Collaboration Zones – Page 1354 – Public Intelligence Blog

South Korea: For the first time in seven years, South Korea has lit a 100-foot tower in the shape of a Christmas triee with 100,000 Christmas lights and topped it with a cross, along the Demilitarized Zone. A choir sang Christmas carols. The tower and carols could be seen and heard in North Korea.

. . . . . . .

Afghanistan-Iran: Iran is blocking almost 2,000 fuel tankers from crossing the border into Afghanistan, saying the trucks would supply U.S.-led coalition troops, according to Afghan officials. The unannounced blockade is in its third week, and Afghan officials do not know when fuel imports will resume, Afghan Deputy Minister of Commerce Sharif Shairifi said.

. . . . . . .

Sudan: Update. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz held talks with Sudanese President Omar al Bashir and Southern Sudanese leader Salva Kiir in Khartoum on 21 December in anticipation of the coming referendum on Southern Sudanese independence.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: All three pieces with the commentary are worth reading. Even when wrong, the intellectual process and insights of the NIGHTWATCH leader are authentic, deep, and a real pleasure to consider.

1. Wrong. South Korea should not be provoking the North, and the US is long overdue from pulling out of South Korea. This is a regional matter and like Germany, reunification is inevitable. Meanwhile, the US military and the US taxpayer should not be burdened.

2. Right. Iran is Persia, and complicated. The US supply lines to Afghanistan, and US cultural and doctrinal inadequacies in Afghanistan, combined with the FACT that it is costing the US taxpayer $50 million per Taliban body, the US is PAYING for the Taliban drug crop, and the US is blindly accepting of Karzai's deep deep corruption, all argue for a redirection of attention away from Afghanistan and toward respectful engagement with the Iran-Turkey axis of sensibility.

3. Wrong. Sudan is a bomb waiting to explode. They may go through the motion of a vote, but the raw fact that the south has the wealth and the north has nothing means that strategic instability is inevitable. Absent a regional plan to achieve tolerable prosperity for all, this is theater. The US and the Arabs are settling for theater over thinking.

2010/12/21

2011 Top 10 Cyber Predictions (and Then Some)

Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Cyberscams, malware, spam, InfoOps (IO), IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, IO Technologies, Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Officers Call, Policies, Real Time, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Standards, Strategy, Technologies, Threats

2011 Top 10 Cyber Predictions

Posted by Anup Ghosh on December 16, 2010

Everybody is putting out their Top 10 lists of predictions for 2011. Not to be left out of the party, below is a list of what we expect to see in 2011 in Cyber Security.

1. Malware.

2. Blame the User.

3. Reactive approaches to security will continue to fail.

4. Major Breaches in Sectors with Intellectual Property.

5. Hacktivists will bask in their new-found glory.

6. Critical Infrastructure Attacks.

7. Hello Android.

8. Windows Kernel Exploits.

9. Organized Crime rises.

10. Congress will rear its head.

Read full paragraph that goes with each of the above….

Phi Beta Iota: Nothing wrong with any of the above, except that they are out of context. As the still-valid cyber-threat slide created by Mitch Kabay in the 1990's shows, 70% of our losses have nothing to do with disgruntled or dishonest insiders, or external attacks including viruses. Cyber has not been defined, in part because the Human Intelligence crowd does not compute circuits, and the circuit crowd do not computer human intelligence. We are at the very beginning of a startling renaissance in cyber/Information Operations (IO) in which–we predict–existing and near-term hardware and software vulnerabilities will be less than 30% of the problem. Getting analog Cold War leaders into new mind-sets, and educating all hands toward sharing rather than hoarding, toward multinational rather than unilateral, will be key aspects of our progress. Cyber is life, life is cyber–it's all connected. Stove-piped “solutions” make it worse.

Journal: 1 in 4 Fail US Army Extrance Exam

Journal: Development at Gunpoint? Wasteful & Wrong

Undersea Cables: The Achilles Heel of our Economies

Journal: NSA Assumes It Has Been Compromised…Correct!

Reference: Frog 6 Guidance 2010-2020

2010/12/21

Journal: 1 in 4 Fail US Army Extrance Exam

Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

APNewsBreak: Nearly 1 in 4 fails military exam

CHRISTINE ARMARIO and DORIE TURNER
AP News

Dec 21, 2010 19:05 EST

Nearly one-fourth of the students who try to join the U.S. Army fail its entrance exam, painting a grim picture of an education system that produces graduates who can't answer basic math, science and reading questions, according to a new study released Tuesday.

. . . . . .

The military exam results are also worrisome because the test is given to a limited pool of people: Pentagon data shows that 75 percent of those aged 17 to 24 don't even qualify to take the test because they are physically unfit, have a criminal record or didn't graduate high school.

