A Lesson of War

There is a good piece in the Wall Street Journal Opinion section today, quoting University of Pennsylvania professor Arthur Waldron.  It is interesting because the root of the story is not quite what the quote seems to convey.  The quote is:  “Compromise” is a scarce concept in Chinese theories of conflict. Rather the phrase they use is ni si wo huo—“you die, I live.” That is not “win-win.” . . .

It is what I have been saying about China for many years now.  They pretend to be cooperating with the rest of the world, but their main course of action is to look out for their own interests, very diverse and complicated as they are.  The South China Sea comes to mind.  They have managed to militarize the area without admitting to it, change the mind of their protagonist the Philippines, and lay claim to territory that any number of other countries claim as their own.  They live;  those other claims die.  Just in case the little dictator in the Philippines has not noticed, his interests are their interests as long as he does what they want - no more or less.

As to the United States, those lessons will be lost after the next election and we will reengage, almost as if the whole thing just started on January 20th with the swearing in of a new administration.  This is supposed to be why we have career government employees - to span the comings and goings of politicians and still do the job.  As we have been finding out, too many of those people are becoming politically aligned, and more than just the rising number of political appointees allowed to any new administration.  That class used to be our continuity of government, but it is largely gone now.  We should think more about making some agencies like the Department of Justice exempt from appointing anyone who might not place the administration of justice above politics.  Republicans and Democrats both decry the situation we have, but neither of them wants any part of changing it.

The lesson of war is that political systems like ours are not well suited to defeating the Chinese who are centrally managed and ruthlessly consistent in their application of their world view.

Chinese Aluminum Goes to WTO (at last)

In the Wall Street Journal today is the story of one of those hard-working people who has decided to take a stand on aluminum being dumped by the Chinese, and go to the World Trade Organization to take up this travesty.  We can sure tell it is the silly season when some of the top Democrats in Congress decide they want to clamp down on China for something they have been doing for the last five years. Elections do that to them.  However, we should not look a gift horse in the mouth.

An article by the Aluminum Insider, says the current duties on Chinese aluminum have been in effect since 2011, so their must not be hurting anyone in China very much.  I'm at a loss to say what those figures are, since the formula for calculating this kind of thing is mysterious and complicated.  All we can say for sure is there are duties.

Along the way of enforcing these duties comes another story of even greater consequence.  Fortune says while the U.S. has lost 600 jobs with the closing of the Alcoa smelter, the Chinese were stockpiling $2 Billion in aluminum in Mexico trying to get it into this country without paying the duties on their aluminum coming from China.  We have to wonder how long they managed to pull that off.  Ingots of aluminum seem to all have pretty much the same look to the casual onlooker like me, so they could be doing that in every one of their friend's businesses all over the world.

So, it turns out that leaders who are concerned about the message being spread by voters seems to indicate Congress is not doing enough, does something to appear to be doing something.  What it is doing could have been done five years ago.  What the Chinese have always done when confronted by WTO is to back down, turn around, and come back another way.  Green Dam has just come back after a layoff of a few years.  Aluminum exports will not be far behind a temporary setback of WTO saying "don't do that" to them.  Vigilance is essential to keeping them from doing it.  Congress is far too patient.

The Pace of Justice

The use of phone scams in the United States, especially among the elderly, has come along nicely as a business.  We know this from the number of calls coming to our homes, and parents homes where they usually go unanswered.  My mother stopped answering the phone which gives merchants and her plumber no end of grief.  There isn't a state government that isn't up in arms over the calling which has been going on for years to get to this point.  Nobody seems to want to stop it.

So, we finally see yesterday (The Justice Department announced it and articles appeared in several newspapers) the cracking of a "major" ring located in India, with participation of 20 suspects arrested in the U.S and a total of 56 indictments all in all.  This is what people do when they can't stop the calls being made.  They arrest a few of the many - the usual suspects - and declare victory.  It should not take three years to do that.

