Headlines Thursday

FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM

1.  Before you move, read this. Contributor Diana Rodriguez explains why relocation might not be right: “In certain situations, the prospect of moving to a new city can be exciting. Unfortunately, if the job turns out to be less than desirable, or the area of the country is not compatible, a job seeker can feel trapped in a job, and a position. Here are five points to consider . . . .”

2.  But if you hate your job . . . . Also from Diana Rodriguez, some sage advice when the fit isn’t right: “There are numerous situations and reasons for job dissatisfaction, to include changes in duties, supervisors, co-workers, or expectations. Incompatibility is a major cause of job satisfaction. When expectations aren’t met, either personally or professionally, frustration can drive the worker to seek a more compatible, or satisfying professional environment.”

THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT

1.  The future of weapons. DefenseOne.Com’s Patrick Tucker reports, “According to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, it’s big data, synthetic biology and space planes. ‘We can see the information revolution unfolding across operations,’ DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar told the House Armed Services Committee at a hearing on the FY2015 budget on Wednesday. She emphasized that it was very important to create ‘new tools to help us get a handle on the explosion of data.’”

2.  Syria—jihad training par excellence. LongWarJournal.Org’s Bill Roggio reports, “A prominent Saudi cleric and a Chechen military commander in a unit of the Al Nusrah Front for the People in the Levant, al Qaeda’s official branch in Syria, celebrated together after recent heavy fighting against Syrian government forces in a mountainous area in the coastal province of Latakia. . . . Chechen-led jihadist groups have been some of the fiercest units in the Syrian civil war. Chechens and others from the Russian Caucasus and even from the Ukraine hold prominent positions in jihadist units fighting in Syria.

3.  Resign and Run—al Sisi for President. Reuters’ Tom Perry and Mahmoud Mourad report from Cairo, “Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the general who ousted Egypt’s first freely elected leader, declared his candidacy on Wednesday for a presidential election he is expected to easily win. . . . Among his supporters, Sisi is wildly popular. Many see him as the kind of strong man needed to stabilize a country in crisis. But he is reviled by the Islamist opposition as the mastermind of a coup against a freely elected leader.”

4.  Not a Cold War: not even a cool one. Time’s Zeke Miller reports, “Delivering remarks on the U.S.-European relationship at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels on the third day of his international trip, Obama framed the Ukraine crisis as a conflict between self-determination and might. But he rejected the notion that recent events are the beginning of another global struggle. ‘This is not another Cold War that we’re entering into . . . . After all, unlike the Soviet Union, Russia leads no bloc of nations, no global ideology. The United States and NATO do not seek any conflict with Russia. In fact, for more than 60 years we have come together in NATO not to claim other lands but to keep nations free.’”

5.  Putin Profile. USNews.Com contributor Paul D. Shinkman reports, “President Barack Obama’s dismissal of Russia as merely a ‘regional power’ will have done little to assuage the concerns of Eastern European leaders, who are worried that Vladimir Putin’s quest to return former Soviet territory to the Russian Federation is not finished with his incursion into Ukraine. The Russian president still could use similar political maneuvers to annex separatist regions of Moldova or Georgia.”

CONTRACT WATCH

1.  Amazon Cloud over the Pentagon. NextGov.Com’s Aliya Sternstein reports, “Any contractor hoping to sell government agencies cloud services must pass FedRAMP by June. Approval signifies a system is safe for use governmentwide and comes with a reusable set of documented tests to prove it. Some agencies that determine FedRAMP protections, such as, perhaps, antivirus scans, do not meet their security needs can add more controls. The Pentagon is one such customer. The Defense Information Systems Agency assessed Amazon Web Services’ ‘compliance with those additional security controls and approved AWS cloud computing services, reducing the time necessary for DoD agencies to evaluate and authorize the use of the AWS cloud,’ company officials said in a statement.”

