The NTI Index theft ranking includes two sets of data: countries with one kilogram or more of weapons-usable nuclear materials and countries with less than one kilogram of or no weapons-usable nuclear materials. Browse overall country scores or explore the data by category and indicator on the map below. The equal sign (=) denotes a tie between or among countries. All countries are scored 0-100, where 0 and 100 represent the lowest or highest possible score, respectively, as measured by the NTI Index criteria.
28 January 2016
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RESULTSReal Strategists Don’t Use Smartphones
http://modernwarinstitute.org/1258-2/
Posted by Matt Cavanaugh on Jan 23, 2016
Smartphones: the strategist’s most insidious insider threat.
Strategists are knowledge workers; attention is their scarce, sparse, spendable resource. Smartphones, and other mobile, ever-present, internet-linked devices, hijack human attention at the speed of “click.” These performance-degrading, digital dealers of info-dopamine consume the mind and deny the focus, rendering the hapless victim’s attention span lower than that of a goldfish. And devices for staying connected often ironically result in disconnecting users from their own judgment, which is the fundamental problem: smartphones obstruct strategists from “deep work.”
When your mind is your weapon, concentration matters. Just as great athletes don’t smoke as not to inhibit their lungs, great strategists don’t use smartphones as not to inhibit their minds.
Cal Newport, in his book, Deep Work, defines this title concept as “professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate.” This is precisely what strategists provide. For strategists, engaged in deep work means writing, means reading, means thinking. When your mind is your weapon, concentration matters. Just as great athletes don’t smoke as not to inhibit their lungs, great strategists don’t use smartphones as not to inhibit their minds.
Craftsmen choose their tools wisely. Here are 10 reasons why strategists ought to exercise the moral courage to ditch these self-lobotomizers:
Smartphone use means constant multitasking; multitasking is not possible.
Google cannot provide a Theory of Victory (if use x resource, then achieve y outcome). Bing is even less likely.
Strategists do not spend thousands and thousands of precious mental moments Tweeting. Just as nobody will Tweet the revolution, nobody will Tweet a war winning strategy.
Sharp tools; dull minds: over-reliance on technology lapses into complacency.
Smartphones infantilize one’s sense of direction. Clausewitz considered terrain sense a part of military genius. Google Maps denies this skill’s practice.
Smartphones deliver information, never knowledge or wisdom.
Smartphone connectivity provides external networking at the cost of internal insights. The former can be accomplished with alternate means, the latter can never be replaced.
Strategists practice the strategic arts in human affairs, and therefore must be masters of the interpersonal. Smartphones block sincere, eye-to-eye, human engagement.
War is unending boredom punctuated by intense bouts of violence. As such, managing boredom impacts preparedness for combat, while smartphones prevent boredom through digital escapism. You cannot develop a “fingertip feel” for the battlefield if your finger never leaves a glass screen.
No smartphones were consulted or harmed in the making of this essay; this list was entirely conceived in pen and ink.
BONUS: This goes for general officers as well; the best thing you could do for that flag officer in your life is to execute that Blackberry with extreme prejudice. Ironically, trading up to a “dumbphone” might be the smartest decision you’ll ever make.
How technology transforms conflict
http://www.c4isrnet.com/story/military-tech/blog/net-defense/2016/01/26/how-technology-transforms-conflict/79340420/
Kevin G. Coleman, January 26, 2016
The art and science of modern warfare have been undergoing a dramatic change in recent years. You don’t have to go back 10 years, just look back at 2008. That was the year a USB flash drive inserted malicious code into a U.S. Central Command computer and spread into the classified systems of the military. The same malware found its way to some of our allies and disrupted a substantial part of one country’s fleet.
The convergence of the physical and cyber worlds was inevitable. Many are projecting this to occur over the next few years. In all actuality, it has already begun and appears to be accelerating. Technology has already created the need for many new jobs in the military and intelligence communities as well as the private sector. In fact, many of the top 10 in-demand jobs in 2010 did not even exist in 2004. All that adds up to a substantial amount of change that will befall the military and intelligence communities
The strategies and tactics employed in modern military conflict are extremely dependent on technology. Some have even gone as far as to say that military superiority demands technological superiority. They point to unmanned vehicles and robots used for patrolling and in actual combat operations. Some have even suggested complete combat brigades of armed robots.