There are several groups doing this, and we can tell that from the differences in phone calls rejected or accepted by answering machines.  I have heard computer generated voices, recorded hunan voices and real human beings (or very good imitations).  They all say call this number or you will be arrested.  So, if for any reason, you think they will stop or even slow down a little, guess again.  This one little raid will do about as much as arresting a couple of hackers stealing from banks will stop that kind of activity.

We could stop it, but it would take a different approach than criminal prosecution - find out who is doing it (how hard can it be when they leave their number?) make the cost of doing business higher than the revenue stream. The phone companies are partially at fault for not blocking the callers at the networks.  Yes, it is whack-a-mole, but nobody is doing it.  They want to put the burden on the user to block them individually because they don't want to spend the money to take this on.  It is abuse of the telephone system which they own.  They treat it as a user problem.  To those in computer security, that sounds familiar.

We are supposed to have great people doing public service in consumer protection. What are they doing about this?   Why can't we get the numbers of people who call the scam number and warn them?  Personally call victims before they actually pay. The thieves will change the number, but start it again.  They will move to another state or country.  Start again.  It is called crime prevention.

Second, where is the real IRS in this?  They should be out investigating people pretending to be IRS.  Then, last but not least, do criminal investigations of the one that still operate.

Last, this is not resource intensive.  A couple of people in government can be spared to get something going instead of studying the problem.  One state could start.  Take the first step.  Do something.

Chinese Steal Rice Seeds

Well, I thought I had heard everything when the Chinese stole seed corn out of the ground in Iowa, but I guess that was just one more notch in the agricultural theft by Chinese businesses.  They know no shame and no limits on what they try to steal.

The latest, documented by the Depaertment of Justice, is the theft of rice seeds from a laboratory  in Stuttgart Arkansas.  Fox news has a story on this too and says there were two culprits cooperating in the theft of rice seed: "Yan was a geneticist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture at the Dale Bumpers National Research Center in Stuttgart, when he was originally charged in December 2013. He and another scientist Weiqiang Zhang were charged with conspiracy to steal trade secrets and theft of trade secrets. Zhang is a U.S. permanent resident and Yan a naturalized U.S. citizen."  

Two things are wrong here.  One is the number of Chinese-Americans who cooperate with China in the theft of technology from the United States.  We take them in, give them citizenship, and they give back by stealing from us.  But the real theft involves the whole area of permanent residents created by the E5B program which is used for more than stealing technology.  Ninety-two hundred of the 10,000 visas granted in 2014 were Chinese.  We need to abolish this program which allowed political parties to say they were getting money from "US Citizens" when they were only granted citizen status by this policy of the previous Clinton administration.  

China Playing the Game with Apple

There is a good story by the BBC today on China's twist on Apple.  Even though Foxconn employees thousands of people in China, some companies have banned the new iPhone 7.  It would be one thing if those bans were symbolic and not really enforced, but it appears "you're fired" actually means what it says.

Of course the Chinese have every excuse you can think of, from the South China Sea to it being a status symbol to justify what is really about Apple encryption and the ability to defeat the iPhone in other parts of the world.  China will not admit that it is bent on having access to every phone and computer in the world, but that is the way it works out.  When Apple said it was not going to cooperate, things started to happen, and this is part of the result.  The Chinese will keep the heat on until Apple does more than build a new technology center there.  It is a sign that they are still enough concerned about Apple that they won't compromise with one of their best long-term partners.

Think about what this means to other cell phone makers.  The Chinese have not complained about hardly any other companies except Apple.  That should tell you something about (1) their control of the technology in cell phones of the world and (2) their respect for Apple's ability to keep secrets in their phones.  Yes, the phones are made there and the Chinese intelligence services can do most anything to them without us knowing, but Apple will know.  Eventually, we will all find out.  Then, Apple can make their phones somewhere else or sell them only in China.  I guess it would be my preference for a phone made in the US where Chinese national interests were not the first thing that was considered, but Apple has a billion reasons to think about it awhile.

