Journal ISSN 1078-1935 – Page 1897 – Public Intelligence Blog

Well worth reading between the lines.

Socom Officials Work on Plan for Global Network

By Donna Miles

American Forces Press Service

MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla., June 3, 2013 – About 100 people are hard at work at the U.S. Special Operations Command headquarters here on a new plan that will operationalize the way the command provides manpower and capability in support of the new defense strategic guidance.

The plan, due to the Joint Staff in late August, is part of the Special Operations Command 2020 vision Navy Adm. William H. McRaven introduced shortly after taking the helm as Socom commander in 2011.The building of a global network of special operations forces, as well as U.S. government partners and partner nations, is a major component of Socom 2020, McRaven explained during the Special Operations Forces Industry Conference in Tampa, Fla., earlier this month.

McRaven’s Socom 2020 vision calls for a globally networked force of special operations forces, interagency representatives, allies and partners, with aligned structures processes and authorities to enable its operations. Globally networked forces, he said, will provide geographic combatant commanders and chiefs of mission with an unprecedented unity of effort and an enhance ability to respond to regional contingencies and threats to stability.

McRaven noted his own experience working with the Joint Special Operations Command in Afghanistan. “It has been interesting to work in a network like that, and we do that very, very well on the direct action side,” he said. “We need to figure out — and it is part of the Socom plan — how do we take that network, and be able to extend that out to the theater special operations commands,” down to special operations forward elements and forces assigned to them.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: SOCOM Working on Global Network — Comment by Robert Steele”

2013/06/18

Berto Jongman: TWA Flight 800 Whistle-Blowers — Flight Shot Down?

Corruption, Government, Media

TWA Flight 800 investigators break silence in new documentary, claim original conclusion about cause of crash is wrong

A group of whistleblowers, including a number of aviation experts, have come forward in a new documentary to claim that the official explanation for the crash of TWA Flight 800 was wrong and a gas tank explosion did not bring down the flight off the coast of Long Island 17 years ago.

However, the six whistleblowers, all part of the original investigation team, stopped short of saying the plane was shot down.

Flight 800, a Boeing 747, had just taken off from JFK airport with 230 people aboard on July 17, 1996 enroute to Paris when it exploded and crashed off the coast of nearby East Moriches, Long Island, killing everyone on the plane.

“..This team of investigators who actually handled the wreckage and victims’ bodies, prove that the officially proposed fuel-air explosion did not cause the crash,” reads a statement by the producers of the film, which will debut on cable network EPIX next month. “They also provide radar and forensic evidence proving that one or more ordinance explosions outside the aircraft caused the crash.” However, the statement said they did not speculate about the source or sources of any ordinance explosions.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: TWA Flight 800 Whistle-Blowers — Flight Shot Down?”

2013/06/18

Berto Jongman: Bedtime Story for Big Kids…

Offbeat Fun, Officers Call

Going viral world-wide.

He Was Asked An Arrogant Question. His Great Answer Shows The Problem With How The U.S. Functions.

2013/06/182013/06/18

Tom Atlee: A Difference of View — Top Down Control of Unstable Bottom, or Bottom-Up Renaissance of Capitalism and Democracy?

Cultural Intelligence

The Guardian UK reports that the US and other militaries are preparing for major domestic disorder stimulated by climate, energy, and economic crises. NSA surveillance is part of that. This shoring up of power-over from the top calls for our rapid development of power-with from below.

Ramping up the two big Powers

The report below from the Guardian UK describes accelerating government and military planning for major civil unrest caused by climate change, energy shocks, and economic crises. The recently highlighted NSA surveillance – with its engagement of both government and corporate players – is a part of this. Another part, highlighted here, is the domestic use of the military.

I see this as an example of the power-over forces attempting to maintain control – articulated by them as “government stability” and “domestic order” – as crises and technological developments undermine the capacities of centralized rule and management, as covered by my recent review of THE END OF POWER.

Continue reading “Tom Atlee: A Difference of View — Top Down Control of Unstable Bottom, or Bottom-Up Renaissance of Capitalism and Democracy?”

2013/06/182013/06/19

Neal Rauhauser: Balochistan, Eygpt, Lebanon, Syria, & Yemen

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence

Balochistan Triple Tap

Structure hit, suicide bomber success, another suicide bomber at the hospital handling casualties, and then a unit of unknown size storms the hospital in an attack lasting hours? I first noticed the Balochistan independence movement about six months ago. The action that gets reported has thus far been in Pakistan.

