WASHINGTON — Defense Department officials are negotiating to buy and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of an Afghan war memoir they say contains intelligence secrets, according to two people familiar with the dispute.
The publication of “Operation Dark Heart,” by Anthony A. Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, has divided military security reviewers and highlighted the uncertainty about what information poses a genuine threat to security.
This could be the next number one hit country song. It is written by a High School assistant football coach. Apparently the guy was fired over the song because some parents complained. Shameful if true. If you like it, help it go “viral” by passing it along to everyone you know.
The terrorist threat faced by the U.S. nine years after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington is far more difficult to detect but less likely to produce mass-casualty attacks, according to the former leaders of the 9/11 Commission.
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The U.S. government is ill-equipped to counter the newest version of the terrorist threat, the report concludes, adding that “American overreactions,” particularly on Capitol Hill and in the media, even to unsuccessful attacks, have arguably played into terrorists' hands and fuel anti-American sentiment.
“It's a much more complex and a much more diverse threat than it was” in 2001, said former 9/11 Commission Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton in an interview. “We lag behind still in developing responses to this threat.”
No agency in the U.S. government, for example, is charged with monitoring and stopping the radicalization and recruitment of Americans to terrorist ranks, he said.
This is a provoking and entertaining presentation.
After the short video called “Pixels” prior to the presentation, Jesse Schell starts off with what if life becomes, not Orwellian, but Huxleyan (Brave New World) where pleasure achieved through technology grips the whole lives of citizens. Imagine sensors attached to commercial products from toothbrush to television (and electric tattoos linked to Facebook) collecting data + wi-fi connections uploading behavior data to the Web. People can earn “points” like in a gaming environment depending on their behavior and habits and these points can be used for coupons, deals, and other corporate profit-pursuing conceptions.
Soon the presentation gets into prediction and if the more one practices at predicting the future, the better one can become. Other parts of the presentation:
The upward trend of mobile gaming application sales versus console gaming systems, and how micro-transactions of money (Zynga, Playdom, Playfish, Bigpoint) in connection with social networking will be like peanut butter + chocolate.
Dream states (REM sleep) as un-tapped territory that most likely advertisers will reach first.
Virtual money such as “Farm cash,” and World of Warcraft gold was mentioned to attract product attention.
A stat was shown of commercial ads on television rising from 13% in 1950 to 36% today.
“Battlefield of the 21st century” as how you spend your day and carving up those percentages to target your behaviors
