FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. More jobs and higher salaries. Contributor Tranette Ledford explains, “Heading full steam into the holiday season, there’s only an eight-week window before a new year and new job prospects for cleared veterans. If you’re preparing to launch your civilian career in 2014, the projections are already out and the market looks good.”
2. DoD and Cyber Defense. Contributor Marc Selinger frames DoD’s efforts to get the shields up: “It is no secret that the U.S. Department of Defense is seeking ways to better safeguard sensitive information against the growing threat of cyber theft. Three recent announcements outline some of the specific steps DoD is taking to beef up those defenses.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. In Somalia, drones hit al Shabaab. LongWarJournal.Org’s Bill Roggio reports, “The US killed two Shabaab operatives, including a senior explosives expert, in a drone strike that targeted a vehicle in southern Somalia today. The remotely piloted Predators or the more deadly Reapers fired three missiles at a car as it traveled in the town of Jilib, about 50 miles north of Kismayo . . . One of the two Shabaab operatives killed was Anta Anta. He was described as “the mastermind of al Shabab’s suicide missions’ . . . involved in a series of five coordinated suicide attacks in 2008 that targeted the presidential palace, a UN compound, the Ethiopian Consulate in Somaliland, and an intelligence headquarters in Puntland. . . .The drone strike in Jilib was likely launched from a US base in Arba Minch in Ethiopia. The existence of the base was revealed in 2011.”
2. Afghans to meet Taliban in Pakistan. Khaama.Com reports, “A delegation of the Afghan high peace council will visit Pakistan in the near future to meet with the senior Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. . . . the decision was taken during the trilateral summit between Afghan, Pakistani and British leaders.” Also, Taliban quick to deny opposition to suicide attacks: LongWarJournal.Org’s Bill Roggio reports, “A top spokesman for the Afghan Taliban has denied a recent report in the Pakistani media that claimed the group opposes suicide attacks. The group also denounced as a fraud an individual who claimed to speak for the Afghan Taliban. . . . The Taliban have praised suicide attacks in the past. As recently as mid-June, the Taliban released an official statement on their website, Voice of Jihad, lauding “martyrdom operations” and justifying the use of the tactic.” Finally, Deputy Defense Secretary Ash Carter terms Afghanistan a big success.
3. In Egypt, senior Muslim Brotherhood leader nabbed. Aljazeera.Com reports, “Egyptian authorities have detained senior Muslim Brotherhood leader Essam el-Arian, the latest arrest in a government crackdown against the Islamist movement . . . . Arian, the deputy leader of the Brotherhood-linked Freedom and Justice party, was taken into custody from a residence in New Cairo where he had been in hiding. . . . An Egyptian court in September banned the Brotherhood group and seized their funds in an attempt to end the movement, which the government accuses of inciting violence and terrorism.” The AP expands: “arrest of Essam el-Erian, the deputy leader of the Brotherhood’s political arm, the Freedom and Justice party, was the latest in a wide-ranging crackdown and prosecution of both the Islamist group’s leaders and its rank-and-file since the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi, who also hails from the Brotherhood.”
4. In Iraq, too, a civil-war is brewing. Good thing we helped them out: “he wave of attacks by al-Qaida-led Sunni extremists that has killed thousands of Iraqis this year, most of them Shiites, is provoking ominous calls from Shiite leaders to take up arms in self-defense. They generally insist they’ll do it legally, under the banner of the security forces. But Iraq’s young democracy is still struggling, nearly two years after U.S. troops withdrew, and the specter of armed Shiite and Sunni camps revives memories of the sectarian fighting that took the country to the brink of civil war in the mid-2000s.”
5. Starvation – Assad’s siege tactic. Reuters reports, “One Syrian security official called it the ‘Starvation Until Submission Campaign’, blocking food and medicine from entering and people from leaving besieged areas of Syria. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have used partial sieges to root out rebel forces from residential areas during the civil war. But a recent tightening of blockades around areas near the capital is causing starvation and death, residents and medical staff say.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. The blame game. NextGov.Com contributor Sam Baker reports, “A week after the contractors who built HealthCare.gov blamed the Obama administration for the site’s failures, the administration is shifting the blame right back. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius will tell a House committee [today] the site’s botched rollout was the result of contractors failing to live up to expectations – not bad management at HHS, as the contractors suggested. . . . Sebelius’ prepared testimony concedes that the HealthCare.gov launch was troubled, but does not place any blame for its problems on HHS.”
