NATO Tries to Define Cyber War

By Robert Morgus

October 20, 2014

Imagine that China launches a cyber attack on the United States tomorrow. It devastates systems, crippling the financial sector or causing loss of life. But does it merit a military response? The answer to that big question also informs a much larger, looming debate: As it becomes increasingly clear that few cyber attacks can be defined as acts of war, what should the role of institutions such as NATO be? And in this new world, how do we define what is war - and what is not?

The topic was discussed at September's NATO Summit in Wales. Attending heads of state agreed that cyber attacks can reach a threshold that not only threatens Transatlantic prosperity and security, but could even be "as harmful to modern societies as a conventional attack" and thus merit an invocation of Article 5, the collective defense clause. Treading carefully, though, they refrained from defining which cyber attacks cross this threshold.

This is an important declaration and the culmination of a seven-year internal debate that stems from Distributed Denial of Service attacks pointed at Estonia in April 2007. But the emerging policy still begs questions, about NATO's response to cyber attacks in particular, but more broadly about the general function of the Alliance.

On April 27, 2007, Estonia, a NATO member, relocated a Soviet-era war memorial. Within hours, a large-scale DDoS campaign began, targeting the websites of government departments, banks, telecoms, and news organizations. Some sites were shut down entirely, while others were defaced.The attacks rendered a number of Estonian government sites inaccessible for weeks and generally disrupted communication in the country.

The attack on Estonia illuminated the vulnerability of NATO members in cyberspace and placed the enhancement of cyber capabilities near the top of the Alliance agenda. In June 2007, NATO defense ministers committed to take up the issue, and in 2008, the Alliance opened the Cooperative Cyber Defence Center of Excellence in the Estonian capital, Tallinn.

The latest Alliance statement, however, does little to clarify NATO's role. At its core, Article 5 is a reactionary clause. Its only invocation in the 65-year history of the Alliance came in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And as the summit declaration states, a certain threshold must be met to consider invoking Article 5.

Definitions

But how do we define thresholds in cyberspace? It is useful to consider three dimensions: confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data. A few key cases help unpack these concepts.

Confidentiality is the principle that sensitive data should be kept out of the wrong hands, and breaches of confidentiality are perhaps the most common form of cyber attack. Take the widespread accusations that the Chinese hacked Lockheed systems and stole blueprints for the new F-35 aircraft. This attack produced a tangible strategic loss for the United States - and for allies who buy the F-35. It provided the Chinese with not only the information to build a competitor aircraft, but also information to help defend against such an aircraft. Chinese responsibility for the incursion is widely acknowledged. The response? The Department of Justice indicted the hacker in question. For better or worse, confidentiality breaches have been treated as crimes.

15 PREDICTIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET COMPARTMENTALIZED, GATED, ARMORED, CAMOUFLAGED, DECEITFUL, DANGEROUS, WONDERFUL. RESENTED — A ‘DR. NO’ IN CYBER SPACE — AND AN OFF THE NET MOVEMENT

October 15, 2014 

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15 Predictions For The Future Of The Internet Compartmentalized, Gated, Armored, Camouflaged, Deceitful, Dangerous, Wonderful. Resented — A ‘Dr. No’ In Cyber Space — And An Off The Net Movement

Bridget Shirvell, had an interesting and thought-provoking article back in March of this year on the PBS NewsHour website on what may lay ahead for the future of the Internet. We are all aware that the overwhelming majority of us are no longer network enabled; but, more like network dependent. And, as Ms. Shirvell notes, “the Internet has radically changed everyday life –[ particularly] in American society. It has created [opened] new ways to connect family and friends; disrupted the way we do business; and, rewired just about everything in between. But, the Internet and the worldwide web are still relatively young. The public web is only 25yrs. old; and, like most twenty-somethings…it still has a lot of growing up to do.”

“While the debate continues on net neutrality,” Ms. Shirvell writes, “privacy, and architecture of the Internet, there is some agreement about the future of the Internet over the next ten years. As part of a series of reports marking the 25th anniversary of the Web, Pew Research Center’s Internet Project, in partnership with Elon University’s Imagining The Internet Project, asked nearly 1,500 Internet experts open-ended questions the future of the web.” What they found probably won’t surprise you in most respects; but, in others, it could be breath-taking.

The majority believes the Internet will become like electricity during the next decade, less visible; but, more important…and, embedded in everyday life. While a majority of the experts surveyed agreed that the Internet is likely to continue to grow/expand, there was disagreement on the implications — especially with respect to its good and bad aspects, Ms. Shrivell wrote. Pew has been conducting this survey since 2004 [ten years] and interestingly, this was the first time that there were as many negatives…as there were positives. “They worry about interpersonal ethics, surveillance, terror, and crime; and, the inevitable backlash as governments and industry try to adjust,” said Elon University Professor Janna Anderson, a primary author of the report.

