*** Trove of Stolen NSA Data Is ‘Devastating’ Loss for Intelligence Community

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BY JENNA MCLAUGHLIN

Last week’s dump of National Security Agency malware sparked brief hysteria until Microsoft reassured customers that most of the Windows exploits had already been patched, but several former intelligence officials say the leak points to a larger erosion of espionage capabilities.

“These were multimillion-dollar exploits,” one former cyberintelligence employee told Foreign Policy. “This is a big deal.”

The Last Days of Charles De Gaulle

The campaign run by France’s center-right has cut any last ties between the general and the party that claims to…

On Friday, the mysterious group known as the Shadow Brokers released a large number of sophisticated, refined capabilities most likely developed by some of the NSA’s top hackers — the Tailored Access Operations group, known as TAO. Those capabilities, now rendered useless, joined similar CIA tools exposed in WikiLeaks’ recent Vault 7 release.

Although digital exploits are used for spying rather than destruction, they allow operators to break down invisible doors, pilfering information. Seeing these latest tools published online was “devastating,” the former cyber intelligence employee said.

Three recently retired intelligence employees who worked on hacking tools for the government requested anonymity in order to speak freely about sensitive matters and to protect ongoing work and employability.

** India’s Faux ‘Liberals’ Are Damaging Our Army’s Efforts To Douse J&K Fire

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R Jagannathan

We are not losing the real war with jihadi militants and their stone-throwing mobs.

The war we are losing is the one launched by so-called “liberals” who think the army is fair game in their fight against the BJP.

In order to win a war – any war – you need to have a realistic analysis of your enemy’s aims, his strengths and weaknesses, your real strengths and weaknesses, and clarity on your ultimate goals in prosecuting the war. The truth is neither the Indian state nor its detractors in the national media, has thought this through.

The war we are losing is the information war, as the outrage over the video of a Kashmiri tied to an army jeep shows. If anything, the video shows that army officers are able to use innovative tactics to prevent violence and deaths, but the mainstream narrative is about the army using human shields when this is the perennial tactic used by stone-pelters in the Valley. What is the norm among stone-pelters is now shown as the army’s failure in one instance of a change of tactics.

We are not losing the real war with jihadi militants and their stone-throwing mobs. The war we are losing is the one launched by so-called “liberals” who think the army is fair game in their fight against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

A space to watch - The Hindu nationalist tradition is not alien to West Bengal

Swapan Dasgupta

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In the long and acrimonious run-up to the 2014 general election, there were political analysts who discounted the possibility of the Bharatiya Janata Party ever forming a viable government at the Centre. Their scepticism was based on two considerations. First, it was felt that Narendra Modi was too 'polarizing' a figure to be acceptable to the Indian electorate. Secondly, and much more significant, it was believed that the social and geographical spread of the BJP was too narrow to permit any pan-Indian presence.

The belief that the BJP was essentially a Brahmin-Bania or, at best, an upper-caste party confined to northern and western India was a caricature that seems to have been ingrained in the minds of many analysts. 'Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan' was a Hindu Mahasabha formulation of the 1940s that was uncritically applied to, first, the Bharatiya Jana Sangh and, subsequently, to the BJP. This was coupled with astonishing social condescension of an elite that regarded itself as cosmopolitan and, consequently, very much superior.

In his novel, The Jewel in the Crown, centred on the twilight years of imperial rule, Paul Scott described the prevailing British attitudes to Hindu nationalists: "Hindu meant Hindu Mahasabha, Hindu nationalism, Hindu narrowness. It meant rich Banias with little education, landowners who spoke worse English than the younger sub-divisional officer his eager but halting Hindi. It meant sitting without shoes and with your feet curled up on the chair, eating only horrible vegetarian dishes and drinking disgusting fruit juice." This stereotype was inherited by the Nehruvian elite after Independence and helped shape its political attitudes. The Congress of those days did contain many Hindu nationalists, some of whom were ministers. To Walter Crocker, an Australian high commissioner to India, these functionaries were markedly different from "Nehru and the upper class Indian nationalists of English education". The non-Nehruvians, he wrote in his reminiscences of his years in India, "were provincial mediocrities, untraveled, ill-educated, narrow-minded, not a few were lazy; some were cow worshippers and devotees of ayurvedic medicine and astrology; some were dishonest".

