One of our contributors passed this to me and asked me to comment in relation to the alarm that Winn Schwartau, Bill Caeli, Jim Anderson, and I sounded in 1994, in writing, to Marty Harris, then head of the National Information Infrastructure (NII).
Stuxnet, the cyberweapon that attacked and damaged an Iranian nuclear facility, has opened a Pandora's box of cyberwar, says the man who uncovered it. A Q&A about the potential threats.
EXTRACT:
CSM: How would you characterize the year since Stuxnet – the response by nations, industry and government?
LANGNER: Last year, after Stuxnet was identified as a weapon, we recommended to every asset owner in America – owners of power plants, chemical plants, refineries and others – to make it a top priority to protect their systems…. That wakeup call lasted only about a week. Thereafter, everybody fell back into coma. The most bizarre thing is that even the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Siemens [maker of the industrial control system targeted by Stuxnet] talked about Stuxnet being a wakeup call, but never got into the specifics of what needed to be done.
It’s the show that time and the world forgot. It’s called the Occupation and it’s now in its 45th year. Playing on a landscape about the size of Delaware, it remains largely hidden from view, while Middle Eastern headlines from elsewhere seize the day. Diplomats shuttle back and forth from Washington and Brussels to Middle Eastern capitals; the Israeli-Turkish alliance ruptures amid bold declarations from the Turkish prime minister; crowds storm the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, while Israeli ambassadors flee the Egyptian capital and Amman, the Jordanian one; and of course, there’s the headliner, the show-stopper of the moment, the Palestinian Authority’s campaign for statehood in the United Nations, which will prompt an Obama administration veto in the Security Council.
But whatever the Turks, Egyptians, or Americans do, whatever symbolic satisfaction the Palestinian Authority may get at the U.N., there’s always the Occupation and there — take it from someone just back from a summer living in the West Bank — Israel isn’t losing. It’s winning the battle, at least the one that means the most to Palestinians and Israelis, the one for control over every square foot of ground. Inch by inch, meter by meter, Israel’s expansion project in the West Bank and Jerusalem is, in fact, gaining momentum, ensuring that the “nation” that the U.N. might grant membership will be each day a little smaller, a little less viable, a little less there.
This is spell-binding radio. Given what she knows, her interviewer, Gary Null, wonders out-load why she has not yet been assassinated. Here’s why:
Susan Lindauer is a former U.S. Intelligence Asset who covered anti-terrorism at the Iraqi Embassy in New York from 1996 up to the invasion. Independent sources have confirmed that she gave advance warning about the 9/11 attack. She also started talks for the Lockerbie Trial with Libyan diplomats. Shortly after requesting to testify before Congress about successful elements of Pre-War Intelligence, Susan became one of the first non-Arab Americans arrested on the Patriot Act as an “Iraqi Agent.” She was accused of warning her second cousin, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and Secretary of State Colin Powell that War with Iraq would have catastrophic consequences. Gratis of the Patriot Act, her indictment was loaded with “secret charges” and “secret evidence.” She was subjected to one year in prison on Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas without a trial or hearing, and threatened with indefinite detention and forcible drugging to shut her up. After five years of indictment without a conviction or guilty plea, the Justice Department dismissed all charges five days before President Obama’s inauguration.
Listen to or download the whole show from this link:
There is more, very recent and stunning news – with evidence presented – about 9-11 here:
The Public Intelligence Blog (Phi Beta Iota) has carried a number of recent articles all of which had the common theme that the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) is wasting billions of dollars and can easily sustain major cuts in the DOD budget without threatening U.S. National Security. A sub theme of this series has been that DOD’s waste is caused by a deadly combination of corruption, incompetence, and ignorance. I would add a fourth culprit to this trio, the lack of a coherent National Security Strategy.
I would argue that DOD major cuts in its budget should be informed by a national security strategy that realistically assesses who or what DOD needs to defend against. Unfortunately as Pierre M. Sprey noted not too long go on this Blog, the U.S. does not have such a strategy. Currently the DOD and especially the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), in lieu of thinking about the sort of defense the U.S. really needs, continue to try and build a defense that can defend against everything with the result that it defends against nothing and is enormously expensive to build and maintain.
