FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
Army cuts. Editor Lindy Kyzer reports, “The U.S. Army is reducing the number of troops to the lowest levels since before World War II, defense officials announced this week. The cuts are to be made by 2017, and include reducing troop levels by 40,000 and the number of Army civilians by 17,000. The cuts are due to budget constraints, defense documents note, and further reductions may be required if the automatic budget cuts required by sequestration are put into effect.” See also, “Lawmakers bash U.S. Army plan to cut 57,000 troops and civilians.”
Career competition. Also from Lindy Kyzer, “It may seem a bit extreme to think of your career as a competition – but as anyone who has ever been unemployed or endured a difficult career transition can attest, careers are competitive. Consider it a friendly competition rather than a bare knuckles brawl. Competing on the job can be fun – especially when you win with a career you love.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
Revisionist states: the U.S. military strategy. DoD Buzz’s Richard Sisk reports, “The new U.S. military strategy focused on the growing threat from ‘revisionist states’ such as Russia and China while renewing the commitment to work through coalitions with limited U.S. troop involvement to defeat ISIS. In his foreword to the 24-page National Military Strategy 2015 released last week, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey also expressed his concerns about possibly losing the current advantage the U.S. has against both state and non-state actors. ‘Since the last National Military Strategy was published in 2011, global disorder has significantly increased while some of our comparative military advantage has begun to erode’ . . . .”
Afghanistan talks with Taliban. New York Times’ Joseph Goldstein and Mujib Mashal report, “An Afghan government delegation met with Taliban officials in the Pakistani capital for the first time on Tuesday, in a significant effort to open formal peace negotiations, according to Afghan, Pakistani and Western officials. The Islamabad meeting, brokered by Pakistani officials after months of intense effort by President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan to get them more centrally involved in the peace process, was the most promising contact between the two warring sides in years. And it followed a series of less formal encounters between various Afghan officials and Taliban representatives in other countries in recent months.”
Lessons of Vietnam. Defense Media Activity’s Karen Parrish reports, “As the United States and Vietnam mend and strengthen relations, a congressional ceremony [Wednesday] commemorated a time 50 years ago when the two nations parted ways. Defense Secretary Ash Carter spoke during the event at Emancipation Hall, addressing congressional leaders and members from both sides of the House and Senate aisles. Carter’s remarks credited Vietnam veterans with helping the nation recognize and learn the lessons that divisive war taught. . . . More than 2 million American service members assigned worldwide during that era were conscripted, or enlisted without choice, under the then-active draft system, which applied to men 18 to 26.” See also, “Vietnamese Leader Predicts Closer US Military Ties.”
Remembering Srebrenica. AP’s Aida Cerkez and Amel Emric report, “Twenty years ago Saturday, Bosnian Serb troops led by Gen. Ratko Mladic carried out Europe’s worst carnage since the end of World War II – a massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys that a United Nations court calls a genocide. As Dutch peacekeepers stood helplessly by, the Serbs stormed the Srebrenica safe haven, separating men and boys from women. They drove the males away in trucks and massacred 2,000 on the spot. About 15,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys fled into the woods; the Serbs hunted 6,000 of them down and killed them one by one – some 8,000 in all.”
Retaking Ramadi. New York Times’ Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt report, “Seven weeks after their frenetic retreat from Ramadi, Iraqi security forces are preparing to mount a counteroffensive in the coming weeks to try to reclaim the pivotal western Iraqi city from the Islamic State . . . . Struggling to regain the momentum in its campaign to ‘degrade’ and ultimately defeat the Islamic State, the militant group also known as ISIS or ISIL, the Obama administration wants the Iraqis to retake the city before the militants dig in even more.”
CONTRACT WATCH
Harris’s $29 million deadly deal. Military & Aerospace Electronics Editor John Keller reports, “Military networking experts at Harris Corp. will provide the U.S. Navy with new airborne targeting systems and situational awareness equipment that enable F/A-18 jet fighter-bomber crews to locate, classify, and attack important targets quickly. Officials of the Naval Air Systems Command at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., announced a $29.1 million contract last week to the Harris Government Communications Systems Division in Melbourne, Fla., for 138 Distributed Targeting System (DTS) in two separate production lots.”