Afghanistan: The Future of the National Unity Government

This report investigates the troubled efforts by the National Unity Government (NUG) to secure political stability in Afghanistan. The country’s problems include 1) the NUG itself, which is beset with internal disagreements and discord; 2) a host of stubborn political and constitutional tensions; and 3) knife-edged political partisanship.

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English (PDF, 33 pages, 1.2 MB)

Author 

International Crisis Group (ICG) 

Series 

Crisis Group Asia Reports

Issue 

285 

Publisher 

International Crisis Group (ICG)

Deciphering Pakistan Supreme Court’s Panama Papers Verdict

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By Umair Jamal

On April 20, the Supreme Court (SC) of Pakistan in its Panama Papers case verdict announced that there was not enough evidence to disqualify the country’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who has been the direct target of a year long trial after documents from Mossack Fonseca showed his family’s overseas dealings.

The court in its final verdict said that the evidence presented before the SC needed a further probe. The court has ordered the formation of a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to further investigate the evidence. The JIT is tasked with presenting its final report before the court within two months. Moreover, the five member bench, which was divided 3-2 over the decision, revealed that various investigative bodies, including the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), had failed to cooperate with the investigation.

Apparently, Sharif and his immediate family have survived in the ruling, for no part of the verdict directly declares them guilty. On the other hand, the opposition parties, particularly the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), do not appear to have been offered any face-saving result in the verdict. On the whole, the court’s decision to form the JIT to investigate the case further is being seen as clever ploy to stall the case which, like all previously formed JITs, will fall into obscurity.

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In essence, with the evidence that was offered the court, the decision could not have been fairer. The opposition parties evidence was by and large based on the data that could hardly justify the removal of a sitting Prime Minister. While the opposition parties may have desired a decision that disqualifies the incumbent Prime Minister, the court’s decision proves its inability to prove the matter in detail due to a wide range of bureaucratic and political handicaps.

The New Cold War Politics in Afghanistan

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By Daud Khattak

As Cold War politics come full circle, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the wider region are bracing for a new era of conflict in the making. Switching sides and changing goalposts, the key players are flexing their muscles for a new Cold War on Afghan turf.

Let’s review the new alliances and various actors that will make or break Afghanistan’s future.

Russia-Pakistan Warming up

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The recent visit of a Russian military delegation, headed by Chief of General Staff Colonel General Israkov Sergi Yuryevich, to Pakistan’s North Waziristan was the latest sign of Russia and Pakistan’s warming relations.

Retired Brigadier General Saad Muhammad Khan, Pakistan’s former military attaché to Afghanistan, in a TV talk show, called the Russian delegation’s visit to Waziristan “interesting and unusual.” But that was not the first step in the blossoming relationship.

In September 2016, around 200 Pakistani and Russian military personnel conducted joint exercises codenamed Druzhbha-2016, which means friendship. Earlier, in 2014 and 2015, naval forces from the two countries conducted joint drills named Arabian Moonsoon.

Since the 1980s, the era dominated by the Afghan jihad, Pakistan used to arrange visits for U.S. civilians and military officials to its tribal areas. The reason was obvious: the ongoing anti-communist war in the bordering Afghanistan. But what brings a Russian military delegation to North Waziristan? Pakistan recently achieved success in removing the Taliban from a 13,000 square kilometer area in Waziristan, but Russia never been a partner in Pakistan’s anti-terror war.

China’s Xi Restructures Military, Consolidates Control

By Philip Wen,

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BEIJING Chinese President Xi Jinping has announced a military restructure of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to transform it into a leaner fighting force with improved joint operations capability, state media said.

Centered around a new, condensed structure of 84 military units, the reshuffle builds on Xi’s years-long efforts to modernize the PLA with greater emphasis on new capabilities including cyberspace, electronic and information warfare.

As chair of the Central Military Commission, Xi is also commander-in-chief of China’s armed forces.

“This has profound and significant meaning in building a world-class military,” Xi told commanders of the new units at the PLA headquarters in Beijing, according to the official Xinhua news agency report late on Tuesday.

All 84 new units are at the combined-corps level, which means commanders will hold the rank of major-general or rear-admiral, the official China Daily reported Wednesday, adding that unit members would likely be regrouped from existing forces given the Chinese military was still engaged in cutting its troops by 300,000, one of the wide-ranging military reforms introduced by Xi in late 2015.

