Military – Page 271 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/01/292011/01/29

Revolution & Secession: The Game is ON!

08 Wild Cards, Advanced Cyber/IO, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Military, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Threats

NIGHTWATCH Complete Report for 28 January 2011

Jordan: Protesters across Jordan called for the government to step down. In Amman, more than 5,000 marched. Demonstrators chanted anti-government slogans, blamed the government for rising prices and called for the resignation of Prime Minister Samir Rifai.

Egypt: Today was the Day of Rage and so it has been. Roughly an hour after Friday prayers, the demonstrations began in Cairo, Suez and Alexandria, then spread and continued into the night. Buildings were set alight; curfews ignored and the Army moved in. The night closed with President Mubarak's mildly concessional speech which promises to incite the protesters, more than placate them. Expect more confrontations on 29 January.

Special comment: Background. Research and analysis of more than 50 internal instability episodes since 1980, NightWatch has tracked order in what appears to be chaotic security situations. Once internal discontent metamorphoses into a breakdown of public order, the government begins searching for a set of responses that will halt the decline in its fortunes. A government will follow a three-phase cycle in applying different ideas and resources alternately to placate or crush an insurrection or to buy time to try to find “a line it can hold.” That phrase refers to a set of actions over an expanse of national territory that will stabilize internal conditions.

If the government finds a set of responses that match the protestors' grievances, the downward cycle can be halted. If not, it will continue until the government falls or is changed, usually by the Army, the ultimate guardians of the state.

Below the line: complete NightWatch analytics, followed by comment on Davies J-Curve and Power of the Powerless.

Continue reading “Revolution & Secession: The Game is ON!”

2011/01/282011/01/31

Egyptian Protests Live Video (Al Jazeera) / “Revolution-in-Progress”

08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

Comment: Kuwait gov paying citizens money and food mentioned during the broadcast as a move to pacify and prevent uprisings by Kuwait citizens.

Preconditions of Revolution in the USA Today

Continue reading “Egyptian Protests Live Video (Al Jazeera) / “Revolution-in-Progress””

2011/01/272011/01/27

Reference: NYT on WikiLeaks + RECAP

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Military, Peace Intelligence

Dealing With Assange and the Secrets He Spilled

By BILL KELLER

The New York Times, January 26, 2011

Bill Keller is the executive editor of The New York Times. This essay is adapted from his introduction to “Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy: Complete and Expanded Coverage from The New York Times,” an ebook available for purchase at nytimes.com/opensecrets.

EXTRACT: The government surely cheapens secrecy by deploying it so promiscuously. According to the Pentagon, about 500,000 people have clearance to use the database from which the secret cables were pilfered. Weighing in on the WikiLeaks controversy in The Guardian, Max Frankel remarked that secrets shared with such a legion of “cleared” officials, including low-level army clerks, “are not secret.” Governments, he wrote, “must decide that the random rubber-stamping of millions of papers and computer files each year does not a security system make.”

Phi Beta Iota: Upgraded to a Reference because this nine part overview of the entire process is elegant, informative, and provocative. A very fine contribution of lasting value.

2011/01/27

WikiLeaks Mindset Growing Far & Wide

Civil Society, Corruption, Ethics, Government, Media, Military, Open Government, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

(text fr newsletter)
Get used to the WikiLeaks mindset
“The hacker generation is now employed by government, the military and corporate America, writes George Smith, a senior fellow at GlobalSecurity.org.”

Workforce: Get used to the WikiLeaks mindset

By George Smith
Jan 26, 2011

George Smith is a senior fellow at GlobalSecurity.org and a writer and commentator on the science and technology of national security.

Back in the early 1990s, I edited an electronic newsletter that dealt with the culture of amateur virus writers — hackers who wrote mobile malware. Julian Assange was a subscriber. This is only to illustrate Assange's bona fides as someone from the original world computer underground, a place where one of the driving philosophies was to reveal the secrets of institutional power.

Once confined to what was considered a computer geek fringe, that ideology is now entrenched. It's no longer an outsider mindset, and it hasn't been for a long time. Now it's inside, with its originators entering middle age. And younger adherents of the philosophy are coming along all the time.

They're everywhere — employed by government, the military and corporate America. And because we have come to the point that the United States is considered by some to be a bad global actor — whether you share that point of view or not — the government is faced with a problem it cannot solve. Its exposure is thought by many to be deserved.

Continue reading “WikiLeaks Mindset Growing Far & Wide”

2011/01/262011/01/26

David Ignatius Loves Bob Gates

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Media, Military, Officers Call

David Ignatius, Washington Post 26 January 2011

Ike was right: Defense spending must be cut

Core paragraph: President Obama has the right team in place to begin this strategic downsizing of the defense budget. Gates has been an outspoken advocate of cutting programs we can't afford, and he has strong backing from Adm. Mike Mullen and Gen. James Cartwright, the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military brass knows the country won't be secure if it's broke.

Phi Beta Iota: This article is corrupt on so many levels, from moral to intellectual to financial, it simply epitomizes all that is wrong with Washington.

2011/01/252011/01/25

Reference: Advanced Cyber-IO (First Cut)

Advanced Cyber/IO, Computer/online security, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, Military, Monographs, Officers Call, Policies, Real Time, Threats

The below was inspired by a close look at the evolving concept of cyber-commands. In our judgment, LtGen Keith Alexander, USA and those in charge of the various service cyber-commands are headed for spectacularly expensive failure, minor operational successes not-with-standing. The officers concerned are well-intentioned, precisely like their predecessors who chose to ignore precisely the same insights published in 1994–they simply lack the intestinal fortitude to break with the past and get it right for a change. What they plan is the cyber equivalent of “clear, hold, build,” and just as mis-guided. They are out of touch with reality and will remain so. They will all be happily retired long before the predictable recognition of their failure occurs, and the next generation of young flags will make the same mistakes again…and again…until we get an honest President with an honest Office of Management and Budget (OMB) able to demand and enforce integrity across the board.

Draft Monograph on Cyber-Command

2011/01/24

Citizen Satellites (1 kilogram)

04 Education, Academia, Civil Society, Earth Intelligence, Government, Military, Technologies

Citizen Satellites

Tiny, standardized spacecraft are making orbital experiments affordable to even the smallest research groups

By Alex Soojung-Kim Pang and Bob Twiggs | February 9, 2011 (latest issue)

Ever since Sputnik kicked off the age of space satellites more than fifty years ago, big institutions have dominated the skies. Almost all the many thousands of satellites that have taken their place in Earth orbit were the result of huge projects funded by governments and corporations. For decades each generation of satellites has been more complicated and expensive than its predecessor, taken longer to design, and required an infrastructure of expensive launch facilities, global monitoring stations, mission specialists and research centers.

In recent years, however, improvements in electronics, solar power and other technologies have made it possible to shrink satellites dramatically. A new type of satellite, called CubeSat, drastically simplifies and standardizes the design of small spacecraft and brings costs down to less than $100,000 to develop, launch and operate a single satellite—a tiny fraction of the typical mission budget of NASA or the European Space Agency.
(full article requires subscription)
Comment: the article mentions the idea of “printing” low-cost materials as well.

+ Brooklyn Space Program (weather balloon + iPhone + camera recording most of the flight into space and back)