Category: 03 Economy

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Journal: Deficit Reduction Plan Hoses Everyone BUT the 10% at the Top

03 Economy, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off....

Hint: if you are in lower 90% of income earners, just look in the rear view mirror — because S-B is about to sell you the same ideological snake oil that got America into its current economic mess.

My good friend Jeff Madrick, a old fashioned liberal in the best sense of the term, dissects the Simpson-Bowles cape-job in the article attached below.

In my opinion, the litmus test for measuring the seriousness of the Simpson – Bowles recommendations will be what if anything the commission recommends for containing the Pentagon's out-of-control  budget.  At a minimum, the defense budget  should be frozen (for reasons cited here) in current dollar terms until the Pentagon can pass the audits legally required by the Chief Financial Officer Act of 1990, not to mention the the letter and original intent of the Accountability and Appropriations Clauses of the Constitution — a document that every officer in the US government has taken an unconditional oath to protect and uphold.

My personal view is that the Pentagon's budget can and should be placed on a downward path glide path of 2-3% reduction per year in current dollars.  One way for doing this, while forging a more sensible and responsive national military strategy, is described here.  But, of course, that kind of hard decision making is simply not going to happen in the Hall of Mirrors that is Versailles on the Potomac.  Indeed, even the generous constraint of a current dollar freeze to a defense budget, which is now at the highest level since the end of WWII, is likely to be a pipe dream, because as Jeff points out, the evidence to date suggests that Simpson – Bowles is likely to give the Pentagon a free ride … again.  Maybe we will be surprised, but don't bet your diminished net worth on it.

Chuck Spinney

Is Simpson-Bowles Balanced? Take a Look at its Supporters.

New Deal 2.0 11/18/2010

Jeff Madrick

http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/11/18/is-simpson-bowles-balanced-take-a-look-at-its-supporters-27552/

The enthusiasm from moderate to hardcore conservatives for the deficit reduction plan underscore what’s wrong with it.

Read rest of original article…

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Journal: Master Key to the Internet?

02 China, 03 Economy, 10 Security, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Mobile, Real Time

Jon Lebkowsky Home

Are there “master keys” to the Internet?

Interesting article in the New York Times – “How China meddled with the Internet,” based on a report to Congress by the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The Times article talks about an incident where IDC China Telecommunication broadcast inaccurate Web traffic routes for about 18 minutes back in April. According to the Times, Chinese engineering managers said the incident was accidental, but didn’t really explain what happened, and “the commission said it had no evidence that the misdirection was intentional.” So there was a technical screwup, happens all the time, no big deal? Or should we be paranoid?

No doubt there’s a lot to worry about in the world of cyber-security, but what makes the Times article interesting is this contention (not really attributed to any expert):

While sensitive data such as e-mails and commercial transactions are generally encrypted before being transmitted, the Chinese government holds a copy of an encryption master key, and there was speculation that China might have used it to break the encryption on some of the misdirected Internet traffic.

That does sound scary right? China has an “encryption master key” for Internet traffic?

Except it doesn’t seem to be true. Experts tell me that there are no “master keys” associated with Internet traffic. In fact, conscientious engineers have avoided creating that sort of thing. They use public key encryption.

So why would the times suggest that there’s a “master key”?

Phi Beta Iota: We have three thoughts:

1)  There's been a movie on the idea, and a low-rent mind might have been led to use the idea for spin.

2)  Much more seriously, we have been told that many routers strip security as a routine means of increasing speed.  We do not know the truth of the matter, since encrypted emails do arrive with encryption, but as a general proposition, security does seem to have been sacrificed to speed, and it may be there is no need for an Internet key in general.

3)  Finally, we would observe that 80% of signals intelligence is pattern analysis, and being able to pull a massive amount of Internet into a place where pattern analysis of who is talking to who can take place, might, conceivably be worth doing.

See Also:

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Reference: Quantitative Easing Explained

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Civil Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Government
Michael Ostrolenk Recommends...

Below is just one of a number of short (YouTube) videos that are gaining traction as the American people begin to understand the reality of Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve being allowed to blow up the US economy and now the world economy, with the full blessing of President Barack Obama.  This is change we can believe in?

"Must Watch"
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Journal: Pentagon Acquisition

03 Economy, 10 Security, Corruption, Military
DefDog Recommends...

Pentagon’s Favorite Jet Delayed as Costs Rise Yet Again

Add another several billion dollars and years in delays to the military’s most important new jet. Nearly a year after Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the head of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program for failing to keep costs and performance under control, a new internal Pentagon review finds the $382 billion stealth plane might get pushed back as much as three years, with an added $5 billion price tag.

. . . . . . .

The delay is due to a host of problems central to the aircraft, including “software, engineering and flight difficulties,” according to Bloomberg. Fixing them will require jacking program costs up an estimated $5 billion. Worse, Venlet’s review is supposed to find that the Joint Strike Fighter will be “as much as 1 1/2 times more expensive to maintain” as the F-16, the F/A-18, the A-10 and the AV-8B — the planes the Joint Strike Fighter is supposed to replace.

