FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Hiring: FBI’s new cyber agents. Contributor Chandler Harris reports, “After the high-profile hack of Sony Pictures Entertainment, the FBI is now looking to hire ‘cyber special agents’ to help the agency in its cybersecurity efforts. . . . The FBI looks to hire up to 100 cyber agents during the first round of hiring. The hiring process can take up to a year and once a person is hired, he/she spends 19 weeks of training . . . When completed, new agents will be assigned to one of 56 field offices located throughout the United States . . . .”
2. Making 2015 the best year ever. Editor Lindy Kyzer offers, “If you want your year to be great, don’t just sit back and wait for good things to happen—a new job or promotion won’t fall in your lap, and you don’t wake up instantly happier because it’s 2015. Here are a few tips to help make 2015 your #BestYearEver.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Iran taking lead in ISIS fight. AP’s Hamza Hendawi and Qassim Abdul-Zahra report from Baghdad, “In the eyes of most Iraqis, their country’s best ally in the war against the Islamic State group is not the United States and the coalition air campaign against the militants. It’s Iran, which is credited with stopping the extremists’ march on Baghdad. Shiite, non-Arab Iran has effectively taken charge of Iraq’s defense against the Sunni radical group, meeting the Iraqi government’s need for immediate help on the ground.”
2. Boko Haram rocking Nigeria. Homeland Security News Wire reports, “Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist insurgency, has been gaining ground in the face of what Western security analysts consider an ineffective, even counterproductive, campaign by an incompetent Nigerian military weakened by corruption and lack of professionalism. The number of victims of Boko Haram’s brutal campaign is mounting exponentially, with the latest tally reaching 2,000 dead in and around the northeastern town of Baga, on the border of the Nigerian border with Chad.” See also, “Nigeria: two suspected child suicide bombers attack market.”
3. Fighting homegrown terrorism. Politico.Com’s Michael Crowley reports, “[A]fter a recent string of attacks on their fellow citizens by Islamic radicals, including Wednesday’s massacre in Paris by a pair of French nationals, critics complain that the plan has been halfheartedly implemented, produced bureaucratic turf fights, lacks funding, and does little to make Americans safer at a moment when the Islamic extremist message is more prevalent than ever. ‘I don’t think we have a strategy’ . . . .”
4. Afghanistan’s new cabinet. Khaama.Com reports, “The Government of National Unity on Monday announced the nominees of cabinet ministers. The list including 25 ministers and governor of Central Bank along with Director General of the Afghan Intelligence – National Directorate of Security (NDS). The nominees were announced by Abdul Salam Rahimi, the head of the office of administrative affairs in ARG Presidential Palace. The nominees include . . . .”
5. In detail: what to watch in 2015. DefenseNews.Com offers, “Despite all of the talk in the Pentagon and among the defense intelligentsia in Washington about the ‘new normal’—the present era of battling Islamic extremists while putting out security and humanitarian brushfires across the globe—there has really never been a ‘normal’ year when it comes to national security. And 2015 will be no different.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Acquisition funding offset: protecting tech. DoDBuzz.Com’s Kris Osborn reports, “Navy acquisition executive Sean Stackley said the Pentagon needs to ensure that it has an offset strategy to preserve funding for innovation as ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down and the military looks to the future. Making reference to past budget down turns following World War II and Vietnam, Stackley described offset strategies as necessary to avoid choking off developments under budget pressure and instrumental in ensuring that next-generation platforms don’t suffer by not having the advantage of technological superiority.”