Those reforms include establishing a joint operational command structure by 2020 and rejigging existing military regions, as well as streamlining troop numbers particularly in non-combat facing roles.

The previous seven military area commands were regrouped into five, and the four military departments – staff, politics, logistics and armaments – were reorganized into 15 agencies last year. The 84 units will come under the 15 agencies.

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By: Dennis J. Blasko

Vice Admiral Yuan Yubai (袁誉柏) is the new commander of the Southern Theater Command

Among recent changes in the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) leadership, the appointment of Vice Admiral Yuan Yubai to Commander of the Southern Theater Command is particularly noteworthy (PLA Daily, January 23). Yuan is the first and only non-Army officer ever to command a Military Region (MR) or Theater Command (TC), one of the five newly formed joint headquarters that replaced the seven Military Regions that had existed since the mid-1980s. Consistent with Chinese practice, Yuan shares responsibility for the Theater with a political commissar, Army General Wei Liang. Nonetheless, Admiral Yuan’s selection as TC commander is a major event in PLA history, and a step toward abandoning “the traditional mentality that land outweighs sea” (China Brief, June 19, 2015). [1]

Unlike the old Military Regions, which were staffed primarily by Army personnel and in peacetime directly commanded Army units in their areas of operation, the five new Theater Commands are joint headquarters composed of personnel from all services. TCs are responsible for operations (战区主战), that is “responding to security threats in their strategic directions, maintaining peace, deterring wars and winning battles” (PLA Daily, February 1, 2016).

The four service headquarters (Army, Navy, Air Force, and Rocket Force) in Beijing, on the other hand, are responsible for “construction” (军种主建) (PLA Daily, December 1, 2016). “Construction” activities include functions such as organizing, manning, equipping, educating, and training the forces, and possibly may involve some service-specific operations, such as military operations other than war (MOOTW) or potentially single-service combat missions.

UNPACKING THE FALLACY THAT CHINA TESTS NEW PRESIDENTS

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STEVEN STASHWICK

The United States and China are strategic competitors, but the idea that China "tests" new U.S. presidents risks exaggerated responses and is backed only by flimsy evidence.

For special access to experts and other members of the national security community, check out the new War on the Rocks membership.

China is poised to test the Trump administration with some new challenge or provocation, just as it supposedly tested Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush in the first year of their presidencies. Or at least, so says a widely popular narrative in news analysis and commentary, academia, and think tanks. Illogically, this narrative has also been used to claim that China already tested President Trump with provocations that preceded his inauguration.

Neither Bush nor Obama let ostensible Chinese “tests” spiral out of control, but then again, neither entered office with the same adversarial, zero-sum view of the U.S.-China relationship that President Trump and his advisors have articulated. The stakes could hardly be higher, as China approaches near-peer (or peer) status with the United States and with the future of U.S.-China relations in the Trump era a bigger mystery than at any point since the world started thinking seriously about the rise of China. But the “test” narrative is wrong and, to the extent the national security community uses it to advocate forceful responses against China, it is needlessly dangerous for tensions between the two countries.

The Crime-Terrorism Nexus

By the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS)

By Florence Gaub and Julia Lisiecka for European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS)

In the case of the so-called Islamic State (IS), Florence Gaub and Julia Lisiecka think the crime-terrorism nexus runs deep. Indeed, the organization recruits more former criminals, and funds itself more through petty – not organized – criminal activities than other groups. This tendency, however, also offers law enforcement officials an opportunity to pursue IS in a way that goes beyond the usual radicalization narrative. It does require zeroing in on hitherto neglected petty criminals, though.

That there is a link between terrorism and crime is common knowledge: terrorism itself is a crime, often funded by organised criminal activity. But in the case of Daesh, the link goes much further. The organisation recruits more former criminals, and funds itself more through petty – not organised – criminal activities than other groups. Yet this also offers law enforcement officials an opportunity to pursue it from another angle beyond the usual radicalization narrative. This requires a zeroing in on hitherto neglected petty criminals, however.

From zero to hero

European criminals are one of Daesh’s main targets for recruitment. It is estimated that between 50- 80% of Europeans in Daesh have a criminal record – substantially higher than al-Qaeda, where the same statistic stands at around 25%. The German federal police, for instance, found that two-thirds of German Daesh fighters had criminal backgrounds, one-third of whom had previously been convicted (other estimates put the number of convicted at nearly 60%). The vast majority of these were repeat offenders: 98% had committed more than one crime, and more than half had committed three or more offenses (mostly acts of violence, as well as property crimes and drug-related felonies). In fact, on average, 7.6 crimes had been committed per person. According to Belgian sources, the criminal records of jihadists mostly consist of theft and assault, and usually begin with small-scale shoplifting.