Blocking China's Acquisitions

Yesterday, the Financial Times had a good article on the growing resistance to China's purchases, mentioning both Aixtron (see my blog from yesterday) and Syngenta as cases in point.  The article [ Western resistance to China blocks $40bn of acquisitions by James Kynge] claims Germany and the Swiss "took into account security and competition concerns".  And, though many of these deals seem to be on the table, more and more countries are taking a closer look.

These main issue in both the EU and the US is whether a purchase by a State Owned Enterprise is really a purchase by another business or China itself.  In my first book, I went through some of the issues with Chinese businesses not being like ours.  Some of the foreign businesses in China have levels of Chinese ownership and control specified in law.  Conglomerates are so diverse as to make you wonder if any of them had business plans when they started.  They buy other entities that bear no relationship to anything the company currently does.  That alone would raise some eyebrows in the M&A markets.  But diversity is only one aspect.

The other issue is security.  Australia recently blocked the sale of Ausgrid, part of their core electric grid.  What the rest of the world should be looking at is the tech that goes into 5g, advanced networks and any long-haul communications.  The Chinese are looking to control the Internet and use it to collect intelligence needed to meet their political and economic objectives.  They do it well in their own country and are using that model to seep into the rest of the world.  When they buy something, there is almost always a reason.

Aixtron German-Chinese Sale Unplugged

In today's Wall Street Journal is an article that notes the German government has withdrawn its approval of the purchase of German high-tech company, Aixtron.  I have repeated a portion of my prior post on Aixtron which quotes the New York Times story about how the purchase came to be sidetracked to begin with.  The real issue is the difference between state owned enterprises buying something, and a private investor.  Try as they might, the Chinese are not able to convince the world that their businesses are independent, when the world's business community knows better.

There was a good article in the New York Times on Saturday that describes the turmoil for a company called Aixtron, a German high-tech business.  What the Times article does is give the back story to how this purchase came to be.  If we want to play with Chinese investments, it is a good thing to know how they play.  

The cancellation of an order at the last minute put Aixtron's stock on a downward spiral.  The company that pulled the plug on that order was San’an Optoelectronics, another Chinese company with funding from some of the same people who worked out the M&A on Aixtron.  The story in the Times documents the connections between the different companies that were related both to the purchaser and the business relationships Aixtron had in China.  This purchase and one other major one made Germany the biggest recipient of Chinese capital in Europe.  German concerns about technology transfer are well founded.  

The biggest mistake we make in dealing with China is believing their businesses are just like ours - independent of government, managed by Boards with their own independence, and acting in their own self-interest.  The only interests they serve are those of the central government.  

A Little Conversation with the CPC

One of the funniest pieces I have ever seen on China was done today by the BBC.  The Communist Party was hosting an open dialog with the world, or so they said.  If this is what passes for "open" then we might understand why there has not been one of these before.  It will have you rolling on the floor, if you don't take it too seriously.  Some of the handlers were obviously not getting the memo.

Memories

I am reading an interesting book called Dark Territory, by Fred Kaplan.  The subtitle of it The Secret History of Cyber War tells most of what it is about, and Kaplan is reporting from his own knowledge and interviews with people who were involved at the higher levels of government.  For me, this is a book of memories, some new, some old, and some recalled for the benefit of the teller.

He tells the stories of how the political side of cyber war came to be defined by the people, mostly military, who were at the top level of NSA and RAND.  I think MITRE should have been mentioned a little more, but in that company were many more organizations and people with interests on the offensive and defensive side (I still have more than half to read).  More about this book later.

I met a lot of these people at one time or another, speaking at conferences and working in National Missile Defense.  I met Robert Morris Sr, Chief Scientist at NSA, that way.  He used to sit in the front row of a conference, where there were usually plenty of seats.  At one Canadian IT Security Symposium I used him as an example of UNIX expert, saying his credibility would carry the day for most arguments made for how to secure a UNIX system and he made a good source.  Since he was sitting not more than 3 feet from me, I walked over to him while I was talking.  I caught him off guard.  He fumbled, thought about it, and said, loudly enough that everyone in the auditorium could hear it, "I wouldn't be too sure about that, if I were you." The audience started to laugh and went on for a little too long for him to be comfortable.  He was as humble a Chieft Scientist as I have ever known, but he was smart as a man can be.

