FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
Clearance guidelines. Editor Lindy Kyzer reports, “Security clearance adjudicative guidelines are used to determine eligibility for a security clearance. The government uses 13 adjudicative criteria, referred to as guidelines, for determining whether or not an individual should obtain access to classified information. Decisions are based on national security and a ‘common sense’ judgment of the person’s overall trustworthiness. The 13 adjudicative criteria are . . . .”
Protecting your PII. Contributor Sean Bigley advises, “The fact that foreign governments routinely attempt to hack into U.S. government computer systems is old news. Cyber espionage has been around almost since the dawn of the internet. What is new, however, is the increasingly aggressive nature with which foreign intelligence services are targeting the personal information of security clearance holders. They’re now after not just classified information but also the people who have access to it.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
Escalating Iraq: advisory capacity. Defense Media Activity’s Tyrone C. Marshall Jr. reports, “President Barack Obama has authorized Defense Secretary Ash Carter to provide a modest increase in additional U.S. personnel to be deployed to Iraq in a noncombat role . . . . Officials said Obama has authorized up to 450 additional U.S. personnel to deploy to Iraq to expand the U.S. advise-and-assist mission at Taqaddum Air Base in support of the Iraqi government. . . . The intent is to provide personnel to assist with planning, integration and support of Iraqi security forces and tribal forces as they fight to retake the Ramadi and Fallujah corridor . . . .” See also, “US Increases Iraq Personnel to Combat ISIL.”
Mosul today. Wall Street Journal‘s Nour Malas reports, “In Islamic State’s stronghold of Mosul, the extremist group is working day and night to repair roads, manicure gardens and refurbish hotels. Iraq’s second-largest city has never looked so good thanks to strict laws enforced by the Sunni militants. But beneath that veneer, the group metes out deadly punishments to those who don’t comply with a long list of prohibitions imposed over the year since it took control of Mosul on June 10, 2014, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former city residents, refugees and Iraqi officials. . . . In the past year, the group has tightened its grip on Mosul mostly uncontested, building out its administrative and security apparatus. It has cut the city off from the rest of Iraq and the world beyond by shutting off cellphone towers and the Internet. A year after Mosul fell, Islamic State’s grip on the city stands as its biggest strategic and symbolic victory.”
China’s empire. Quartz’s Steve Levine reports, “Much has been made of Beijing’s “resource grab” in Africa and elsewhere, its construction of militarized artificial islands in the South China Sea and, most recently, its new strategy to project naval power broadly in the open seas. Yet these profiles of an allegedly grasping and treacherous China tend to consider its ambitions in disconnected pieces. What these pieces add up to is a whole latticework of infrastructure materializing around the world. Combined with the ambitious activities of Chinese companies, they are quickly growing into history’s most extensive global commercial empire.”
Watch it: “Six Days in North Korea” by Wall Street Journal’s David Guttenfelder.
CONTRACT WATCH
The future of Infantry Fighting Vehicles. DoD Buzz’s Michael Hoffman reports, “The Army is taking another shot at replacing or upgrading the Bradley. Earlier this month, the service awarded two $28 million design contracts to BAE Systems Land and Armaments and General Dynamics Land Systems for what the Army is calling the Future Fighting Vehicle. . . . Army acquisition officials awarded the two contracts on June 2 to BAE and General Dynamics to inform the Army what’s in the realm of the possible when it comes to infantry fighting vehicles. The defense firms have until November 2016 to deliver their designs to the Army.”
