National Security – DIME
General Would Bring Polish To Security Post, (Arizona Republic (Phoenix))…Robert Burns and Richard Lardner, Associated Press
The national-security adviser doesn’t require Senate confirmation, nor does the job come with the muscle of a large federal agency. But in that role, James L. Jones may well be the last voice the new president hears before making crucial decisions on security. Observers say Obama has chosen wisely.
Cyber-Attack On Defense Department Computers Raises Concerns, (Los Angeles Times)…Julian E. Barnes, Nov 28, 2008.
Senior military leaders took the exceptional step of briefing President Bush this week on a severe and widespread electronic attack on Defense Department computers that may have originated in Russia — an incursion that posed unusual concern among commanders and raised potential implications for national security.
The invasive software, known as agent.btz, has circulated among nongovernmental U.S. computers for months. But only recently has it affected the Pentagon’s networks. It is not clear whether the version responsible for the cyber-intrusion of classified networks is the same as the one affecting other computer systems.
The malware is able to spread to any flash drive plugged into an infected computer. The risk of spreading the malware to other networks prompted the military to ban the drives.
Government By Contractor Is A Disgrace, (Wall Street Journal)…Thomas Frank, Nov 26, 2008.
The irony if not the humor is that the same people who are perceived as not being capable of being “innovative, efficienct and flexible” are the ones that write and/or manage the contractors. The contracting system typically favors the contractors.
When government is “forced” to compete for work via A76/MEO, they win the majority of the times.
We don’t lack solutions that can be applied to continually improve the efficiency and effectiveness of government service (Baldrige critiera comes to mind); Leadership has always been the key.
Many jobs are best left to federal workers.
Back in 1984, the conservative industrialist J. Peter Grace was telling whoever would listen why government was such a wasteful institution.
One reason, which he spelled out in a book chapter on privatization, was that “government-run enterprises lack the driving forces of marketplace competition, which promote tight, efficient operations. This bears repetition,” he wrote, “because it is such a profound and important truth.”
And repetition is what this truth got. Grace trumpeted it in the recommendations of his famous Grace Commission, set up by President Ronald Reagan to scrutinize government operations looking for ways to save money. … Turn government operations over to the private sector and you get innovation, efficiency, flexibility.
What bears repetition today, however, is the tragic irony of it all. To think that our contractor welfare binge was once rationalized as part of an efficiency crusade.
As the George W. Bush presidency grinds to its close, we can say with some finality that the opposite is closer to the truth.
POST: Extreme Toyota’s Lesson for American Auto, November 19th, 2008 by Hal
While American Auto go hat-in-hand to Washington, I thought it might be instructive to take a look at what those firms have missed while Toyota has steadily out-invested, out-innovated and racked up more profits than all three combined. Who’s got the answer? How about three professors from a Japanese business school.
Deming’s advice to the Japanese in the 1950’s was to adopt a systems perspective where the consumer was the most important part of the production line, and to reduce variation — Advice that is relevant to any industry.
COMMENTARY: Overlooked Exit Strategy (Washington Times)…Bruce Fein
President-elect Barack Obama should embrace an overlooked riskless exit strategy for the war in Iraq that has inflicted more than the equivalent of another Sept. 11, 2001, on brave American soldiers.
Every Founding Father agreed that one man or small group of men should never be entrusted with authority to initiate warfare because they would be driven by visions of power and glory into reckless military adventures. Future Justice of the Supreme Court, James Wilson, at the Pennsylvania ratification convention, explained: “This system will not hurry us into war; it is calculated to guard against it. It will not be in the power of a single man, or single body of men, to involve us in such distress; for the important power of declaring war is vested in the legislature at large: this declaration must be made with the concurrence of the House of Representatives: from this circumstance we may draw a certain conclusion that nothing but our interest can draw us into war.”
James Madison, future president of the United States and father of the Constitution, amplified in a letter to Thomas Jefferson: “The Constitution supposes, what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the executive is the branch of power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war in the legislature.”
Gates: Review Military’s Role In Homeland Defense, (Washingtonpost.com)…Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press
Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Monday ordered his top department leaders to conduct a broad review to determine whether the military, National Guard and Reserve can adequately deal with domestic disasters and whether they have the training and equipment to defend the homeland.Gates: Active Force, Reserves Must Integrate, (ArmyTimes.com)…William H. McMichael
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates took a giant step Monday toward more tightly blending the active-duty military and reserve components into an “integrated total force,” calling for wide-ranging personnel policy changes, codifying the reserves’ homeland defense role and adequately funding
Pentagon Bans External Flash Drives, (Washington Times)…Unattributed, Nov 22, 2008
The Pentagon has banned, at least temporarily, the use of external computer flash drives because of a virus threat detected on Defense Department networks.
Although defense officials would not publicly confirm the ban, messages were sent to department employees informing them of the new restrictions. As part of the ban, the Pentagon was collecting any of the small flash drives that were purchased or provided by the department to workers, according to a message distributed to employees.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would provide no details on the virus Friday, but he described it as a “global virus” that has been the subject of public alerts.
