FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. 8,500 hot jobs for cleared professionals. Editor Lindy Kyzer reports, “ClearanceJobs is now home to nearly 8500 security cleared positions. With new jobs and opportunities added every day, there are positions in fields from finance to communications. But which industries offered the most opportunities in 2014? Here’s a round-up of the top job categories, as ranked by the number of positions listed. . . .”
2. Your SF-86: be exactly right (or exactly wrong). Contributor Andrew Levine reports, “There are a number of seemingly minor omissions that commonly appear on an applicant’s SF-86. Standing alone, they will rarely have a profound impact on the efficiency of your investigation. However, an accumulation of such omissions when completing the SF-86 could, at a minimum, substantially lengthen the personal interview. . . .”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. The details: attack on Charlie Hebdo. Homeland Security News Wire reports, “The two gunmen who attacked the offices of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo — Cherif Kouachi, 32, and his brother Said, 34 — are French citizens of Algerian origin. Cherif Kouachi has been involved in radical Islamic activities in France for over a decade, and served time in jail for his 2005 attempt to go to Iraq to join the Iraqi branch of al-Qaeda. In the last three years he was active in facilitating the travel of French Muslims to Syria to fight the Assad regime. . . .” See also from Quartz, “’We must continue to laugh,’” from Salon.Com, “Our thorny relationship with satire,” from Economist.Com, “Islam in Europe,” and from Reuters, “Hunt deepens for militant killers.”
2. Girding Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors (THAAD). DefenseOne.Com’s Marcus Weisgerber reports, “The Pentagon wants to extend the range of one of its missile interceptors designed to shoot down weapons launched by North Korea and Iran today so it could target super fast Russian and Chinese missiles of the future. U.S. defense giant Lockheed Martin has been quietly working on modifications to its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors, known as THAAD, that would allow the system to protect a wider areas, company officials revealed Wednesday. The upgrade would allow the interceptor to launch earlier giving it more time to take out an enemy missile.”
3. Deconstructing Dabiq: ISIS’ fight with AQ, and everyone else. LongWarJournal.Org’s Thomas Joscelyn reports, “Throughout much of their propaganda, the Islamic State’s jihadists have portrayed themselves as the true heirs of Osama bin Laden. For example, the group produced a series of videos entitled ‘The Establishment of the Islamic State.’ In the videos, which were published in English and other languages, Baghdadi’s group attempted to undermine al Qaeda’s current leadership by revisiting the words of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders, all of whom praised the Islamic State of Iraq before its expansion into Syria and rebranding as a ‘caliphate.’ [See LWJ report, Analysis: Al Qaeda attempts to undermine new Islamic State with old video of Osama bin Laden.]
4. Funding the fleet: the National Sea-Based Deterrence fund. DoDBuzz.Com’s Kris Osborn reports, “Congress has created a special fund to help the Navy build its next generation nuclear submarine fleet while rebuilding back to a 300-ship fleet, but Navy and Pentagon officials are now trying to find the dollars to supply that special funding line, said Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley. Called the National Sea-Based Deterrence fund, the new account is designed to protect funding to build 12 new Ohio Replace Program submarines from the Navy’s overall shipbuilding budget because Navy leaders and lawmakers have said the Navy can’t afford to build the new submarines and also reach the service’s goal of achieving a 306-ship Navy. In total, the Ohio Replacement program will consist of 12 submarines to begin deployments by 2031.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Making money saving energy: Energy Saving Performance Contracts (ESPC). FederalTimes.Com’s Andy Medici reports, “Under an ESPC, a vendor pays the upfront costs of energy-saving or water-saving retrofits in exchange for payments from energy cost savings over time. If the building doesn’t save energy, the contractor doesn’t get paid, which gives all parties the motivation to make sure the technologies pay off. ESPCs are an increasingly popular option for building upgrades and renewable energy, according to agency officials and energy contractors, who plan on investing hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few years.”