As models of armed conflict change to ones that are much more technology intensive, some have expressed their concerns. The first concern is that we become less humane because the conflict will take place remotely with few soldiers being placed in harm’s way. The second concern deals with the magnitude of change that will take place over the next few years. All of us adapt to change in different ways and at various rates. How will we get those that adapt slower to pick up their pace of change? Or will they just be cast aside because they do not have the adaptability necessary in the military of tomorrow. Think of the magnitude of change the career military has already seen. That is likely to pale in comparison to the technological changes that will take place in the next 10 to 20 years.
** PREPARING FOR THE NEXT BIG WAR
http://warontherocks.com/2016/01/preparing-for-the-next-big-war/
DAVID BARNO AND NORA BENSAHE, JANUARY 26, 2016
“For almost twenty years we had all of the time and almost none of the money; today we have all of the money and no time.”
Those words were spoken by Army Chief of Staff George Marshall in 1940 as he was facing the imminent entry of the United States into World War II. He was lamenting the fact that when large conflicts suddenly arrive, all the money in the world cannot magically fix military shortfalls overnight. It is not hard to imagine a future Army chief of staff uttering those same words on the eve of a truly big war.
Between 1945 and 1989, the looming threat of global war between the United States and the Soviet Union informed every aspect of U.S. military preparations, from doctrine to organization to weaponry. But since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. military has not been sized, organized, and globally postured to fight a large-scale and bloody war.
Today, virtually no one serving below the rank of colonel or enlisted senior chief has ever served in a military facing a powerful peer competitor, nor have they faced a realistic prospect of fighting a global war to protect the nation’s most vital interests and perhaps even its survival. Yes, the United States has been at war for the past decade and a half. But even at their peak, U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan included no more than 171,000 troops and100,000 troops respectively. Compare that with the more than 537,000 troops deployed at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968 — which was considered a small and limited conflict at the time.
The likelihood that the United States will have to fight a really big war — one that requires many hundreds of thousands of troops, with high levels of destructiveness and casualties — remains low, but the consequences would be enormous. And in a world threatened increasingly by disorder, violent extremism, and more aggressive large states, those low odds may be increasing.
What could trigger a big war? A massive, direct attack on the United States certainly would, but other lesser crises could also escalate unpredictably. Imagine, for example, a Russian invasion of another eastern European state; a territorial miscalculation between the United States, China, or a treaty ally in the South China Sea; an explosive Sunni–Shia conflict spilling beyond the Middle East; a regional conflict in South Asia or on the Korean peninsula; or a large deadly terrorist attack in the United States. An initial U.S. military response to any of these scenarios could escalate into a greater, and potentially even global, conflict. The requirements of such a war would greatly exceed current contingency plans for Iraq, Afghanistan, or even the Korean peninsula.
The potentially devastating consequences of the next big war demands that the U.S. military (and the nation as a whole) prepare as much for this scenario as for the range of lesser challenges demanding attention today. Today’s wars, likely contingencies, and simply running the Defense Department all require time, energy, and resources. Choices and tradeoffs must be made. Nevertheless, the Pentagon must identify the gaps that would put the United States at the biggest risk in a large, prolonged conflict against a highly capable adversary, and mitigate those risks to the greatest extent possible.
An Expansive, and Dangerous, Chinese View on Cyber Deterrence
http://blogs.cfr.org/cyber/2016/01/25/an-expansive-and-dangerous-chinese-view-on-cyber-deterrence/
by Adam Segal, January 25, 2016
In most open source writings, Chinese analysts tend to discount the possibility of deterrence in cyberspace. Attribution, detection, and monitoring are hard. Attacks can come from state and non-state actors. Retaliatory cyber attacks have no certainty of outcome. All of these conditions combine to make it difficult to deter cyber attacks on national networks.
Given this skepticism, it was interesting to find a long, Sun Tzu-quote-filled discussion of cyber deterrence published on a website affiliated with People’s Daily. Like many other open source writers, Yuan Yi, a researcher at the Academy of Military Sciences, takes a very expansive view of deterrence in cyberspace. According to Dean Cheng, China traditionally views deterrence, or weishe (ๅจๆ
), as both deterrence in the Western sense–threats intended to raise the costs high enough so a potential adversary does not act in the first place–and compellence–displays of military power or threats to use military power in order to compel an opponent to take an action or submit. In the vast majority of cases where Yuan’s article refers to deterrence, it appears to be talking about offensive cyber operations and compellence. So the strengths of cyber deterrence, in Yuan’s view, include the fact that cyberattacks are more humane than nuclear, chemical, or biological attacks; deterrence is cost effective because cyber weapons are cheap; deterrence methods are diverse because cyber weapons can target multiple types of systems; and deterrence uses are repeatable and flexible because, unlike nukes, cyber weapons can be used multiple times. Western analysts tend to associate all of these characteristics with cyber offense not deterrence.