Read rest of article….

Phi Beta Iota: The literature on complexity & catastrophe is quite clear–one cannot micro-manage complexity, and the Pentagon keeps trying to do precisely that: build more and more complex systems that fail in unanticipated cummulative ways.  The mind-set is broken, and no amount of money can fix that mind-set.  It is going to take a kick-ass Secretary of Defense willing to actually do a clean-sheet redesign of Whole of Government and M4IS2 operations, using information and intelligence to reconnect PPBS to reality, and to harmonize other people's money.  What we have now is flat out nuts, unaffordable, and ineffective.

See Also:

Continue reading “Journal: Pentagon Acquisition”

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Journal: The Future of the Internet

03 Economy, Analysis, Audio, Augmented Reality, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Computer/online security, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), IO Technologies, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Maps, Methods & Process, Mobile, Open Government, Real Time, Standards, Strategy, Technologies, Tools
Jon Lebkowsky Home

Tim Wu and the future of the Internet

Tim Wu explains the rise and fall of information monopolies in a conversation with New York Times blogger Nick Bilton. Author of The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires (Borzoi Books), Wu is known for the concept of “net neutrality.” He’s been thinking about this stuff for several years, and has as much clarity as anyone (which is still not much) about the future of the Internet.

I think the natural tendency would be for the system to move toward a monopoly control, but everything that’s natural isn’t necessarily inevitable. For years everyone thought that every republic would eventually turn into a dictatorship. So I think if people want to, we can maintain a greater openness, but it’s unclear if Americans really want that…. The question is whether there is something about the Internet that is fundamentally different, or about these times that is intrinsically more dynamic, that we don’t repeat the past. I know the Internet was designed to resist integration, designed to resist centralized control, and that design defeated firms like AOL and Time Warner. But firms today, like Apple, make it unclear if the Internet is something lasting or just another cycle.

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Journal: Cyber-Heist 2nd Generation

03 Economy, 04 Education, 10 Security, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Computer/online security, Cultural Intelligence, Cyberscams, malware, spam, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, Law Enforcement, Mobile, Standards
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

The Great Cyber-Heist

New York Times

By JAMES VERINI

November 10, 2010

Full Story Online

Mid-1990s: Gonzalez, 14, is visited by F.B.I. agents at his high school for hacking into NASA.

Gonzalez,  law-enforcement officials would discover, was more than just a casher. He was a moderator and rising star on Shadowcrew.com, an archetypal criminal cyberbazaar that sprang up during the Internet-commerce boom in the early 2000s. Its users trafficked in databases of stolen card accounts and devices like magnetic strip-encoders and card-embossers; they posted tips on vulnerable banks and stores and effective e-mail scams. Created by a part-time student in Arizona and a former mortgage broker in New Jersey, Shadowcrew had hundreds of members across the United States, Europe and Asia. It was, as one federal prosecutor put it to me, “an eBay, Monster.com and MySpace for cybercrime.”

Read rest of article….

Phi Beta Iota: We opened Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) in 1994, making the observation that when the Israeli's captured a hacker they gave him a job, while the US simply kicked them in the teeth and sent them to jail.  We tried to keep Phiber Optic out of jail, and we have for decades been on record comparing hackers to astronauts–full of the right stuff and pushing the edge of the envelope.  No one, including Marty Harris then in charge of the National Information Infrastructure (NII) wanted to listen.  Today the US Government is again ignoring the warnings on the urgency of getting a grip on all information in all languages all the time, and roughly 20 years behind in creating “root” cyber-security.  This article by James Verini is a phenomenal update on what we all knew in the mid-1990's that the US Government is still oblivious to–this is not a problem technology or wanton spending can solve–this is a problem that demands discipline, integrity, intelligence, and sharing.  It is neither possible nor desireable to secure government or military computers in isolation–this is an “all in” smart safe nation challenge.

See Also:

1994 Sounding the Alarm on Cyber-Security

Search: smart nation intelligence reform electoral reform national security reform

Continue reading “Journal: Cyber-Heist 2nd Generation”

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Journal: Who Dun It on the Deficit?

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Budgets & Funding, Government
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off...

Obama inherited a federal deficit that was spinning out of control (mostly because of decreased tax take and increased expenditures for automatic stabilizers, e.g. unemployment insurance), and pressure is growing to cut Social Security (perhaps the most efficiently run program in government) while placing Defense (one of the most inefficiently run programs) off limits.  These political  pressures are not new and in fact have been building up for years.  So, as a first cut into a complex issue, perhaps it is time for the angry masses to ask which political party put them into the fiscal straight jacket that is setting them up for this horrible choice?

A. Democrats?
B. Moderate Republicans?
C. Right Wing Republicans?

Hint:

Green => Reductions in the burden of Gr. Fed. Debt (as measured by the debt to GDP ratio)
Red => Increases in the burden of Gr. Fed. Debt

Click on Chart to Enlarge
noble gold