2. Robots under acquisition scrutiny. NationalDefenseMagazine.Org’s Sarah Sicard reports, “With tightening budgets and one high-profile program delayed by several years, ground robot acquisitions are coming under increasing congressional scrutiny . . . . The Navy is the executive agent in charge of procuring explosive ordnance disposal robots. After seven years of effort, it has failed to field replacements for its legacy systems and the commercial-off-the-shelf machines sped into the field during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Air Force officials announced in the summer of 2014 that they had run out of patience and were partially withdrawing from the program.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Access clones: stemming the tide. SecurityWeek.Com contributor Travis Greene explains, “Like their sci-fi counterpart, access clones are made with good intentions. The new business users want to become productive as quickly as possible and they need access to applications and information to do so. Access clones go unnoticed by the people in charge, while the well-intentioned people creating the clones don’t realize the potential problems they’ve created. But the risk is very real. . . .”
2. Pyongyang’s hacker army. WashingtonTimes.Com’s Guy Taylor reports, “U.S. intelligence agencies find themselves sorely limited in how to respond to North Korean hacking operations because of the authoritarian nation’s uniquely isolated position in the world, amid reports that Pyongyang is now employing a hacker army of as many as 6,000 cyberwarriors. . . . The Obama administration response leveled a slate of sanctions against North Korea last week, but any attempt by Washington to go farther, such as by launching counterhacking operations against North Korea, faces a vexing set of challenges. . . .”
3. Cybersecurity’s new normal. NextGov.Com’s Frank Konkel explains, “The Sony hack copied a multinational company’s financial documents, its employees’ personally identifiable information and years’ worth of embarrassing—and poorly written, it must be said—emails from high-level executives and released them all for the world to see. But for many cybersecurity observers, the real eye opener was how the hack illustrates today’s cyber landscape: It’s likely to get worse before it gets better. . . .”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. High noon: “Not wasting any time, new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Barack Obama are setting course for showdowns over health care, a big oil pipeline, immigration policy and financing of the agency that tries to protect the U.S. from terrorists. At the same time, both insist they are eager for compromise – if only the other side would give in.”
2. Cruz hitting on freshmen: “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) are competing for influence among the Senate’s 12 Republican freshmen, with the outcome potentially shaping the agenda for 2015 and beyond. Cruz has reached out to freshman Republicans, whom he helped in last year’s elections, in hopes they will join his effort to pressure Republican leaders to pursue what he calls a ‘bold agenda.’ ‘We should follow through on our commitment to provide big, bold positive ideas responding to the very real economic hardship that so many millions of Americans are feeling,’ he said. Cruz said he has targeted that message to the new freshman class, which comprises more than a fifth of the GOP’s 54-member majority.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. “Rebooting The Pak-Afghan Impasse.” Khaama.Com contributor S. Mubashir Noor argues, “Positioning itself as an energy and trade thoroughfare, [Pakistan] can facilitate trade between its material-rich (Iran/Afghanistan) and technology-rich(China/India) neighbors, and thereby help the entire regions reap the benefits of lower production costs and a bigger marketplace. The possibilities of a regional trading bloc with Pakistan as its fulcrum opens up a myriad of possibilities for regional prosperity as a whole. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif desires so, and may need to turn on the charm for his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi to bite. Perhaps a goodwill gesture allowing India a transit trade route to Afghanistan will melt the proverbial ice in everyone’s favor.”
2. “Europe must unite after Charlie Hebdo attack.” Christian Science Monitor’s Editorial Board argues, “To get on top of its many crises, Europe must reinforce its original constitution of moral and civic liberties. With challenges from outside and within, it can unite in renewed ‘self-understanding,’ as Siedentop states, and embrace the value of freedom that shapes a just and peaceful society.”
3. “Islamic civilisation is in Europe’s DNA.” Aljazeera.Com contributor Khaled Diab argues, “[T]he demonisation of minorities is what nurtures the truly threatening radicals in Europe’s midst; the far-right and neo-Nazis. Since the end of World War II, Western Europe has worked consciously to build and celebrate diversity. Despite its weaknesses and failings, Europe needs to cherish, build and strengthen its multicultural experiment.”
THE FUNNIES
1. Charlie Hebdo.
2. Je suis Charlie.