The list of negatives that characterize cyber deterrence also mirrors what Western strategists have traditionally associated with the weaknesses of cyber weapons. Cyber deterrence, for Yuan, lacks credibility because cyber weapons have not yet been used in real warfare; the defense is dynamic and may eliminate vulnerabilities and thus make a weapon useless; the effects of a weapon may spread to connected networks and may even boomerang back to the attackers; states with low levels of connectivity provide few targets and are not easily deterred; and the distributed nature of networks makes the creation of a unified military force difficult.
27 January 2016
Time for a pause - Reflections on Pathankot
http://www.telegraphindia.com/1160126/jsp/opinion/story_65816.jsp#.VqeP3_l96M8
Brijesh D. Jayal
Now that the tsunami that swept through newsrooms and electronic channels during and after the recent terrorist attack on the Indian air force station in Pathankot has blown over, it offers an opportunity to pause and reflect on the deeper ramifications of the entire event and, indeed, the national response to it. At one level, it would appear that this was in line with a series of such storms that continue to buffet the national scene at an alarmingly regular frequency. While debates on these can be considered part of an ongoing political turf war or a healthy democracy at play with an inquisitive media playing its rightful role, the Pathankot episode concerns not just national security, but how we, as a society, respond to a new and still evolving threat of terrorist violence unfolding across international frontiers. Such an event should be considered beyond the pale of partisan politics, media hype and ill-informed debate and discussion. This is all the more important since this is not going to be the last of such happenings and just as the armed forces will hold incisive debriefs and learn lessons, other institutions of our democracy would also be well advised to do so.
One understands the fierce competition that prevails in newsrooms of the electronic media for viewership, so that some of the debates tend to be dramatic and even hysterical. While this may be of good entertainment or viewer-rating value it would be fair to accept a degree of seriousness when covering the national security domain. More so when operations are ongoing and minders of terrorists are monitoring the media to glean information and guide their foot soldiers in real time. Getting hold of veterans and others eager to face the camera and calling them "defence experts" when some were not even considered so by their peers when they were in service, is to be unfair to a subject as serious as national security.
There has been much criticism on how terrorists could make an entry into a military airfield little appreciating that military airfields are spread over large areas and while all have security perimeter fencing/walls and so on, these can measure up to 20-30 kilometres in length and are by no means impenetrable in warlike situations unless secured by the army. That is why passive air defence and ground defence of airfields (as indeed many other pre-designated civil and military vital areas and vital points) during a state of war is the responsibility given to army formations who along with the IAF or other concerned authorities carry out routine exercises to ensure seamless and coordinated action in the event of a cautionary for hostilities being declared. During peace time a plethora of intelligence, police and paramilitary forces are expected to ensure that war-like threats are unable to rear their head.
The legacy of Raghuram Rajan
Mon, Jan 25 2016.
http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/p2SZMu6ay7HYOj13v3BxjN/The-legacy-of-Raghuram-Rajan.html
The RBI governor has reiterated his commitment to restore the central value to Indian business: trust. In time, when we look back on his term at the helm, this will be his enduring legacy
On the sidelines of the just concluded meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan reiterated his commitment to restore the central value to Indian business: trust. In time, when we look back on his term at the helm, this will be his enduring legacy—something for which we will be grateful.
In a Walk the Talk session with Shekhar Gupta, the evergreen newsman, Rajan built his case around three astute and insightful observations on the wrongs of some segments of corporate India or what is less generously referred to as the cost of crony capitalism.
—If you flaunt your birthday bashes even while owing the system a lot of money, it does seem to suggest to the public that you don’t care. I think that is the wrong message to send. If you are in trouble, you should be cutting down your expenses.
—The system has been geared to favouring those who have the ability to work the courts. The policy that you (large businessmen) follow is that during good times, you take the upside; but in bad times, you go to banks and ask how much of a haircut (loan write-offs) are you going to take?
—It is not about being against big businesses or successful businessmen or businesswomen and neither is it a Robin Hood issue.
Rajan then went on to emphasize the objective of what he has pursued in his tenure since he took over as RBI governor in 2013. “This is an issue about the wrongdoers among the community who (have) raised the cost of borrowing for everybody,” he said.
Typically, most of these statements, also made in the past, have been taken up in the context of a clean-up of all that is bad in the system. Appealing while it may be sound, it is a case of missing the wood for the trees.
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