2. Contractor crackdown. GovExec.Com’s Charles S. Clark reports, “A House panel on Tuesday passed by voice vote a bill to crack down on unscrupulous contractors by consolidating agency suspension and debarment offices. H.R. 3345 – the Stop Unworthy Spending Act – introduced Monday by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, D-Md., would attempt to confront the $1 trillion that the Government Accountability Office has estimated the government spends on contracts and grants to individuals and companies who may be criminals or poor performers.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Google’s mystery machine afloat in the Bay. Reuters’ Ronnie Cohen and Alexei Oreskovic report, “At least one Coast Guard employee has had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the Internet giant . . . . Another person who would only identify himself as an inspector for a California government agency had to do the same. Moored in the shadow of the Bay Bridge off of Treasure Island, a former military base, the nondescript barge is stacked several stories high with white shipping containers, and sprouts what appear to be antennas on top. The hulking structure, half shrouded in scaffolding, has stirred intense speculation in the Bay Area since reports of its existence surfaced late last week.”
2. Spy Rocks . . . Spies Rock . . . Spy’s Rock. Wired.Com contributor Allen McDuffee explains, “This week at the annual AUSA Army meeting in Washington, D.C., Lockheed Martin showcased developments in their surveillance technology called SPAN (Self-Powered Ad-hoc Network), a ‘covert, perpetually self-powered wireless sensor network’ that can provide ‘unobtrusive, continuous surveillance’ in units so small they can fit in a rock. SPAN is a mesh network of self-organizing sensors that, when triggered, can cue a camera or an unmanned aerial vehicle to further study an area, or summon an engineer when a pipeline or bridge structure is in danger or fractured. It uses proprietary algorithms to reduce false alarms.”
3. The password puzzle. VentureBeat.Com contributor Vijay Pandurangan explains, “Unfortunately, people are quite bad at managing passwords. Recent studies are full of frightening statistics. Over 60% use the same password on multiple sites — all these sites are then only as secure as the least secure site, a scary thought indeed. People also tend to select passwords that are easier to remember. While this avoids forgotten passwords, it makes them far too easy to guess. . . . Can biometrics be a panacea? Unfortunately not. Passwords are supposed to be secrets, but biometrics are the exact opposite of a secret—you take them and leave copies everywhere you go.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Sebelius testifies today. Warmed up and calibrated on Marilyn Tavenner, Congress take aim at Sebelius, and they’re looking for a kill: “Eager to cast blame, lawmakers are preparing to grill President Barack Obama’s top health official over problems with the rollout of the government’s health care website. A growing number of Republicans in Congress are calling for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to step down or be fired because of problems consumers are having signing up for insurance coverage on the government’s new website.”
2. It was the damn, dirty Europeans. Alexander sashays around accusations and responsibility: “Alexander told the House Intelligence Committee reports of bulk collection of European phone data by the NSA were ‘totally false.’ . . . ;This was not information we collected on European citizens,’ he said. ‘It represents information that we and our NATO allies have collected in defense of our countries and in support of military operations.’” Read the Christian Science Monitor’s take on the testimony.
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. Yes, we spy on allies. Want to make something of it? Reuters’ contributor Jack Shafer argues, “reasons to spy on allies: It keeps them honest, or if not honest, it at least puts them on notice that their lies might get found out. Spying gives countries a diplomatic leg up on allies, as well as an edge in things military. The downside — well, there is really no downside unless receiving the stink eye from an ally for a couple of weeks qualifies as a downside.
2. Congress vs the President: Who Should Make the Calls on NSA? DefenseOne.Com contributor Marc Ambinder argues, “This distinction between executive and legislative disclosures, based on a long-standing argument about the control of national security information, is slowly being erased. Congress is becoming more assertive in demanding intelligence to make policy, and the intelligence committees are becoming more assertive in demanding intelligence about intelligence to make intelligence policy decisions.”
3. NSA revelations threaten Obama’s soft power and America’s global influence. Christian Science Monitor contributor Adam Quinn argues that “the central fact is that even the part of the US’s own intelligence apparatus charged with long-term foresight regards it as established that, within 20 years, the world will have transitioned from the ‘unipolar’ American dominance of the first post-cold war decades to a world in which multiple centers of power must coexist. The center of economic gravity has already shifted markedly toward Asia during the last decade.”
THE FUNNIES
3. Wondering why.
