Existentialism and Afghanistan, Cyberwar in Cyberspace – Daily Intelligence

FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM

1. Recruiting and Hiring: Cybersecurity. Contributor Jillian Hamilton lays out the challenges and strategies in a buyer’s market: “In the long term, build up your bench where possible. Hiring entry-level cybersecurity professionals and providing the opportunity for them to gain the certifications and experience could turn out well for future contracts. Creating a cybersecurity team before contracts come in is a gamble that could payoff if the job environment and pay is good enough to keep employees from jumping ship once the necessary certifications are achieved.”

2. Women: Lean In or Career Capital? Also from J. Hamilton: “Building career capital is about differentiating and offering something that is valuable in return for a great job. It’s about finding a niche. Career capital provides leverage when it comes to job searching or promotions. It is a basic supply and demand concept.”

THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT

1. On Russia, E.U. and U.S. unifying. Reuters’ Martin Santana and Aleksandr Vasovic report, “The European Union agreed on a framework on Wednesday for its first sanctions on Russia since the Cold War, a stronger response to the Ukraine crisis than many expected and a mark of solidarity with Washington in the drive to make Moscow pay for seizing Crimea. . . . Obama and Yatseniuk outlined a potential diplomatic opening that could give Russians a greater voice in the disputed Crimean region, where a referendum is scheduled for Sunday on whether it should become part of Russia.” See also, the F-16s are landing: “A dozen more F-16s and 300 personnel based at Aviano Air Base, Italy, will augment the U.S. aviation detachment at Lask Air Base, Poland . . . . 12 F-16 Fighting Falcons and associated personnel from the 555th Fighter Squadron at Aviano are expected to arrive in Poland by the end of the week.”

2. Existentialism and Taliban: no longer a threat? DefenseNews.Com’s Paul McCleary reports, “The Taliban no longer presents an ‘existential threat’ to the Afghan government, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan told a congressional panel Wednesday morning . . . . Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford told the Senate Armed Services Committee that while the power of al-Qaida in Afghanistan has largely been blunted . . . . He also described an al-Qaida in Afghanistan that today is in ‘survival mode.’” Khaama.Com reports, “Taliban abduct election commission employees in Nangarhar,” and U.S.M.C. General Joe Dunford testifies “that operations in Afghanistan have been successful in preventing al-Qaida and other terror groups from using the nation as a haven and staging ground. But this progress is fragile, he added, and Afghanistan will need international trainers and some counterterrorism help to maintain progress.”

3. At it again—Israel and Palestinians. Aljazeera.Com reports, “UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called for restraint from all sides after escalating violence in the Gaza Strip and Israel. The Israeli military bombed 29 places in the besieged Palestinian territory, after at least 60 rockets were fired into southern Israel on Wednesday. The rocket fire, which Israeli police said resulted in no casualties, was claimed by the Islamic Jihad group and came a day after Israel killed three of its members in a Gaza air strike.”

4. Navy’s fuzzy math strategy. DefenseNews.Com’s Christopher P. Cavas explains, “You might have missed it, but virtually overnight the US Navy just grew, from 283 battle force ships to 291. A windfall purchase? A fast-track transfer? No, just a new way of counting the ships that carry out the Navy’s missions. . . . A big difference is in the way ships qualify as members of the battle force. Ships that do not regularly deploy overseas, for example, won’t be counted, but ships of the same type that do will be included. Some non-combatant ships, including hospital ships and high-speed ferries, will be counted, since they fulfill certain missions even while lacking in firepower.” [A.K.A., why I majored in English]

CONTRACT WATCH

1. Boeing’s Poseidon venture. DefenseMediaNetwork.Com’s Steven Hoarn reports, “The [Maritime Surveillance Aircraft] program is designed to provide a low-cost maritime surveillance aircraft for countries looking to fulfill search and rescue, anti-piracy patrol, and coastal and border security roles. The baseline configuration consists of an active electronically scanned array multimode radar (AESA), an electro/optical/infrared sensor, electronic support measures, a communications intelligence sensor, and an automated identification system. These technologies were originally developed for the P-8A, which is starting to deploy for the U.S. Navy.”