Contracts and campaign finance. Government Executive’s Charles S. Clark reports, “A 75-year-old prohibition on campaign contributions by individual federal contractors was upheld on Tuesday by a three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Circuit, a ruling favoring the Federal Election Commission’s position over two contractors for the U.S. Agency for International Development. . . . The ban does not apply to corporations that give to political action committees, and open-government groups such as the Project on Government Oversight have urged President Obama to sign an executive order requiring contracting companies to disclose all campaign contributions.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
Adobe vulnerabilities. Homeland Security News Wire reports, “On the heels of the discovery of a zero-day defect, a vulnerability not known to the software developer, Adobe is scrambling to develop yet another patch for another vulnerability. . . . The vulnerability, labeled CVE-2015-5119, causes a system to crash and allows a remote computer take control of the target machine. According to the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT,) ActionScript 3 ByteArray class, which can allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system.” See also, “Adobe confirms Flash vulnerability found via Hacking Team leak.”
EINSTEIN 3A: DHS Jeh Johnson on cybersecurity. Nextgov’s Mohana Ravindranath reports, “Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday reaffirmed his goal to make the latest version of a cybersecurity intrusion detection and prevention platform – known as EINSTEIN 3A – available to all federal civilian agencies by the end of 2015. . . . DHS plans to encourage the development of information sharing and analysis organizations – collaborative cyberthreat information sharing groups mandated by a February executive order – by selecting one organization to ‘develop best practices’ for public and private sector information sharing.”
PKI and cybersecurity sprints. FierceGovernmentIT’s Molly Bernhart Walker reports, “The Marine Corps is directing its information technology system administrators to immediately implement public key infrastructure, or PKI, encryption as part of a review of cybersecurity at the service. Privileged user authentication and PKI are mandatory requirements . . . . The deadline for PKI-enabled password compliance is July 15, and two-factor authentication for system administrators and privileged users is required by Aug. 31 . . . .”
Cybersecurity and vendor risk management. Help Net Security reports, “With cyber attacks and data security threats looming at insecure access points, the increased scrutiny of regulators and the focused attention of boards of directors, the outsourcing of critical services to third parties requires a robust vendor risk management program and stringent oversight – now more than ever. Yet the results of a new study suggest that many companies may be underperforming in these areas. Organizations must make improvements to their risk management programs in order to keep pace with the latest risks and challenges, according to a new study by the Shared Assessments Program and Protiviti, which examined information from more than 450 C-suite executives, risk management and audit professionals.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
House divided. “House Republicans have entered a new season of sniping. GOP leadership has spent weeks twisting arms to get dozens of lawmakers — even some subcommittee chairs — to pony up to the campaign arm, a basic annual obligation of party loyalty. . . . The broad disagreement on so many fronts lately is striking.”
Mouths shut. “Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) blasted his Republican colleagues Wednesday for keeping mum after Donald Trump’s controversial statements about illegal immigration. ‘I’ve heard the comments. They’re distasteful, disgusting and frankly, I’m terribly disappointed that my Republican colleagues here in leadership positions in the Senate and those running for president have basically kept their mouths shut,’ Reid told reporters. ‘I think that’s unfortunate, and I think that speaks of where the Republican Party is today,’ he added.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
“Another Year, Another Failure.” US News contributor Ryan Alexander argues, “It’s time for Congress to get to work doing both the day-to-day business of getting appropriations bills passed, and the hard work of making a larger fiscal deal that does in fact put us on a sustainable path forward.”
“Why Russia’s turn to China is a mirage.” Reuters contributor Björn Alexander Düben argues, “China and Russia are often depicted as having closed ranks in response to the Ukraine crisis. But they’ve made little progress in the bilateral economic and financial projects that they’ve announced with considerable fanfare. The recent warming in Sino-Russian relations should not be overstated. It does not mark a tectonic shift in international relations, and Moscow’s renewed romance with Beijing has little potential to break its deepening international isolation.”
“Putin Imposes Simplicity on Complex World.” The Moscow Times contributor Georgy Satarov argues, “The oppressive atmosphere of gray, government-imposed simplicity has finally insinuated itself into every sphere of Russian life. One hopes that when Putin’s reign ends — as it inevitably will, perhaps even soon — Russians will understand that the path toward an open, modern society is never a simple one.”