Rolling Back the Islamic State

by Seth G. Jones, James Dobbins, 

Research Questions 

What are the Islamic State's ideology and objectives? 

What possible strategies and primary instruments of power should the United States and its allies employ against it? 

What specific steps should be taken to defeat and prevent the reemergence of the Islamic State in the countries where it controls territory and population, such as Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, and Nigeria? 

What other steps should be taken around the globe to counter the Islamic State's capacity to recruit fighters, raise funds, orchestrate a propaganda campaign, and inspire and direct attacks? 

The Islamic State is a byproduct of the 2003 American intervention in Iraq and the subsequent American departure in 2011. At its peak in late 2014, the group held more than 100,000 square kilometers of territory with a population of nearly 12 million, mostly in Iraq and Syria. Beginning in 2015, the Islamic State began to lose territory as it faced increasingly effective resistance. Still, the Islamic State continues to conduct and inspire attacks around the world. This report assesses the threat the Islamic State poses to the United States and examines four possible strategies to counter the group: disengagement, containment, rollback "light" (with a reliance on local forces backed by U.S. special operations forces, Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence assets, and airpower), and rollback "heavy" (adding the employment of American conventional forces in ground combat). The authors conclude that the United States should pursue a light rollback strategy. They also recommend additional steps, such as rebalancing counterterrorism efforts to address grievances, loosening restrictions on U.S. military operations, increasing U.S. military posture in Africa, and tightening restrictions in the Islamic State's internet access.

The Information Battle: How Governments in the Former Soviet Union Promote their Agendas and Attack their Opponents Abroad

The essays in this publication zero in on 1) the present power and ubiquity of information; 2) the powerful and dubious impact Russian media has in the country’s former territories; 3) how pro-Russia propaganda outlets are masquerading as independent and objective news outlets; 4) how ex-Soviet states have weaponized media to promote their interests and attack their opponents abroad, and much more.

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English (PDF, 60 pages, 2814 KB)

Author 

Rasťo Kužel, Natalia Antelava, Justin Schlosberg, Ben Nimmo, David Lewis, Melissa Hooper, Ana Dvali, Revaz Koiava, Arzu Geybulla, Richard Giragosian, (Editor: Adam Hug) 

Publisher 

Foreign Policy Centre (FPC)

Europe and U.S. Move to Fight Russian Hybrid Warfare

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Europe and U.S. Move to Fight Russian Hybrid Warfare

Richard Haass explains why we should care about Ukraine

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Richard Haass

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says there is a "low level of trust" between Moscow and Washington, after talks with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Video provided by AFPNewslook

“Why should U.S. taxpayers be interested in Ukraine?” That’s what Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly asked at a recent meeting in Italy with some European counterparts. The French foreign minister said he told Tillerson the United States should want a strong Europe. That’s true, but there are many other reasons for Americans to care about Ukraine.

First and foremost, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including its takeover of Crimea and its continued interference in eastern parts of the country, violates the most basic principle of international relations — that borders between countries should not be changed through the use of military force. This is what Saddam Hussein attempted in Kuwait in 1990, and what Hitler’s Germany attempted before and during World War II. Respect for this principle is the bedrock of what peace and order there is in the world.

A second reason has to do with Russia specifically. Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a one-dimensional power. Its influence is tied to its ability to dominate others through the use of force, be it military, cyber, or related to Russian oil and gas exports. It is important that Putin not conclude that continued use of force is a viable path to make Russia great again. If he does, he will continue to invade, coerce and interfere.

Google rolls out new 'Fact Check' tool worldwide to combat fake news

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The new feature tags stories with potentially misleading information with veracity reports from organizations like Snopes and Politifact. 

Monitor's Best: Top 5 

Why United Airlines fiasco resonated with so many

Pentagon has powerful capacity to wage cyberwar

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MICHAEL EVANS 

File footage of a North Korean ballistic missile launch is relayed on monitors at Seoul Railway Station on April 16, 2017.

Advances in cyberwarfare have provided the Pentagon with unique capabilities to target ­weapon systems and covert ­nuclear programs operated by hostile states such as North Korea.

