Friday Finale, This Time Last Year, and Watch Brennan Live!
FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Work and life. Editor Lindy Kyzer reports, “Thanks to a new military program, some members of the Armed Forces will have the opportunity to . . . take a one-to-three year partially paid break-in-service to care for children, attend university or pursue another interest. . . . It’s just one example of an employer looking to make balancing work and family a little easier.”
2. Overseas move. Contributor Jennifer Cary offers, “Once you’ve accepted a job overseas, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of living abroad. The food! The culture! The travel opportunities! But before you can start eating authentic bratwursts or taking selfies in front of Big Ben, you have to plan out and execute an overseas move. Here are a few tips to make your move a little less cringeworthy and a little more organized. . . .”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Misery loves company: ISIS welcomes Boko Haram. AP’s Zeina Karam reports, “Islamic State militants have accepted a pledge of allegiance by the Nigerian-grown Boko Haram extremist group, according to a spokesman for the Islamic State movement. The development Thursday came as both groups – among the most ruthless in the world – are under increasing military pressure and have sustained setbacks on the battlefield.” See also, “Peshmerga continue Kirkuk push after evicting ISIS from strategic oilfields.”
2. Retaking Tikrit. Reuters’ Ahmed Rasheed and Dominic Evans report, “Iraqi security forces and militias fought their way into Saddam Hussein’s home city of Tikrit on Wednesday, advancing on two fronts in their biggest counter-offensive so far against Islamic State militants. . . . Army and militia fighters captured part of Tikrit’s northern Qadisiya district, the provincial governor said, while in the south of the Tigris river city a security officer said another force made a rapid push toward the center.” See also, “U.S. watching Tikrit blazes with concern as Iraqi fighters advance.”
3. Syria, Hezbollah, and Israel. Christian Science Monitor’s Nicholas Blanford reports, “The high casualties and the impact of multiple funerals across Shiite regions of Lebanon led some to predict that in coming to the aid of its ally, embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah had entered its ‘Vietnam’ – an exhausting conflict with no clear exit strategy that would erode its popular standing across the Middle East as a powerful foe of Israel. . . . Yet, nearly two years later, those predictions have not been borne out. In fact, despite incurring high casualties and the wrath of the region’s Sunnis, Hezbollah has acquired a set of new fighting skills in Syria.”
4. ISIS migration to Afghanistan. The Long War Journal contributor Ali Alfoneh reports, “The civil war in Syria risks exacerbating the sectarian and ethnic conflicts in geographically distant Afghanistan and Pakistan. The deaths of 62 Shiite Afghan nationals killed in combat in Syria since September 2013 testifies to that threat: there is every reason to expect surviving Shiite Afghan veterans of the civil war in Syria to relocate to Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight Sunni groups, including the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban, some of whose members also are present in Syria.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Navy’s next strike fighter. Defense News’ Christopher P. Cavas reports, “It’s been only two years since the US Navy quit buying F/A-18 Super Hornet strike fighters – part of a long-planned transition to the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter – but a confluence of events has led to the new possibility that more attack aircraft could be ordered from Boeing.”
2. Balancing Pentagon’s books. Breaking Defense’s Colin Clark reports, “The overall cost for Pentagon’s weapons buying is at the lowest it’s been a decade, says the Government Accountability Office in its respected annual assessment of the military’s major programs. But that overall result, which might seem to cheer exponents of acquisition reform and of smaller Pentagon budgets, contains two smaller points well worth noting. The F-35 program, the biggest in the Pentagon’s profile of 78 Major Defense Acquisition Programs (MDAP), increased in cost while the number of aircraft purchased declined. As the GAO report notes, this means the taxpayer ‘is paying more for the same amount of capability.’”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Cybersecurity bill inches forward. Wired’s Andy Greenberg reports, “The Senate Intelligence Committee passed the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA, by a vote of 14 to one Thursday afternoon. The bill, like the failed Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Protection Act that proceeded it, is designed to encourage the sharing of data between private companies and the government to prevent and respond to cybersecurity threats. But privacy critics have protested that CISA would create a legal framework for companies to more closely monitor internet users and share that data with government agencies.” See also, “Senate Intel panel passes cybersecurity bill.”
2. Getting rid of passwords, still. Homeland Security News Wire reports, “With hackers and cyber thieves running rampant online, efforts to create stronger online identity protection are leading major tech firms to invest in biometric security methods. . . . [F]irms are incorporating biometrics — the recognition of a user through fingerprint, iris, voice, or facial scans — to stay ahead in a competitive industry.
3. Hackproofing drones. Defense One contributor Aliya Sternstein reports, “An unhackable Boeing Little Bird unmanned aircraft should be in flight around the end of 2017 . . . . Right now, defense industry programmers are rewriting software on the helicopter drone to encapsulate its communications computer. That way, no outsiders can steer the unmanned aerial vehicle to strike, say, civilians, or tamper with surveillance video to mask adversary targets.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. .20 Tolerance Policy: “A Secret Service agent allegedly involved in a driving accident after drinking said last year that the agency had a ‘zero tolerance’ policy toward alcohol misuse and misconduct. George Ogilvie . . . made his comments [last year] after incidents in which one agent passed out drunk in a Dutch hotel and another crashed a car in Florida. Ogilvie said then that the Secret Service ‘maintains a zero tolerance policy regarding incidents of misconduct and continues to evaluate the best human capital practices and policies for the workforce’ and was reassigning staff ‘after two recent incidents of misconduct.’ . . . Now Ogilvie and agent Mark Connolly, who hit a White House barrier, have been reassigned to non-supervisory and non-protective roles.”
2. Cotton picking: “As a Republican-led effort to warn Tehran that the next U.S. president likely won’t honor any nuclear deal that lacks congressional approval has yielded little new news since the warning was first sent Monday, newsrooms across the country have since turned their attention to the man behind the GOP’s message to Iran: Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. “How the CIA can get from spy to cyberspy.” Los Angeles Times contributor Jane Harman argues, “Brennan deserves credit for overhauling the CIA to become more nimble and more ready to meet these threats on this digital front. But as cyber competence becomes part of the CIA’s mission, friends of the agency should ask tough, constructive questions — to make certain that the human and digital worlds are being totally integrated.”
2. “Is It Time for a Counterinsurgency Approach to the Cyber War Against ISIS?” Defense One contributor David Fidier argues, “Such a campaign will not be the decisive factor in defeating ISIS, but ISIS’ abuse of social media makes imperative the need to harness the current proliferation of data, findings, and ideas into a more organized strategic undertaking aimed at actively defending cyberspace against ISIS extremism.” See also, “Weighing the pros, cons of blocking ISIS’s access to social media.”
3. “Should the Kurds be worried about Iran’s involvement in Iraq?” Rudaw’s Ayub Nuri argues, “To deal with the post-ISIS Baghdad, the Kurds must mark their new borders, keep Kirkuk and all areas they won in the recent conflict and never put an inch of Kurdish territory in any negotiation plan with Baghdad.”
THE FUNNIES
1. Strike three.
2. Fence climber.
3. Delete.
