FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
Staffing staffing companies. Editor Lindy Kyzer offers, “If you’ve kept staffing companies off of your list, you may be missing out on the best way to take your cleared career to the next level. TAD PGS offers global staffing solutions to the US Government, contractors, and integrators. . . . [W]hen you launch your career with TAD PGS, you’re working with a team of professionals who are experienced in everything from security clearance processing to helping you find a career in your niche field.”
Hitting the road, Jack. Contributor Jennifer Cary explains, “For most of us, traveling for work is a fun bonus. It doesn’t happen very often and when it does, it’s usually for a short period of time. However, there’s a group of people in the workforce who travel about 70-80 percent of the year for work. While these ‘road warriors’ benefit from a lot of travel perks and well paying jobs, they also have to perform a balancing act with their home lives. Do you think you have what it takes? Get the inside scoop from two road warriors and decide for yourself.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
China challenge: air and space. Reuters’ David Alexander reports, “China is mounting a serious effort to challenge U.S. military superiority in air and space, forcing the Pentagon to seek new technologies and systems to stay ahead of its rapidly developing rival, Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work said on Monday. The Pentagon’s chief operating officer, speaking to a group of military and civilian aerospace experts, said China was ‘quickly closing the technological gaps,’ developing radar-evading aircraft, advanced reconnaissance planes, sophisticated missiles and top-notch electronic warfare equipment.”
Tikrit after ISIS. AP’s Vivian Salama and Qassim Abdul-Zahra reports, “Iraqi forces, backed by Sunni fighters, Iranian-advised Shiite militias and U.S.-led airstrikes, retook the city on April 1. Tikrit’s capture marked Iraq’s biggest victory yet against the Islamic State group, which holds about a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria in its self-declared caliphate. The military later handed control of the city to a provincial police force, in a model it hopes to emulate in liberated areas across the country. It aims to have 13 police regiments patrolling cities and towns in the rest of Salahuddin province once the extremists have been driven out.”
Benghazi’s Ali Awni al Harzi killed in Mosul. The Long War Journal’s Thomas Joscelyn reports, “The Pentagon said today that Ali Awni al Harzi, a suspect in the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, was killed on June 15 by an American airstrike in Mosul, Iraq. The Defense Department describes al Harzi as a ‘person of interest’ in the Benghazi attack, adding that he ‘operated closely with multiple ISIL-associated extremists throughout North Africa and the Middle East.’” See also, “U.S. drones kill ISIS leader tied to 2012 Benghazi attack.”
Terror threat snapshot. Homeland Security News Wire reports, “House Homeland Security Committee chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) on Friday released a new Committee product called the Terror Threat Snapshot. McCall said the snapshot is a new, regular monthly feature which tracks ‘the escalating and grave threat environment’ facing the United States. The Terror Threat Snapshot will be kept up to date on the Committee’s Web site.” Review the Terror Threat Snapshot.
Women and Ranger School: AAR. Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe reports, “The heavily scrutinized assessment of women attending Army Ranger School could be nearing its end soon, and it comes with a dichotomy: senior service officials are laudatory of their efforts, while some of the women who washed out question whether they got a fair shake.”
Race and research: Gas! Gas! Gas! NPR’s Caitlin Dickerson reports, “All of the World War II experiments with mustard gas were done in secret and weren’t recorded on the subjects’ official military records. Most do not have proof of what they went through. They received no follow-up health care or monitoring of any kind. And they were sworn to secrecy about the tests under threat of dishonorable discharge and military prison time, leaving some unable to receive adequate medical treatment for their injuries, because they couldn’t tell doctors what happened to them.”
CONTRACT WATCH
Acquisition and simplicity cycles. Government Executive’s Katherine McIntire Peters’ interview with Dan Ward, author of The Simplicity Cycle: A field guide to making things better without making them worse: “We do have a natural taste for complexity. Part of it is that as designers, as engineers, as policy makers, complexity looks like work. . . . it takes a lot of skill and talent and discipline to produce something that’s simple, but a lot of times, when you finally arrive at that simple design, it doesn’t look like a lot of work was done. For self-preservation reasons, we go ahead and complexify things because that’s an easier sell.”