It reminds me of the number of experts I see today who are doing the work but can never talk about what they are doing or why they do it.  I raise my glass to all of you.  Some of our country's best resources fall into that category.  They can't write about it.  They can't speak about it.  Yet they are the ones between us and our enemies.  They are frustrated by politics, and nobody can blame them.  Yet, they do the right thing, sometimes over the objections of politicians who wouldn't understand much of what they were doing even if they explained it.  It is heroic.

All Politics is Local (except the money)

We have a saying in this country that all politics is local.  Maybe everyone in the world could agree with that, since even the most strictly controlled countries have some dissent among their own populations.  People naturally grumble and too tight of a lid on that can lead to revolutions of various types.  Law Enforcement usually intervenes, the smoke clears, and a few leaders end up in jail.

But, as we find today in the Wall Street Journal the law enforcement may be part of the problem when it fails to be independent and honest.  This case involves the same Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, who was involved with the Chinese in funneling money to the Clinton Campaign, which is still being investigated by the FBI.  They may have difficulty being objective.  

The Journal article tells a tale of political support for the wife of a Deputy Director of the FBI.  He just happens to be the one leading the investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails.  The FBI and the political hacks that oversee it at the Justice Department have stepped into something here that will not go over well with the electorate.  Though it is too late to influence the outcome of the campaigns, politics is not a game the FBI should play.  That is why we have an independent national law enforcement entity to deal with political corruption.  

One of our political parties selected the wife long before anyone knew her husband would be leading the investigation, but the appearance which will dominate the news for a day, is one of corruption of the major law enforcement agency in the US.  That is on top of the appearance of a leadership in the Justice Department that will go to the end to make sure there is not a prosecution of the reigning nominee.  It is appearance, not facts of any nature, that make political revolutions. 

However this turns out, it will not be good for the FBI which relies on its independence to do its investigations fairly.  The FBI has always been a place where that appearance was important to the leadership and to the agents that do the work in the field.  Allowing a person whose wife has just run for a major political office to participate in the investigation was clearly bad judgement, at the least.  She was selected by the party and asked to run.  One third of her money came from the party.  The word stupid comes to mind here because we would hope that it was just a miscalculation and not politically motivated.  I vote for stupid.  No pun intended.  

Nothing Like Public Email

  In Email 101 every college student is taught that what you say to a person on email may not be interpreted quite the way you thought it would be, or it might be exposed by someone with a political agenda.  Office politics is sometimes just as vicious as what we see at the national level.

What we are seeing in the exposure of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign is a stream of statesments that do not fit the narrative being told by the candidate.  That is because the candidate did not say the same thing to different groups, which is apparently a sin of some sort, and may have set out to undermine the opposition by a series what some call  "dirty tricks" and others call "politics as usual".  Neither of these are at the root of the problem. We have had those since the 1800s. What we have not had was theft of the internal communications of political organizations on this scale.

I wonder what would have happened if the email and data stored in the DNC and campaign had been secure.  Secure means nobody can read it unless they are on the distribution for it.  They can copy and send it to someone else, but it will retain the original source.   That would have been good for them and for all of us who have to listen to the endless nonsense being spewed out by every major network.  But, email is not very secure when they choose to not secure it, use devices that can easily be hacked, and get their political buddies to do computer services for themselves.  They get what they deserve.

However, the other aspect of this is the writing side.  Email should be written for the public, and I do mean the public at large, not just posterity.  If it cannot be secured, it must be written as if for the public, because it will be sooner than later.  Some of the things being said in those emails are clearly not written for anyone outside the inner circle in the campaign.  These are things that only friends say in the quiet of their own home, and they better be good friends too;  cocktail friends are not close enough.

There used to be a rule about Top Secret information that made a lot of sense.  If you have something really, really sensitive to talk about, make that an in-person talk, briefing, or exchange.  Don't write it down unless you have to, and then only when that is recorded and tracked by who had access to what.  It is burdensome and difficult to do this, but it will keep secrets secret.  People find it too hard to do basic security of their secrets, and for that they also get what they deserve.

