FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Reputations and resumes. Editor Lindy Kyzer offers, “Your professional reputation is incredibly valuable. And whether you like it or not, every statement you make online contributes to that reputation. Even the ones you intend to just be among friends. Every post is just one share away from being seen by your employer or a recruiter. That’s just one of the reasons why I post less on social media sites the older I get—it’s not that I don’t see the value in those channels, it’s just that I use them for a more specific purpose.”
2. First impressions. Also from Editor Lindy Kyzer, “The first two weeks on a job can often feel like a waste. If you work in a government office, you probably spend at least a week waiting for the right access and may not even be able to get to the real ‘work’ for another week. But keep in mind how critical this time is—it’s when you set cultural expectations and provide your boss and coworkers the most insight into the personality of the person hired. Be diligent, be yourself, and be careful.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. The world v. ISIS. AP’s Lara Lakes and John-Thor Dahlburg report, “Nearly a year after the Islamic State overran key cities in western Iraq, diplomats from more than 60 counties and international organizations gathered in Brussels to plot a way forward against what has since become one of the world’s worst terror threats. The mostly Sunni Muslim insurgency now stretches across much of northern Iraq and Syria, and has attracted thousands of foreign fighters from around the world, including Europe. Its elusive leadership is flush with financial support from illicit donations and black-market oil sales.”
2. Profile Ashton Carter. AP’s Robert Burns reports, “No household name, Ashton Carter has earned his stripes in the national security trenches the quiet way. For decades he has toiled as a defense thinker and strategist, nuclear expert, three-time Pentagon executive, budget guru and academician. He never served in the military or in Congress, unlike many defense secretaries . . . . But he spent a lot of time with troops during his 2011-2013 stint as deputy defense secretary and has built relationships with an entire generation of military leaders during his years in the Pentagon.” See also, “Pentagon Won’t Confirm Ashton Carter is Next Defense Secretary.”
3. Iraqi-Kurd compromise. Christian Science Monitor’s Dan Murphy reports, “Iraq’s central government appears to have settled a long-running dispute over sharing oil revenue with the country’s autonomous Kurdish region, a rare and long-awaited sign of compromise as the country continues to struggle to retake territory lost to the Islamic State over the summer. . . . The oil deal with the Kurds is being described as a temporary one, and there are significant hurdles to making the current arrangement permanent.”
4. Defense Bill taking shape. AP’s Donna Cassata reports, “House and Senate negotiators have reached agreement on a $585 billion defense policy bill that provides funds to expand the U.S. mission in Iraq to counter Islamic State militants and gives the military the authority to train moderate Syrian forces. The overall legislation endorses President Barack Obama’s latest request to Congress in the 4-month-old war against Islamic extremists who brutally rule large sections of Iraq and Syria. Obama sought billions for the stepped-up operation and the dispatch of up to 1,500 more American troops; the bill provides $5 billion.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Improving Pentagon procurement. Washington Post’s Christian Davenport reports, “[K]ey members of Congress, the Pentagon and industry all seem to be aligned, at least for the moment. And the dense and tedious topic of acquisition reform has become a hot issue in Washington, especially as many believe defense spending will continue to be tightened. In its report introduction, the NDIA . . . ‘believes that the conditions that have strongly resisted transformation of the acquisition process may be more susceptible to change today than at any time in the recent past.’”
2. Defense acquisition reforms. GovExec.Com’s Charles S. Clark reports, “With new chairmen on deck at both the House and Senate Armed Services panels, the National Defense Industrial Association on Tuesday released detailed recommendations for streamlining the Pentagon’s weapons buying process to curb waste, upgrade the acquisition workforce and take better advantage of industry innovation. . . .”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Ashton Carter—Miltech’s best friend. Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe explains, “The man President Obama is expected to choose to be the next secretary of defense has a long history at the Pentagon, having served in senior positions there for nearly five years. But one of his specialties is particularly timely: Ashton B. Carter is considered one of the country’s top administrators and students of military technology.” See also, “Ash Carter Tapped as Next Defense Secretary.”
2. DARPA’s Transparent Computing (TC) initiative. NetworkWorld.Com’s Michael Cooney reports, “High-end cybercriminals count on the fact that modern-day enterprise computer systems tend to be intricate and complicated. So sophisticated and dense that they let few people or other systems gain any significant visibility into their real machinery and software. . . . ‘TC will construct an enterprise-wide Information Plane that creates, propagates, and reasons about metadata associated with the computation. . . . TC will enable the prompt detection of . . . cyber threats, and allow complete root cause analysis and damage assessment once adversary activity is identified.’” See also, “DARPA working to reduce IT vulnerabilities in complex military systems” and “Sony Pictures struggles to recover eight days after cyber attack.”
3. Hawkings, Intel, SwiftKey, and Assistive Context Aware Toolkit. VentureBeat.Com’s Paul Sawers reports, “A team of researchers has been working in tandem with Hawking for the past three years to develop the Assistive Context Aware Toolkit (ACAT). The new interface apparently enables Hawking to type twice as fast, with an estimated tenfold increase in other tasks, such as browsing the Web and managing emails and documents. . . . With SwiftKey integrated, the system can learn from Hawking and predict the characters and words he plans to type next based on historical patterns, with this data funneled through to his speech synthesizer. SwiftKey has also tapped Hawking’s historical works (not all of which have been publicly published) to help it more accurately predict his next words in this bespoke version of the software.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Spot o’ tea, governor? “Tea Party Republicans who led the charge into a 16-day government shutdown last year are now taking a more pragmatic approach as they weigh options how to fight President Barack Obama’s immigration order. Pushed by their dissident wing, Republicans blocked government funding in September 2013 in a bid to stop Obama’s healthcare reform law, but now numerous Tea Party members appear reluctant to take the battle over immigration that far. . . . more subdued rhetoric suggests they have little appetite for a repeat of what one conservative Republican described as ‘an epic battle’ that pitted Washington versus America.’”
2. Petraeus problem: “Sen. John McCain is demanding answers regarding an ongoing FBI investigation of former CIA Director David Petraeus, suggesting the agency is dragging its feet and unfairly leaving the Congress in the dark. In a letter sent Tuesday to Attorney General Eric Holder, McCain says he is concerned a probe surrounding an alleged extramarital affair by Petraeus apparently remains unresolved after almost two years and that the only information that has come to light is through anonymous leaks within the intelligence community.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. “Afghanistan at crucial juncture.” Aljazeera.Com contributor Shashank Joshi argues, “Although the presence of US forces provides a safety net throughout next year, things look more precarious after that. International funding commitments for Afghanistan currently run to 2017, but that timeline had assumed the insurgency would lose steam by then, allowing ANSF to slim down. If that isn’t possible, the annual $4-6bn bill for the security forces is simply unsustainable.”
2. “How Ukraine’s arsenal matches up against the Russian-backed separatists’.” Reuters contributor Robert Beckhusen explains, “[T]he question is whether the outnumbered but heavily armed separatists have enough weapons to push the Ukrainian army farther back—without support from a full-blown Russian invasion. If the answer is no, the result could be stalemate.”
3. “As Sykes-Picot unravels, a chance for Kurdish unity and a global energy source.” Rudaw.Net contributor Ako Mohammed argues, “The unpublicized growing relations between the Kurdistan Region and Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), especially in economic ties, are a lot better than what is publicized. This is interesting and good news for those who care about strengthening political and economic relations between the different parts of Kurdistan.”
THE FUNNIES
1. Thin ice of life.
3. Pyramid scheme.