DARPA: bouncing off little satellite constellations. Military & Aerospace Electronics Editor John Keller reports, “U.S. military researchers are trying to develop lightweight and low-power RF and optical communications links that would enable new generations of tiny space satellites to communicate with one another while in orbit. Officials of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., on Friday issued a solicitation (DARPA-BAA-15-43) for the Inter-Satellite Communications Links project to find efficient ways for CubeSat communications to exchange information among micro-satellites to coordinate action or to send information to ground stations.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
Net Assessment reassessment. Washington Post’s Thomas Gibbons-Neff reports, “In a June 4 memo labeled ‘Guidance,’ Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter outlined a subtle shift for the Pentagon’s renowned Office of Net Assessment and its new director, retired Air Force Col. Jim Baker. With Carter’s memo, the office, which traditionally looked towards the horizon when it comes to defense concerns, will incorporate more of today’s issues in its analyses. . . . The office, which reports directly to Secretary of Defense and focuses heavily on future threats, has a $10 million budget and, now, according to the memo, will have access to all classified Department of Defense programs. . . . [T]the memo’s concluding paragraph . . . highlights what [Ash Carter] might mean when it comes to building upon the office’s legacy. ‘Finally, help me think about the long-term consequences of near-term policy decisions,’ it reads. ‘Your work remains future focused, but you must ensure the team’s work has present relevance to me.’”
DARPA’s robot Army. Defense One contributor Jack Detsch explains, “The Pentagon already uses lethal autonomous weapons: anti-tank mines, fire-and-forget systems, the Navy’s Aegis weapon system, Patriot missiles, and cruise missiles. Singer estimates that 80 countries have already invested in lethal robotics. But are humanoid robots marching us toward a dark, science fiction-like future? Georgia Tech’s Arkin said he didn’t believe so. ‘I don’t think the military wants a Terminator. We want a system that can do this under human supervision.’”
Risk Management Framework for DoD Information Technology. Fierce Government IT’s Dibya Sarkar reports, “For the last eight years, the Defense Department applied a specialized process to ensure that new or modified IT systems and applications were secure enough to operate on its network – but it’s been nothing less than complex and burdensome. . . . But a little more than a year ago, the department implemented a newer, more standardized and streamlined platform called the Risk Management Framework for DoD Information Technology, or RMF for DoD IT. Defense officials expect it to be more flexible, more effective and provide a continuous view of security risks so they can be reviewed in a more timely manner. The new process intends to provide the military with hardware and software that has the latest security controls baked in from the beginning and throughout their life spans.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
Secret services. “A Secret Service agent has been placed on administrative leave amid an investigation of he allegedly sent lewd texts. The unnamed agent allegedly sent lewd texts to a woman following a May 20 event co-hosted by first lady Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Dole. . . . The agent allegedly sent the woman, identified as ‘a prominent Washington, D.C. staffer,’ a text offering oral sex, as well as a lewd photograph of himself.”
No smoking. “President Obama was not holding a pack of cigarettes in a widely circulated picture of him meeting with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi at last weekend’s Group of Seven summit. When asked if Obama has a pack of cigarettes in his hand in the photo, spokesman Josh Earnest answered, ‘He does not.’ Earnest did not identify the object Obama was holding. He said he has not raised the issue with the president. After several follow up questions from a reporter, Earnest said ‘let’s move on.’”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
“How to get Silicon Valley to help the Pentagon.” Senator John McCain argues in Wired, “The acquisition reforms proposed and adopted by the Senate Armed Services Committee are significant. But there is much more work to be done to transform the acquisition system from a Cold War relic to one agile and nimble enough to meet the challenges of a globalized information age.”
“As Obama escalates war on IS, Congress must give OK.” Christian Science Monitor’s Editorial Board argues, “A war effort needs unity and purpose to even begin, let alone to succeed. Before presidential politics heats up any more, or Obama’s ‘incomplete’ strategy puts more American boots on the ground, both he and Congress must bridge their differences and define a disciplined consensus on how to defeat IS.”
“Want to know Vladimir Putin’s secrets? They’re all right on his face.” Reuters contributor Dan Hill explains, “Putin’s most frequent look involves his eyes narrowing in anger, an aggressive-approach emotion that conveys the impulse to strike out against others. That other can be Georgia, Ukraine, Russia’s internal dissidents – the list is long.”
