Monday, Monday & Even NSA didn’t know.
FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCE JOBS.COM
1. Security clearances – attention to detail. You want your clearance application to flow without glitches. Editor Lindy Kyzer shows you how to increase your chances of success: “Failure to pay attention to detail seems to top the list, with issues of missing or incomplete information taking up the majority of the top 20 issues listed.”
2. Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Also from Kyzer, how your personal and professional lives can collide, with disastrous consequences you may not have considered: “Will a one-time affair that you disclose to your spouse result in clearance denial? Hardly, and it’s not likely to even come up in the course of an investigation. But incidents such as the one above highlight the need for standards of personal integrity in positions of public trust, especially at the highest clearance levels. If you’re willing to create a web of lies and pretend to be dead to avoid your problems, what else would you be willing to do?”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. The U.S. Army – Identity Crisis. DefenseNews.Com’s Paul McLeary reports, “Within US Army leadership, there are more questions than answers. The service seeks to project an image of itself as having learned the right lessons from the past decade, while remaining agile enough to meet whatever threats lurk in the future. . . . To help work through the tough business of identifying a path forward, Gen. Raymond Odierno, Army chief of staff, in 2012 quietly established a Strategic Studies Group staffed by a few dozen hand-picked officers and civilians . . . . Some are skeptical that the Army will actually absorb the lessons it has learned in its two recent wars.”
2. In Pakistan, throwing good money after bad. Reuters’ Warren Strobel reports, “For fiscal year 2014, which began on October 1, Obama has requested $1.162 billion for Pakistan, including $857 million in civilian assistance and $305 million in security assistance, Harf said. Much of U.S. security aid to Pakistan is intended to bolster the ability of its military to counter militants in the country’s semi-autonomous tribal areas.”
3. Israel, the first casualty of peace (with Iran). AP’s Josef Federman reports, “Just days after the first round of global nuclear talks with Iran, a rift appears to be emerging between Israel and its closest ally, the United States. . . . The differing approaches could bode poorly for Israel as the talks between six global powers and Iran gain steam in the coming months. Negotiators were upbeat following last week’s talks, and the next round of negotiations is set to begin Nov. 7.”
4. al-Qaeda in Iraq keeps the war going, and going, and going. AP’s Sameer N. Yacoub reports, “A suicide bomber slammed his explosive-laden car Sunday night into a busy cafe in Iraq’s capital, part of a day of violence across the country that killed 45 people . . . . Violence has been on the rise in Iraq following a deadly crackdown by security forces on a Sunni protest camp in the northern town of Hawijah in April. At least 385 have died in attacks in Iraq so far this month . . . . There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Sunday’s attacks, though car bombings and gun assaults are favorite tactics of al-Qaida’s local branch. It frequently targets Shiites, whom it considers heretics, and those seen as closely allied to the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.” For a detailed analysis of on-going violence in Iraq, see LongWarJournal.Org’s report by Bill Roggio. See Aljazeera.Com’s take on the violence.
5. In Afghanistan, good ol’ body counts. Khaama.Com reports, “At least 36 Taliban militants were killed in joint Afghan and NATO forces operations across the country, according to the interior ministry of Afghanistan. The militants were killed during joint military operations during the past 24 hours, interior ministry media office said following a statement. The source further added that the operations were conducted in Helmand, Paktiya, Maidan Wardak, Kandahar, Baghlan and Kunar provinces of Afghanistan.”
6. In AFRICOM, “Western education is sinful” (Boko haram) kill 19. Aljazeera.com reports, “Boko Haram gunmen dressed in military uniform have killed 19 people near the Nigerian border with Cameroon in the restive northeast . . . . Boko Haram, whose name translates as ‘Western education is sinful’, has had a long history of violence and has stepped up deadly attacks on civilians and schools in repraisal against vigilantes co-operating with the military.The group says it is fighting to create an Islamic state in Nigeria’s mainly Muslim north, but it is believed to be made up of different factions with varying aims”.
CONTRACT WATCH
1. GSA – back in business. FederalTimes.Com’s Any Medici reports, “When the government shut down Oct. 1, the General Services Administration was forced to issue stop work orders for about 1,000 contracts totaling $1 billion in work, according to the agency. The contracts included maintenance projects and a variety of services but excluded financial management systems such as the SmartPay credit card program, according to the agency. GSA was able to reinstate most of the contracts Oct. 17, the first day of the government reopening.”
2. BAE-Lockheed Martin in scrap over JLTV privileges. DefenseMediaNetwork.Com’s Scott Gourley reports, “The Oct. 15, 2013 announcement that BAE Systems would be closing its vehicle production facility in Sealy, Texas, is causing ripples through one element of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) community. . . . Within hours of the BAE Systems plant closure announcement Lockheed Martin representatives announced that they would be moving their hoped-for JLTV production activities to their plant in Camden, Ark. . . . Lockheed Martin had begun planning for contingency action on a production facility move ‘earlier this year’ in the event that the closure decision by BAE Systems were to occur.’”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Cyberthreats up — IT spending down. FederalTimes.Com’s Niole Blake Johnson reports, “Agencies will have fewer information technology dollars for innovative projects and systems migrations, as overall discretionary spending shrinks over the next five years. Civilian and defense IT spending are pegged at $70.0 billion this year, down from $73.5 billion last year, according to an annual forecast by TechAmerica Foundation. Annual IT spending over the next five years is projected to reach $78.5 billion, of which $42.1 billion will go toward civilian agencies. . . . But security concerns and fears of adopting new technology like cloud computing and mobility are inhibiting adoption, especially within DoD.”
