Idiocy – Page 129 – Public Intelligence Blog

This has been true since Vietnam (from my personal experience) and for all the money and technology that has been thrown at the IC, the return is dismal at best, criminal at worst….see my previous identifying your tribal summary as better than 99% of the intel I saw in Afghanistan.

War Study: Troops Had Bad Intel, Worse Spin

EXTRACT:

Ten years of war have given the U.S. military more than its share of frustrations. According to an internal Pentagon study, two of them were as fundamental as they were related: Troops had terrible intelligence about Iraq and Afghanistan, and they told their own stories just as badly.

Those are some preliminary conclusions from an ongoing Pentagon study into the lessons of a decade of combat, authorized by Gen. Martin Dempsey, the multi-tour Iraq veteran and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The study doesn’t single out any sensor or spy platform for criticism. Instead, it finds that U.S. troops didn’t understand the basic realities of society, culture and power structures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and couldn’t explain what they were doing to skeptical populations.

. . . . . . . .

The study Dempsey ordered is ongoing and will have several volumes, each with multiple iterations, before the military produces a definitive assessment of what went wrong in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is just the first volume. But it helps identify a series of problems that the military thinks it needs to fix to win the wars of the future.

That future military needs to “leverag[e] technology and social media” in order to consider “all relevant actors’ instruments of power; cultural, religious, and other demographic factors; and employs innovative, non-traditional methods and sources.” In other words, spin harder — and know what you’re talking about.

Read full article.

Continue reading “DefDog: War Study – Troops Had Bad Intel, Worse Spin”

2012/06/09

John Robb: Worms, Drones, SuperBugs, & Plagues – The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

07 Other Atrocities, Government, Idiocy, Military, Peace Intelligence

This Version of the Four Horsemen the Apocalypse actually Makes Sense

What types of weapons will use self-replication (which in this context means the ability to easily and rapidly make exact copies of themselves on a massive scale without human oversight)?

Here's a really simple taxonomy. Had some fun with this. All of these use rapid, very difficult to counter self-replication to do massive damage.

Weaponized computer worms/viruses/malware. Legal bot networks that control/manipulate society and markets (think in terms of quant hedge funds). That's the White horse. Conquest.
Drones/robots. Weaponized drones that at first self-perpetuate by acquiring fuel from the environment. Weaponized drones that can self-replicate ala 3-D fabrication and scavanged materials (think rep-rap). That's the Red Horse. War.
Superbugs/superweeds (some may be aided by engineered modification, but all get their start due to the stupidity of growing food in monocultures). Organisms that can wipe out monocultures and cause the loss of productive farmland and crops ond a global scale. That's the Black Horse. Famine.
Plague. Genetically modified weapons, laboratory mistakes, or naturally occuring disease (due to too much physical proximity) that result in plagues. That's the Pale Green horse. Death.

Again, folks. The only long term counter to self-replication is through the smart decentralization afforded by networked resilient communities.

Communities that produce most of what they need locally. Communities that can physically disconnect themselves as needed. Communities that aren't dependent on complex global computer systems that can be corrupted. Communities that use diverse polycultures to produce their food.

2012/06/082012/06/08

Marcus Aurelius: NSA Blocks www.publicintelligence.net

Idiocy, IO Impotency, Military

Marcus-Aurelius-150x150 — Marcus Aurelius

US Cyber Command (read: NSA) has, “for operational reasons,” blocked access to www.publicintelligence.net from DoD computers. You get a pretty WEBSITE BLOCKED notice.

Block “category” is: “USCC_WIKILEAKS_BLOCK”

Also contains following blurb: “This is a DoD enterprise-level protection system intended to reduce risk to DoD users and protect DoD systems from intrusion. It will block access to high-risk web sites and filter high-risk web content.

As far as I have seen, publicintelligence.net doesn't do any direct collection by cyber means. I'm fairly sure that they act as an information aggregator and integrator, receiving and posting stuff independently submitted to them by third parties who may or may not have obtained it legally.

Insofar as I have seen, there is little if any of the WIKILEAKS traffic posted on publicintelligence.net. I don't think I've ever actually seen classified material on that site.

At least this morning, cryptome.org, which is far edgier, was unblocked.

Phi Beta Iota: This is as silly as the US Air Force telling its people that they will be punished if any of their family members read Wikileaks. Micro-management–and especially uninformed micro-management, does not scale.

BUY TODAY: THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO – Transparency, Truth, & Trust . . . the meme, the mind-set, and the method

2012/06/06

Dolphin: Stuxnet – Throwing Rocks When You Live in a Glass House!

Government, Idiocy, IO Deeds of War

Outlines the potential unintended consequences (blowback) resulting from the USG's apparent covert action employing Stuxnet.

Stuxnets are Not in the US National Interest: An Arsonist Calling for Better Fire Codes

Jason Healey | June 01, 2012

The United States government has apparently struck a blow against the Iranian nuclear enrichment capability by using Stuxnet to disable centrifuges. While this cyber weapon destroyed centrifuges and seized up the enrichment process, the cost in American cyber power ultimately will not have been worth these limited gains.