2. Aerospace leaders and future challenges. AviationWeek.Com’s Anthony L. Velocci notes, “Today’s CEOs must champion the right partnerships, properly prioritize company-funded research dollars, achieve the right balance between short- and long-term goals, figure out how to deliver more-affordable products to market faster, and be bolder in how they approach their innovation strategies. If any of the leaders in this day and age have a grand vision, not just for their own companies but also for the greater good of the industry, it is not apparent, so insular is the current crop of CEOs. We can only hope, because it is a vacuum that desperately needs filling. Nor is it clear how effective they will be in guiding their companies through the maze of competitive, operational and political challenges that will define the industry for years to come.”

TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY

1. C.I.A. vs Senate: Round 2. AP’s Eric Tucker and Mark Sherman report, “A dispute between the CIA and the Senate that flared into public view this week has no obvious path toward criminal prosecution and may be better resolved through political compromise than in a court system leery of stepping into government quarrels . . . . The matter has landed in the lap of the Justice Department, which has been asked to investigate whether laws were broken.”

2. N.S.A. Friended you. NextGov.Com’s Dustin Volz reports, “This just in from the Edward Snowden vault of government secrets: The National Security Agency is breaking into ‘potentially millions of computers worldwide’ and infecting them with malware ‘implants’ as part of an effort that is increasingly relying on automated systems and not human oversight, according to a by First Look Media report published Wednesday. And the NSA is pretending to be Facebook to get the job done.”

3. Cyberwar in Cyberspace. DefenseOne.Com contributor Bruce Schneier reports, “Electronic espionage is different today than it was in the pre-Internet days of the Cold War. Eavesdropping isn’t passive anymore. It’s not the electronic equivalent of sitting close to someone and overhearing a conversation. It’s not passively monitoring a communications circuit. It’s more likely to involve actively breaking into an adversary’s computer network—be it Chinese, Brazilian, or Belgian—and installing malicious software designed to take over that network. In other words, it’s hacking. Cyber-espionage is a form of cyber-attack. It’s an offensive action. It violates the sovereignty of another country, and we’re doing it with far too little consideration of its diplomatic and geopolitical costs.”

POTOMAC TWO-STEP

1. No [real] comment: “President Obama declined to take sides Wednesday in a simmering feud between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Senate over whether the agency spied on a congressional panel. . . . The White House has tried not to add fuel to the fire after Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., claimed the CIA monitored her committee’s investigation into the use of torture in interrogations under former President George W. Bush. At the same time, Brennan alleges that Senate staffers improperly accessed classified information and denies Feinstein’s accusations. White House press secretary Jay Carney said earlier Wednesday that officials were given a ‘heads up’ that the CIA was referring the spat to the Justice Department.”

2. Too-hard-to-do Congress: “Congress will fail to approve an aid package to Ukraine before a Sunday referendum in Crimea, where voters will decide whether to break away from Kiev’s government to join Vladimir Putin’s Russia. While a Senate panel on Wednesday approved legislation in a bipartisan vote, aides said differences between the House and Senate will prevent Congress from completing its work before lawmakers leave Washington on Friday for a weeklong recess. . . . Heather Conley, an expert from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said failing to pass the bill this week would be harmful.”

OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS

1. A must-read sobering tale about working in the trenches: “My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Poor.” Atlantic contributor Joseph William reminds career professionals how good we’ve really got it: “I had no idea what a modern retail job demanded. I didn’t realize the stamina that would be necessary, the extra, unpaid duties that would be tacked on, or the required disregard for one’s own self-esteem. I had landed in an alien environment obsessed with theft, where sitting down is all but forbidden, and loyalty is a one-sided proposition. For a paycheck that barely covered my expenses, I’d relinquish my privacy, making myself subject to constant searches.”

2. “Russian ruse, Ukrainian crisis.” Aljazeera.Com contributor Oleksandr Lakymenko argues, “Russian aggression against Ukraine can be detrimental not only to its sovereignty, but also to the stability of the Black Sea region and the whole of Europe. Therefore, containing Russia should be on top of political agendas across the continent.”

3. “Putin projects Russia’s unreal reality.” Reuters contributor Nina Khrushcheva argues, “Putin’s promise to restore Russian self-respect, for example, which had been shattered by the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the bitter loss of superpower status, has centered on bullying Europe. He is intent on cowing the continent into submissively accepting Russia’s sphere of ‘privileged interest’ in all the ‘near abroad’ states of the former Soviet Union.”