Population Control

We heard yesterday that the magnanimous Chinese central government has decided to allow each family to have two children instead of one.  I think we miss something in accepting that it is a good change of policy.   How many countries have population control with the kind of monitoring it takes to do that?  None.

Mao believed in controlling every aspect of the life of his people, and that included marriage and raising the offspring, but that was in the days before computers and the Internet.  These were poor rural populations trying to live.   Now, they really can control every aspect of a person's life and keep records on it too.

There is an office that does population control.  It is used to consider when exceptions to the policy were to be granted, like the death of an only child, and extensions granted to rural populations centers.  Everyone in China must understand birth control and abortion, because both are essential to the quality of life that comes from living under the hand of the Central Government.  They decide what is best for you.

China has a way of believing that any order will be followed by a dutiful public, but that order must be a little difficult.  Anyone who has raised a child knows how difficult it is to control their behavior, especially in the area of sex.  Abstinence used to be a popular method of trying to control youthful enthusiasm, but the one thing that was missing was the inability to say "no" at the all the right times.  They don't always know what birth control methods actually work.   People who believe in abstinence problem need a government agency looking over their shoulder to make sure they did.  China does.  Thus, China has 400 million abortions talked about so eloquently in today's Wall Street Journal [China's New Two-Child Policy and the Fatal Conceit] by Nicholas Eberstadt.  His context is the impact on a country where generations have produced one-child families who produce one-child families.  That means the family ties, so important to China's businesses, are not there.

Sometimes, we wonder what it would be like to live under a centrally managed government, doing what the government wants - for our own good.  We can look at population control as a good example of why we should not.  China is built on a thin layer of government control at every level, something we don't want or need.  The local party official stops by to check on you.  The central government has a central database of every citizen that includes a lot more than just how many children they have.  People are arrested for speaking out against the central government.  Harmony is essential to progress.  These are the things revolutions come from.  Mao knew it.  Xi Jinping does too.

Russia Hides Syrian Dead

A story in today's Wall Street Journal [Doubts Persist About Death of Russian Soldier in Syria ]  is a reminder that the Russians handle the deaths of their soldiers differently than some of the rest of us.  This story is about the "suicide" of a soldier stationed in Syria.  Russian villagers in his home town doubt his suicide, and complain that other similar incidents have occurred with soldiers in the Ukraine and elsewhere.  

In the Ukraine, a number of special operations forces were killed, and they were memorialized in a Moscow ceremony attended by somebody with a cell phone.  There was video to prove their loss, but the families did not hear about how they died.  They were heroic deaths, of course.  An organization of mothers complained that soldiers were killed and they were never told anything.  Imagine not knowing that your child was dead, never hearing from them, or getting a letter from the government saying he was gone.  This was not uncommon in Russia at any time in history.  

It will take time to find out the truth, but it is harsh life being a soldier in Russia.  There is no point in making it any harder.  

FSB Aids Theft of Microelectronics from U.S.

Alexander Posobilov, Shavkat Abdullaev and Anastasia Diatlova were this month convicted for crimes they committed in 2008 and 2012, related to the unlawful export of microelectronics shipped to Russia.  These included such things as analog-to-digital converters, static random access memory chips, micro-controllers and microprocessors.  These particular ones were used by the military and intelligence functions and their value was somewhere around $30 million.

What the FSB did in all of this was phony up a letter saying the parts were faulty and had to be replaced.  the Justice Department says this:

"... The investigation uncovered a letter sent by a specialized electronics laboratory of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Russia’s primary domestic intelligence agency, to an Arc customer regarding certain microchips obtained for the FSB by Arc.  The letter stated that the microchips were faulty and demanded that the defendants supply replacement parts."

I wonder how often a company would fall for this type of letter.  Goods are sent to another country after their quality controls are finished.  We know they were good when shipped.  The customer, located in another country, says they don't work on his end.  Do we send more to ensure our business reputation?  Do we even notice who sent the letter and where they are?  Apparently, this one was paying attention.

Ships in Broad Daylight

The U.S. has finally sent a ship into the 12-mile limit around the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.  This had to come eventually, since we don't accept China's claim on the huge area they claim between China and Malaysia.  The Wall Street Journal article on this said that claim was similar to Mexico claiming the Gulf of Mexico.  We don't recognize it.

