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
Who? Who?

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”

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

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

DefDog: The Hillary Clinton Hack on Al Qaeda That Was Not….

Government, Idiocy, IO Impotency
DefDog

The Hack That Wasn’t: Sec. Clinton and Operation AdWords

Kim Zetter

WIRED, 24 May 2012

When news outlets recently quoted U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claiming that State Department operatives hacked the websites of al-Qaida affiliates in Yemen, we didn’t know whether to be proud of the feds’ leet skills or appalled at the administration’s hypocrisy regarding hacking.

Turns out the hacks who wrote the stories got it wrong – though Danger Room’s David Axe, who was on the scene, got the story right the first go-around. And now, with the hyped headlines dialed back, we’re just disappointed.

Turns out the team simply purchased anti-al-Qaida ads on the websites to counter anti-American ads the sites were running.

Call it Operation AdWords, if you like.

Clinton was delivering a keynote speech at the Special Operations Command gala dinner in Tampa, Florida, when, as the Associated Press reported, she described how State Department specialists attacked sites tied to al-Qaida, which were trying to recruit new members by “bragging about killing Americans.”

“Within 48 hours, our team plastered the same sites with altered versions of the ads that showed the toll al-Qaida attacks have taken on the Yemeni people,” Clinton said, according to the AP. “We can tell our efforts are starting to have an impact because extremists are publicly venting their frustration and asking supporters not to believe everything they read on the internet.”

The AP rushed out a story with the headline “Hillary Clinton: U.S. Hacked Yemen al-Qaida Sites,” only to revise the story with a more demure headline later, reading “Clinton: US wars with al-Qaida on the web.”

The latter story included new quotes from a State Department official clarifying that the specialist didn’t actually hack the sites. Instead, he said, they challenged extremists in open forums.

Read the rest of this sorry tale.

Chuck Spinney: The Afghanistan Exit – Looting the Useful Idiots to the Bitter End

04 Inter-State Conflict, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Idiocy, Military
Chuck Spinney

When Alexander the Great decided to leave Afghanistan, his plan was to exit via the Khyber Pass and march though what is now Pakistan and thence into India. But the Khyber was blocked by a warring Pashtun tribe. Legend has it that Alex's exit strategy was to bribe another Pashtun tribe to open the door by attacking and driving off the first tribe. The gambit worked and he escaped with his forces largely intact, Alexander looked shrewd in the history books. But is that the whole story?

I have often wondered if old Alex was snookered by two tribes in cahoots in a scheme to extort money and divide the proceeds from an invader desperate to leave. Of course we will never know if this actually happened, but as the following report in yesterday's Sunday Times suggests, my speculation has a quintessential Pashtun flavor and is therefore not outside the realm of probability.

Chuck Spinney
Port Cogolin, France

Afghan Troops And Tailban In Pact To Loot NATO Convoys

Secret alliances threaten to undermine the West's strategy of handing more responsibility for security to local forces

By Miles Amoore and Christina Lamb, London Sunday Times, May 20, 2012

THE two men should be sworn enemies. One is a Taliban commander waging what he says is a holy war against foreign soldiers in Afghanistan. The other is an Afghan army officer trained and paid by Nato to fight the Taliban.

Yet rather than do battle, the two men have forged a secret alliance. In the area of Ghazni province where both are based, just an hour's drive south of Kabul, they collaborate to loot Nato supply convoys, dividing up the proceeds. They even share intelligence about military operations.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: The Afghanistan Exit – Looting the Useful Idiots to the Bitter End”

Owl: Frack Fluids Can Migrate to Aquifers Within Years

07 Other Atrocities, 12 Water, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, General Accountability Office, Government, Idiocy, Office of Management and Budget
Who? Who?

New Study Predicts Frack Fluids Can Migrate to Aquifers Within Years

A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted.

More than 5,000 wells were drilled in the Marcellus between mid-2009 and mid-2010, according to the study, which was published in the journal Ground Water two weeks ago. Operators inject up to 4 million gallons of fluid, under more than 10,000 pounds of pressure, to drill and frack each well.

Scientists have theorized that impermeable layers of rock would keep the fluid, which contains benzene and other dangerous chemicals, safely locked nearly a mile below water supplies. This view of the earth's underground geology is a cornerstone of the industry's argument that fracking poses minimal threats to the environment.

But the study, using computer modeling, concluded that natural faults and fractures in the Marcellus, exacerbated by the effects of fracking itself, could allow chemicals to reach the surface in as little as “just a few years.”

“Simply put, [the rock layers] are not impermeable,” said the study's author, Tom Myers, an independent hydrogeologist whose clients include the federal government and environmental groups.

“The Marcellus shale is being fracked into a very high permeability,” he said. “Fluids could move from most any injection process.”

See Also:

Water: Soul of the Earth, Mirror of Our Collective Souls

Mini-Me: $4 Billion for Israel, Nothing for US Jobs

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, DoD, Government, Idiocy
Who? Mini-Me?

Huh?

Congressional Committee Proposal would raise US taxpayer support for Israel’s military in 2013 to a record $4 billion.

Tim King | Salem-News.com

(WASHINGTON DC) – As news about Israeli political parties merging dominates headlines, this one is being overlooked. The US House of Representatives Defense Appropriations Subcommittee yesterday approved almost $1 billion for Israel’s anti-missile defense programs.

The expensive systems are called Arrow 3. The American politicians propose spending this exorbitant amount in order to upgrade the current Arrow system, David’s Sling, and Iron Dome.

The names are fancy, unlike the missiles they say they are defending themselves from. The munitions fired from Gaza are al Qassam rockets and they are little more than unguided fireworks.

Israeli and American media portray the ‘rocket attacks from Gaza’ as a serious danger and they claim that the large U.S. tax payer contributions are necessary in order to ‘defend’ Israel. The Gaza rockets have in all time, killed a total of 28 Israeli citizens. Some place the number at 29.

The total appropriation is the highest ever approved for the four programs; it reflects the willingness of the United States to back yet another racist, apartheid government that uses American investments to send Israeli youth to college, and to kill Palestinians; Muslims and Christians, who have few rights under a system that Israel created, offering one set of laws and punishments to Jews, and a different set for all other human beings.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota:  Equally troubling is the continued borrowing of $1 trillion a year and the continued waste of over $2 trillion a year.

Penguin: Pentagon Spending Taxpayer Money to Identify Insider Threats — Never Realizing that Pentagon Misbehavior Inspires Insider Patriots

Corruption, Idiocy, IO Impotency, Military
Who, Me?

After paying for the development of this bullshit we can all plan building this expense into our family budgets.

The Way The Pentagon Is Predicting Your Potential To Become A National Threat Is Frightening

Eloise Lee

Business Insider, May 7, 2012,

Tom Cruise made “pre-crime'” a futuresque and controversial method of law enforcement in the 2002 movie Minority Report.Ten years later, the idea of preemptively identifying a criminal — particularly an inside threat — is taking shape within the U.S. Defense Department, reports Joe Gould at Army Times.Whether it's a low-ranking soldier intent on dumping secret information to WikiLeaks, or a rogue Sergeant going on a shooting rampage, insider threats can seriously plague the military and the government as a whole.

Taking a novel approach, the Pentagon is spearheading research into studying the predictive behavior of personnel in the lead-up to a betrayal.

Continue reading “Penguin: Pentagon Spending Taxpayer Money to Identify Insider Threats — Never Realizing that Pentagon Misbehavior Inspires Insider Patriots”