FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. News from the other worldly cyberspace. Contributor Michelle Kincaid hops through the looking glass and translates the binary, and things aren’t looking good in cyberland. 01001101 01101001 01100011 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01100101 00100000 01001011 01101001 01101110 01100011 01100001 01101001 01100100 (that’s binary for Michelle Kincaid. Duh.)
2. Want a job? Just make sure the C-word is in your resume (cyber, cyber!). Put ClearanceJobs.Com Job Post on your desktop. Thirteen new jobs posted this morning by 0400, and that on top of some 100 jobs posted on 1 July. Let’s get to it.
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Leave, but leave all that crap here. LongWarJournal.Com’s Bill Roggio reports, “The Taliban claimed credit for today’s early morning suicide assault that targeted a logistics company in Kabul that specializes “retrograde” operations that aid Western militaries in withdrawing from Afghanistan. A four man suicide assault team attacked a logistic base run by Supreme in the Pul-i-Charkhi area of Kabul early this morning, Kabul’s chief of police told TOLONews.”
2. Budget cuts infect SecDef rhetoric. Amaani Lyle of American Forces Press Service reports that during his visit to the Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station in Colorado, SecDef Hagel explained (apparently talking to himself as much as his audience), “’It really matters little how much money you have in the budget or how much technology you have – if you don’t have the right people, you don’t have much.” And, if you have all the right people and no money, well, you still don’t have much, except some really good disgruntled people. Someone, please get Hagel a publicist.
3. Maybe that was the plan: turn ‘em against each other until they implode. Reuters’ Special Report “Return to Baghdad, epicenter of Islam’s growing divide” by Samia Nakhoul remembers Baghdad, April 2003, and provides his detailed update from inside Iraq: “Iraq is broken, its society splintered. Sunni and Shi’ite Iraqis have resumed the gruesome sectarian violence touched off by the invasion. The U.S. occupation, sold as a way to end Saddam’s brutal dictatorship, end the threat of weapons of mass destruction, and usher in peace and democracy, instead fuelled longstanding hatreds between the two rival branches of Islam – first in Iraq and now across the region.” Oops.
4. Put your money where your downed pilots are. DefenseNews.Com’s Marcus Weisgerber stays on the Air Force’s plan to re-organize its CSAR mission. Lawmakers, however, are questioning the wisdom of the proposal: “A group of six US senators and three House members are expressing concerns to senior Pentagon leadership of an internal Air Force proposal to change the way it performs the combat search-and-rescue mission, calling the plan on the table unsuitable from a budgetary and operational standpoint. While the move has not been finalized within the Air Force, the lawmakers criticized Air Force Special Operations Command’s proposal to absorb the CSAR mission from Air Combat Command and use a mix of Bell-Boeing CV-22 Ospreys and Sikorsky HH-60 helicopters. The mission is currently conducted by ACC using only HH-60 Pave Hawks. . . . AFSOC official argue that using a mix of CV-22s and HH-60s could save the Air Force more than $3 billion between 2015 and 2025.”
5. POTUS calls Morsi. AP’s Nedra Pickler reports, “Obama also told Morsi he’s particularly concerned about violence in the demonstrations, especially sexual assaults against women.” A White House statement said, “Obama told Morsi that the United States is committed to the democratic process in Egypt and does not support any single party or group. The statement also said Obama underscored to Morsi that the current crisis can only be resolved through a political process.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. DIA goes Turbo-Tax (IRS to follow). NextGov.Com reports on the Defense Intelligence Agency’s search for “simple, TurboTax-like software to provide ‘cradle to grave acquisition support.’ The Virginia Contracting Activity, which runs DIA procurements, said it wanted a knowledge-based system modeled on TurboTax to help manage acquisitions . . . . Eventually the software should support the entire intelligence community – including the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and the FBI – ‘to consolidate our limited and dwindling resources with the added benefit of improving support to all our supported customers’ DIA said.”
2. Don’t fear the Reaper. U.S. prepared to sell to France. FlightGlobal.Com’s Dave Majumdar reported late last week, “The Pentagon notified the US Congress on 27 June of a possible foreign military sale to France of 16 General Atomics Aeronautical Systems MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft and associate accoutrements for an estimated cost of $1.5 billion. ‘France requests these capabilities to provide for the defense of its deployed troops, regional security, and interoperability with the US,’ says the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA). ‘The proposed sale will improve France’s capability to meet current and future threats by providing improved ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] coverage that promotes increased battlefield situational awareness, anticipates enemy intent, augments combat search and rescue, and provides ground troop support.’” More cowbell.
3. Galois Inc. wins $8 million contract: “Galois Inc., Portland, Ore., has been awarded an $8,147,278 contract for advanced multi-integration sensor engineering reports. The scope of this effort is to research and develop automated techniques by which mission planners can design and build robust cyber warfare plans using intuitive graphical interfaces, and develop tools that automatically synthesize such plans into fully detailed, executable missions.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. I spy. You spy. He, she, or it spies. AP Intelligence writer Kim Dozier reports on POTUS’ answer to EU outrage: “President Barack Obama had a simple answer to European outrage over new allegations that the U.S. spies on its allies: The Europeans do it too.”