Pyongyang has suffered dozens of missile failures. While some were due to engineering defects, others may have fallen victim to a covert Pentagon operation to jam or disrupt launches with sophisticated computer viruses.

Indeed, former British foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind has suggested the malfunctioning North Korean missile launch on Sunday could have been caused by a US cyber attack.

The Pentagon has two departments that have developed powerful tools to attack a hostile state’s computers.

Cyber Command and the ­National Security Agency work together on programs to provide the president with an offensive ­option that does not require boots on the ground, Tomahawks or the US air force.

Nuclear Weapons in a Post-Christian World

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By Paul Bracken

Debate about a nuclear arms race may be missing a moral dimension, and these debates should include all nuclear powers

The second nuclear age takes place in a post-Christian world. New atomic missiles come from North Korea, Pakistan, India, China – with diverse religious and nonreligious traditions. The United States, set to start its own nuclear modernization, now too is a post-Christian nation.

“Post-Christian” here means the decline in primacy of a Christian worldview in politics, especially in the United States and Europe. During the first nuclear age and Cold War, both were Christian societies by this definition. And while Christianity still has many adherents, it lacks the authority it had during the years of the Cold War. This decline of authority means that calculations of self-interest in international politics bear almost all of the weight for restraint and shaping world order. Questions that drove debate about the Cold War arms race are no longer asked with the same passion. Yet these questions haven’t vanished. Who, for example, determines the national interest? Who does the calculations on which self-interest is founded and that determine nuclear armaments buildup?

Any framework that overlooks these moral issues misses a critical dimension of strategic analysis.

That our world is post-Christian, despite nearly a third of the population being Christian, should give us pause, especially about nuclear weapons. As a practical matter the national interest is now decided by politicians and strategy specialists. If the Cold War had been conducted this way it would have been a more dangerous experience, perhaps intolerably so. But it wasn’t. A larger Christian context surrounded the debate over the arms race. It didn’t prevent this arms race, but capped it in important ways. Many people don’t realize that most nuclear weapons proposed during the Cold War were never built. Neutron and cobalt bombs, tsunami makers with bombs on the ocean floor and nuclear weapons in space – all proposed and never built.

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Small Wars Journal / Military Writers Guild Writing Contest

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Small Wars Journal / Military Writers Guild Writing Contest

Congratulations to the authors listed below whose articles have been selected as the top essays submitted in our latest writing contest. Sixty seven articles were submitted and the following twenty three made the cut. Due to the diverse nature of the subject matter submitted and the authors’ backgrounds SWJ has reorganized the contest from three distinct categories into one broad category. Twenty of the authors will receive a $150 prize. The top three submissions will be announced at the conclusion of the publication of all the articles at Small Wars Journal. The top paper’s author will receive $500, second place $300 and third $200. Each author will also receive a certificate acknowledging their accomplishment.

Publication of the articles will begin Wednesday, 12 April, with one or two papers being published each day over a three week period. The list below and the order of publication are purely random.

Kudos to all the authors for an outstanding effort and your contributions to our community of interest and practice are sincerely appreciated.

1. Clemency and the Sword: Using Amnesty as a Weapon to Fracture and Defeat ISIL by Matthew Mullarky

While some analysts predict that ISIL will slowly but gradually decline throughout 2017, the organization has proven to be both resilient and dangerous in defeat. The United States is unable to devote its full resources and attention to combating ISIL, as it must maintain its commitments with its partners in the Pacific and with NATO.

MOBILIZATION: THE ARMY’S ACHILLES’ HEEL

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CHRISTOPHER PETTY

For special access to experts and other members of the national security community, check out the new War on the Rocks membership.

I knew we had a problem in 2006. That was the year I took a battalion through the mobilization process on the way to war in Iraq. The 2-135th Aviation Battalion, with our six hundred citizen-soldiers, from different states, moved to Ft. Hood to answer the nation’s call. Our flight crews were manned and well-trained. Our battalion staff was proficient. Yet, we ended up away from our jobs and families, sitting and waiting patiently at Fort Hood for six months. Some of the time was spent setting up our battalion with its unique airfield and maintenance requirements. We also went through training we had already done. Much of the time we sat around waiting to use ranges and other training facilities that we had to share with others. My soldiers also received equipment, such as new radios and mounts for vehicles that we would end up sending home. This story isn’t just about frustrated soldiers. It’s also about how a nation that invested in such an incredible warfighting capability faced a needless six-month delay in employing it. It didn’t change the outcome of the war, but it was more than an inconvenience: It was a symptom of a strategic problem that the United States needs to tackle because next time the stakes might be higher.

