Friday Finale & This Time Last Year
FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
Responding to the hack. Security clearance attorney Sean Bigley advises, “Frustration aside, the real question we had upon reading our letters was whether OPM’s solution of free identity monitoring was, in fact, a solution. We had good reason for skepticism: the general consensus is that the hack was perpetrated by the Chinese government. Somehow I’m guessing Beijing is more interested in compiling a targeting database for spy recruitment than taking out a car loan in my name. . . .”
Cleared freelancers. Contributor Peter Suciu writes, “Freelance job opportunities are indeed out there. Those with clearance may find it easier to move to similar positions that demand the same level of clearance, and within the same agency, since one of the keys to hiring freelance workers is ensuring they’re able to get to work immediately – without waiting for a new investigation or reciprocity.”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
SecDef in Afghanistan. Reuters’ Yeganeh Torbati reports, “U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter arrived in Afghanistan on Friday for meetings with U.S. troops and military commanders and Afghan officials facing an insurgency that has inflicted growing numbers of casualties on hard-pressed security forces. Carter was set to meet personnel at a U.S. base in eastern Afghanistan, near the city of Jalalabad in Nangarhar province, where about 600 U.S. troops are stationed. The base, called Operating Base Fenty, is a hub for training, logistics, and counter-terrorism efforts across eastern Afghanistan.”
Assad is out: war planning in NYC. AP’s Bradley Klapper reports, “As the United States and world powers gather again in a bid to end Syria’s civil war, Russia appears to be calling the shots. Nations meeting Friday in New York and the U.N. will essentially be negotiating a Russian plan for a ‘political transition,’ based on the Syrian government’s consent and with no clear reference to President Bashar Assad’s departure.”
Saudi coalition questions. The Christian Science Monitor’s Taylor Luck reports, “Saudi Arabia’s attempt to form an umbrella coalition of Muslim nations to combat terrorism is reviving its decades-old failed aspirations to lead the Muslim world while also risking wider Sunni-Shiite sectarian strife . . . . Yet can Saudi Arabia truly present an alternative to ISIS ideology? For decades it has wielded control over religious institutions yet failed to curb extremism, while spreading ultra-conservative Wahabi Islam that has given rise to jihadism.”
Canadians fight ISIS. Vice News’ Justin Ling reports, “Members of Canadian special forces traded fire with Islamic State militants and helped Kurdish fighters repel a heavy attack near the strategically-important Iraqi city of Mosul overnight on Wednesday. . . . The 69 Canadian special forces operators, not all of whom participated in defending the Kurdish territory, are in the region on a strictly non-combat role in order to train the Kurdish forces. . . . In the end, Kurdish forces pushed the IS fighters out of its territory and re-established the line.” See also, “Kurdish Peshmerga Forces Vital to Speed ISIL’s Defeat.”
CONTRACT WATCH
Warships to Taiwan. Defence Talk reports, “The US State Department informed Congress on Wednesday of a proposed sale of two warships to Taiwan as part of a $1.8 billion arms deal already angrily denounced by China. The massive contract comes at a time of reconciliation between China and Taiwan — separated since 1949 — but also of worries by Washington that Beijing is ‘militarizing’ part of the South China Sea.”
Harris’ EW decoys. Ulitzer reports, “Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS) has received a three-year, $54 million ceiling, single-award IDIQ contract from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory to provide electronic warfare (EW) technology and engineering services for the Advanced Decoy Architecture Project (ADAP). The contract was awarded during the first quarter of Harris’ fiscal 2016. Harris will provide ADAP payloads designed to lure missiles away from their intended targets with advanced electronic techniques.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
Next-gen cybersecurity. Homeland Security News Wire reports, “As in other domains of science, this process involves hypothesis, experimentation, and analysis — or at least it should. In reality, cybersecurity research can happen in an ad hoc fashion, often in crisis mode in the wake of an attack. A group of researchers has imagined a different approach, one in which experts can test their theories and peers can review their work in realistic but contained environments — not unlike the laboratories found in other fields of science.” Read Cybersecurity Experimentation of the Future (CEF): Catalyzing a New Generation of Experimental Cybersecurity Research.
Border drones. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports, “DHS had taken delivery of 11 MQ-9 Reaper drones, unarmed but otherwise similar to the ones used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan. DHS anticipated that the cost per flight hour would be $2,468, far lower than the actual $12,225. The agency was using accounting tricks to move the costs of pilots, equipment, and overhead off the books. Even the actual flights hours — 5,102 — were a fraction of the promised 23,296. As a result, large areas and portions of the border were left undefended.”
Quantum computing. Nextgov’s Mohana Ravindranath reports, “A national intelligence R&D team wants to tackle problems too complex for classical computers, and thinks quantum technology could be the answer. The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity plans to award a multiyear grant to IBM to build out a small part of what could, in several years, make up a system capable of decoding encrypted information, or plotting the most efficient way to perform a series of tasks.”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
Whew. I was worried. “’I just want the record to be spread that the Reid-McConnell relationship hasn’t hit a new low.’ Reid went on to thank McConnell for the concern he showed when Reid’s wife, Landra, was in a car accident and faced cancer. The Democratic leader also said McConnell was kind to him after his January exercise accident that left him nearly blind in one eye. ‘People can write all these things they want to write. But Mitch McConnell and I are friends,’ Reid said. ‘I want the record to reflect that I have admiration for Mitch McConnell and the work he has to do.’”
State of the Union. “White House officials are pledging that President Obama will deliver a ‘non-traditional’ State of the Union address in January . . . . The address will still be given in the Capitol before joint session of Congress. But instead of rattling off a laundry list of proposals for lawmakers to consider, a senior White House official said the president will take a ‘big picture approach to some of the challenges and opportunities that we face’ as a country.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
“Ignoring Guantanamo Won’t Make It Go Away.” The Atlantic contributor Scott Beauchamp argues, “Even if Guantanamo weren’t a self-defeating, expensive, legal black hole, even if it were of prime importance and necessary for the security of the United States and the safety of its citizens, there are still U.S. laws and American values to consider. If laws and values are to have meaning, then American leaders must uphold them and do the hard work of convincing the American people to do so also, by persuading them that housing and questioning these prisoners on U.S. soil is worth the risk.”
“The UN’s faith in Libyan peacemongers.” The Christian Science Monitor Editorial Board argues, “Diplomacy is not always top down, just as peace is not merely the absence of conflict. If Libya’s peace pact holds, it will be because it was built on the power of a popular consensus for peace, not the power from the end of a gun.”
