Thirsty Thursday & “Taking a chance and expanding man’s horizons.”
FROM THE DESK OF CLEARANCEJOBS.COM
Clearance changes. Editor Lindy Kyzer advises, “Listen to the latest episode of the Security Clearance Careers podcast. Christopher Burgess, CEO and founder of Prevendra, a privacy and online security consultancy, discusses the creation of a new agency to take over the background investigation process, and what recently announced social media monitoring requirements really mean for clearance holders.”
Clearance complications. Contributor Charles Simmins reports, “The recruitment and retention of skilled personnel for the federal cybersecurity workforce has been an issue for many years. Congress and the Executive Branch have tried to address issues several times. This piecemeal approach may have confused the situation as much as helped it, according to the Congressional Research Service. . . .”
THE FORCE AND THE FIGHT
Challenger crashes. Washington Post’s Justin Wm. Moyer reports, “Images from Jan. 28, 1986, are seared into the memories of former schoolchildren, teachers, parents, and pretty much any American now older than 30 — the Challenger space shuttle, meant to carry school teacher Christa McAuliffe into orbit, reduced to a snaky tunnel of smoke in the sky near Cape Canaveral.” See also, “Thousands Watch a Rain of Debris” and “Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster.” Watch, “America remembers Challenger.”
SecDef at Davos. Defense One’s Kevin Baron reports, “U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter came to the World Economic Forum with dual messages. One for world leaders on this global stage: get into the fight against the Islamic State. And a second for corporate leaders: join forces with the Pentagon and get into the business of fighting for something bigger.”
Nicholson takes Afghanistan. Defence News’s Aaron Mehta reports, “The Pentagon has nominated Lt. Gen. John W. ‘Mick’ Nicholson as its next commander of Operation Resolute Support, the ongoing US operation in Afghanistan. If confirmed, Nicholson would replace Gen. John Campbell in the role. . . . Nicholson is currently the commander of NATO’s Allied Land Command in Turkey. From October 2012 to October 2014, Nicholson commanded the 82nd Airborne Division.” See also, “NATO Land Forces Commander to Succeed Campbell in Afghanistan” and “Nicholson tapped for top job in Afghanistan.”
Space war. Washington Post’s Dan Lamothe reports, “A new report released on Wednesday by the Center for a New American Security highlights the vulnerabilities the Pentagon has in space, and calls for a shift in strategy to safeguard it and prepare for conflict there. It’s written by senior fellow Elbridge Colby . . . and argues that potential adversaries like China and Russia have noticed the degree to which the United States is reliant on its ‘space architecture,’ and begun to seek ways to threaten it.” Read “A Framework for a U.S. Defense and Deterrence Strategy for Space.” See also, “Russia and China Have Space Weapons.”
Korea ready to launch. Reuters’ Ju-Min Park and Jack Kim report, “North Korea may be preparing to launch a long-range missile as soon as within a week, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported early on Thursday, citing an unnamed Japanese government official. The official cited signs of possible preparations for a missile launch, based on analysis of satellite imagery of the North’s Tongchang-ri missile test site on its west coast.” See also, “North Korea may be preparing missile launch.”
CONTRACT WATCH
ISIS boosts exports. Government Executive contributor Marcus Weisgerber reports, “A wide range of global threats posed by Islamic State militants and nations like Iran are continuing to fuel the sale of American-made arms around the world. Despite slower domestic sales in the U.S., the foreign market remains ripe. Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor, reported that foreign orders made up 21 percent of the company’s $46.1 billion in 2015 sales.”
USAF’s HPEM CEWA project. Military & Aerospace Electronics Editor John Keller reports, “U.S. Air Force weapons experts are reaching out to industry for new technologies to apply high-power electromagnetics (HPEM) technologies to electronic warfare (EW) and cyber warfare. Officials of the Directed Energy Directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., released a broad agency announcement Tuesday for new initiatives in the High Power Electromagnetics (HPEM) Cyber and Electronic Warfare Applications (CEWA) program.”
TECH, PRIVACY, & SECRECY
IBM’s terror sieve. Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reports, “IBM purchased i2 EIA back in 2011 and added in some of the company’s patented cognitive computing capabilities, the most famous of which is Watson, the AI that beat Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings. IBM believes the tool could help governments separate real refugees from imposters, untangle terrorist cells, or even predict bomb attacks.”
Future drones and warfare. Popular Science’s Kelsey D. Atherton reports, “We are living in the first age of drone warfare. While unmanned aerial vehicles can trace their origins back at least as far as 1918, it took the War on Terror and its accompanying technological advances to truly showcase the abilities of long-endurance, high-flying remotely piloted machines. Yet despite their prominence in modern battlefields, the greatest impact of drones will be felt in the future.”
Global warming. Homeland Security News Wire reports, “Recent record warm years are with extremely high likelihood caused by human-made climate change. Without greenhouse-gas emissions from burning coal and oil, the odds are vanishingly small that 13 out of the 15 warmest years ever measured would all have happened in the current, still young century.”
The Doctorate is in. Vice News’ William M. Arkin and Alexa O’Brien report, “Where once the intelligence community and the military attracted a broad sampling of the best minds in America, today a small, conservative, self-selected, and self-perpetuating sub-class populates an ever more insular world. Before 9/11, among the top 10 schools granting doctoral degrees to Top Secret workers, seven were public, three were private not-for profit, and two were Ivy League schools. After 9/11, six of the top 10 schools granting doctoral degrees to Top Secret workers are solely or predominately online for-profit schools.”
DIY Surveillance. Wired’s Kim Zetter reports, “Only a well-resourced party like the NSA could deploy such a grandiose surveillance program. But if your spy needs are more modest, there are a number of existing tools available that offer similar surveillance capabilities, albeit at a smaller scale . . . .”
POTOMAC TWO-STEP
Why can’t we be friends? “President Obama and congressional Democrats embarking on their final year working together say that despite years of bitter bickering between their party and the Republicans, they want bipartisanship to become one of the hallmarks of their 2016 agenda. It was a central theme at the White House on Tuesday when Democratic congressional leaders met privately with the president as his final year in office got underway.”
Feeling the Bern. “President Barack Obama was so determined to prove he hadn’t endorsed Hillary Clinton that he put in a full 45 minutes with Bernie Sanders in the Oval Office on Wednesday. There were no photos, and no lunch like the one Obama hosted Clinton for when she came through the White House in early December. But both men did what they needed to do, in a meeting that’s been in the works since Sanders asked Obama at the congressional holiday party last month for some time together.”
OPINIONS EVERYONE HAS
“Analytics needed to improve security clearance process.” Federal News Radio contributor Karen Terrell, vice president of SAS Federal argues, “Building on the success already realized by ODNI, the government must now overhaul the process by which existing clearances are reviewed and recertified — implementing analytics-based solutions capable of identifying patterns in data that are indicative of elevated risk. They must do this on a continual basis by incorporating these analytics into agency case management systems, and they must make this a priority.”
“That ‘Wasteful’ Task Force? You’re Not Getting the Full Story.” Defense One contributor Daniel Fisher argues, “Given the present woeful state of the Afghan economy, and contrary to the current (and frankly very strange) TFBSO witch hunt, the relevant question for the American taxpayer is actually why we do not reconstitute some form of this very powerful expeditionary development capability.”
“Will America Go to War for the Philippines?” National Interest contributor Richard Javad Heydarian argues, “In short, America will be compelled to act if Sino-Philippine disputes get out of control and transform into a full-fledged confrontation.”