CTC Sentinel 10 (4)

Author 

Michael Knights, Alexander Mello, Paul Cruichshank, Assaf Moghadam, Aaron Y Zelin, Sean Yom, Katrina Sammour, (Editor: Paul Cruickshank) 

This edition of the CTC Sentinel looks at 1) the Islamic State’s continued efforts to defend Mosul; 2) the tactical, cost-benefit relationship between Iran and al-Qa`ida; 3) the latter group’s first successful international attack since 9/11, which targeted the el-Ghriba synagogue in Djerba, Tunisia; and 4) the social and political dimensions of youth radicalization in Jordan. The journal also includes an interview with attorney Bernard Kleinman, who has defended high-profile individuals in terrorism cases, including Ramzi Yousef, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Anas al-Libi.

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English (PDF, 32 pages, 3.78 MB)

Series 

CTC Sentinel

Issue 

4 

Publisher 

Combating Terrorism Center (CTC)

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Sound And Fury

By Max Boot,

When I read of the United States forces’ dropping of the second-largest non-nuclear explosive in their arsenal — the 21,000-pound GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) — in eastern Afghanistan, I am reminded of what John Paul Vann, the legendary Army officer and civilian adviser during the Vietnam War, said about the right way to fight guerrillas: “This is a political war, and it calls for discrimination in killing. The best weapon for killing would be a knife, but I’m afraid we can’t do it that way. The worst is an airplane. The next worse is artillery. Barring a knife, the best is a rifle — you know who you’re killing.” An Israeli general made a similar point to me after the defeat of the second intifada, saying, “Better to fight terror with an M-16 rather than an F-16.”

What they were saying, these veteran counterguerrilla fighters, is that war requires careful calibration in the application of violence, lest excessive firepower kill lots of innocents and drive more recruits into the enemy’s camp. That is precisely the problem that United States forces (and before them, the French) encountered in Vietnam and the Russians encountered in Afghanistan.

There is, to be sure, no evidence of any collateral damage from the use of the “mother of all bombs” in Afghanistan. Preliminary reporting indicates that the bomb may have killed 36 Islamic State militants and collapsed some tunnel networks. These are results to be cheered. And if North Korea or Iran is intimidated by this staggering display of firepower, so much the better.

Our most vulnerable borders may be electronic, not physical

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BY MARK TESTONI, 

It’s interesting to see how words like "ban" and "wall" have become intertwined with our basic understanding of national security. Yet, while these terms rile passions everywhere, there is a different set of borders that is potentially more vulnerable and maybe even more dangerous.

The behavior toward these barriers is reckless, even lawless, all while there’s ubiquitous access and uneven safety, and it doesn’t get nearly enough attention. 

These are the "borders and roadways" seemingly and virtually built around information — the lifeblood of modern society, with all the benefits and flaws. For years, we’ve seen attacks on everything from retailers and banks to political parties and government agencies, and each takes its toll.

The sheer volume has a curious effect on our consciousness. On one hand, as the assaults pile up, we’ve become largely immune to the bad news. On the other, the hacks and the motives behind them have gotten more sophisticated, more complicated and more damaging.

US cyber attacks may be bringing North Korean missiles down

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Julian Ryall

A file image showing an underwater test-fire of strategic submarine ballistic missile conducted at an undisclosed location in North Korea CREDIT: KCNA VIA EPA

Experts are suggesting the in-flight failure and crash of the missile launched by North Korea on Wednesday could have been the result of a "left-of-launch" attack by the United States.

Wednesday's missile has been identified as a liquid fuel, extended-range Scud and was launched shortly after dawn from near the city of Sinpo, on the east coast of the Korean Peninsula. US Pacific Command estimates that the weapon flew for a maximum of nine minutes and travelled less than 40 miles before spinning out of control into the Sea of Japan.

North Korea's missile programme has a high rate of failure with another medium-range weapon failing during flight earlier in March. In early 2016, a Musudan missile fired to mark the anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-sung, the founder of the nation, blew up immediately after launch and damaged its mobile tractor-erector-launcher unit.