Read rest of the article….

Phi Beta Iota: Information Operations (IO) starts in the public schoolhouse. On the battlefield, the “strategic corporal” may have the fate of an entire division in their hands. It's time to get back to basics. Side note: corporations struggling with the failure of schools including colleges are now focusing on identifying “trainable” individuals who can be remediated toward full performance. Restoring universal service and creating a common boot camp followed by branching into Home Service, Peace Corps, or Armed Forces would be one way to raise the over-all level. Dumping the age requirements and creating both mid-career and retired categories of specialists is another solution. IO is about human brains–collective intelligence–it more about humanity in action than it is about technology or the security of bits and bytes–the latter are support functions, not primary functions.

2010/12/212010/12/21

Journal: Development at Gunpoint? Wasteful & Wrong

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Gift Intelligence, Government, Methods & Process, Military, Non-Governmental, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Threats

Development at Gunpoint?

Why Civilians Must Reclaim Stabilization Aid

Michael Young

Foreign Affairs, December 19, 2010

Summary: Today, billions of dollars in aid is delivered by soldiers and private contractors at the behest of the political and military leadership. But this so-called “militarized aid” is ineffective, wasteful, and puts lives at risk.

MICHAEL YOUNG is Regional Director for Asia, Caucasus, and the Middle East at the International Rescue Committee. He has worked in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chechnya, and Pakistan.

Article online….

2010/12/212010/12/21

Reference: Frog 6 Guidance 2010-2020

About the Idea, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Policies, Strategy, Threats

From Virtual Secretary of Defense

Purpose

The purpose of this memorandum is to establish priorities for my strategic objectives through 2012 and pending the concurrence of a new president with a proper staff, 2020. There is no such thing as strategic guidance for one year. This document informs without directing anyone.

Intent

My intent is to establish a baseline of truth–the truth at any cost reduces all other costs–so as to return our Armed Forces to a condition of readiness, responsiveness, and effectiveness in the face of all threats to the Republic, both domestic and foreign. At a minimum this means an Air Force capable of long-haul lift; a Navy capable of distributed littoral operations; an Army able to fight uncomfortable wars while also reinforcing legitimate governments and where appropriate helping insurgents holding the moral high ground to displace despotic regimes. It also means a Marine Corps able to put air-land-sea forces on any spot in 24 hours (platoon landing team), 48 hours (company landing team) and 72 hours (battalion landing team), along with a Coast Guard able to fulfill all of its homeland safety and security missions. Underlying my intent for the Armed Forces is a strategic intent to demand clarity, integrity, and sensibility from the Whole of Government–sustainable legal orders consonant with our public's culture.

Our blood must only be shed when our brains are engaged and all other means–cultural, diplomatic, economic, educational, and political–cannot achieve the objectives that are open, legal, ethical, moral, and validated by both Congress and the public. My intent therefore consists of creating the conditions for getting a grip on reality and being able to deal with reality, with a particular emphasis on assuring that all information necessary to inter-agency effectiveness and multinational engagement is both known to us, and shareable with others.

Continue reading “Reference: Frog 6 Guidance 2010-2020”

2010/12/212010/12/21

Reference: Private Military Corporations–A Non-State Actor-Nuclear Terror Nexus?

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Private Military Corporations: A Non-State Actor-Nuclear Terror Nexus?

Robert L. Brown
Temple University

August 16, 2010

Abstract:

The risk of nuclear terrorism is hyped by some as possible and high consequence (Allison 2006) while others dismiss the strategy as too difficult and too risky for terrorist organizations (Jenkins 2008). However, analysts have no data from which to directly analyze the probability of terrorist acquisition and use. One methodological solution is to extend the range analysis to include analogous cases: private military corporations (PMCs) are one class of non-state actors (NSAs) who may possess the capacity and autonomy to pose a risk of nuclear terrorism for their state masters. I find that the while the technical and military capabilities of PMCs may be greater than those of terrorist organizations with respect to nuclear weapon construction or delivery, they are still be insufficient (and PMCs must also somehow acquire fissile materials). Also, PMCs benefit from agency slack, as demonstrated by Blackwater’s performance in Iraq, but this autonomy does not appear sufficient to carry out an illicit nuclear plot. Therefore, PMCs may be more capable than most terrorist organizations if they sought to acquire nuclear weapons but they are still unlikely to succeed.

Keywords: Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, Private Military Corporations, Blackwater, Xe

Working Paper Series
Brown, Robert L., Private Military Corporations: A Non-State Actor-Nuclear Terror Nexus? (August 16, 2010). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1659785

See Also:

David Isenberg, Jack Bauer Beats Blackwater, Huffington Post 20 december 2010

Journal: Near-Term Demise of Private Military Contractors

2010/12/202011/01/01