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...
There is something going very wrong in Washington, and you need to be aware of it. You don't have to be a Somalia expert or even a national security or counterterrorism expert to follow along here. And follow you must. For the thinking you are about to witness is hazardous to your - our - national security. The Somali pirates' attempted hijacking of the Maersk Alabama has captured much of America's collective attention this past week. It has also likewise...
The news of an American vessel, the Maersk Alabama, being boarded and commandeered by pirates off the coast of Somalia has brought the Somali piracy issue to the front burner for Americans. Still, the piracy has long been the most widely covered news out of Somalia for Americans. And for this reason, many of them might be shocked to know that al-Qaeda's Somali franchise al-Shabaab actually controls much of the country. But I digress. It's time for a solution. It's...
This is not an article about Charles Freeman; it is about something bigger than Charles Freeman, for which he is simply a poster boy. While anyone who is looking for an objective, informed voice on issues relative to national diplomacy and security should be at least concerned about statements attributed to Charles Freeman, one should not forget to look at this issue from another angle: Why does it seem like the only post-governmental living that can be made by people...
At the information security convention Black Hat DC, homeland security expert Paul Kurtz argued in favor of developing sophisticated cyberweapons to deter attacks on American networks. However, as ThreatsWatch's own Michael Tanji observes, cyber-deterrence makes as much sense as trying to ban math. With anyone with a computer science degree able to develop malicious code, Cold War concepts of deterrence and non-proliferation are useless. Nebulous concepts of cyber-deterrence are but one isolated symptom of a severe problem within the cyber-industrial...
Consider the following scenarios, some notional, some pulled and adapted from recent headlines: You are the President of the United States. You are about to step foot on the new Marine One helicopter for a trip to Camp David. Just before takeoff, as you are waving to the press, an aide whispers that a hostile foreign power may have obtained the plans for the bird you are about to board. Just what is the expression on your face right now?...
What on Earth is the administration doing announcing plans to give $900 Million in aid to rebuild Hamas' Gaza Strip while our own Defense Department's Security Development Plan for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan "faces a shortfall of approximately $167.5 million, about 73 percent of its funding goal for fiscal year 2009," according to a GAO report? Did we not just witness the American president heading up a "Fiscal Responsibility Summit"? With fiscal responsibility in such high demand,...
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April 24, 2009