Climate change and reduced sea ice cover may result in opening up the Arctic to vastly increased resource development and commercial traffic. These trends will inevitably spark international conflicts and create a need for more military forces to provide security and protect interests in the Arctic region. This is bad news for the U.S. Navy, already hard-pressed by shrinking fleets and rising challenges elsewhere.
In an era when changes to the Earth that used to take 10,000 years now take three;
In an era when all information in all languages all the time is the non-negotiable first step to achieving holistic understanding of the Earth's system of systems as well as all the chaotic sub-systems;
In an era when the Nordics are far ahead of everyone else in thinking about Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2),
it is helpful to have a sense of what the U.S. Department of Defense is going with respect to it's own Global Information Grid (GIG).
Below are a few headlines as well as pointers to a couple of devastatingly critical reviews from the General Accountability Office (GAO).
Phi Beta Iota has just one question: when, if ever, will DoD plan, program, budget, and implement for a world in which 96% of the information DoD needs to exploit is not secret, not in English, and not originating from a DoD device?
After the GAO reports, click on the Frog Left to read what we said to the National Research Council about the Army Communications Architecture in the early 1990's and Frog Right to read about our recommendations for National Information Infrastructure (NII) cyber-security in the mid-1990's.
DoD needs a Chief Knowledge Oficer (CKO)–someone that knows the difference between knowledge management, network management, content capture and exploitation, and the Holy Grail, organizational intelligence.
My bills are all due and the baby needs shoes and I'm busted
Cotton is down to a quarter a pound, but I'm busted
I got a cow that went dry and a hen that won't lay
A big stack of bills that gets bigger each day
The county's gonna haul my belongings away cause I'm busted.
Ray Charles
Economic optimism is in the air — at least in rarified air of the twin palaces of Versailles On the Potomac and Versailles On the Hudson. And if you believe the newspapers, there are growing signs that the economy is turning around, and America has dodged the depression bullet.
Phi Beta Iota Editorial Comment: Yesterday we pointed out the idiocy of Virginia police chiefs attacking a lone blogger for using her God-given powers of observation and her First Amendment rights of articulation to expose shoddy police work and Gestapo police reactions.
Today we find an article that is focused on the importance of such blogging as a new form of social communication. Attacking one blogger, whether by abuse of local authority as has been the case in Virginia, or by a massive denial of service attack as is more common out of Russia and other part where brilliant young people have too few opportunities for challenging employment, is an attack on society at larger.
Tip of the hat to AP and the other news services for continuing to be relevant to our lives.
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Original Story Online
By BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP Technology Writer Barbara Ortutay, Ap Technology Writer – Sun Aug 9, 2:27 am ET
NEW YORK – The outage that knocked Twitter offline for hours was traced to an attack on a lone blogger in the former Soviet republic of Georgia — but the collateral damage that left millions around the world tweetless showed just how much havoc an isolated cyberdispute can cause.
“It told us how quickly many people really took Twitter into their hearts,” Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, said Friday.
Tens of millions of people have come to rely on social media to express their innermost thoughts and to keep up with world news and celebrity gossip.
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer Ali Akbar Dareini, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 42 mins ago
TEHRAN, Iran – A young French academic and local employees of the British and French embassies appeared before an Iranian judge Saturday along with dozens of opposition figures accused of involvement in the country's postelection unrest.
The extraordinary mass trial in Tehran's Revolutionary Court demonstrates the government's resolve to discredit Iran‘s pro-reform movement as a tool of foreign countries — particularly Britain and the United States — trying to spark a revolution to topple Iran's Islamic system.
Reuters – French language teaching assistant Clotilde Reiss (R) sits next to an Iranian policewoman and other defendants …
Click on logo or photo for the rest of the story at the original source.