2. Rush on radiation detectors predicted. MilitaryAerospace.Com Editor John Keller reports, “The military and security sectors are two of the fastest-expanding areas for radiation detection and attracting heavy investments . . . . One factor driving growth in the military and domestic security radiation-detect markets is the supposed increase in terrorist activity, and a need for radiation monitoring and control to help in confiscating illicit radioactive materials, maintaining tabs on emitted rays from known sources, and measuring radiation in the aftermath of terrorist activities . . . .”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Joint Multirole Program—beyond the Osprey. BreakingDefense.Com’s Richard Whittle reports, “Helicopters can take off and land most anywhere and hover, but the aerodynamics of rotors mean they don’t fly very fast. Fixed-wing planes can fly fast but need runways to take off and land and can’t hover. Designing a machine that can launch and return without a runway, fly fast and hover with ease proved impossible in powered flight’s first century, but the military wants its next generation of troop and cargo transports and gunships to do all of those things. . . . The Army and other services hope to breed new and phenomenally agile and speedy aircraft through the $350 million Joint Multirole (JMR) program, a technology demonstration under the Pentagon’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) initiative.”
2. Big data and terrorism. DefenseSystems.Com’s George Leopold reports, “The former head of the Israel Security Agency’s IT unit says big data and data analytics—something the U.S. military has been focusing on—have been widely used by the Israeli military and intelligence agencies to track down enemies of the Israeli state, including several senior Hamas leaders killed during the Israeli incursion into Gaza Strip last summer. ‘ am telling you with certainty that quite a few [dead] terrorists are looking at us from the sky owing to big data capabilities’ . . . .”
3. Risk intelligence and cyber-resiliency. SecurityWeek.Com contributor Jason Polancich explains, “Without long-term, strategic commitment to collecting, tracking, analyzing and evaluating data, it’s impossible to develop really effective long-term mitigation strategies that help doctors, nurses, hospitals, device and drug makers, as well as patients actually be safer over the long haul. So, you may be asking how does this all relate to cybersecurity? The answer is again simpler than you think. . . .”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Shaving Peaches: “Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham . . . released a joint statement Saturday calling it ‘outrageous that the highly confidential and law enforcement-sensitive recommendation of prosecutors to bring charges against General Petraeus was leaked to the New York Times.’ The FBI and Justice Department are recommending Attorney General Eric Holder indict Petraeus on felony charges for allegedly providing Paula Broadwell, his former mistress, access to classified documents while he was serving as CIA director. It will be up to Holder to decide whether to proceed with an indictment.”
2. Year of the Veto: “This could be the year of the veto for President Obama. The White House and congressional Republicans are already in a pitched battle, less than a week into the 114th Congress. Republicans are itching for a fight, eager to exploit their new control of the Senate to chip away at some of the president’s signature policy initiatives. They believe a flurry of vetoes could bolster their argument that it’s Obama who is the real obstructionist in Washington—not congressional Republicans. . . . The White House is eager to paint the GOP as hopelessly stuck on old issues, such as repealing ObamaCare. The administration wants to contrast a GOP fighting battles from the past with a forward-looking president pitching a middle class agenda.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. “Best defense of free speech: individual dignity.” Christian Science Monitor’s Editorial Board argues, “The rally in Paris was a message to all those who may believe their dignity can be diminished – by even a silly artistic expression, be it a drawing or a film. Your worth is a given.”
2. “Charlie Hebdo: ‘Us or them’” Aljazeera.Com contributor Rachel Shabi argues, “We—not just Muslim society, but our societies—are accountable. We, not just the fanatics that recruit to and commit mindless terror, are bound up in the causes and the context in a way that makes it not just insulting but actively counterproductive to single out Muslims as bearing sole responsibility both for the crimes and for their prevention. If we don’t own this terrible reality collectively, we won’t be able to find a way out of it collectively, either – and that means we won’t be able to find a way out of it at all.”
3. “’Charlie Hebdo’: High-impact, low-tech tactics add chilling dimension to attacks.” Reuters contributor Matthew Green argues, “There is always a choice as to how to respond. As the West has learned from the price it paid during a 13-year war in Afghanistan, launched within weeks of the collapse of the Twin Towers, it rarely pays to react in haste.”
THE FUNNIES
1. Homegrown.
2. Name change.
3. Oops.