2. Killer ‘bots to replace boots. Wired.Com’s Allen McDuffee reports, “Robots armed with automatic weapons, anti-tank missiles and even grenade launchers are marching, er, rolling ever closer to the battlefield now that they’ve shown they can actually hit what they’re supposed to. . . . The Army, which issued a favorable assessment of the technology last week, doesn’t see our armed robotic overlords as weapons taking the place of boots on the ground, but rather as combatants working alongside troops in the field. . . . Senior Army officers attending the rodeo appeared satisfied with the robots after seeing them accurately hit targets 500 feet away, and they hope to see battle ‘bots in action within five years.”
3. And the password . . . . security. PCWorld.Com’s Steve Ragan with some ways to keep the NSA out of your junk: “Try to make your password more than 12 characters long and use at least one lower case character, one upper case character, one number, and one special character. Shamefully, not all sites have enabled this yet, so it may not always be possible, but do it where you can. Try stringing unconnected words together and mixing up the letters, numbers and special characters to make them extra hard to guess.” And more . . . .
4. Bacteria — nothing to to sneeze at. WaPo’s David E. Hoffman argues, “We ought to snap out of our long complacency. . . . But politically, there is no active constituency — no patient groups marching in the streets. We take antibiotics for a short period and then forget about them. And hospitals, which can be cauldrons for resistant bacteria, often remain silent about infections and outbreaks out of concern for adverse publicity and patient privacy. Yet another dimension of the crisis is that the economics of drug development have led major pharmaceutical firms to abandon research into new antibiotics while they pursue more lucrative therapies for chronic disease. The antibiotic pipeline is slowly drying up.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. You put your left candidate in, you put your left candidate . . . the 2016 Hokie Pokie has commenced. Politico.Com explains the familiar face back on the stump: “Hillary Clinton made her first campaign appearance in nearly five years on Saturday to support Terry McAuliffe, her old friend who’s running as the Democratic nominee for governor in Virginia. But for the media and the majority of attendees packed into The State Theatre here for the event, it was all about her. . . .The crowd chanted ‘Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!’ before she even started speaking. McAuliffe served as her warm-up act, describing Clinton as an ‘inspiration to men and women all across Virginia and all across the globe.’ The speech effectively ended Clinton’s hiatus from electoral politics. But Clinton, whose allies are mindful of her being in the spotlight too early, kept it devoid of heavily-partisan barbs and language, allowing her to maintain some distance.”
2. Republicans in-fighting it out in Kentucky. In the wake of the shutdown-debt-ceiling crisis, Tea Partiers see opportunity; more traditional GOP’ers see a threat: “Florida Senator Marco Rubio endorsed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell over his Kentucky Tea Party primary challenger Sunday morning, signalling a limit to the intraparty resentments following Republicans’ failed effort to defund Obamacare throughout the government shutdown. . . . Rubio joins fellow Tea Party senator Rand Paul in getting behind McConnell’s run. The Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee founded by former South Carolina senator and current Heritage Foundation president Jim DeMint, has endorsed Bevin.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. Thin red line in the Persian sand must stand. USNews.Com contributor Mortimer B. Zuckerman argues that “neutering Iran’s nuclear menace is deeply in the interest of this country. President Obama has unequivocally ruled out living with a nuclear-armed Iran, but few in the world believe he has the will to stand firm, in part because of his waffling over Syria. Meanwhile Iran basks in domestic stability and feels empowered by its crucial role in Syria. There are things we can do if we do not wish to act ourselves. One is to provide Israel with the bunker-buster bombs capable of destroying the underground facilities. Another is to give Israel air-refueling tankers so they may fly their planes the distance necessary to do the maximum damage.”
2. “A Reasonable Iran.” Slate.Com contributor Fred Kaplan argues that, “assuming good intentions on all sides, negotiating and enforcing a treaty of this sort is a complex business. It’s why many, even those in favor of a treaty, doubted the accord could be worked out as quickly as Rouhani publicly hoped. It’s also probably why he and Zarif are off to such a quick start. The details are what usually take years to iron out. If they can nail down the goals and the path to get there in a matter of days, maybe the rest can be settled in merely many months.”
3. “War robots will lessen killing – not increase it.” Christian Science Monitor contributor and Rand senior engineer John Matsumura argues, “It would be difficult to find anyone arguing against the need for reflection in the decision to wage war, regardless of which tools humans use to fight their battles. However, there is a convincing base of evidence that robots are more likely to prevent slaughter than engage in it.”