The JCS structure, if it were functional, would be the obvious choice to formulate a rational defense strategy that would then guide them on the type of force structures to build and how to equip it. Sadly the JCS is completely dysfunctional and is driven by the parochial interests of the military services that collectively can only scramble each year to see which service gets the largest share of congressional defense appropriations. Simultaneously, lacking an overall strategy, each individual service is attempting the impossible task of being prepared to provide military action for any contingency, however unlikely, that might arise. As a result the U.S. Military has sacrificed actual readiness in favor of a dubious ability to respond to any contingency.
Essentially, the individual services are working blind trying to buy small quantities of ever more expensive weapons and equipment to have on hand just in case the contingency for which they were designed arises. Thus the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) was just forced to cancel an out of control program to design and build a new amphibious landing craft although the USMC has not had a real amphibious landing since the Korean War (1950-1953). The U.S. Air Force (USAF) has purchased over 200 F-22 Supersonic fighters to assure air control against what turned out to be a non-existent Soviet (now Russian) fighter. And as it turns out because of design flaws the F-22 is not really a safe aircraft (even though the USAF claims that it is now ok to fly).
Because there is no overall strategy, neither the JCS nor the DOD Civilian Bureaucracy really knows how to deal with threatened substantial cuts in the DOD budget. Indeed the only way to achieve savings so far that has been advanced by these lost souls has been to cut retirement benefits and reduce the cost of living benefits of the enlisted men and women who serve in the armed forces. This is criminal and in any case will achieve only minimal cost reduction. Surely the U.S. can do better than this.
When a system is so slosh with money that it does not know what its costs are, it is time to take serious action. But what do you do when no one cares?
The US Air Force misreports, even to itself (and to Congress and OSD), the cost to operate and support its own aircraft. That is the bottom line of my recent attempt to uncover operating and support (O&S) costs for aircraft like the F-22 and the B-2.
It also gets more interesting: the official USAF data that are available show that, despite promises to the contrary, “stealth” aircraft are far, far more expensive to operate than the aging (and expensive to maintain) relics they are to replace. Moreover, the data that are available are very likely an understatement. Also, there are some other cost Queens in the USAF inventory; still others are hidden in the missing data.
The amounts of money involved are huge. Generally, O&S costs for aircraft are twice (very probably more) the cost to acquire them. For example, OSD predicts the $379 billion F-35 program will cost an additional $916 billion to operate and support. (However, the O&S number is a low-ball prediction.)
What is happening about this? Nothing.
These are some of the points in a 3,000 word study piece I recently completed. The piece, with a one page summary, follows below. It is also at the CDI website at , and you can also see journalists Colin Clark's take.
The text of the short study and its summary follows:
Researchers at Michigan State University have developed a laser that could be used to detect roadside bombs, also known as improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
The device is no stronger than a typical presentation pointer, but it has the sensitivity and selectivity to scan large areas and detect the chemicals used in these deadly bombs, which have accounted for about 60 percent of soldier deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Phi Beta Iota: In 1988, when the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (today a Command) was created, Measurements and Signatures Intelligence (MASINT) was just getting started. The #1 officially-stated Marine Corps requirement for MASINT in 1988 was precisely this: the ability to detect ground explosives at stand-off distance regardless of the containers. Nearly a quarter century later, and billions–not just one billion–later, the US Government still cannot do this. This Israelis solved the problem for themselves in the 1960's, using trained dogs that were expendable. The US Government learned of this solution in 1988, but refused to take it seriously (dogs are not an expensive enough solution). As General Robert Scales has pointed out, 4% of the force (infantry) takes 80% of the casualties, but receives less than 1% of the funding. This is, in one word, corruption. The Department of Defense lacks integrity in every sense of the word.
A remarkable talk by Wesley Clark–4-Star General in the U.S. military: he reveals his reaction to informaton that the U.S.was going to attack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in 5 years–Iraq, Syria,Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran. He goes on to say, “These people [from the Project for a New American Century] took control of the policy of the United States” and recalls a 1991 meeting he had with Paul Wolfowitz who at that time held the number three position at the Pentagon. Pay close attention to what Wolfowitz told him. This talk by Wesley Clark made my jaw drop.
