FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. Veterans working. Contributor Jennifer Cary reports, “Last week, the President’s Council on Veterans Employment announced that in FY 2014 the percentage of veteran new hires within the federal government hit an all-time high of 33.2 percent. This is up from 31 percent in FY 2013. It was the first time in the five years since the Veterans Employment Initiative was created that the number of veteran new hires increased in the same year that overall new hires also increased in the executive branch.”
2. Putting yourself out there. Contributor and barrister Sean Bigley advises, “A security clearance makes you a highly marketable commodity in today’s job market. Unfortunately, it can also make you a target for foreign intelligence services, criminals, and others who wish to harm our nation’s security. Given this dynamic, many security clearance applicants wonder how they can advertise their unique skill set – and cleared status – in a way that maximizes their allure to potential employers, but also avoids security risks. . . .”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Remembering Vietnam, and their Veterans. The Atlantic’s Alan Taylor shares, “Fifty years ago, in March 1965, 3,500 U.S. Marines landed in South Vietnam. They were the first American combat troops on the ground in a conflict that had been building for decades. The communist government of North Vietnam (backed by the Soviet Union and China) was locked in a battle with South Vietnam (supported by the United States) in a Cold War proxy fight. The U.S. had been providing aid and advisors to the South since the 1950s, slowly escalating operations to include bombing runs and ground troops. By 1968, more than 500,000 U.S. troops were in the country, fighting alongside South Vietnamese soldiers as they faced both a conventional army and a guerrilla force in unforgiving terrain.”
2. Women Rangers on the march. Defense One’s Molly O’Toole reports, “A dozen women have now qualified for the Army’s Ranger School, putting them one step closer to becoming the first females to complete one of the military’s most elite special operations training programs alongside men. Six servicewomen successfully passed the latest round of the Ranger Training Assessment Course, or RTAC, qualifying them for the first gender-integrated full Ranger Course beginning on April 20 . . . .”
3. Gathering intel on Russia. DoD Buzz’s Brendan McGarry reports, “The U.S. Army is working to glean intelligence on Russian military technology from the conflict between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces, American generals said. The Moscow-backed rebels are waging a hybrid war that includes the use of soft power such as disinformation and cyberattacks to hard power such as truck-mounted Grad rocket launchers . . . .”
4. Zulkifli bin Hir dead in the P.I. Reuters’ Julia Edwards reports, “The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Wednesday it has confirmed that Zulkifli bin Hir, one of its ‘most wanted terrorists,’ was killed in a raid in the Philippines in January. . . . The U.S. State Department had offered $5 million for the arrest of bin Hir, a Malaysian member of the al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiah militant group behind numerous bombing attacks in the Philippines.” See also, “Bali bomber Marwan dead, FBI confirms.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Decisions: Long Range Strike Bomber contract. Breaking Defense’s Colin Clark reports, “When the Pentagon picks the winner of the Long Range Strike Bomber (LRSB) contest in the next few months, it faces an interesting choice. It could give Lockheed Martin — which is doing the design work for the Boeing-Lockheed team — almost all of the country’s advanced stealth design work. Or it could maintain the status quo, in which the entire stealth bomber fleet is made by Northrop Grumman. It’s a really important competition, arguably more important for the industrial base and the American people than the incredibly painful and problem-plagued tanker program.”
2. Astronics wins $36 million sub radio contract. Military & Aerospace Electronics Editor John Keller reports, “Radio communications experts at Astronics Test Systems are building on-board systems that route signals and information among various antennas and communications systems aboard U.S. Navy submarines. Officials of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, R.I., announced a $36.4 million contract Wednesday to Astronics Test Systems Inc. in Irvine, Calif., to build Radio Frequency Distribution and Control Systems (RFDACS) for the Navy’s submarine fleet.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Oh, I’ve got a helmet! Washington Post’s Christian Davenport reports, “The F-35 Lightning II is one of the most complicated weapons systems ever developed, a sleek and stealthy fighter jet years in the making that is often called a flying computer because of its more than 8 million lines of code. The Joint Strike Fighter comes in three versions, including one that is designed to take off and land on an aircraft carrier and another that lands vertically, as if it were a helicopter. But to truly understand the most expensive weapons program in the history of the Pentagon, forget the plane for a minute. Consider the helmet.” See also from Easy Rider, “I’ve got a helmet.”
2. Google’s Robots with personality. Quartz’s Mike Murphy reports, “Whether or not we are headed toward a robot revolution, Google wants us to get comfortable with the next generation of robots. In a new patent awarded to the company today, Google outlines ways to download and customize the personality of a robot or computer. Google’s patent details a cloud-based system where a personality could be downloaded to a robot, in the same way one might download an app. A robot could hold multiple personalities for interacting with different people—with specific idiosyncrasies for each user—rather like a family computer having different accounts for each family member.”
3. Paget’s Patriotic Betrayal: a book review. National Review’s Sol Stern observes, “Paget relentlessly pursued the story for all those years in part because she felt personally damaged by the CIA operation. Fifty years ago she was an idealistic college student from Iowa who was active in student government on her campus. She then began attending NSA conventions, and after her husband became an officer of the student group, the young couple moved to Washington, D.C. As Paget recounts, one day, completely out of the blue, she was summoned to meet with someone who announced that he was her husband’s CIA case officer . . . .”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Yes, I will: No, I won’t. “The race for the Democratic nomination in the 2016 U.S. presidential election is turning into a battle of ideas between a woman who has not yet said she is running and another who insists she won’t. Hillary Clinton is expected to launch her White House bid later this month, while Elizabeth Warren, the senator known for her fiery anti-Wall Street rhetoric, repeated this week that she is not seeking the Democratic nomination.”
2. Sinking Hillary. “The Republican Party is upping the ante in its bid to stop Hillary Clinton. The GOP Thursday is set to launch an organized campaign to derail the presidential aspirations of President Obama’s former secretary of state and the likely Democratic presidential nominee in 2016. The effort will corral in one war room inside the Republican National Committee’s Washington headquarters operatives from across all RNC departments, including communications, digital, finance, political, and opposition research. Their mission is to sink Clinton.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. “Perils of the CIA’s reform and what Congress can do.” The Hill contributor Matteo Faini argues, “Congress should use its power of the purse to push for the strengthening of the cadre of analysts of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and for the transfer of some of the CIA’s analysts to the ODNI.”
2. “Remember, America’s Top Spy Says Iran Isn’t Trying to Build A Nuke.” Defense One contributor Michah Zenko argues, “[W]hile the world is focused on the nonproliferation requirements of a country with zero bombs, keep in mind the promises that remain unfulfilled from those countries with 9,835 of bombs, as well as the four countries that are nuclear outliers.” See also, “Options for the U.S. if Iran breaks a nuclear deal” and “Iran talks stretch into another day; deal seen close but elusive.”
3. “Why Cyber Defenders Are So Bad at Sharing Information.” Also from Defense One, contributor Robert Lee argues, “Making information sharing discussions more meaningful will require incentivizing the community, from the companies who manufacture the control systems to those organizations who operate them, to create and run systems that are capable of reporting and storing the technical data needed. It will also require the proper cultural mechanisms to share the meaningful data without facing penalties even beyond those that can be mitigated with legal immunity.”
THE FUNNIES
1. Foot fetish.
3. Secret Squirrel.