CORRECTION: Balochistan Triple Tap

The structure hit was indeed the Balochistan Liberation Army, striking a symbolic target with no loss of life.The suicide bombings and armed assault were not at all related. … So I had some good background, some good maps, but this one conceptual error throws the whole piece off kilter. Rather than editing it in place, I felt a clean update was best.

Declining Oil Production: Syria, Egypt & Yemen

Oil producers are subject to an effect know as the Export Land Model. Basically, oil fuels internal growth and when production declines exports decline even more swiftly, as producers steer production into uses at home. Egypt, Syria, and Yemen have all featured heavily here and they are first up in the ominously titled How Oil Exporters Reach Financial Collapse.

Syria & Lebanon’s Patchwork

The ethnic and sectarian divides in Syria are fueling their civil war, and they have a long history of intervention in the affairs of Lebanon. These maps show with increasing focus the ethnic and religious groups that inhabit the region.

2013/06/182013/06/18

Berto Jongman: Lies & Spies, Positive Thoughts for Future

Cultural Intelligence

“#OpPrism, #AntiSec, #Anonymous Reacts to NSA,” Institute for Ethics & emerging Technologies, 18 June 2013

Bruce Schneier, “Evidence that NSA is Storing Voice Content, Not Just Metadata,” Schneier.com, 18 June 2013

David Dayen, “Bank of America whistle-blower's bombshell: ‘We were told to lie,'”,'” Salon, 18 June 2013

Dieter Broers, “Decoding the Matrix: Stepping into a new state of consciousness,” Event Announcements for UK

Freedom House, Nations in Transit 2013: Authoritarian Aggression and the Pressures of Austerity (2013)

Leon Fuerth with Evan Faber, “Anticipatory Governance: Winning the Future,” World Future Society, July-August 2013 (Vol 47 No 4)

Listening Post, “Bradley Manning: Truth on trial,” Al-Jazeera, 17 June 2013

Patrick Tucker, “Mapping the Future with Big Data,” World Future Society, July-August 2013 (Vol 47 No 4)

Rick Pelletier, “Scientists explore ways to transform hostility into peaceful thoughts,” Institute for Ethics & emerging Technologies, 18 June 2013

“State of Mind: The Psychology of Control,” InfoWars.com, 18 June 2013

Tim Shorrock, “Put the Spies Back Under One Roof,” Washington Post, 17 June 2013

2013/06/182013/06/18

John Robb: Iran, Cyberwar, and the Perils of Lazy (or Corrupt) Thinking

Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military

Iran, Cyberwar, and the Perils of Lazy Thinking

For those of you that don't know, the US doesn't spend much time/energy/effort on military strategy and theory. They do spend money on political scientists and engineers to provide a substitute. Regardless, this deficit means the US continually falls victim to strategic errors due to stale military theory.

The big one we recently fell victim to?

The US unilaterally launched an arms race in autonomous weapons (for more on this read my article; Pandora Smiled).

NOTE: In fact, in all of the work I've done for the national security system (CIA, NSA, DoD, JCS, DNI, etc.), I've never run across a true military theorist. They don't exist in the 2 m plus person bureaucracy, despite trillions in spending based on those theories. Go figure?!? It's like building a Large Hadron Collidor without a physicist.

Well, that arms race is starting to bite us back, but not in the way our lazy national security strategists expected. There's a pretty good article in Vanity Fair about cyberwarfare and Iran by Michael Joseph Gross that details how.

It starts with a nice kick at the start, like Brave New War (on its fifth printing), but for cyberware:

The data on three-quarters of the machines on the main computer network of Saudi aramco had been destroyed. Hackers who identified themselves as Islamic and called themselves the Cutting Sword of Justice executed a full wipe of the hard drives of 30,000 aramco personal computers. For good measure, as a kind of calling card, the hackers lit up the screen of each machine they wiped with a single image, of an American flag on fire.

As you can see, if you like my stuff, it's worth the click to read the entire thing. Here's one of the payoffs:

In the U.S., the escalating bug-and-exploit trade has created a strange relationship between government and industry. The U.S. government now spends significant amounts of time and money developing or acquiring the ability to exploit weaknesses in the products of some of America’s own leading technology companies, such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft. In other words: to sabotage American enemies, the U.S. is, in a sense, sabotaging its own companies.

Here's another one from a bug developer:

“You don’t have to be a nation-state to do this,” he says. “You just have to be really smart.”

BTW: the lead graphic is close to an article I did for Wired in 2007, When Bots Attack. From the Vanity Fair article:

It reminded me of this graphic from my Wired article that I thought you would enjoy: