FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Reaching for the stars. Contributor John Holst explains, “Between Google’s grab of Skybox this year, and the latest selection of New Space companies for NASA’s Commercial Crew contract, the future seems to take on a somewhat rosy-ish tinge for the likes of SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and XCOR. What are the other opportunities New Space will be tackling to serve a nearly constantly connected customer base?”
2. National job watch. Contributor Tranette Ledford advises, “Major cities are always good spots for civilian jobs, but some lesser-targeted regions may hold better opportunities to technically skilled job seekers with a clearance. At least that’s what the numbers say. September’s tech job ads totaled more than 800,000 across the U.S. But four pockets had the largest year-over-year increase, and they aren’t the usual suspects. Take a look. . . .”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Terrorism goes Canadian. Reuters’ David Ljunggren and Leah Schnurr report from Ottawa, “Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed to redouble the country’s fight against ‘terrorist organizations’ abroad after a reported convert to Islam rampaged through parliament, shocking the usually tranquil capital city. Shortly after a gunman shot dead a soldier at the National War Memorial in central Ottawa on Wednesday morning, a man armed with a shotgun burst into the Center Block of Parliament, pursued by police. He died after dozens of shots rang out a few yards away from where Harper was talking to his legislators.” See also, “PM says shooting rampage was terrorism” and “Shooter identified.”
2. American “Soldiers of Fortune” joining Kurds. UPI.Com’s J. C. Finley reports, “Matson, a native of Sturtevant, Wisconsin, arrived in Syria last month via Iraq and quickly became the public face of the YPG. ‘Someone had to do it,’ he said, laughing. He is more serious in the widely publicized image of him clad in camouflage, a head scarf and carrying a weapon now appearing across YPG’s social media accounts. Although the public role ‘was thrown on me,’ Matson is quick to add he’s happy to play it because the media attention has ‘brought light to the situation here.’ Matson says American veterans are ‘outraged’ over the deteriorating security situation in Iraq.”
3. Blackhawks on Pacific Pathways in Asian pivot. DefenseNews.Com’s Joe Gould reports, “The US Army Stryker brigade set to begin exercises in Japan next week as part of its third stop in the Army’s Pacific Pathways rotation brought its own aviation assets to the venerable exercise for the first time. The Japanese and US military will train with four AH-64 Apaches, four UH-60 Black Hawks and three HH-60 Pave Hawks during scenarios that include an air assault mission, along with 23 Strykers . . . .”
4. Taliban gains in Afghanistan. LongWarJournal.Org’s Bill Roggio reports, “The Afghan Taliban took control of three districts, one in the province of Wardak which is just south of Kabul, and the other two in the northern province of Kunduz, that were heavily contested during the US troop surge that began in 2010 and ended in 2011. One of the districts was the scene of the Taliban’s shoot down of a US helicopter that resulted in the deaths of 31 special operations personnel, including 17 US Navy SEALs. . . . Sayyidabad in Wardak as well as the districts of Chahar Darah and Dasht-i-Archi in Kunduz province are under the Taliban’s thumb.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Refitting Army’s navy. DoDBuzz.Com’s Brendan McGarry reports, “The Army is gearing up to solicit proposals to replace the so-called Mike boats as part of a new acquisition program to buy three dozen craft called the Maneuver Support Vessel (Light), or MSV(L) . . . . The Army has already begun getting rid of some of its aging Mike boats. This summer, the government auctioned off one of the vessels docked at Fort Eustis, Virginia. The boat—which is 74 feet long, 21 feet wide and can carry as much as 80 tons, or more than an M1 Abrams tank—sold for slightly less than $43,000.”
2. Mad months—$103 billion in contracts. NextGov.Com’s Rebecca Carroll reports, “Nearly 40 percent of publicly disclosed fiscal 2014 federal contracts were awarded in October 2013 or September 2014—the first and last months of the fiscal year . . . . Awards in these two months alone had a value of $103 billion, or 38 percent of all publicly disclosed fiscal 2014 contracts . . . .”
3. Blackwater contractors guilty. WashingtonExaminer.Com’s Kelly Cohen reports, “Four former Blackwater security guards were found guilty Wednesday in the 2007 shootings of unarmed Iraqis. Originally hired for extra security for American diplomats around Afghanistan, the Blackwater USA private security guards killed 14 Iraqis and injured 18 more in Baghdad on Sept. 16, 2007. Nicholas Slatten was found guilty of first-degree murder. The three other guards—Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard—were found guilty of multiple counts of voluntary manslaughter, attempted manslaughter and gun chargers.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Graphene: the new old brain implant stuff. DefenseOne.Com’s Patrick Tucker reports, “Researchers from the University of Wisconsin, with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DARPA, have created a new type of brain chip made of graphene that could bring futuristic brain implants much closer to reality. If you haven’t heard of graphene, you aren’t alone. . . . But in its purest form, it’s been around for billions of years. Some military-related applications for brain chips include treating PTSD flashbacks or episodes the moment that they occur. Neural activity can clearly—and silently—communicate stress as well as other emotional states.”
2. PowerPoint’s back door to you. VentureBeat.Com’s Jordan Novet reports, “Microsoft’s ‘Security Response Center’ . . . highlighted a new PowerPoint bug that affects all supported versions of the Windows operating system (save for Windows Server 2003). But fear not: Microsoft has a temporary solution to the problem. ‘A cyberattacker could cause remote code execution if someone is tricked into opening a maliciously crafted PowerPoint document that contains an infected Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) file’ . . . . An attacker can receive the same user rights as the person currently using the system . . . .”
3. Food and Drug vulnerabilities. FierceGovernmentIT.Com’s Dibya Sakar reports, “Vulnerability testing of the Food and Drug Administration’s computer network found several deficiencies that could potentially be exploited by attackers, but auditors did not gain unauthorized access to the network . . . . The Health and Human Services’ inspector general performed the penetration testing from Oct. 21-Nov. 10, 2013. Several days before the test was done, the IG noted that a wide-scale cybersecurity breach involving an FDA system was detected, exposing sensitive data in 14,000 user accounts.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. New sport: Touch the White House: “A man jumped the White House fence on Wednesday evening and was attacked by Secret Service dogs before being arrested, a Secret Service spokesman said. ‘Dogs got him’ spokesman Edwin Donovan said, referring to the intruder. He identified the intruder as Dominic Adesanya, 23, of Bel Air, Maryland, and said he was unarmed at the time of his arrest. Video showed Secret Service agents surrounding the man on the north lawn of the White House, which was put on lockdown for about 90 minutes. The man punched one of the dogs that attacked him, as seen in the video.”
2. The importance of being Earnest II: “The White House got scientific Wednesday in trying to explain why question and answer sessions between President Obama and major donors are kept private. ‘I think [it’s] the Heisenberg Principle—the fact that someone observing something changes what is actually being observed,’ White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters. ‘And I think that’s what is in play when you have a relatively small group of individuals who are seeking to have a conversation with the president of the United States … in a relatively private setting.’ Not to get too geeky, but Earnest likely meant the Hawthorne effect, or the observer effect, which states that people change their behavior if they are being watched.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. Canada’s Innocence. Aljazeera.Com contributor Rex Brynen argues, “The aftermath of these attacks will preoccupy politics for many weeks. Security and intelligence officials will intensify their efforts to counter the threat. Provided that these remain relatively isolated and limited attacks by single, self-radicalised attackers, however, none of this will spark a major turning point in security or foreign policy. The Canada a year from now will not look all that different from the Canada of last week.”
2. “Why the world shouldn’t write off the Iraqi Army just yet.” Reuters contributor Michael O’Hanlon argues, “Despite all the disappointments and heartbreak over this decade, the potential for a successful U.S.-Iraqi allied effort to defeat this terrible ISIL organization is promising—and quite real. But Washington needs to move beyond the plateau that Abadi and Obama have been on and take the strategy to the next level. We can afford to be patient in achieving actual battlefield results—but there is also no time to lose in getting on with our assistance in Iraq’s preparations for the looming fight.”
3. “Women in Data Science Are Invisible. We Can Change That.” Wired.Com contributor Claudia Perlich proposes, “Our goal is a world where women leaders come easily to the mind of data scientists of both genders, and I no longer have to wonder whether I have been invited primarily because I am a woman. Obviously, we have a long way to go. But if those of us who have blazed the trail for women in data science continue to recruit and guide new members to our ranks, we can get there.”
THE FUNNIES
1. Stay calm.
2. Terror arrives.
3. Political virus.