The Pentagon has acknowledged that its vast computer network is scanned or probed by outsiders millions of times each day. Military leaders have consistently warned of potential threats from a variety of sources including countries such as China, terrorists and self-styled cybervigilantes.
Soldiers In Iraq And Afghanistan To Get Life Saving Anti-Sniper Device, (London Daily Telegraph)…Richard Alleyne, Nov 22, 2008.
British and American forces fighting the guerilla insurgence in Iraq and Afghanistan could soon be protected by an anti-sniper device that can pinpoint the position of the shooter within a fraction of a second.
The palm-sized device designed by Qinetiq, the British defence firm that was once the government research laboratories, is pinned to the uniform and uses acoustic technology to calculate the exact position of the rifle fire.
What A Single Nuclear Warhead Could Do, (Wall Street Journal)…Brian T. Kennedy, November 24, 2008
Pg. 19
Why the U.S. needs a space-based missile defense against an EMP attack.
Think about this scenario: An ordinary-looking freighter ship heading toward New York or Los Angeles launches a missile from its hull or from a canister lowered into the sea. It hits a densely populated area. A million people are incinerated. The ship is then sunk. No one claims responsibility. There is no firm evidence as to who sponsored the attack, and thus no one against whom to launch a counterstrike.
But as terrible as that scenario sounds, there is one that is worse. Let us say the freighter ship launches a nuclear-armed Shahab-3 missile off the coast of the U.S. and the missile explodes 300 miles over Chicago. The nuclear detonation in space creates an electromagnetic pulse (EMP).
Gamma rays from the explosion, through the Compton Effect, generate three classes of disruptive electromagnetic pulses, which permanently destroy consumer electronics, the electronics in some automobiles and, most importantly, the hundreds of large transformers that distribute power throughout the U.S. All of our lights, refrigerators, water-pumping stations, TVs and radios stop running. We have no communication and no ability to provide food and water to 300 million Americans.
The EMP Threat , Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2008 , Pg. 10
Imagine you’re a terrorist with a single nuclear weapon. You could wipe out the U.S. city of your choice, or you could decide to destroy the infrastructure of the entire U.S. economy and leave millions of Americans to die of starvation or want of medical care.
The latter scenario is the one envisioned by a long-running commission to assess the threat from electromagnetic pulse, or EMP. The subject of its latest, and little discussed, report to Congress is the effect an EMP attack could have on civilian infrastructure. If you’re prone to nightmares, don’t read it before bedtime.
An EMP attack occurs when a nuclear bomb explodes high in the Earth’s atmosphere. The electromagnetic pulse generated by the blast destroys all the electronics in its line of sight. For a bomb detonated over the Midwest, that includes most of the continental U.S. Few, if any, people die in the blast. It’s what comes next that has the potential to be catastrophic. Since an EMP surge wipes out electronics, virtually every aspect of modern American life would come to a standstill.
The commission’s list of horribles is 181 pages long. The chapter on food, for instance, catalogs the disruptions up and down the production chain as food spoils or has no way to get to market. Many families have food supplies of several days or more. But after that, and without refrigeration, what? The U.S. also has 75,000 dams and reservoirs, 168,000 drinking water-treatment facilities, and 19,000 wastewater treatment centers — all with pumps, valves and filters run by electricity.
Getting everything up and running again is not merely a matter of flipping a switch, and the commission estimates that many systems could be out of service for months or a year or more — far longer than emergency stockpiles or batteries could cover. The large transformers used in electrical transmission are no longer built in the U.S. and delivery time is typically three years. “Lack of high voltage equipment manufacturing capacity represents a glaring weakness in our survival and recovery,” the commission notes.
Many industries rely on automated control systems maintained by small work forces. In emergencies — say, during a blackout — companies often have arrangements in place to borrow workers from outside the affected area to augment the locals and help with manual repairs. After an EMP attack, those workers would be busy in their home regions — or foraging for food and water for their families.
The commission offers extensive recommendations for how industry and government can protect against the effects of an EMP attack and ensure a quicker recovery. They include “hardening” more equipment to withstand an electromagnetic pulse; making sure replacement equipment is on hand; training recovery personnel; increasing federal food stockpiles; and many others.
If not, our vulnerability “can both invite and reward attack,” the commission’s chairman, William Graham, told Congress last month. Iran’s military writings “explicitly discuss a nuclear EMP attack that would gravely harm the United States,” he said. James Shinn, an assistant secretary of defense, has said that China is developing EMP weapons. The commission calls an EMP attack “one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences.” The threat is real. It’s past time to address it.
$600M Spent On Canceled Contracts, (USA Today)…Matt Kelley, Nov 18, 2008.
The Pentagon spent about $600 million on more than 1,200 Iraq reconstruction contracts that were eventually canceled, nearly half of them for mismanagement or shoddy construction, government investigators say.
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