FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. NASA’s McSatellite. Contributor John Holst reports, “That’s right, the International Sun/Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) satellite is controlled right out of a McDonald’s restaurant in Mountain View, Calif. It’s actually an old McDonald’s building located in the NASA Ames Research Park right next to Moffett Field. . . . It’s not the first time McMoons has been used for space activities.”
2. CIA’s Capsule caper. Also from John Holst, “Some readers might remember there was a time when the Central Intelligence Agency accomplished amazing feats against other countries, instead of against American senators. Probably one of the more interesting CIA success stories is embodied in a declassified CIA journal entry. Believe it or not, the CIA ‘borrowed’ a Soviet space capsule for study, then returned it, before the Soviets even knew what was happening.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. National Guard to Ferguson. Reuters’ Ellen Wulfhorst reports from Ferguson, “Missouri’s governor said on Monday he would send the National Guard into the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson to restore calm after authorities forcibly dispersed a crowd protesting last week’s fatal shooting of an unarmed black teen by police. Gov. Jay Nixon signed an executive order deploying the U.S. state militia, saying demonstrators had thrown Molotov cocktails and shot at police as well as a civilian, a description of the night’s events diverging widely from some eyewitness accounts.” DoDBuzz.Com reports, “Congress to Review Military Equipment Sent to Police.”
2. Dam fight in Mosul. Aljazeera.Com reports, “Fierce fighting is raging around the Mosul Dam, Iraq’s largest dam, as Kurdish Peshmerga troops and Iraqi counter-terrorism forces try to recapture it from Islamic State fighters who seized it just over a week ago. . . . the forces had retaken the dam on Monday, backed by an air patrol. . . . On Sunday, the Kurdish military forces, known as Peshmerga, recaptured the town of Tel Skuf, about 15km east of the dam, as well as the towns of Sharafiya and Batnaya. Their advance was aided by US air strikes on Islamic State positions. The US central command said it had launched 14 raids on Sunday, to support Iraqi security forces and Kurdish defence forces to combat the Islamic State . . . .” Reuters reports, “Kurdish, Iraqi forces in control of Mosul dam.”
3. Obama Doctrine. DefenseNews.Com’s John Bennett and Paul McLeary report, “Obama administration officials have struggled during the president’s second term to describe the boss’ foreign policy vision, and how he views the use of US military force. But in recent weeks, a series of high-profile moves—along with a few quiet ones—have begun to link the puzzle pieces of what might be called Obama’s second-term foreign policy doctrine. . . . But if one looks closely at the global chess board and Obama’s recent moves, his new approach is taking shape.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. $288 million Third Party Logistics Follow-on Service Acquisition. NextGov.Com’s Bob Brewin reports, “The Air Force requires thousands of low-cost electronic and hardware commodity items to keep its fleet of aircraft flying and yesterday awarded eight companies contracts valued at $288 million to supply it with 3,000 separate items. Under the Third Party Logistics Follow-on Service Acquisition, vendors will source and supply the Air Force with commodity electronic equipment valued in the $20,000 or less range.”
2. $300 million P-8 parts—Boeing. DoDBuzz.Com’s Brendan McGarry reports, “Boeing Co. has landed a nearly $300 million contract with the U.S. Navy for parts needed to build another dozen P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft. The deal was announced by the Pentagon on Thursday and includes funding for so-called long-lead items to build and deliver 12 of the planes, including eight for the Navy and four for the government of Australia . . . . The award comes as the Chicago-based aerospace giant is cutting costs from its defense segment in anticipation of a downturn in U.S. military spending. Defense accounted for $33 billion – more than a third — of the company’s overall 2013 revenue of almost $87 billion . . . .”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Cyber Jobs and the Snowden effect. NextGov.Com’s Aliya Sternstein reports, “Revelations last year that the National Security Agency is collecting Americans’ telephone metadata soured some people’s opinions about the U.S. intelligence community, but they apparently haven’t affected the views of many computer security professionals. Anecdotal evidence suggests that leaks by Edward Snowden, the former systems administrator and contractor with the National Security Agency, have not hindered efforts to recruit or retain cyber staff at the three-letter agencies. Instead, the disclosures actually might have helped intelligence agencies attract computer aficionados by spotlighting the agencies’ bleeding edge technology.”
2. Meet Bill Evanina—Snowden’s sweep-up man. DefenseOne.Com contributor Charles Clark reports, “Tapped in May 2014 by James Clapper, director of the Office of National Intelligence, Evanina is now immersed in coordinating multi-agency efforts to mitigate the risk of foreign infiltration, assess damage from intelligence leaks and tighten the security clearance process. . . . Evanina debuts at a time when the administration is under new pressure to prevent internal spying by bad-actor employees. His team also helps U.S. industry fend off cyber attacks and anticipate military threats from emerging terrorist groups.”
3. Robot car ethics. Wired.Com’s Patrick Lin reports, “It’s generally better to harm fewer people than more, to have one person die instead of five. But the car manufacturer creates liability for itself in following that rule, sensible as it may be. Swerving the car directly results in that one person’s death: this is an act of killing. Had it done nothing, the five people would have died, but you would have killed them, not the car manufacturer which in that case would merely have let them die.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Super Supreme Court: “President Harry Truman said, ‘Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court, he ceases to be your friend.’ The Supreme Court is having trouble making friends of late, having one of the lowest approval ratings in Gallup’s 14-year history of measuring it. Traditionally one of the most popular branches of government, approval of the court now falls along strict party lines. With Congress’ approval rating also at a historic low, perhaps SCOTUS saw this coming. While the Supreme Court’s job is to interpret the Constitution and federal law, the cases the highest court chooses to accept often follow the ‘hot-button’ issues of the day. And the areas where SCOTUS has focused its attention over the years present a striking view of our nation’s history.”
2. High rolling Hillary: “Hillary Rodham Clinton likes to travel in style. She insists on staying in the ‘presidential suite’ of luxury hotels that she chooses anywhere in the world, including Las Vegas. She usually requires those who pay her six-figure fees for speeches to also provide a private jet for transportation — only a $39 million, 16-passenger Gulfstream G450 or larger will do. And she doesn’t travel alone, relying on an entourage of a couple of ‘travel aides,’ and a couple of advance staffers who check out her speech site in the days leading up to her appearance, much like a White House trip, according to her contract and supporting documents concerning her Oct. 13 speech at a University of Nevada, Las Vegas Foundation fundraiser.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. “On the UN and war in Gaza.” Aljazeera.Com’s senior political analyst Marwan Bishara argues, “It takes a lot of nerve for the UN Security Council to address another Israeli war on the Palestinians of Gaza as if it were between two equal partners and without recalling the bitter fact that it has let down Palestinian refugees for decades. As former Secretary General Kofi Annan argued, its failure to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and end decades of occupation will ‘continue to hurt the reputation of the United Nations and raise questions about its impartiality.’ More importantly, its failure continues to lead to more suffering and instability in Palestine and beyond.”
2. “Some Good News for Iraq.” USNews.Com contributor Andrew Reiter argues that “the transfer of power from al-Maliki to al-Abadi should be viewed as an important, but merely a small step forward in the quest for the greater internal unity and external support necessary to confront the Islamic State and eventually bring peace and stability to Iraq.”
3. “How Money Warps U.S. Foreign Policy.” DefenseOne.Com contributor Peter Beinart argues, “Foreign policy has always been more elite-driven, and more insulated from public opinion, than domestic policy. But today’s elite-mass gap is the largest in decades. And regardless of your foreign-policy perspective, that’s a problem for American democracy.
THE FUNNIES
1. Fore!
2. Militarization.
3. Then and Now.