So, while others consider the meaning of those emails, I find it has more meaning than the content.  It means we have forgotten how to keep secrets secret.  It is too hard, I guess.

China All In

Anjani Trivedi's article in the Wall Street Journal today is about China's shift to buying their mid tier goods used in manufacturing, from Chinese vendors instead of ours.  The example he uses is resins from Dow Chemical and Eckard Effect Pigments in Germany.  They now get these from local suppliers.  Of course we all know why.

It is the same reason our trade deficient hit a record with China last year.  They have stolen our technology and propriety information and use it to build their own businesses that compete with ours, and the Germans too.  The have laws that restrict what foreign companies can do in their country to grow business, and they made business intelligence, competitive business information about competitors, a national secret.  If a business keeps competitive data, it risks going to court.

They demand proprietary secrets from any business operating in China, including source code and encryption technologies that protect it.  They are aggressive and persistent.  They use those to shortcut their own production cycles and move out more quickly into other markets.

The natural result is they can buy more goods from themselves, because they make more goods and don't buy ours.  That makes for huge deficients which both Presidential candidates ignore.  We can't pretend that we can outthink or innovate ourselves out of this mess because the damage has largely been done.  What we lack is reciprocity in our trade relations with China.  They have had it both ways during this sprint, and only the power of political interest can stop them.

Justice Delayed is Something Else

 I don't see how the press release yesterday from the Justice Department tells us anything about the reasons for prosecution of Retired General James E. Cartwright, except that he was retired.  It says he was prosecuted for lying to a Federal investigator, which is a catch-all phrase used to justify a prosecution for something nobody wants to talk about.  Partly, it is because the incidents in question took place so long ago, it is obvious this is one of those loose ends being tied up before this administration leaves office.  

Politico updated their story today to say what this is about and the name in that story is David Sanger, the noted New York Times writer with very good sources in cyber, and Barack Obama, who was said to be close to Carwright.  The information disclosed was Top Secret/SCI, some of our most secret things.  Cartwright was represented by Greg Craig, the President's former White House Counsel.  

The Justice letter back to Carwright's lawyer notes a charge of "abuse of authority" which carries a 2 year sentence, along with the primary charge of lying to a federal investigator, which gets 6 if the judge is so inclined.

Something is not right here.  The Politico story reflects the Cartwritght legal view, that he did not make the disclosure to begin with, and only tried to keep the story from being published.  That usually doesn't end in prosecution.  They could have just said, "bad call" and given him a letter of reprimand, ending his career.  That would have fit the narrative better than a criminal prosecution.  

Movies Now a National Security Issue

I had to flinch when I saw the article today in the Wall Street Journal about Wang Jianlin and Jack Ma's purchases in the Hollywood movie business.  We are now going to ask CIFIUS, which tracks and occasionally tries to manage foreign purchases in the US, to see if this grab for movie studio control has national security implications.  The theory here is that we should be concerned about the Chinese manipulating content of movies to produce products that more favor the Chinese view of the world and are thus fit for Chinese consumption.  

It seems like the Chinese would be more interested in the means of production of movies so they could make more of their own.  They have a huge audience and a crying need for content, since they ban all but 34 foreign films every year.  In case you missed it, this is all part of the effort to control content of anything in print, film or sound that might be sold in China.  This is all part of a new set of laws governing anything not made or controlled by Chinese media companies.  Apple fell victim to this type of control and had to give up its iTumes sales in China.  They are trying to buy into our media companies and ban US participation in theirs.  This is the reciprocity in trade relations that we seem to have put aside for the election.  Let the next President deal with it.  In normal times, CIFIUS can hold a meeting and make a decision in a couple of months, but this one is going to drag out.  It isn't about a national security concern for Chinese purchases of studios;  it is about allowing them to buy technology that they wouldn't buy from the manufacturers in the United States.  

