FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
1. CIA’s computer interrogation. Contributor Charles Simmins explains, “The advantage of using a computer for interrogation is the relentless nature of the questioning. The computer will not tire, need to eat or drink, or use the restroom. Properly constructed, an interrogation AI provide the basis for additional, human, interrogation at a more advanced level of effort.”
2. Keeping score in your career. Editor Lindy Kyzer advises, “Whether you’re an active job seeker or a happily employed professional, it’s a good idea to know how you rank. And not just in terms of your own office, but in your overall career progression. A career scorecard can help give you an idea of both your abilities and value. It’s great to have on-hand as you head into an interview or salary negotiation.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
1. Taliban surge in Afghanistan. LongWarJournal.Org’s Bill Roggio reports, “The Taliban have increased offensive operations in Kabul and the provinces as the US and NATO are ending the combat mission in Afghanistan. The rise in violence has forced the US to change the rules of engagement for next year and allow forces to conduct combat missions, as well as keep an additional 1,000 troops in country (10,800 troops will remain in Afghanistan as opposed to the planned 9,800). As the US and allied countries withdraw their forces, the Afghan National Security Forces have taken the brunt of the casualties. This year, Afghan forces have suffered the highest casualty rates since the war began in 2001.” See also, “Suspected ISIS (Daesh) commander arrested in Afghanistan.”
2. Terror Down Under. Reuters’ Matt Siegel and Jane Wardell report from Sydney, “Australian police locked down the center of the country’s biggest city on Monday after an armed man walked into a downtown Sydney cafe, took hostages and forced them to display an Islamic flag, igniting fears of a jihadist attack. . . . Police, including paramilitary officers, cordoned off several blocks around the cafe as negotiators tried to defuse one of the biggest security scares in Australia for decades. Snipers and a SWAT team took up positions around the cafe and police helicopters flew overhead. At least five hostages have been released or escaped . . . .” See also, “180 former ISIS members back in Germany.”
3. Marine charged in Philippines. AP’s Jim Gomez reports from Manila, “Philippine government prosecutors charged a detained U.S. Marine with murder Monday in the killing of a Filipino transgender . . . . The case reignited a debate over custody of American military personnel accused of crimes. But the looming irritant between the treaty allies over Pemberton’s custody was eased after Washington agreed to move him from a U.S. warship to the Philippine military’s main camp in metropolitan Manila, where he remained under American custody with an outer ring of Filipino guards.”
4. Iran winning in Iraq. Aljazeera.Com reports, “Iranian military commanders deployed in Iraq played a key role in recent victories against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters throughout the country . . . . Iran was the first country to respond to the Iraqi government’s calls for international help in the battle against ISIL, which overran vast swaths of the country’s north and west this summer and were advancing towards the capital. Dozens of Iranian military commanders—including Qassim Sulaimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force—have joined Iraqi security forces in battlefields north and south of Baghdad.” See also, “In Iraq, Sunni tribes pay heavy toll for joining fight against Islamic State.”
CONTRACT WATCH
1. Identify Friend or Foe (IFF): BAE’s $34 million deal. MilitaryAerospace.Com Editor John Keller reports, “U.S. Navy experts are asking the BAE Systems Information and Electronic Systems Integration segment in Greenlawn, N.Y., to provide hundreds of identification-friend-or-foe (IFF) transponders for military aircraft under terms of a $34.3 million contract awarded this week. The contract involves IFF transponders for jet fighter-bombers, helicopters, trainer aircraft, and transport aircraft. IFF transponders transmit coded messages that identify aircraft as friendly and determines their range and bearing from ground- or air-based interrogators.”
