happen again. Yet no one was charged in Mr Nhamuave’s death: the case was closed after a cursory police investigation apparently turned up no witnesses (who were easily found by journalists earlier this year). The latest violence flared up in the Durban area earlier this month after King Goodwill Zwelithini, the traditional leader of the Zulus, reportedly compared foreigners to lice and said that they should pack up and leave.

Europe's Migration Crisis

By Jeanne Park

April 24, 2015

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The growing numbers of migrants and asylum seekers fleeing turmoil in Africa and the Middle East poses complex challenges for European policymakers still grappling with weak economic growth and fractured national politics. Europe, according to a 2014 report from the International Organization for Migration, is currently the most dangerous destination for irregular migration in the world, and the Mediterranean Sea the world's most dangerous border crossing. To date, the European Union's collective response to its growing migrant crisis has been ad hoc and, critics charge, more focused on securing the bloc's borders than on protecting the rights of migrants and refugees. With nationalist parties ascendant in many member states and concerns about Islamic terrorism looming large across the continent, it remains unclear if political headwinds will facilitate a new climate of immigration reform.

Where do these migrants and refugees come from?

Europe Passes the Buck While Thousands Die

BY BENJAMIN HADDAD

APRIL 23, 2015 

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Rescuers have struggled to recover bodies from an April 19 shipwreck 60 miles off the Libyan coast and 120 miles south of the Italian island of Lampedusa. They have given up on finding survivors. Up to 900 men, women, and children are feared dead after the capsizing of their 65-foot vessel, which had embarked from Libya en route to Italy carrying migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, and sub-Saharan Africa.

In the days after this tragedy, French President François Hollandecondemned the “terrorists” who put migrants in “ships they know are rotten,” and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi denounced the human traffickers as “slave drivers of the 21st century.” Smugglers — who have developed a lucrative business exploiting the misery and despair of hundreds of thousands attempting to reach European shores — certainly deserve blame for this tragedy. But they also provide a convenient target for European politicians whose failed immigration policies and lack of willingness to address this crisis bear much responsibility.

Korea and the New Regional Paradigm

April 24, 2015

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Are we witnessing the piecemeal construction of a new regional paradigm in Northeast Asia? Despite lengthy commentary on the differences between Europe and Asia in terms of international institutions and multilateral cooperation, as well as scholarship highlighting the abiding residues of the Cold War in East Asia, there are indications that the post-Cold War interregnum may be settling into a new regional pattern. While inter-regional comparisons shed light on this process, it is also useful to view the process from a sub-regional perspective; put differently, to view it from the inside out. The Korean peninsula, long the nexus of great power competition, provides an instructive place from which to analyze several aspects of this newly emergent regional pattern. This includes: Korea’s recent trilateral military intelligence sharing agreement with the U.S. and Japan; developments in the area of missile defense; the ROK naval base on Jeju Island; and, above all, the current predominance of a particular concept of South Korean sovereignty among the South Korean elite.

The American Dream is a myth, says Nobel-prize winner

By Tami Luhby

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It has become increasingly difficult for Americans to climb the economic ladder, says Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-prize winning economist.

The U.S. has one of the highest levels of income inequality among its peers and is among the worst in offering equal opportunities for advancement, said Stiglitz, who spoke Tuesday in New York City. Whether an American gets ahead is also more dependent on the income and education of their parents, he said.

"The American Dream is a myth," said Stiglitz.

A left-leaning authority on income inequality who teaches at Columbia University, Stiglitz is on a publicity tour for his new book, The Great Divide, which is a compilation of his articles on unequal societies for the New York Times, Vanity Fair and other publications.

His timing couldn't be better. Income inequality and economic mobility have already emerged as hot topics for the 2016 presidential election, with candidates on both sides of the aisle offering their prescriptions for solving the growing income gap. Stiglitz is one of several economists who has spoken with Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton on these issues.

Coursera’s Andrew Ng: How MOOCs Are Taking Local Knowledge Global

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Coursera co-founder Andrew Ng is widely considered a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence. Along with Daphne Koller, he is the co-founder of Coursera, the massive open online course (MOOC) platform, in April 2012. In just a little more than three years, Coursera has over 12 million users enrolled in more than 1,000 courses from more than a hundred institutions worldwide. Ng taught at Stanford University and is the director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab. He works on deep learning algorithms, which Ng says are loosely inspired by how the brain learns. He worked on one of the most ambitious artificial intelligence systems at Google called Google Brain. The system analyzed millions of photos taken from YouTube videos and learned to recognize objects, including human and cat faces, without additional human guidance.

