Friday Finale and This Time Last Year
FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Screening screeners. Contributor Sean Bigley reports, “With the number of people employed at large airports, it would be all but impossible to require all airport employees to undergo the same degree of physical screening to which the TSA subjects passengers. There is, however, another option: more intensive federally-mandated background investigations.”
2. Cleared job watch: 8,500 hot cleared spots. 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. . . .”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Europe’s slumbering terror. AP’s Gregory Katz reports from London, “The military-style attack in Paris has made clear that Europe faces an evolving, ever-more complex terror threat no longer dominated by a few big players. It’s not just al-Qaida, or Islamic State. It’s not just the disciples of some fiery, hate-filled preachers. Instead, security experts say, it’s now an Internet-driven, generalized rage against Western society that can burst into the open at any time – with a slaughter in Paris, an attack on a Jewish Museum in Belgium, or the slaying of a soldier in the streets of London.”
2. China’s defense budget boom. AviationWeek.Com’s Richard D. Fisher Jr. reports, “Spending on China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) can be expected to continue to grow at a double-digit annual pace in 2015, despite a slight economic cooling in 2014 that saw the nation miss its official goal of 7.5% growth in gross domestic product, and expectations that growth could fall to 7% in 2015. Official defense spending figures announced in March 2014 showed a 12.2% increase over 2013, to 808 billion yuan ($132 billion). Assuming at least 10% growth in 2015 this figure could reach 888 billion yuan—about $145 billion. However, based on previous U.S. Defense Department estimates, actual defense spending for 2015 could exceed $175 billion.” See also, “US Closes Bases In Western Europe, Builds Up In East.”
3. The French connection in Yemen. LongWarJournal.Org’s Thomas Joscelyn reports, “One of the two brothers suspected of attacking the offices of Charlie Hebdo traveled to Yemen, where he likely received training in a camp run by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Said Kouachi is believed to have traveled Yemen in 2011, according to multiple press outlets. . . . Said trained for ‘a few months’ on small arms. . . . it ‘is also possible Said was trained in bomb making, a common jihadist training in Yemen.’ Video footage of the attack made it clear early on that the attackers had received training.” See also, “Terrorists who attacked French magazine displayed professional training.”
4. Afghanistan’s heroin epidemic. Washington Post’s Pamela Constable reports from Kabul, “The principal causes of this epidemic . . . are rampant unemployment, the return of addicted workers from wartime exile in Iran or Pakistan, and bumper harvests of opium poppies. Despite years of costly international efforts to curb the traditional Afghan crop, led by the U.S. government, it is thriving more than ever. According to U.S. officials, a record 520,000 acres of land were used to grow poppies in 2013. . . . Although the number of addicts has soared, there is still very little help available for those who want to quit.”
5. Stop, look . . . . Now, what were we talking about?
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Top ten federal contracting categories. GovExec.Com’s Erik Katz reports, “[C]ategory management will provide ‘a new and transparent view of the fragmented federal acquisition landscape that will help drive the government to buy and act as one.’ Ultimately, they expect the changes to lead to more informed decision making and, in turn, dramatic savings for agencies and taxpayers. The categories below, listed by amount spent across government, cost agencies $277 billion in fiscal 2013. . . .”
2. Hellfire—Lockheed’s hot tamale. MilitarAerospace.Com Editor John Keller reports, “U.S. Army anti-armor missile experts are ordering a couple of thousand U.S.-made Hellfire tactical missiles for the Army, as well as for the governments of Australia, Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Indonesia, Egypt, and Lebanon. . . . [T]wo contracts to Hellfire Systems LLC in Orlando, Fla., [will] produce 2,232 various versions of the Hellfire air-to-ground missile. In a $150 million contract announced in December, the Army is asking Hellfire Systems to build 2,109 Hellfire II missile models AGM-114R, AGM-114R-3, AGM-114P4-A, training guided missile TGM M36E7, and air-training-missile ATM-114Q-6.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Intelligence, contracting, and compromise. DefenseOne.Com contributor Michael German reports, “Not only do secret programs suffer from an obvious lack of transparency, but since 9/11, the United States has drastically expanded and changed the way it conducts intelligence, defense and homeland security operations. That growth, without transparency, threatens not just the American taxpayers’ bottom line, but ultimately our national security. Nowhere is this risk more apparent than in the government’s outsourcing of sensitive national security and intelligence operations to private contractors, whose share of the intelligence budget has reached up to 70 percent.”