2.  DHS Acquisition Overhaul. FederalTimes.Com’s Andy Medici reports, “A bill that would reform the acquisition process at the Department of Homeland Security and force the agency to report all cost overruns for major projects to Congress was approved by a House subcommittee March 26. . . . [Jeff Duncan, R-S.C], chairman of the subcommittee, said at the markup of the legislation that DHS acquisition has been wasteful and inefficient for years and repeated audits have found mismanagement of a number of programs. ‘Unfortunately many of these major acquisition projects cost more, are late or do less than expected,’ Duncan said.”

TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY

1.  Logic of design by way of the Griffin. AviationWeek.Com contributor Bill Sweetman evaluates the last three decades of fighter jet design: “The Gen 5 concept is almost 30 years old. It dates to the final turning point in the Cold War, when the Reagan administration accelerated the arms race, believing (correctly) that the Soviet economic engine would throw a rod first. The F-22 was designed for a challenging but simple war: If you were in a NATO fighter and the nose was pointed east, pretty much everyone headed your way was trying to kill you.”

2.  Your own private mini-NSA. Wired.Com’s Christina Bonnington reports that “some companies are taking the wearables idea one step further, building devices that not only record your movements and lay them out in simple graphs, but also collect data in 3-D space and provide analysis of different areas of body awareness. These smarter wearables can help you stand straighter, jump higher, and swing a baseball bat faster.”

3.  Free clouds on the horizon. VentureBeat.Com contributor Vineet Jain explains, “The cloud-storage business has entered an exciting time. This is one of the few segments where consumer interest and trends drove an enterprise market. This blurring between consumer and enterprise creates conflict, confusion, and opportunity, though the dynamics of these segments are different.”

POTOMAC TWO-STEP

1.  Pot—the other campaign currency: “While 82 percent of respondents disapprove of Congress — with both parties “universally despised,” according to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake — 73 percent support medical marijuana in their states, 53 percent back decriminalizing pot, and most importantly, 68 percent said they are more likely to go to the polls if marijuana is on the ballot. Voters in both parties are in favor of looser marijuana laws, but the highest levels of motivation are among younger, single people — a group that skews Democratic.”

2.  Zero tolerance: “President Obama supports a ‘zero-tolerance approach’ to misconduct in the Secret Service, the White House said Wednesday after agents assigned to Obama’s security detail were sent home on allegations of excessive drinking. White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One that the president had been briefed about the incident.”

OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS

1.  The Certainty of Donald Rumsfeld (Part 1). New York Times contributor Errol Morris’ retrospective on the former SecDef and his run-up to war: “’Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.’”

2.  “Putin’s new ‘values pact.’” Reuters contributor Nina Khrushcheva argues and foresees, “Reimagining the post-Cold War order by creating a new “Eastern” bloc to counter the dominant Western secular democracies is perhaps why Putin has continued to support the vile Assad regime in Syria. Now that Egypt has a new military dictatorship, which appears to prefer Russia to the United States, maybe Moscow and Cairo can form a new Warsaw Pact — based on conservative values, oil and arms. Iran might also sign on.”

3.  “N Korea and the myth of starvation.” Aljazeera.Com contributor Andrei Lankov argues, “When it comes to the economy, the market works in North Korea as well as it does in many other parts of the world. It brings growth, but it also brings a large amount of income inequality and social tensions with it too. In spite of North Korea’s Stalinist rhetoric, North Korea is now a country in which there are rich and poor – and the gap between these two groups, already large, is widening quickly. However, this does not mean that the rich are getting richer while the poor get poorer. It seems that the proverbial rising tide is lifting all boats, albeit at very different rates.”

THE FUNNIES

1.  Ponderous pachyderms.

2.  “The Soul of Putin.”

3.  The G1.

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Ed Ledford enjoys the most challenging, complex, and high stakes communications requirements. His portfolio includes everything from policy and strategy to poetry. A native of Asheville, N.C., and retired Army Aviator, Ed’s currently writing speeches in D.C. and working other writing projects from his office in Rockville, MD. He loves baseball and enjoys hiking, camping, and exploring anything. Follow Ed on Twitter @ECLedford.