SUPERSOLDIERS: CAN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY DELIVER BETTER PERFORMANCE?

William Matthews

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Brain wave-reading threat detectors can dramatically increase a soldier’s ability to spot danger. Advances in telepresence might spare soldiers by letting them send mechanical avatars into battle instead of going in person. Brain stimulation by ultrasound, electromagnetic fields and mild electric currents shows promise of sharpening soldiers’ minds. Could drugs or implanted microchips dull or eliminate the memories that cause post-traumatic stress disorder?

Researchers believe a skintight suit called Warrior Web will help soldiers run faster, lift more weight, and hike farther with less fatigue and less risk of injury. Newly developed “gecko gloves” already enable soldiers to scamper up sheer glass walls. Researchers at the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory have found that doses of the drug modafinil can keep UH-60 helicopter pilots alert and operating safely for 40 hours at a time. Can metabolism be altered so soldiers can operate for days with little or no food? Will chemicals erase soldiers’ fear in battle?

The Army continues to turn to science in its quest to create superior soldiers. The service, often in conjunction with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA, has pursued these and other ideas for improving soldier performance.

‘BOXING WITH GHOSTS,’ – 6 MOST DANGEROUS NEW CYBER ATTACK TECHNIQUES IN 2015: SANS EXPERTS LAY OUT THE UP-AND-COMING TRENDS IN CYBER ATTACK PATTERNS AT RSA CONFERENCE

By RC Porter

April 23, 2015

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‘Boxing With Ghosts,’ – 6 Most Dangerous New Cyber Attack Techniques In 2015: SANS Experts Lay Out The Up-And-Coming Trends In Cyber Attack Patterns At RSA Conference 

Ericka Chickowski, posted an article (April 23, 2015) the website, Dark Reading, regarding the up-and-coming cyber attack patterns and trends — as presented by SANS researchers at this weeks RSA Conference in San Francisco, CA. Ms. Chickowski writes that SANS Director John Pescatore, led a panel on future trends and threats in the cyber domain that included SANS Faculty Fellow and CEO ofCounterHack Challenges, Ed Skoudis, Jonathan Ullrich, Dean of Research for SANS, and Michael Assante, SANS Project Lead for Industrial Control System (ICS), and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Security. Each offered their thoughts on how they’ve seen [cyber] threats evolving; and, which techniques they expect to gain steam over the next year.”

Technique Number 1: Attackers Will Expose Breached Data Dumps In Dribbles: According to Dr. Skoudis, “more organizations will need to face the prospect of attackers not only getting savvy in how they steal information; but, also in how they disseminate it, particularly if they’re looking to publicly humiliate their targets. I’m talking of course, about the Sony situation. Instead of just doing the big data dump, they put a little bit out there,” Skoudis said. “The reason this is more damaging — is the organization doesn’t really know how to respond What is the magnitude of the whole thing? Also, the organization’s response…by the time you get to day three, or four, the disclosures — make what they said on day one look silly. So, there’s more damage; and, it amplifies it for the target organization. It”s like your boxing with ghosts.”

Revealed: The Pentagon’s New Cyber Strategy

By Prashanth Parameswaran

April 24, 2015

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U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter unveiled the Pentagon’s new cyber strategy and made the case for greater collaboration between the government and the private sector during today’s speech in Silicon Valley.

In an address at Stanford University entitled “Rewiring the Pentagon: Charting a New Path on Innovation and Cybersecurity,” Carter began by calling for an “open partnership” between the commercial, civilian and government realms, including “rebuilding the bridge” between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley. The partnership, Carter said, was “the only way forward” given the massive proliferation of technology and the aggressive competition for global talent.

