The problem is they don't have much to offer, other than going along. Corporate profits need to be sustained and attending (not fixing) the Cyber world appears to be the new way of doing it. And as a side note, it is the Congressional-cyber-industrial complex……since Congree allocates the funding and reaps the lobbyist's support…

Cyberthreats turn into megabucks for defense companies

By: Tony Romm and Jennifer Martinez

Politico, May 30, 2012

As Congress boosts spending on cybersecurity and mulls over new data safety requirements on private industry, some companies stand to get rich.

Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and other defense and tech companies have been lobbying Capitol Hill about the growing cyberthreats to national security and corporate America, but they also make millions of dollars each year selling a variety of cybersecurity programs, tools and solutions to government and business.

Some lawmakers say the legislative push has spawned a “cyber-industrial complex.”

“I believe these bills will encourage the development of an industry that profits from fear and whose currency is Americans’ private data,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), speaking on the Senate floor last week in opposition to pending cybersecurity legislation. “These bills create a cyber-industrial complex that has an interest in preserving the problem to which it is the solution.”

The online threats of the digital age — stolen state secrets, hacked personal computers and more — may pose serious, real and novel challenges to the federal government and private sector alike.

But the reaction to those threats has been far more old school: Companies in several different industries are aggressively playing the legislative lobbying game as part of their larger market strategy.

And it’s paying off in millions of dollars of federal contracts alone.

Read full article.

The Bilderbergers now post the participant list on their “official” website. In the past, moles inside the organization would release the secretive list to journalists.

Bilderberg Meetings
Chantilly, Virginia, USA, 31 May-3 June 2012

Final List of Participants Including General Keith Alexander, D/NSA and D/Cyber-Command

Continue reading “DefDog: Keith Alexander, Moth to the Flame of Capital Corruption”

2012/05/302012/05/30

Chuck Spinney: Global Moral Downside of Privatizing US Military Support

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Military

In the late 1980s, under the leadership of Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, the Pentagon began to privatise many of the military's support services that had traditionally be done soldiers, sailors, and airmen — laundries, dining halls, security guards, cleaning latrines, some supply functions, etc. It was argued at the time that this would save money and free up troops for combat duties, thus increasing the tooth-to-tail ratio of our military forces. According to this logic, fact that we were fielding an army that could not feed itself or wash its own laundry was deemed to be a cost-effective contributor to combat power. Of course, the only real result was to transfer another large part of the defense budget to the defense contractors and open up vast new opportunities for price gouging.

It is an undeniable fact that, despite a massive move to privatization of support functions by the Pentagon, the tooth-to-tail ratio continued to get worse during the 1990s and in the subsequent decade, the daily cost per unit of deployed combat power, be it troops marching in the mud, flying hours, ship steaming hours, or tank miles driven, etc continued to increase at a rate much faster than the overall defense budget increased.<

As a result, two relatively low-tempo, small wars (compared to Korea or Vietnam) — i.e., Iraq and Afghanistan — have now cost more than any war America has fought, save WWII (in inflation adjusted dollars). Privatization — the neoliberal panacea for all things according to the adherents of the Chicago School of economics — may have created bloated profits for the MICC, fomented the rise of private armies, like Blackwater, and increased the corruption that naturally takes place among war profiteers, but the result has been a disaster for our nation.<

The below article in Le Monde Diplomatique is a good, albeit disgusting, example of how the privatization of public enterprise works in the real world of America's permanent war economy.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Global Moral Downside of Privatizing US Military Support”

2012/05/302012/05/30

John Robb: The Official US Process of Death by Powerpoint

Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement, Military

The US President's Hit List or “Death by PowerPoint”

Posted: 29 May 2012 12:01 PM PDT

Last Friday, I wrote a post on how:

– US national security agencies increasingly use computerized analysis of collected data to designate a person as an enemy combatant.

– The US currently uses non-judicial Presidential “hit lists” to simplify the killing of people (including US citizens) designated as enemy combatants.

– The US is rapidly increasing its use of drones to kill enemy combatants nearly anywhere in the world 24x7x365.

The scary part is that the combination of these trends is the path of least resistance to an automated totalitarianism.

For those of you out of the loop on what is going on, it probably seemed to be a bit of a stretch. Particularly, the idea that the President could put American citizens on a military hit list without going through a judicial process.

If you were skeptical on the existence of a hit list, here's an article from today's (almost on cue) New York Times.

Continue reading “John Robb: The Official US Process of Death by Powerpoint”

2012/05/292012/05/29

Mini-Me: AE911Truth LA Press Conference w/ Ed Asner at Premiere of 9/11: Experts Speak Out; 5-22-12

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

Huh?

AE911Truth LA Press Conference w/ Ed Asner at Premiere of 9/11: Experts Speak Out; 5-22-12

This is the major press conference that AE911Truth held at the occasion of the World Premiere of their powerful myth-shattering documentary “9/11: Explosive Evidence — Experts Speak Out” on May 22, 2012 in Beverly Hills, CA. Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth founder, Richard Gage, AIA and AE911Truth supporter and actor, Ed Asner, teamed up to lay into the media in an effort to hold them accountable for their 10-year silence on the subject of the abundant scientific evidence and eyewitness testimony that pulls the rug from under the official story of the destruction of the three World Trade Center towers on 9/11. This new documentary, introduced by Gage, following the press conference hosts 43 technical and building professionals who cite the evidence and call for a new investigation. It also includes 8 psychology professionals who are well versed in the difficult issues that viewers of this film may face when confronting the evidence.

Watch Video Below.