What we forgot in this discussion was that China has already staked its claim, built up the islands from nothing, and sailed five ships into U.S. territorial waters on the very day that the President of the U.S. was in Alaska, only a short missile distance away.  It must have been alarming to have warships that close to Air Force One.  They did that in the first days of September.  This is in-your-face diplomacy at its best.

We did nothing while they built the islands, and next to nothing until the Chinese put artillery on one of them.  We challenged that and the Chinese either hid the pieces or voted them off the island.  We threatened sanctions, but none have materialized.  And......there is cyber.  The Chinese must be manning our China Desk at the State Department.  We know the Russians are reading their e-mail.   Both of them are anticipating our every move because they know what we are going to do.

A Video Worth Watching

I saw Frances Larson's TED Talk on beheading as an event many people want to see and recommend it to anyone to know why these kinds of videos get the attention of people around the world.  It isn't about Muslims, Christians or any religious preference.  It is about human nature, a part of it that we wish we could put behind us in the name of civilization.  We aren't there yet.  What she gets across is the idea that some darkness is in us all, and it is the kind of darkness that ISIS takes advantage of.  The Internet makes that easy to do.  What we see in Information War is the control of the content on the Internet, at least to the extent that it is possible.  The free world doesn't see that as a good idea, and neither does ISIS, but it is something we need to look at.  Somebody should be keeping those videos off the networks of the world and closing down the websites of those distributing them.  Yes, it is hard to do.  


https://www.ted.com/talks/frances_larson_why_public_beheadings_get_millions_of_views?language=en

Facebook and State-sponsored Attacks

A curious piece in Wired by Brian Barrett [http://www.wired.com/2015/10/facebook-now-warns-users-of-state-sponsored-attacks/]  explains how Facebook is now warning some of its users if they believe a penetration is by a state-sponsored attacker.  Some of the little snippets in this piece indicate Facebook will do this kind of notification "if we have a strong suspicion that the attack is government -sponsored."  One of the countermeasures they will recommend is getting a new computer, which kind of gets to the level of sophistication of some of these attacks on social media.  Getting a new computer is pretty radical.  Maybe they need to explain a little more about the kind of attack that can't be undone and requires a new computer.

Barrett also says Facebook has a Tor-based version for people trying to avoid surveillance.  That may be wishful thinking.

Software Controls Bite Syria

Over the weekend the New York Times [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/world/middleeast/battle-heats-up-over-exports-of-surveillance-technology.html?_r=0] published a story about an export violation of software sold to law enforcement to monitor potential criminals and terrorists.  As I mentioned in my last book, The New Cyberwar, some countries are using this software to monitor their own citizens.  There are a lot of places where it is used, none of which are supposed to have it.  This case is a good example of how they get it.

Strangely enough, our own U.S. industries are trying to head off the kind of controls that the government wants to impose.   Damian Paletta has an interesting story in the Wall Street Journal ( U.S. Firms Fight Global Cyberweapons Deal, http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-firms-fight-global-cyberweapon-deal-1444952599 )  about U.S. industry try to challenge the export controls to be placed on software which has potential cyberwar applications.  The Journal article says it this way:

"  Many of these companies say these rules—which would force them to apply for a series of licenses to export technology that could be used for cyberwarfare—would harm their business while doing little to stop oppressive regimes or others from using intrusion software that surreptitiously monitors communication.

I have some trouble with this kind of argument, especially coming from the likes of Cisco Systems Inc., Northrop Grumman Corp., Boeing Co., and Raytheon Co.  What it boils down to is the uses made of some of their software, not the software usefulness to law enforcement or allied countries and their businesses.  If some of their tools are used to test networks for vulnerabilities, we would be hard pressed to object to them selling it.  Everyone should buy some software that checks for vulnerabilities and it might as well be from us.  That is not what we are talking about here.  


The Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto has published some interesting reports on cyberwar activities of other countries, and this report is no exception.  see Information Controls during Military Operations
http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=93490dabfd80bcbe6e4f28a8c&id=1bbc3c01f1&e=0205fbe9cc

The claim is that as the war in Yemen heated up, cyberwar became a part of those activities as much as the conventional forces of Saudi Arabia and Iran who are really fighting this war.

Iran attacked the Saudi's own national oil company in the same way North Korea attacked South Korea and Sony.  This kind of technical arms proliferation is not something we should tolerate.  Iran and North Korea are getting away with it every day.

"We find that information controls implemented by Yemen’s national ISP, YemenNet, a state-owned and operated national ISP that has served the entire country since 2001, and which is now controlled by the Houthi rebels, have changed substantially since the Houthi takeover of the capital and, by extension, control over the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.  Content filtering now includes a wide variety of political content, and blocking of the entire .il (Israel) domain. We also determine that all political filtering that targets local and regional news and media content is undertaken in a non-transparent way, with fake network error pages delivered back to users instead of block pages."

You can bet the Houthi's have been getting a lot of help from Iran, since the Houthi are not well known in cyberwar circles.  Iran has been using some of these techniques in their own country and helping others like Syria do the same.  We can only hope that their branching out comes back to haunt them one day.

IBM Caves to China

The Wall Street Journal this week announced IBM has become the first comapny to let China have its software for "examination" required under their new rules on "counter terror".  We should be asking a lot more questions of IBM, since the rule requires source code be turned over.  IF they did turn over source code, we would be hard pressed to use any of that software in our government systems.

Source code gives the Chinese full power to retool that software to look like the orginal but do more - specifically things we do not want it to do.  It is bad enough that much of our software is made in China, where an edict from the Central Government can produce a change like the Green Dam that will monitor every citizen's computer.  They make software for China that makes monitoring easier for China.  Are we assuming they don't use that same software outside of China?  Bad assumption.

The Chinese are good at doing what has shown up in Apple software of late - undermining the basic development and distribution channels of software.  The development software used by Guangzhou Youmi Mobile Technology Company (aka Youmi) contained code that allowed personal data to be collected, sometimes without the knowledge of the developer.  Youmi apologized for that, so I guess we are supposed to forgive and forget.  Apple removed two sets of software since September and Youmi's was one of them.

We can look at this as an accident of development, but two is enough to show intent.  Chinese intelligence services are undermining the basic development channels of their own software so it collects data from anyone they want to monitor.  China says it is for the user's own good.  They will be happier knowing their software is being looked at by the government and potential terrorists (meaning anyone the government does not agree with, but especially Taiwan, Hong Kong, and certain religious groups like the Uighurs).  Why should we be allowed to help them?

Email & Social Media Monitoring

CNN and the Wall Street Journal, among others, report the hack of personal email addresses and Twitter accounts, of high-ranking government officials like CIA’s John Brennan and Homeland’s Jeh Johnson.  This is not rocket science hacking, of course, no matter who is doing it, but the pile of public officials having their email and personal correspondence read by other countries is getting bigger every day.  Hillary Clinton said she wasn’t the only one doing it, and that should have been a cause for concern.

The investigative fallout from Clinton’s email has been interesting because so many people were doing government business on those personal accounts, both in this administration and in previous ones.  Our government needs to stop that right now, and do an impact analysis on the potential loss of information by doing business on private email.  “Everybody does it” is not a good excuse, because not everybody does.  Most have common sense.  We don’t need more policy, but we might need more security education for our executives.  It seems to have fallen by the wayside.   Operational Security seems to have gone with it.

That is quite a bit different than having a Twitter account or a private email address.  I may just want to keep up with the kids emails, Facebook postings, and Twitters.  Lots of press people and bloggers are going to make a big deal out of these kinds of leaders having accounts on social media, when it probably is not such a big deal. It just depends on how that information is being used. 

The downside of it is a foreign intelligence service can discover who our leaders communicate with and monitor them.  It makes a web of associations and that web is of interest because it leaks information.  We used to find that hairdressers knew when our operational deployments were taking place because wives gathered there to discuss being alone for a few weeks or getting together for a shopping trip.   We had security education classes for spouses after that.  The cooperation we got from relatives was better than we hoped for.  It is harder to do with influence peddlers who attach themselves to so many government officials. 

Our political leaders have a lot of friends.  Map those friends and you find that some of them are influential with several leaders.  Influence those few and there is a better chance of influencing the leaders without ever getting close to the target.  Businesses understand it when they hire relatives of public officials, or people with prior government experience.  Their influence spreads like a web.  Their influence - and job longevity -  do not last very long, once those associations end.  

Doing business on private email and social media makes that influence easier to get, and improves the quality of intelligence any one country can get from us.  That is a direct benefit that allows them to determine how we might respond to a given situation.  This is Information War as it is practiced today.  Watching what the kids do on Twitter and Facebook is not going to have that same kind of impact. 

A TEAParty Jab at Putin

I'm not really a Tea Party lover, but David Webb has put together a pretty good analysis of Putin's foreign policy and the way we have handled it so far.  http://thehill.com/opinion/david-webb/256830-the-us-is-playing-politics-while-putin-is-waging-war  His central theme is in the title, While the U.S. plays politics, Putin is waging war.  That theme could come from the right or left and still be agreeable to the majority of U.S. citizens.

In the Ukraine and Syria, Putin has managed to back his pro-Russia allies while thumbing his nose at Europe and the U.S.  Webb should have included Xi in the mix, but maybe his column is limited in size.  China and Russia were together on the Iran nuclear weapons agreement.  Both sides have pushed weapons into the Syrian ground battles, but the Russians are flying airplanes and rolling tanks, something the Syrians appreciate more than economic aid and small arms flowing into their country.  The Middle East will not appreciate what the Russians are doing, but they will see the Chinese as their friends.  Let's see how that works out for Russia.

Friends of ours, who lived in the Middle East for a long time, still remember the arms that flowed into Iraq to help them fight Iran, many of them coming from the U.S.   It was a bloody war, filled with chemical weapons, which the Syrians seem bent on using as well.  The indiscriminate bombing of civilian populations was terrible for the people who lived through it, and the Syrian people are getting a similar taste of it.  They are fleeing in great numbers, as both the Iraqis and Iranians did.   The people leaving will not forget.  The Russians will have generations of enemies.

Selling Cyberwar Materials to Potential Enemies

Damian Paletta has an interesting story in the Wall Street Journal today ( U.S. Firms Fight Global Cyberweapons Deal, http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-firms-fight-global-cyberweapon-deal-1444952599 )  about U.S. industry try to challenge the export controls to be placed on software which has potential cyberwar applications.  The Journal article says it this way:

"  Many of these companies say these rules—which would force them to apply for a series of licenses to export technology that could be used for cyberwarfare—would harm their business while doing little to stop oppressive regimes or others from using intrusion software that surreptitiously monitors communication.

I have some trouble with this kind of argument, especially coming from the likes of Cisco Systems Inc., Northrop Grumman Corp., Boeing Co., and Raytheon Co.  What it boils down to is the uses made of some of their software, not the software usefulness to law enforcement or allied countries and their businesses.  If some of their tools are used to test networks for vulnerabilities, we would be hard pressed to object to them selling it.  Everyone should buy some software that checks for vulnerabilities and it might as well be from us.  That is not what we are talking about here.  

What these companies make is software that can monitor citizens of a country for possible hacking, misuse, or violations of privilege - like sending documents out of a network that are supposed to be protected.  They make software that will monitor cell phones, laptops, tablets, and any network connected device.  Businesses have a legitimate need for some of these things to protect proprietary information on business networks.  As employees, you might not like this, but you don't have a right to privacy on a business network.  That is why you are warned that that collection of data is going to take place.  

These are powerful tools in the hands of some governments like China, Russia and Iran where that software has ended up.  The problem is, they didn't necessarily sell it to them.  Our government wants to control the dissemination of this kind of stuff and has tried to write laws to do that.  They have not done a very good job of it.  The businesses don't like controls on anything that might have a use harmful to citizens.  Cell phones can have uses that harm lots of people but we don't control their sale.  

We need to start this process over and get some legislation that can be enforced without an undue burden to the people who make and market it.  On the other hand, those businesses should cooperate in controlling software which is very intrusive and controlling in the hands of known enemies.  They need to define how they can help to do that.  We don't seem to have that agreement just now.   

Hacking for ISIS

A hacker in Kosovo is arrested in Malaysia for hacking systems in the U.S. to get PII on U.S. service members and use that information to threaten them.  It isn't the first time this kind of thing has happened, but it is the first time Justice has actually managed to get a person in custody and charge him.  If you didn't know about this story, it deserves your attention [see http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/isil-linked-hacker-arrested-malaysia-us-charges ]

The arrested person is Ardit Ferizi, aka Th3Dir3ctorY.  An interesting interview with him is at http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/getting-to-know-kosova-hackers-security-crew-plus-an-exclusive-interview-with-th3-dir3ctory/.  Being arrested is not an indication of guilt, as any self-respecting ACLU attorney would be glad to tell us.  Anyway, he is accused of hacking on behalf of an organization called the Kosova Hackers Security Crew, or KHS, accused of launching a DDOS attack on Interpol, of all places, and releasing credit card numbers and PII of 35,000 Israelis, attacking 600 websites in Ukraine, and the National Weather Service - undoubtedly, a target of opportunity tangentially related to the U.S.  The group claims an alliance with Anonymous, but this is not the kind of thing Anonymous has done and they are not known for associations with groups like ISIS.  If Ferizi admits to these kinds of things, he probably has done more.

This time, the U.S. government says, he hacked sites to collect PII on U.S. citizens and gave that information to ISIS.   The charge is paraphrased this way:

“As alleged, Ardit Ferizi is a terrorist hacker who provided material support to ISIL by stealing the personally identifiable information of U.S. service members and federal employees and providing it to ISIL for use against those employees,” said Assistant Attorney General Carlin.  “This case is a first of its kind and, with these charges, we seek to hold Ferizi accountable for his theft of this information and his role in ISIL’s targeting of U.S. government employees.  This arrest demonstrates our resolve to confront and disrupt ISIL’s efforts to target Americans, in whatever form and wherever they occur.”

In court, we would hope to find out whether they conduct this kind of activity for money and were paid by ISIS for the work, or if they did it out of patriotic zeal.  We could wonder if they are looking for Russian names and PII since the bombing started.

Chinese Intimidation and Control

Reuters has an interesting article on how the Chinese manage to intimidate people who don't live in China, but have relatives there [Special Report: China uses intimidation tactics at U.N. to silence critics at http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/07/us-china-softpower-rights-specialreport-idUSKCN0S01O420151007 ] .  It starts with a 43-year-old Buddhist monk, Golog Jigme, who escaped both a Chinese detention center in 2012, and China.  He was about to testify at a U.N. Human Rights Council.  Sitting in a cafe prior to the engagement he is approached by a senior Chinese diplomat, Zhang Yaojun, who produces a cell phone camera and takes his picture.  The monk makes a joke of it;  the Chinese diplomat denies he did any such thing.  Golog doesn't live in China anymore, and won't be going back, but it is the brazenness of the intimidation that gets the attention of the reporters.  Rightfully so.  

You can bet the picture was an open form of intimidation, but behind the scenes, the Chinese would have hacked his computers and monitored his cell phone.  It certainly wasn't a coincidence that both of them showed up at the same time in that cafe.  They know his itinerary, his plans, and who he associates with.  They make sure his meetings are attended by government representatives who quickly spread the official word that he is an escaped criminal whose message is not believable.  They stuff the U.N. Commissions with witnesses and audience participants who represent the official Party line.  They are trying, successfully by the way, to manage news that pertains to China.  They do it by manipulation, intimidation, and threats, if needed.  

I have never been one to read very many U.N. reports, because you only have to read one or two to get the idea that they are written for somebody other than the general public.  The idea that the Chinese would go after a witness who wasn't writing the report, and do worse things to others mentioned in this article, speaks volumes about the level of effort to stifle even the least important of places from making these unfavorable remarks about them.  Anytime a country goes to such great lengths, they must have something to hide that justifies the effort.  

ISIL Cuts its Harsh Messaging

There is a good article today in the Wall Street Journal [ In a Shift, Islamic State Tries to Show It Can Govern]  about the messaging of ISIS, best known for its burning a pilot alive video and beheadings of almost anyone who isn't following their radical ideas.  The article quotes Charlie Winter, Quilliam Foundation in London, who analyzed videos and shows some interesting results.  The kind of messaging that made them famous in every television and Internet video, has dropped to 2% of the total, replaced by "What a nice place we live in" kinds of videos.  They have finally discovered what Al Qaeda figured out years ago, that mass casualty videos may get them money in the short run, but it isn't sustainable.  It turns off more people than it recruits.  They also are finding out that people would rather leave areas they rule, than stick around to be governed by people who commit such acts.  They are not very popular outside their own circles.

We should remember that thousands have come to fight with them after viewing the worst of their propaganda.  They are attracting the kind of people they want to use to fight, and killing is a part of that.  Recruiting people to kill others gets you a particular class of recruits.  This is the kind that would normally be found in prisons, or under treatment for mental illness because they kill for no good reason.  When lots of those kinds of folks start showing up in your country, they are not good at stopping their behavior when a battle is won.  Having them move in next door is even more troublesome.  They settle disputes differently than a normal population.   In the long run, they don't make good neighbors and they don't make good leaders.

This is a long term problem that will not go away because they change their messaging.  It is a plague they deserve.  It keeps them looking over their shoulder at something other than drones or air strikes.

Russians Quick to Deny

The Dutch Safety Board issued its report on the downing of MH17 in the Ukraine on 17 July.  It is not unusual for aircraft reports to take a long time, and compared to others, this one was published quickly.  Considering rebels held the territory, the reconstruction of the aircraft was done very well.

It didn't take the Russians long to start their versions of "the facts".  A Wall Street Journal article today says "The Russian maker of the antiaircraft missile, Almaz-Antey, tried to cast doubt on the Dutch findings in advance. It invited hundreds of journalists Tuesday morning in a complex in outer Moscow, where Chief Executive Yan Novikov said its experiments showed that if MH17 was downed by a Buk system, it was by a different missile type than Dutch investigators specified, suggesting Ukraine was to blame."  The core reporting of this news says the Russians are denying they had this missile in their inventory.  A remarkably similar version of that missile is in Syria.  Maybe they don't have them in their inventory because they give them away.  

The one Russian propaganda version that was shown up by the Dutch report was the one that said a fighter jet from Ukraine was firing at Putin's aircraft when it struck MH17.  Even the Russians couldn't believe that one.  It didn't stop them from offering it as an explanation for how the aircraft was shot down.  The second version of the story was that dead bodies had been put in the aircraft and shot down by a Ukrainian fighter to discredit the rebels in Ukraine.  These are incredible stories that don't even approximate the real facts in evidence.  Still they offered them,  and expected a few people to believe them, even though they were incredible.  That makes the trip to Almaz-Antey all the more unbelievable.  Facts don't matter to the Russians, unless they create them.  

This goes to credibility.  When the Russians publish stories even they can't believe, we are not going to trust anything they say.  "We are going to attack ISIS" should come to mind first.  Somehow, we have national leadership that listens to what they say and takes them at their word.  They should know better.   

An Iranian Missile

The Iranians tested a missile this week that CNN says has a range of 1000 miles.  That is more than enough to cause concern for Israel and most of the Middle East:  [ see http://www.timeanddate.com/  for more ].  Some of these places are potential targets, and some are accidents of geography, but all of Iran's major rivals in the Middle East are on this list.  One of Iran's propaganda videos shows a mushroom cloud over Israel, and that was made long before the treaty-to-end-all-treaties to limit their nuclear weapons capabilities.  I wonder how these countries feel about that treaty now?

Turkmenistan - Balkanabat
Turkmenistan - Türkmenbaşy
Azerbaijan - Shirvan
Azerbaijan - Baku *
Azerbaijan - Sumqayit
Armenia - Kapan
Azerbaijan - Aghjabadi
Azerbaijan - Shamakhi
Azerbaijan - Nagorno-Karabakh
Iraq - Kirkuk
Armenia - Sisian
Azerbaijan - Nakhchivan
Iraq - Basra
Turkmenistan - Ashgabat
Iraq - Irbil
Azerbaijan - Khachmaz
Azerbaijan - Mingachevir
Iraq - Baghdad
Azerbaijan - Ganja
Armenia - Gavar
Kuwait - Kuwait City
Armenia - Yerevan
Armenia - Vanadzor
Armenia - Gyumri
Georgia - Tbilisi
Kazakhstan - Aktau
Turkmenistan - Mary
Syria - Al-Hasakah
Turkmenistan - Daşoguz
Turkey - Erzurum
Syria - Deir ez-Zor
Bahrain - Manama
Qatar - Doha
United Arab Emirates - Dubai
United Arab Emirates - Abu Dhabi
Saudi Arabia - Riyadh
Syria - Damascus
Lebanon - Beirut
Jordan - Amman
Oman - Muscat
Israel - Jerusalem
Palestinian Territories - West Bank - Bethlehem
Tajikistan - Dushanbe
Israel - Tel Aviv
Afghanistan - Kabul

The Military in Cyberwar

I gather from the stories in the press about enhancing cyber capabilities that the military is looking for more money to do their part in cyberwar.  I wish we knew what they were planning on doing for that money.

Most of my experience with the military aspects of cyber was less than gratifying.  At the extremes, it is can be attempts to get into the civilian infrastructure of our country - where the military has no business.  They can't take care of their own infrastructure and they somehow think they can take care of the rest of the country.  One of the things they need to do with that money is get NIPRNET and SIPRNET cleaned up and managed properly.  Those in the military know what I'm talking about.

There was a political sparkler waved about years after the Congress had decided the military should not be involved in security of any networks except their own. The shining light was waived by CyberCommand which was going to help out our country's national security by saving the telecoms from themselves.  Last I heard, they didn't want or necessarily need any help doing that.  It doesn't stop those guys from trying anyway.  They would be better served to focus on cleaning up their own house before focusing on ours.

A Bit of Information War

Yesterday, the news services carried a story about four Russian cruise missiles crashing in Iran.  This is an odd story to begin with, but a general location is shown.  Whether that happened or not - is a question of fact.  Iran says it did not.  Russia says it did not.  Our press says it did, and they have sources, unnamed of course.  Facts will come out eventually, and both the Russians and Iranians hope everyone will have moved on to something more interesting by the time those cellphone videos leak out to the rest of the world.  So, whether it did happen is a matter of facts not shown. 

This is the kind of Information War we are fighting with Russia, China and Iran, places that control what news services say about almost everything, and a free press which controls less than it should sometimes.  Why is it even important? 

Probably the first big issue is reliability of the Russian missiles.  The Russian arms merchants are just like ours and make a profit selling weapons to military units in their own country and their allies.  If they are not very good, nobody buys them.  The news stories, which the Russians posted and promoted with live-action video, said 26 missiles were fired.  We can take their word for that, but probably should look into that number.  They might have fired 50 and reported half that number.  Some of them could have fallen into the water after they left the ship, or blown up in the air without crashing on any land.  But, that number of launched-reached target is important to whether they can sell more.  I can just hear the Generals in the Kremlin saying, "What? You launched 50 and only 20 of them made it to their target?   These suck!  We are not buying any more."  So, the number they actually launched is important, and so it the number that actually hit the target they were set to hit.  That last thing is not that they struck ground in Syria, but that they hit the target they were supposed to hit.  A missile that hits a village 25 miles from that town it was supposed to hit, is not a good missile to keep in our inventory. We will never get those numbers, but those Russian Generals will.  

The second part is the missiles crashing in Iran.... 

So, the  Iranian government knew they were launching missiles and allowed them to overfly Iran.  This is not big news  to anyone, but not something Iran puts on the front page of its newspapers.  It makes people who don't like the Russians - and there are plenty of them in Iran - think twice about their government cooperating with another Satan.  Yes, and that Satan is firing missiles over our heads, and these may or may not fall out of the sky without warning.  This alone is a good reason for keeping that out of the papers. 

So, eventually we will see facts to support the story that  Russians missiles "crash landed" in Iran.  This euphemism is kind of like “water landing” that airlines use to make you feel like landing on the water is just like landing on land, except softer.  All those explosives that fell into that field are going to be hard for the tractor to plow around, not to mention the metal fragments.  We will get details at eleven.    It won't  be today, but it will be soon.  Don't forget about it in the meantime.