Too Many Secrets

We seem to have too many secrets being exposed in this U.S. election.  On the one side, we have the collection and presentation of videos that purport to show gross behavior toward women, some of which occurred 30 years ago.  On the other side, we have the internal emails of a political campaign that talk about attitudes towards various groups within the opposition, like Catholics and Christians.  This is not a face we want to show to the rest of the world, but it is the state of politics since the alignment of political parties and media  channels favoring one candidate over another.

What prompts this kind of activity in the U.S. is the First Amendment to the Constitution [see https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment for a broader explanation]

"The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition.  It forbids Congress from both promoting one religion over others and also restricting an individual’s religious practice.  It guarantees freedom of expression by prohibiting Congress from restricting the press or the rights of individuals to speak freely.  It also guarantees the right of citizens to assemble peaceably and to petition their government.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

So, this delicate balance of press and freedom of expression is easy to document, but the harder to describe in terms of what is happening today.  What is allows the press to do is sandbag videos and voice recordings of any potential candidates and play them when they choose to.  It allows other governments to steal information and feed it into a free press which does not care about the source, accuracy, or context of such things.  With every right there should be some responsibility, which seems to be lacking everywhere in what used to be called "yellow journalism" when it was more fashionable than it is today.

George William Alger wrote a rather long explanation of the law and this form of print where he said the press shows its ethics, more than its respect for law, when it does these kinds of things.  Nobody in 1903 could foresee the storage capacity of a terabit drive or the interconnection of groups over the Internet.  It took years of law and public discourse to change the way the press operated in the late 1800s.  Nobody could have guessed that we would have to deal with it all over again.  

Green Dam All Over Again

You have to give the Chinese credit for perseverance.  They never give up, and when their policies don't work, they wait for a better time to implement them.  They change the names of products or the way the rules are written, but they make them vague enough that they can be interpreted broadly.  We have to stop falling for this nonsense.  [see http://www.wsj.com/articles/china-aims-to-strengthen-internet-child-safety-policies-1476282383 for some insight on this matter].

The Green Dam was a censorship and intelligence collection tool which was characterized by its full title, Green Dam Youth Escort.  Put this on every computer made in China, or made for use in China, and our children will never have to worry about content that is not controlled by the State.  The actual person on the street in China sees a need for this kind of thing, without even looking at how the software worked.  In my last book, I went into the background of this software and the analysis of its real capabilities.  The real intent was not just to allow only content the State thought was good for children.  It blocked religious websites, politically sensitive sites, and some specific individuals who favored political reforms in China.  Not many of our children go looking for some of these things on computers.  About the only sensible thing it blocked were pornographers.

The real issue with Green Dam was the attempt by China to require vendors outside China to help them defend Chinese children by putting the software on their computers too.   At least the Obama Administration had the sense to explore taking this to the World Trade Organization, which finally made them back down - partially.  They still allowed vendors to put the software on "voluntarily".

All the Chinese did was put this aside for awhile and now want to bring it back with a few tweaks.  Maybe they figure with the elections coming, nobody will notice a few little changes in Chinese policy.  

Europe Flails Russia over Syria - Finally

When I worked with NATO over the years, we used to marvel at the pace of activity, most particularly policy decisions.  We could work at a job overseas for an entire four-year tour before an issue that was broached when we arrived was finally considered.  No wonder it took so long for the French and Germans to come to the same conclusions about Russia's help to Syria.

Maybe it came from the heat generated when the Russians bombed a hospital - twice - or when the regime they were supporting used barrel bombs on the folks who are left in Aleppo.  How anyone lives there is a mystery.  After those drone pictures released last week showed next to nothing but a bombed out city.  Finding anyone alive there must be like finding a family safe after a crushing earthquake.

Maybe the Europeans are starting to realize the Russians are interfering in more than just Syria.  They are trying to influence people in Europe to back their causes and going after those who opposed them, not the least of which was accomplished through cyber attacks on TV5 in France.  In Germany, they organized the harassment of political figures who opposed them.  It is one thing when they do it in the Ukraine, but quite another when they do it at your own front door.  We are finding that out in the U.S elections where the level of interference is substantial and largely unappreciated.  Not that we have done much about it.  France might not have the same degree of tolerance that the Obama Administration has shown.