2. Smart spending on service contracts. GovExec.Com’s Charles S. Clark reports, “Defense Department managers in fiscal 2013 came in $500 million under spending limits on contract services required by the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act . . . an improvement over the previous year, when departmental caps were exceeded by $1.72 billion. . . . Of all Pentagon components, only the Army broke the limits on the services contracts that the congressional Armed Services committees determined were needed to maintain the proper balance between the civilian and contract workforces.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
1. Drones in congressional crosshairs. DefenseOne.Com contributor Lauren Fox reports, “In the aftermath of the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report focused on Bush-era techniques, the Obama administration’s own counterterrorism practices are coming under increased scrutiny. . . . Republicans charge that the Central Intelligence Agency’s approach to counterterrorism has not grown more humane—it’s merely shifted. . . . Congress has long been home to frustrations over the program’s secrecy, and sometimes they’ve spilled into public view.”
2. LRDP timeline. DefenseNews.Com’s Paul McLeary reports, “The long-range research-and-development initiative recently touted by top Pentagon leadership to help counter advances being made by potential adversaries is still taking shape, but now there is at least a tentative timeline. . . . But don’t expect contracts anytime soon. The initiative won’t field any new technologies until about 2030, at the earliest. ‘We are thinking about a decade out. We’re not talking about the next opportunity, the next win . . . . There are no dollars associated with this’ yet.”
3. Spacesuit fashion show. Wired.Com’s Liz Stinson offers, “If you’re planning on extended interplanetary travel, you’re going to need more than a standard spacesuit. Sustaining human life on, say, Mercury or the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, means battling the worst of conditions. . . . For a new speculative design project called Wanderers, Oxman and her team of students partnered with 3D printing behemoth Stratasys and the computational design duo Deskriptiv to build four wearable skins that serve as bio-augmented space suits. Each is designed to battle a specific extreme environment by transforming elements found there into ones that can sustain human life.
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
1. Rock and hard place: “The president cannot pursue the types of reforms he wants in his final two years if Democrats abandon him. As the so-called ‘cromnibus’ showdown proved, Obama is unlikely to ever secure enough Republican support alone for passage of big-ticket items. But Obama is in a tough spot politically. He is being accused by his own party of sacrificing liberal values to secure badly flawed legislation, while facing accusations from the Right of overstepping his constitutional authority with unprecedented regularity. In other words, the president risks turning off the bases of two political parties, leaving him to win over a shrinking pool of more centrist lawmakers to give the White House political cover on Capitol Hill.”
2. Warren commission: “Groups on the left are trying to draft the Massachusetts liberal into the presidential race, viewing her as the perfect populist counterweight to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Warren has steadfastly refused those overtures, and allies take her at her word that she isn’t planning to run. Meanwhile, her influence in the Senate is on the rise, partly due to a new position in Democratic leadership that makes her a liaison to groups on the left who have grown frustrated with the party’s direction. . . . Associates and observers of Warren believe she will spend her new political capital on the issues that brought her to Washington in the first place — defending consumers and the middle class and fighting the power of Wall Street.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
1. “Caucasus Emirate Is a Growing Threat to Russia.” TheMoscowTimes.Com contributor Gordon M. Hahn argues, “Some Russian officials have suggested that the Dec. 4 attack in Grozny, that killed 14 police and wounded 36, was orchestrated from abroad, specifically, by the Islamic State. To be sure, Russians occasionally exaggerate the role of foreign jihadists in attacks carried out by the notorious North Caucasus-based Caucasus Emirate. However, in this case, the Russian claim could well be accurate.”
2. “Torture, deny, repeat: ‘Enhanced interrogation’ never works, the CIA never learns.” Reuters contributor Tim Weiner argues, “These are lies that CIA officers told to themselves, to one another and then repeated to their colleagues in the government of the United States. We must leave the questions of deception for another day, but they begin with self-deception—a grave danger in the business of secret intelligence.”
3. “Torture Is Who We Are.” The Atlantic contributor Mike Beinart argues, “After 9/11, while George W. Bush was announcing that God had deputized America to spread liberty around the world, his government was shredding the domestic and international restraints against torture built up over decades, and injecting food into inmates’ rectums. Those actions were not ‘contrary to who we are.’ They were a manifestation of who we are. And the more we acknowledge that, the better our chances of becoming something different in the years to come.”
THE FUNNIES
3. The Doctor is In.
