Much like Stanley Kubrick's 1971 movie Clockwork Orange, Iranian elections are irresistibly difficult to watch. And this election has all the hallmarks of being more than just another sequel, but rather that rare occurrence where it is even more compelling (and irresistibly difficult) than any of its serial predecessors. One of the smartest - and most principled - Iran experts, my friend Michael Ledeen, explains ably just why this is. Their [open demonstrators by the thousands] candidate is the former...
With a televised speech on the subject of cyber and infrastructure security (one of the better ones I have ever heard), so begins the Obama administration's foray into the defense and security of cyberspace. Every administration for the past 15 years has done it to one extent or another, yet as pointed out repeatedly we're not all that better off today than we've been since computers became a part of our lives. As a matter of fact, it was recently...
No matter the product involved, the hype cycle is always the same. First comes excessive adulation and praise, then mass buy-in, and finally critical backlash. Just like a once-hip New York indie rock band, Twitter is suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Mainstream media critics, alarmed by the online panic over the swine flu, are attacking Twitter as a breeding ground for irrational hysteria. Foreign Policy's techblogger Evgeny Morozov has written the most trenchant Twitter critique, pointing to...
Most national security tragedies are the result of - or directly associated with - a failure of intelligence, that is to say, the apparatus we have built and charged to find us the most valuable information possible has come up short. Some key examples of why intelligence has failed us include: Reliance on satellites, which take great pictures, but reveal nothing of human emotion or intention. Reliance on only angels and boy scouts, when the greatest threats come from demons...
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April 24, 2009