What the Pentagon's New Cyber Strategy Means for China

By Greg Austin

April 24, 2015

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In the words of Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, the new Pentagon cyber strategy document, released on April 23 2015, is intended as a powerful mobilizing tool to “guide the development of DoD’s cyber forces and strengthen our cyber defense and cyber deterrence posture”. It addresses international strategic issues as essential context, especially the North Korean attack on Sony Pictures and China’s cyber espionage, but the document assigns the diplomacy of national defense a secondary place. It recognizes correctly that these have been addressed elsewhere and says that the new strategy has to be read in conjunction with other policy documents: “the 2011 United States International Strategy for Cyberspace, in the Department of Defense Cyberspace Policy Report to Congress of 2011, and through public statements by the President and the Secretary of Defense”.

How technology has changed intelligence collection

Mark Pomerleau

April 22, 2015

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With the world becoming a more volatile place and certain high-threat environments becoming too dangerous to send personnel, the lack of human intelligence has placed a greater stress on signals intelligence to provide military commanders with greater knowledge of dangerous actors and potential threats.

Technology has allowed the military to rely less on human intelligence, or HUMINT, which puts the lives of spies and operators on the ground at risk, and procure aerial systems that provide myriad levels of intelligence. Unmanned aerial vehicles have been invaluable in gathering several types of intelligence from the air, such as SIGINT and image intelligence. 

The United States is continuing to invest in these proven platforms for intelligence collection. The Defense Department said in February, when each branch released their budgets for the next year, that the Air Force would be purchasing 29 additional remotely piloted Reaper drones and the Army would be purchasing additional Gray Eagle drones, the service’s version of the Predator. Recent operations in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and continued operations in Afghanistan have forced Washington to continue to procure these vital systems for ISR purposes.

Intelligence and Computer Security News From Silicon Valley

Nicole Perlroth 

April 23, 2015 

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SAN FRANCISCO — The annual RSA security conference here is one of the largest gatherings of computer security professionals and companies in the world. It is also an opportunity for complaining and perhaps just a bit of navel gazing. 

Where is the accountability? If 2013 was the “Year of the Breach” and 2014 was the “Year of the Mega-Breach,” 2015 may be the year that we run out of adjectives and start demanding real accountability from security vendors. 

“The largest enterprises with the most sophisticated, ‘next-generation’ security tools were not able to stop miscreants from making off with millions of dollars, personal information, and sensitive secrets and damaging reputations,” Amit Yoran, the president of RSA, said in his keynote speech Tuesday. 

In the cyber security industry, accountability has been in short supply, but there are hints of change. Several months ago, WhiteHat Security, the web security company, said it would start offering clients $250,000 in the event their website was breached using an attack technique the WhiteHat missed. Recently, Jeremiah Grossman, WhiteHat’s founder, said they had bumped up their guarantee to $500,000. This marked the first time a security company has done anything of the sort.

Buying the Stairway to Heaven: Pentagon Will Open Office in Silicon Valley and Pump Venture Capital into High-Tech Companies

Doug Cameron

April 23, 2015

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The Pentagon plans to open its first office in Silicon Valley and provide venture capital in an effort to tap commercial technology that can be used to develop more advanced weapons and intelligence systems.

Pentagon officials said the twin moves are part of a broader effort by the defense department to field technology more quickly and cheaply amid concerns that potential adversaries such as China are closing the gap or surpassing U.S. capabilities.

However, the Pentagon’s push faces resistance from technology companies and the venture-capital community, which has long been wary of becoming ensnared in the department’s bureaucracy and uncertain budget outlook.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter is scheduled to unveil the plans in a speech at Stanford University on Thursday that will also discuss a new Pentagon strategy for cyberwarfare. The three-day visit to Silicon Valley will include meetings with technology executives such as Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, as well as a venture-capital round table hosted by Andreessen Horowitz, according to a senior Pentagon official.

New Documentary Details High Level Disagreement Within Obama Administration Over Afghanistan-Pakistan Strategy and Tactics in 2009-2010

Matthew Rosenberg

April 23, 2015

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WASHINGTON — In the summer of 2010, Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, began recording a secret audio diary, detailing his frustrations with a White House that he believed was too willing to listen to the military and too often mistook domestic political calculations for strategic thinking.

“That really is the way the White House thinks,” Mr. Holbrooke said in an Aug. 12, 2010, entry in the diary, the existence of which has not been previously reported. “They don’t have a deep understanding of the issues themselves, but increasingly, they’re deluding themselves into thinking they do.”