2. Economy of cybersecurity. NextGov.Com’s Aliya Sternstein reports, “Despite paying $59 billion for data protections since fiscal 2010, the federal government couldn’t stave off hacks against the White House, State Department, Army and dozens of other agencies. Across-the-board funding cuts last year hit cyber budgets, but the total tab, $10.3 billion, still more than doubles the $4.1 billion industry reportedly spent on computer security. And we all know those corporate expenditures did little to prevent data breaches at Sony, Home Depot and almost every other company, if you count the undetected compromises. The apparent futility of cyber spending does not bode well for the American population’s online security.”
3. Cyberattack gets physical. Wired.Com’s Kim Zetter reports, “Amid all the noise the Sony hack generated over the holidays, a far more troubling cyber attack was largely lost in the chaos. Unless you follow security news closely, you likely missed it. . . . . a German report released just before Christmas [announced] that hackers had struck an unnamed steel mill in Germany. They did so by manipulating and disrupting control systems to such a degree that a blast furnace could not be properly shut down, resulting in ‘massive’—though unspecified—damage. This is only the second confirmed case in which a wholly digital attack caused physical destruction of equipment. The first case, of course, was Stuxnet . . . .”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Oligarchy anyone? “The numbers . . . paint the most comprehensive picture to date of an electoral landscape in which the financial balance has tilted dramatically to the ultra-rich. They have taken advantage of a spate of recent federal court rulings, regulatory decisions and feeble or bumbling oversight to spend ever-greater sums in politics—sometimes raising questions about whether their bounty is being well spent. Yet their expanded giving power in 2014 was all the more stark, coming against a backdrop of what appears to be a surprising decline in the number of regular Americans contributing to campaigns . . . .”
2. Disciplining the children: “Carrots versus sticks. Honey versus vinegar. . . . Republican leaders of the House and Senate have a choice as to how to manage their renegade right wing . . . . In the House, Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio meted out retribution for two party rebels who voted against him for a third term as speaker . . . . In the Senate, however, two tea party darlings who last month had seriously crossed incoming Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky received no such reprimand when committee assignments were announced Wednesday evening. They were simply reassigned to their previous committees . . . . The different approaches are not so much a reflection on the leaders, but on the culture and politics of their institutions.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. “Muslims in the news only when they’re behind the gun.” Aljazeera.Com contributor Khaled A. Beydoun argues, “French Islamophobia stands to become far more severe and strident. The conflation of the terrorist’s acts with France’s Muslim population, from the perspective of hatemongers, holds the latter vicariously liable. This connection, that links three deviant actors with an entire faith and millions of disconnected citizens, will fuel rabid backlash against Muslims in France, and more than likely, claim additional victims.”
2. “Will France fall into the trap of pitting ‘Islamism’ vs. ‘Nativism?’” Reuters contributor Carlo Invernizzi Accetti argues, “The only way to answer is the attack on Charlie Hebdo to stand by the values that the French Republic supposedly embodies—treat these gunmen for what they are: dangerous criminals who need to be brought before the justice system for what they have done.”
3. “Am I The Only Techie Against Net Neutrality?” Forbes.Com contributor Joshua Steimle argues, “Governments cannot move fast enough to effectively regulate technology companies because by the time they move, the technology has changed and the debate is irrelevant.”
THE FUNNIES
1. Operative words.
2. Damn critics.