On the plus side, the United States has struck against some of the world’s most terrible organizations working towards the world’s most horrible weapons. If the Iranians ever did build and use a nuclear weapon, we would have regretted missing any chance to disrupt that process. Given the implications, it is understandable that two US presidents authorized and continued a covert program of cyber force to disrupt Iranian nuclear ambitions.

However, not all good ideas, and even fewer covert ones, should be executed. Though it did not cause any physical damage outside of the intended target of Iranian enrichment plants, Stuxnet somehow sprung loose from its intended target and spread in computers – and headlines – around the world. And this leak (along with those from the White House) led to the many downsides.

Few in the world will ever believe the peaceful motives of the United States in cyberspace again, giving us even less leverage to ensure this new cyber dimension develops in a way encompassing America’s wider economic and security interests.

Cyberspace is “the backbone that underpins a prosperous economy and a strong military and an open and efficient government,” according to President Obama. Because of this importance, not much more than a year ago, the president committed the United States to “work internationally to promote an open, interoperable, secure, and reliable” cyberspace “built on norms of responsible behavior.” He wrote that, “While offline challenges and aggression have made their way to the digital world, we will confront them consistent with the principles we hold dear: free speech and association, privacy, and the free flow of information. The digital world is no longer a lawless frontier … It is a place where the norms of responsible, just and peaceful conduct among states and peoples have begun to take hold. ”

Stuxnet was not an act of peaceful conduct.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: The only thing worse that launching Stuxnet is claiming false credit for something we did not actually do. The Israeli Zionists are howling–gentiles have once again proven they are too stupid to be “counted.”

2012/06/03

Chuck Spinney: The Logistics Sphincter of Afghanistan

Government, Idiocy, Military

This is one big chocolate mess. It illustrates the strategic vulnerability arising from the grand strategic blowback effects of the extrajudicial liquidation program that is America's drone war … which is viewed by the White House and Defense Secretary Panetta as the only game in town.

Chuck Spinney
Cannes, France

U.S.-Pakistan Freeze Chokes Fallback Route in Afghanistan

ROD NORDLAND, The New York Times, June 2, 2012

SALANG PASS, Afghanistan — Nowhere is the impact of Pakistan’s ban on NATO truck traffic more visible than here at the top of the Hindu Kush, on one of the only alternative overland routes for supply convoys to reach Kabul and the rest of the country.

For 20 miles north and south of the old Soviet-built tunnel at Salang Pass, thousands of trucks are idled beside the road, waiting for a turn to get through its perilous, one-and-a-half-mile length.<

This is the only passable route for heavy truck traffic bringing NATO supplies in from the Central Asian republics to the north, as they now must come.

There are other roads, but they are often single-lane dirt tracks through even higher mountain passes, or they are frequently subject to ambushes by insurgents and bandits. So a tunnel built to handle 1,000 vehicles a day, and until the Pakistani boycott against NATO in November handling 2,000, now tries — and often fails — to let 10,000 vehicles through, alternating northbound and southbound truck traffic every other day.

“It’s only a matter of time until there’s a catastrophe,” said Lt. Gen. Mohammad Rajab, the head of maintenance for the Salang Pass. “One hundred percent certain, there will be a disaster, and when there is, it’s not a disaster for Afghanistan alone, but for the whole international community that uses this road.” He said 90 percent of the traffic now was trailer and tanker trucks carrying NATO supplies.

Read full article.

2012/06/032012/06/03

Marcus Aurelius: Retarded Governments Catch Up with Hacking 101

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, IO Impotency, Military

Two especially intelligent pieces.

Mutually Assured Cyberdestruction?

David Sanger in New York Times

Cyberspace The Fragile Frontier

Robert O'Harrow Jr. in Washington Post

Phi Beta Iota: What is so pathetic about all this is that governments have learned nothing in the quarter century since Winn Schwartau, Bill Caelli, Jim Anderson, Robert Steele, and a handful of others sounded the alarm. 25 years of dereliction of duty.

2012/05/30

DefDog: Words That Might Get You Labeled a Terrorist

Government, Idiocy

Interesting reading…

Revealed: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don't want the government spying on you (and they include ‘pork', ‘cloud' and ‘Mexico')

Department of Homeland Security forced to release list following freedom of information request

Agency insists it only looks for evidence of genuine threats to the U.S. and not for signs of general dissent

Daniel Miller

Mail Online, 26 May 2012

The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.

The intriguing the list includes obvious choices such as ‘attack', ‘Al Qaeda', ‘terrorism' and ‘dirty bomb' alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like ‘pork', ‘cloud', ‘team' and ‘Mexico'.

Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats.

The words are included in the department's 2011 ‘Analyst's Desktop Binder‘ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities'.

Department chiefs were forced to release the manual following a House hearing over documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit which revealed how analysts monitor social networks and media organisations for comments that ‘reflect adversely' on the government.

However they insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats.

Read full article and see list of terms.