Mr. Holbrooke, a diplomatic troubleshooter who worked for every president since the 1960s, was widely known to be in conflict with the Obama administration. But the audio notes that he dictated on a near daily basis from August 2010 until his death at age 69 from a torn aorta in December of that year provide an usually candid, if one-sided, record of the internecine battles that troubled the administration over the direction of the war in Afghanistan.

Former DIA Chief Lists Needed U.S. Intelligence Reforms

David Shedd and Matthew F. Ferraro

April 21, 2015

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Ten years ago this month, the American intelligence agencies were reorganized to prevent another 9/11. Now the Intelligence Community needs even more radical transformation as national-security challenges grow, budgets decrease, and questions arise about intelligence’s place within an open society. The key to addressing these challenges will be building a more integrated intelligence enterprise that demonstrates its value to the American people. We recommend six major initiatives.

1. The CIA must fully implement its reorganization plan.

In a shake-up, the CIA is creating mission centers to integrate its capabilities around specific subjects and geographic regions. The agency has successfullybeta-tested this kind of collaboration for years, but if the past is prologue, this reform will be arduous in an organization that is averse to major reforms. For this transformation to succeed, CIA will need to foster the highest level of skills necessary for successful clandestine operations and analysis, establish clear career development paths for its personnel, and ensure ongoing support from the President well past 2016.

White House and US Intelligence Community Expanding Their Campaign for Access to Encrypted Communications Traffic

Tom Simonite

April 22, 2015

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The White House and U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials support arguments by the nation’s law enforcement and intelligence leaders that encryption technology should be restricted or modified to make it easier for the government to access private data.

Speaking at the world’s largest computer security event, the RSA conference, Jeh Johnson—the U.S. secretary for Homeland Security—said that strong encryption was hampering law enforcement and that workarounds were needed. At the same event, President Obama’s cybersecurity coӧrdinator said that the White House was looking into what methods could be required in encryption technology to give law enforcement and other agencies a way in.

The remarks come after FBI director James Comey called last year for unlocking mechanisms for systems like those that automatically encrypt data on Apple smartphones. Just last week, National Security Agency head Michael Rogers sketched out a system where companies would have to hand over encryption keys to his agency and others in government.

How to Detect a Clandestine NSA ‘QUANTUM INSERT’ Cyber Attack

Kim Zetter

April 22, 2015

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How to Detect Sneaky NSA ‘Quantum Insert’ Attacks

Among all of the NSA hacking operations exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden over the last two years, one in particular has stood out for its sophistication and stealthiness. Known as Quantum Insert, the man-on-the-sidehacking technique has been used to great effect since 2005 by the NSA and its partner spy agency, Britain’s GCHQ, to hack into high-value, hard-to-reach systems and implant malware.

Quantum Insert is useful for getting at machines that can’t be reached through phishing attacks. It works by hijacking a browser as it’s trying to access web pages and forcing it to visit a malicious web page, rather than the page the target intend to visit. The attackers can then surreptitiously download malware onto the target’s machine from the rogue web page.

Quantum Insert has been used to hack the machines of terrorist suspects in the Middle East, but it was also used in a controversial GCHQ/NSA operation against employees of the Belgian telecom Belgacom and against workers at OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The “highly successful” technique allowed the NSA to place 300 malicious implants on computers around the world in 2010, according to the spy agency’s own internal documents—all while remaining undetected.

5 Most Deadly Warships of the 20th Century

Robert Farley

April 25, 2015

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The idea of a ship class, a series of vessels constructed to essentially the same design, is a hallmark of the industrial age of naval warfare. Prior to the emergence of the industrial age, individual ships represented the craftsmanship of different yards, and the relationship between design and construction allowed specific builders a great deal of latitude. As the industrial revolution overtook naval architecture, it became easier to create a specific template for the construction of a series of ships that would have effectively the same capabilities, regardless of which shipyard they emerged from or what time they entered service.

This article focuses on five of the most lethal classes of warship to sail the seas. The list concentrates on the first half of the 20th century, a period which saw the two most destructive naval wars in history. Given that an effective naval campaign requires a distribution of different ship types, the list offers one each from the five major types of the era; aircraft carrier, battleship, cruiser, destroyer, and submarine.