Phi Beta Iota: We are deeply sympathetic about the fact that most Americans, including well-educated Americans and especially well-educated Americans employed by the federal government, simply cannot comprehend this stuff. They live in a dream world, where America can do no wrong, government can be trusted, Dick Cheney deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and Barack Obama earned the one he got for his first ten days in office, etcetera etcetera. If the measure of a nation is the combination of public intelligence and public integrity, the USA is deeply mired in a cesspool of its own making.

2012/05/29

Winslow Wheeler: Congressional Pork Hidden in Defense Budget

Corruption, Government, Military

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

Slush funds for the executive branch in authorization and appropriations bills are a big no-no, but if they are intended for Members and their staff to use, that would seem to be different.

What I found in the House Armed Services Committee's defense authorization bill is described at Time's Battleland blog at http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2012/05/29/a-peek-at-pentagon-pork-a-taxpayers-guide/, and below:

A Peek at Pentagon Pork: A Taxpayers’ Guide

By Winslow Wheeler | Getty, May 29, 2012 |

The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) and the Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee (sometimes called the HAC-D) have reported their separate defense bills to the House of Representatives (both bills purport to address both spending and policy). The House has already debated and passed the HASC’s “National Defense Authorization Act” (NDAA); it will soon debate the defense appropriations bill. Let’s check out what they’ve drafted and try to figure out which panel is the House’s reigning Pentagon pork king.

The press has covered both bills with multiple daily articles; the House debate, while truncated, got into all sorts of nuts and bolts, including amendments on labor practices in DOD contracting, military depot policy, and protection of sea otters in navy exercise areas, among many other things. In all, there were 141 amendments allowed for debate. That level of legislative and journalistic activity would suggest that the bill and its accompanying “committee report” were thoroughly scrubbed to make sure there were no slimy invertebrates hiding under rocks in the depths of the bill or its report.

Think no such thing.

The sea otters and other minutia addressed in amendments, for example, reflect the energy and thoroughness of lobbyists, not of congressional staff or others. Otherwise, some particularly odious elements of the HASC bill would hopefully have been challenged by one of the very few existing guardians of ethics and governance in the House. Had they or their staffs combed thoroughly through the bill and report they would have uncovered and, I hope, exposed that everlasting object of interest by Members of Congress: pork.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Congressional Pork Hidden in Defense Budget”

2012/05/282012/05/28

Owl: China Swamps US Across the Board – Made in China Computer Chips Have Back Doors, 45 Other “Ways & Means” Sucking Blood from US

02 China, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War, Military

Two Ways the Chinese May Take Over the World and the US:

1) Chinese Stuxnet for the Rest of the World

If what this analyst says is true, it paints a truly astonishing in implication and very, very ugly picture of the national security situation in store for most governments – especially in the US:

Hardware Assurance and its importance to National Security

Current issues. UK officials are fearful that China has the capability to shut down businesses, military and critical infrastructure through cyber attacks and spy equipment embedded in computer and telecommunications equipment. The Stuxnet worm is the most famous and best case example of a cyber attack on a network which wreaked devastation having easily compromised conventional software defensive systems. There have been many cases of computer hardware having backdoors, Trojans or other programs to allow an attacker to gain access or transmit confidential data to a third party. Considerable focus and expense has been invested in software computer networks and system defences to detect and eradicate such threats. However, similar technology with antivirus or anti Trojan capability for hardware (silicon chips) is not available. The computer or network hardware underpins and runs all the software defence systems. If the hardware has a vulnerability then all the energy in defending at the software level is redundant. An effort must be made to defend and detect at the hardware level for a more comprehensive strategy.

Our findings. Claims were made by the intelligence agencies around the world, from MI5, NSA and IARPA, that silicon chips could be infected. We developed breakthrough silicon chip scanning technology to investigate these claims.

We chose an American military chip that is highly secure with sophisticated encryption standard, manufactured in China. Our aim was to perform advanced code breaking and to see if there were any unexpected features on the chip.

We scanned the silicon chip in an affordable time and found a previously unknown backdoor inserted by the manufacturer. This backdoor has a key, which we were able to extract. If you use this key you can disable the chip or reprogram it at will, even if locked by the user with their own key. This particular chip is prevalent in many systems from weapons, nuclear power plants to public transport. In other words, this backdoor access could be turned into an advanced Stuxnet weapon to attack potentially millions of systems. The scale and range of possible attacks has huge implications for National Security and public infrastructure.

Read full article.

2) 45 Signs That China Is Colonizing America

Continue reading “Owl: China Swamps US Across the Board – Made in China Computer Chips Have Back Doors, 45 Other “Ways & Means” Sucking Blood from US”

2012/05/272012/05/28

Marcus Aurelius: Jennifer Sims Party Line on Military Clandestine Service with Robert Steele Comment + RECAP

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Intelligence (government), Military

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

Here we go again….

Why the CIA Is Applauding the Pentagon's Intelligence Grab

Jennifer Sims

Foreign Affairs, May 18, 2012

Last month, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced the creation of a new U.S. espionage agency: the Defense Clandestine Service, or DCS. DCS is expected to expand the Pentagon's espionage personnel by several hundred over the next few years, while reportedly leaving budgets largely unchanged. The news nonetheless surprised some observers in Washington because the move appeared, at least initially, to be a direct challenge to the Central Intelligence Agency, whose National Clandestine Service leads the country's spy work overseas. Then came a second surprise: former CIA officers and other intelligence experts started applauding. The question is why.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: Jennifer Sims Party Line on Military Clandestine Service with Robert Steele Comment + RECAP”