2. Honoree conspicuously absent from IoP awards. The Independent reports that “Sir John Pendry, pioneer of the ‘invisibility cloak’, wins top Institute of Physics honour”: “In a citation for the award the IoP commended Sir John Pendry’s work on low energy diffraction and the theory of surfaces but said that it was his work on a ‘cloak of invisibility’ that had ‘the greatest impact scientifically and certainly on the public imagination.’ It goes on to state that the new class of materials ‘expand massively the material parameters available throughout the electromagnetic spectrum,’ and notes that the invention of the cloak has attracted worldwide public interest.” Strangely, Sir Pendry was not present for the award. (Oh, sorry, he was there. I didn’t see him under his Cloak of Invisibility.)
3. Unification of Church and State. TheDailyBeast.Com’s Miranda “Rights” Green reports on Daniel Ellsberg’s CREDO Action sponsored movement : “Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg is calling for a new Church Committee to probe the ‘abuses of American intelligence agencies’ and ‘restore the protections in the Bill of Rights.’” Says Ellsberg, “‘I’m hoping that we will see public pressure successful in causing Congress to name a select committee investigating the potential full scale of surveillance by the whole intelligence community and proposing legislation that will reflect a full congressional investigation . . . .’” Learn about CREDO Act.
4. Stock opportunity? Sell for $850 million. Buy back for $1 million. Make money. VentureBeat.Com’s Rebecca Grant reports, “Michael Birch is buying back Bebo for the rock-bottom price of $1 million in yet another attempt to turn it into a product people use. AOL bought social network Bebo in 2008 for $850 million in cash. . . . But the acquisition turned out to be a total disaster. Bebo did not live up to its price, and the business was declining. AOL sold it to digital media investors Criterion Capital Partners in 2010 for a reported $10 million. Selling the property, rather than shutting it down, allowed AOL to write off the loss against other capital gains.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Petraeus uses the n-word (negotiate, I mean). Dave Petraeus’ CUNY salary was just cut, from $200,000 to $150,000, according to Gawker.Com, where J.K. Trotter first, well, trotted out the story. Still. Anyway, Trotter writes, “Beyond the staggering salary, the documents, which include email correspondence between Petraeus and CUNY administrators, show that CUNY is trying to tap an independent donor to subsidize Petraeus’ salary.” Never one to sell himself short, Petraeus’ hubris survived the latest scrutiny: “’The truth is that I could have had gotten more money or more prestigious places (you won’t believe what USC will pay per week) but [CUNY’s chancellor] convinced me that this was the principal place to teach.’” Let’s use that word more carefully: teach. See the math at Slate.Com.
2. Not so self-evident. Snowden’s new inalienable right: asylum. World.Time.Com reports Snowden’s latest argument: “’Although I am convicted of nothing, (the United States) has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person . . . . Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum. . . . Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.’” Well, there’s a lot of people coming after you, but I don’t think they’re too scared. Prediction: Snowden will ultimately find himself in the asylum he so desperately seeks.
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. Obama Must Re-prioritize. Washington Post’s Editorial Board writes, “In fact, the first U.S. priority should be to prevent Mr. Snowden from leaking information that harms efforts to fight terrorism and conduct legitimate intelligence operations. Documents published so far by news organizations have shed useful light on some NSA programs and raised questions that deserve debate, such as whether a government agency should build a database of Americans’ phone records. But Mr. Snowden is reported to have stolen many more documents, encrypted copies of which may have been given to allies such as the WikiLeaks organization.”
2. Iran – get it right this time. Aljazeera.Com’s Trita Parsi and Reza Marashi argue, “Trying to predict political developments in Iran can be a humbling experience, even for the most seasoned students of Iranian politics. The unexpected electoral victory of centrist Hassan Rouhani serves as a reminder of this stark reality. The Washington Post editorial board boldly proclaimed before the elections that Rouhani ‘will not be allowed to win.’. . . conventional thinking in Washington did not provide room to consider the idea that the Iranian people understood the power dynamics in their own country better than anyone abroad. Few believed that Iranians could out manoeuvre Khamenei, leaving him with no choice but to succumb to their wishes. Since these outcomes didn’t fit the assumption about Iran, they couldn’t be envisioned.”
3. Dangerous Ground: The Guardian takes on Friedman. Barrett Brown argues, “Summing up the position of those who worry less over secret government powers than they do over the whistleblowers who reveal such things, we have New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who argues that we can trust small cadres of unaccountable spies with broad powers over our communications. We must all wish Friedman luck with this prediction. Other proclamations of his – including that Vladimir Putin would bring transparency and liberal democracy to Russia, and that the Chinese regime would not seek to limit its citizens’ free access to the internet – have not aged especially well. An unkind person might dismiss Friedman as the incompetent harbinger of a dying republic. Being polite, I will merely suggest that Friedman’s faith in government is as misplaced as faith in the just and benevolent God that we know not to exist – Friedman having been the winner of several of the world’s most-coveted Pulitzer Prizes.” See also Friedman’s 11 June op-ed, “Blowing a Whistle.”
THE FUNNIES
1. Thank you.
3. A last word.