Kendall on the SASC, acquisition, and leadership. Breaking Defense’s Colin Clark reports, “Sen. John McCain’s push to boost the power of the four service chiefs to manage Pentagon weapons programs is coming at the ‘worst time’ and may well lead to more increased costs and busted schedules, the military’s acquisition chief, Frank Kendall . . . . ‘The thing that bothers me the most about the SASC bill is that it destroys my ability to lead.’”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
Internet vulnerability: hacker history and the story of L0pht. Washington Post’s Craig Timberg tells the tale: “The seven young men sitting before some of Capitol Hill’s most powerful lawmakers weren’t graduate students or junior analysts from some think tank. No, Space Rogue, Kingpin, Mudge and the others were hackers who had come from the mysterious environs of cyberspace to deliver a terrifying warning to the world. Your computers, they told the panel of senators in May 1998, are not safe — not the software, not the hardware, not the networks that link them together. The companies that build these things don’t care, the hackers continued, and they have no reason to care because failure costs them nothing. And the federal government has neither the skill nor the will to do anything about it.”
NSA hacks Kaspersky, and others. Wired’s Kim Zetter reports, “Now newly published documents released by Edward Snowden show that the NSA and its British counterpart, GCHQ, were years ahead of Israel and had engaged in a systematic campaign to target not only Kaspersky software but the software of other antivirus and security firms as far back as 2008.”
Drones, robots, and artificial intelligence. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports, “A typical drone combat air patrol, or CAP, is a lot more manpower-intensive than the term ‘unmanned aerial vehicle’ would suggest. In fact, as many as 150 people—from repairmen to image analysts—play some sort of role in every drone flight that takes place over Iraq and Syria. It’s a problem created by technology. Unfortunately, it’s not a problem that technology is going to solve any time soon, according to Steven K. Rogers, the senior scientist for automatic target recognition and sensor fusion at the Air Force Research Laboratory.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
Boehner backlash. “A key bloc of conservatives is laying plans to throttle legislation on the House floor and will meet privately this week to discuss a shake-up of GOP leadership. The group is irate at what one called a ‘culture of punishment’ that Speaker John Boehner’s leadership team has instituted against dissenting members — most recently the removal of Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) from a subcommittee chairmanship after he bucked Republican leaders on an important procedural vote.”
No regrets. “President Obama has no regrets about using the N-word to make a point during a recent discussion on race, the White House said Monday. ‘He does not,’ said White House press secretary Josh Earnest. ‘The president’s use of the word and the reason he used the word could not be more apparent.’ The president’s phrasing renewed a debate over who is allowed to use the word and when it’s appropriate to say.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
“How Vladimir Putin learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.” Reuters contributor John Lloyd argues, “Putin is rational, and he is using the threat rationally. He has decided that, since the beginning of his third presidential term in 2012, he must portray the West as a menacing force on Russia’s borders, a force that seeks to weaken the country’s government by encouraging a ‘fascist’ revolution in Ukraine and by supporting antipatriotic nongovernmental organizations, which work against the national interest within Russia itself. The strategy is not only rational; it works.”
“TPP’s Failure Wouldn’t Doom Washington’s Asia Strategy.” Defense One contributor Joshua Kurlantzick argues, “If the Obama administration and its successor follow through on the military promises of the rebalance, while altering the pivot to better reflect U.S. interests and values, America will remain a vital strategic actor in Asia, even if the TPP does not pass Congress.”
“No Dog in This Fight.” US News contributor Sarwar Kashmeri argues, “The truth is that what is taking place in the Middle East is a war to re-establish a balance of power in the region, by reorganizing the artificial borders created by Britain and France after World War I, which were set for their commercial interests. Today’s war will be fought by the citizens of the region and will take its own course, no matter what the United States does or does not do.”