Russian Hackers & France TV5 Attacks

BBC published a story today about the report done on the attacks against TV5 in France in April of last year.  At the time, it was said to have been done by a group connected to ISIS, but as the latest reporting shows, it was Russian hackers operating outside their normal intelligence gathering function.  The BBC article refers to APT 28 without giving credit to FireEye for the discovery or documentation of that group's activities and country of origin.  For a simple explanation of the work of this group see APT 28: A Window into Russia's Cyber Espionage Operations?  The question mark at the end tells a lot about the links between the Russian government and the cyber operations of this group.  APT 29 gets into some of those details. [ You will have to provide contact information to FireEye to download this report ].

The importance of the French analysis, though old in cyber standards, is the portrayal of a destructive attack against a network television station.  It also shows that the Russians not only know how to do that, but are willing to do it while blaming some other group for the mischief.  Even FireEye leaves room in the attribution to the Russian government, but it is also obvious that they believe it has to be centered there.

BBC talked to Yves Bigot, the director-general of TV5Monde who described how close the network came to going down completely.  He said if they hadn't just opened a new part of the network, the technicians would not have been there to stop it from getting worse.  The damage would have been lasting since it was not a denial of service attack using the usual methods.  It was destructive, and its intent was to make the damage last.   

I certainly hope the U.S. paid attention.  France has to do something though the effects are somewhat reduced by the length of time that has transpired between the events and the report.  This is the basic problem with attribution, especially to a government.  By the time we figure it out, the event is long over.  This is the reason for maintaining a strong deterrence policy and intelligence collection of our own.   For France, there has to be some retaliation, since deterrence seems to have failed.  For the U.S there is reason to note that the theoretical portrayal of denial of service of basic infrastructure may be more than just a theory.  

U.S. Points to Election Disruption

Unless you stopped reading newspapers yesterday you have seen a number of news reports about the Russians trying to interfere with the U.S. Elections next month.  Most of them say the same thing, that the U.S. Intelligence Community has pointed the finger at the Russians because "only something directed from senior leaders" could have produced this result.  These people must not have read Wikileaks very often, where people contributing material are certainly not the higher-ups of any government.  None-the-less, let's give them their due - they have pointed a finger at someone and attributed the theft of information for political purposes, to the Russians.

Attribution is the first step in retaliation.  The Intelligence Community likely knows a good bit more than it is saying about these events, since attribution requires more than just a statement of belief.  The Director of National Intelligence told a Congressional panel that it required knowledge of the physical location of the attack, who was behind it, and something of how it was carried out.  That generally takes time, but we don't have much before the election.  This brings up the most important aspect of national policy - we don't have a deterrence strategy that deters anyone from attacking us.

Attribution is too late here.  Deterrence is prevention of an attack, knowing the consequences will be severe enough to give pause to our adversaries.  Neither the Chinese nor the Russians are deterred by the threat of sanctions or retaliation in kind.  By the time we could retaliate, the election would be over.  This is, of course, because our government does not have a credible deterrence strategy that warns the countries doing this sort of thing before they do it.  That requires planning beyond next Tuesday and some idea of what cyber deterrence really means, a credible threat.  Neither country believes we have one.  I talked to some people that really believe we could have a deterrence strategy but lack the political will to do anything.  That is a National Security Council problem.  Where are they?

Foreign Money in U.S. Elections

The first likely scapegoat in the EB5 scandal has been caught, slaughtered and shipped off for disposal.  The hope always is that one will be enough to quell any curiosity in the press or overturning a rock that leaves potential whistleblowers talking even more than they have.   The target was described this way by the Daily Caller:  "Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas sent out an email Wednesday announcing his resignation.

The announcement follows an investigation by The Daily Caller News Foundation that showed neither the DHS, nor the Office of Government Ethics properly examined major ethics violations related to his fast-tracking of visas for a company run by Hillary Clinton’s brother."

