ON THE FIGHT
Washington has been quietly equipping and training thousands of African soldiers to wage a widening proxy war against the Shabab, the Al Qaeda ally that has sparked alarm as foreign militants join its ranks. The National Guardsmen from Task Force Raptor, 3rd Squadron, 124th Cavalry Regiment, have been invited to countries all over the East African region to exchange best practices.
At the Council on Foreign Relations blog, Micah Zenko does not believe a US-Iran clash is inevitable.
ON TECH
Hackers who spent their teen years phone-phreaking — breaking into telephone networks and making free calls — created their own GSM network at Defcon.
Ars Technica reports that Miller showed off his latest smartphone hack at Black Hat USA on Wednesday which involved using NFC to force someone’s Android smartphone to go to a malicious website and download malware. And the scariest part about this is that all hackers have to do to compromise users’ phones is to walk right by them, “What that means is with an NFC tag, if I walk up to your phone and touch it, or I just get near it, your Web browser, without you doing anything, will open up and go to a page that I tell it to,” Miller said during his Black Hat presentation.
Pictures, purportedly of the new iPhone 5, have leaked.
FLASHBACK: Apple is considered one of the most secretive companies in business today.
IN THE MEDIA
Dan Froomkin ponders the “The Dark Side Of The Obama White House”.
The Israeli government has denied an Israeli newspaper report that the Obama administration’s top security official has briefed the Jewish state’s prime minister on U.S. plans for a possible attack on Iran.
Vali Nasr, the dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, argues the US should prepare for the day after Syria.
CONTRACT WATCH
The Department of State, either for itself or on behalf of another USG entity, wants 5.11 Tactical uniforms “for Damascus”.
The Air Force is repaving and revamping its facilities in and around Boston, Massachusetts.
The Defense Intelligence Agency has hired more private security for it’s Missile and Space Intelligence Center.
