You’d better watch out, you’d better not cry – Daily Intelligence is taking a winter siesta. We’ll return to your regularly scheduled computer January 2. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Tuesday’s Top Ten, Farewell, Joe, and thanks.FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Cyberespionage. Contributor William Loveridge reports, “While North Korea is in the news now for its ‘cybervandalism,’ the U.S. Government is acutely aware of the extensive threat of cyber attacks. An annual report offers an analysis of foreign intelligence efforts. It has long been required reading for the FSO-set, but as cyber threats affecting the private sector increase it’s a good idea for everyone in the security community to know what form today’s computer-based attacks are taking.”
2. A day in the life . . . . Contributor Jillian Hamilton describes, “The finance world may be a lot of screen time with excel or financial programs and playing responder role to the changing whims of clients and program managers; however, it is a job where you should be able to expect a clear picture of your roles and responsibilities. Financial analysts need to be detail-oriented and problem solvers. Sometimes, searching through excel rows for the missing or incorrect number can be painful, but someone has to be responsible for ensuring financial accuracy.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. N. Korea internet crashes, recovers. AP’s Foster Klug and Hyung-Jin Kim report, “Key North Korean websites were back online Tuesday after a nearly 10-hour shutdown that followed a U.S. vow to respond to a crippling cyberattack on Sony Pictures that Washington blames on Pyongyang. It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the Internet stoppage in one of the least-wired and poorest countries in the world, but outside experts said it could be anything from a cyberattack to a simple power failure.”
2. ISIS staying power in Kobane. Christian Science Monitor’s Dominique Soguel reports from Suruc, Turkey, “US-led coalition airstrikes in Iraq have allowed the Iraqi Army, Kurdish peshmerga fighters, and their allies to reclaim territory lost to an Islamic State (IS) spring and summer offensive. But in the Syrian city of Kobane, where Syrian Kurds and their allies have been fighting IS forces with dogged determination since September with the support of airstrikes, the gains have been especially slow. Despite losing fighters by the hundreds, the IS has proved difficult to stamp out, maintaining a solid foothold in the frontier town.” See also from LongWarJournal.Org, “Islamic State routs Hezbollah Brigades unit north of Baghdad.”
3. Air Force test-range revitalization. DefenseNews.Com’s Aaron Mehta reports, “The Air Force began a major study into the future of its test-range infrastructure, one which could decide how the service runs its live-flight testing for the next 20 years. Ed Chupein, chief for Air Force ranges, airspace and operations sustainment, told Defense News that a review is underway to provide Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh with options on how to revitalize the training infrastructure.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Lockheed’s $308 million Taiwan win. MilitaryAerospace.Com Editor John Keller reports, “Aircraft radar experts at Lockheed Martin Corp. are building 144 active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar systems for a planned upgrade to Taiwanese F-16 jet fighters. Officials of the U.S. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, awarded a $308.3 million contract modification last week to the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics segment in Fort Worth, Texas, to install AESA radars on Taiwan’s F-16 aircraft, as well as one year of supplier support.”
2. Lockheed’s $28 million False Claims loss. GovExec.Com’s Charles S. Clark reports, “A defense contractor producing products and services for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan agreed on Friday to repay the government $27.5 million to settle overbilling charges brought under the False Claims Act. The Justice Department announced on Friday that Lockheed Martin Integrated Systems overbilled the Pentagon for work performed by employees who ‘lacked required job qualifications’ but whose work was billed at the rate for qualified ones, allegedly to inflate profits.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. CIA’s biometric conundrum. NextGov.Com contributor Aliya Sternstein reports, “Some tactics that CIA operatives use to avoid blowing their cover at airports could be foiled by one of the spy agency’s best surveillance tools: biometric identification. The growing use of digital fingerprint matching at European airports troubles Langley, according to January 2012 CIA guidelines for using fake IDs that Wikileaks released on Sunday.”
2. Online privacy in 2025. FierceGovernmentIT.Com’s Dibya Sarkar reports, “Slightly more than half of Internet experts polled by the Pew Internet Research Project said they don’t believe that a secure and trusted framework protecting online user privacy will be developed over the next decade. . . . Some respondents said people give up their privacy for convenience and services, while others said that definitions of ‘privacy’ and ‘freedom’ will change so much in 10 years that their meanings now won’t apply.”
3. Cashing-in on cybersecurity. VentureBeat.Com contributor Bob Ackerman reports, “The global security market was little more than a cottage industry in 2002, when it was an insular $3.5 billion market dominated by just five vendors. Fast-forward to today and there is — I estimate — $87 billion being spent in 2014, while that number should increase to $120 billion by 2017, according to AGC Partners. What’s more, venture investment in cybersecurity startups is red hot. In the second quarter of this year, security startups took in $767 million in financing, according to CB Insights. That’s more than any other quarter in recent history. In 2013, VCs bankrolled 230 security startups, and even more are getting funded this year. But not all security startups are created equal. . . .”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Opening Gitmo’s gates: “President Obama has long advocated closing the U.S. terrorist prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He likely would have done it long ago, had Congress not stopped him. Now, however, Obama is not in the mood to abide by anything Congress says. And he is again talking about closing Guantanamo. The result could be an ugly and protracted fight between the president and lawmakers of both parties. But it’s also possible Obama will avoid a conflict and simply use his executive authority to release a prisoner here, a prisoner there, until Guantanamo is very nearly empty — all done without any meaningful debate.”
2. Grimm ending: “Representative Michael G. Grimm, a Republican from Staten Island who was easily re-elected to his third term in Congress last month despite a pending federal indictment, has agreed to plead guilty to a single felony charge of tax fraud, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. . . . A guilty plea by the congressman, who has steadfastly maintained his innocence, would almost certainly put him under tremendous pressure to resign.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. “China will make 2015 year of missed opportunities.” Reuters contributor John Foley argues, “The penny is starting to drop for foreign investors in China. Two years into the leadership of President Xi Jinping, there’s little sign of the country opening, relaxing and rebalancing as outsiders expected. It’s likely that 2015 will be another year of missed opportunities.”
2. The blood price of Faustian bargains. Aljazeera.Com contributor Mirza Waheed argues, “One hundred and thirty-two children were massacred in Peshawar on what’s being termed one of the darkest days in Pakistan’s history. These are gruesome and brazen acts of mass murder carried out by men who speak proudly of the death tolls they score. Nothing more shocking has occurred in recent history. We ought to be more shocked, repulsed, than we are, so that those who can do something about it will do so.”
THE FUNNIES