Of the 10,000 EB5 visas issued in 2014, 9200 of them were issued to Chinese businessmen.

In case you have forgotten what the original matter was about, it involved Terry McAuliffe, the Governor of Virginia.  It appears that McAuliffe's car company was heavily financed by foreign investors.  Mayorkas was helping arrange EB5 visas for some of the people McAuliffe needed to be covered, in particular for political contributions, being separately investigated by the FBI.  The EB5 allows them to contribute as U.S. citizens rather than foreign nationals which would be illegal.  This might not end with the removal of Mayorkas who was really only a facilitator.

The Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security started in September 2012, and finally finished the investigation and published a report in March 2015.   At the same time the case of Wang Wenliang, another of Terry McAuliffe's good foreign friends with money.  The New York Times describes this little escapade as part of McAuliffe's desire for foreign funding and laid out other states benefiting from this Chinese largess.    

Had it not been for the negative publicity for the Clinton Foundation, the Clinton Campaign and the association of the Governor's name with foreign money - again - the whole affair would have likely died after the first report.  But, as we proceed towards a national election, having foreign money in our election process is an ugly and dangerous precedent.  

2012. During the course of our work, we identified a significant number of DHS employees—more than15—with varying levels of responsibility and authority, including some very senior managers at USCIS and USCIS’ Office of the Chief Counsel (OCC), who each had direct contact with Mr. Mayorkas and were in a position to witness the events. Each conveyed the same factual scenario: certain applicants and stakeholders received preferential access to DHS leadership and preferential treatment in either the handling of their application or petition or regarding the merits of the application or petition. Other employees with whom we spoke did not have direct contact with Mr. Mayorkas, but witnessed significant deviations from the normal process for certain applicants. Many witnesses provided emails, written contemporaneously with the events, to support their allegations of special access and treatment.  The number and variety of witnesses is highly unusual. It is also quite unusual that a significant percentage of the witnesses we interviewed would Mayorkas 


Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) employees that Alejandro Mayorkas, then-Director of USCIS and current Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was exerting improper influence in the normal processing and adjudication of applications and petitions in a program administered by USCIS. Specifically, we were told that Mr. Mayorkas was in contact, outside the normal adjudication process, with specific applicants and other stakeholders in the Employment-Based Fifth Preference (EB-5) program, which gives residency preference to aliens who agree to invest in the U.S. economy to create jobs for U.S. citizens. We were also told he was exerting influence to give these individuals preference and access not available to others. 

Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) employees that Alejandro Mayorkas, then-Director of USCIS and current Deputy Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was exerting improper influence in the normal processing and adjudication of applications and petitions in a program administered by USCIS. Specifically, we were told that Mr. Mayorkas was in contact, outside the normal adjudication process, with specific applicants and other stakeholders in the Employment-Based Fifth Preference (EB-5) program, which gives residency preference to aliens who agree to invest in the U.S. economy to create jobs for U.S. citizens. We were also told he was exerting influence to give these individuals preference and access not available to others. 

Who's In Charge in Russia?

Check out Karen Dawisha's piece in the Wall Street Journal  today concerning a new book, All the Kremlin's Men, by Mikhail Zygar.  It sounds like a book anyone who follows Russia would want to read.

What is disturbing about the substance of this book is the power behind the throne, the business leaders of Russia who align with Putin.  He may have made the decision to develop a bid to host the Olympics, but it the portrayal of how he came to decide it was not pretty.  The Russian business class used some of the same techniques the Russian government used in the Ukraine to win over Putin.  They put billboards on his path to work, bought targeted media ads, and got a caller to get his question on the annual Q&A for the President.  It sounds crass, and makes Putin sound more like a follower than a leader in his own country.

Given our experience with the on-going political campaign in this country, I wonder if some of the same kind of thing goes on here.  The advisors are occasionally out of control, doing things to persuade the clients to adopt political positions, act in certain ways, and say all the "right" things when they get before the public.  There will be a revolt eventually to overturn this system, but until it happens we are stuck with money and handlers taking cattle prods to the people running for office.