So, what is the future of the Internet? Here are 15 predictions from the report released back in March, 2014, Digital Life at 2025:

— Information sharing over the Internet will be so effortlessly interwoven into daily life that it will become invisible, flowing like electricity, often through machine intermediaries;

— The speed of the internet will enhance global connectivity, fostering more positive relationships among societies;

— The Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and big data will make people more aware of the their world; and, their own behavior;

— Augmented reality and wearable devices will be implemented to monitor and give quick feedback on daily life, especially in regard to personal health;

— Political awareness and action will be facilitated and more peaceful change; and more public uprisings like the Arab Spring will emerge (see Hong Kong now);

— The spread of the “Ubernet” will diminish the meaning of borders, and new “nations” of those with shared interests may emerge online; and exist beyond the capacity of current nation-states to control;

— The Internet will become “the Internets,” as access, systems, and principles are renegotiated;

— An Internet-enabled revolution in education will spread more opportunities, with less money spent on buildings and teachers;

— Dangerous divides between the haves and have-nots may expand, resulting in resentment and possible violence;

— Abuses, and abusers will ‘evolve and scale.’ Human nature isn’t changing; their laziness, bullying, stalking, stupidity, pornography, dirty-tricks, crime, and the offenders will have new capacity to make life miserable for others;

— Pressured by these changes, governments and corporations will try to assert power — and at times succeed — and at times succeed — as they invoke security and cultural norms;

— People will continue — sometimes grudgingly, to make tradeoffs favoring convenience, and perceived immediate gains over privacy; and, privacy will be something only the upscale enjoy;

— Humans and their current organizations may not respond quickly enough to challenges presented by complex networks;

— Most people are not yet noticing the profound changes today’s communications networks are already bringing about; these networks will be even more disruptive in the future;

— Foresight and accurate predictions can make a difference. The best way to predict the future….is invent it.”

U.S. Spy Programs May Break The Internet If Not Reformed, Google Leader Says

ANDREW MARSHALL [AKA: 'YODA'] TO RETIRE FROM PENTAGON’S NET ASSESSMENT OFFICE IN JANUARY

By VAGO MURADIAN and PAUL McLEARY 

October 18, 2014 

Andrew Marshall [aka: 'Yoda'] To Retire From Pentagon’s Net Assessment Office in January

Andrew Marshall has run the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment since 1973.

Andrew Marshall has run the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment since 1973. (Department of Defense)

WASHINGTON — Andrew Marshall — a Pentagon institution who influenced policy makers from the Cold War to today — has signaled his intention to step down in January, according to sources.

Marshall, 93, heads the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), which months ago was spared the budget ax as part of a restructuring of the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Having founded the Pentagon’s internal think tank in 1973, Marshall is the only director it has ever known. His influence over the decades on defense policy analysis in Washington has been vast.

Pentagon leaders such as Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work, Director of Cost Assessment Jamie Morin and Undersecretary for Intelligence Mike Vickers have all worked for Marshall, as have dozens of other leading national security thinkers spread through think tanks and policy shops.

As of Friday evening, a spokesman for the Pentagon was unable to comment on Marshall’s departure.

Once Marshall vacates his Pentagon office, questions will invariably arise over the small organization’s future; speculation over who will step in to run the office will likely be intense.

“The function of that office needs to be retained,” said Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Center Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), who worked for Marshall as an Army officer and whose organization still does work for the ONA.

“In order for that office to perform successfully, you need a person who understands the analytic approach to net assessment,” Krepinevich added. “It also requires a significant budget, and the independence to decide what will be studied.”

What is seen as ONA’s greatest strengths — Marshall’s ability to keep it independent of political or bureaucratic influence from inside or outside the building — could be difficult to maintain without him at the helm, however.

Richard Danzig, former Navy secretary who is now the vice chairman of RAND and a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, maintains that one of the key attributes that Marshall’s eventual successor must have is to be “a person who thinks long term and with originality. That successor doesn’t necessarily have to be someone who comes out of the community of Andy’ sprotégés,” he said.

“Andy is so unique and so idiosyncratic in his style that I wouldn’t try to replicate him, but attempt to find someone with his virtues of far-sightedness, rock solid integrity, and original thought,” Danzig said.

After a reorganization late last year, the office lost a bit of its independence when it was decided that it would begin reporting to the undersecretary of defense for policy. But Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel promised in December that “we will preserve ONA as a distinct organization with direct links to the secretary of defense, but this change will better ensure that its long-range comparative analyses inform and influence DoD’s overall strategy and policy.”

A taste of what ONA does can be seen in an announcement issued in May seeking proposals to look at everything from “military competition on and under the surface of the sea,” to future precision-strike capabilities; potential policy fallout from increased nuclear proliferation; and military competition in space.

Over the summer, the office issued research contracts worth more than $10 million to a variety of organizations like CSBA, Booz Hamilton, the Hudson Institute and IHS International to carry out these projects over the next several years.

“An interesting consideration some years from now would be the benefits of longevity,” Danzig said. “Would we want Andy’s successor to stay five years or 35? That question is probably best answered five years after the successor has been on the job.”

Overall, Krepinevich — author of the forthcoming book “The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy” with fellow ONA alum and CSBA senior analyst Barry Watts — mused that Marshall “was fortunate that defense secretaries saw the need to have an office to do this kind of work without having to go though all the bureaucratic coordination that takes the sharp edge off of ideas … that sort of intellectual freedom is needed to think strategically, and challenge the conventional wisdom.” ■

Both symptom and balm

Oct 18th 2014

The oil price is tumbling. Is that good or bad news for the world economy? 

AFTER declining gradually for three months, oil prices suddenly tumbled almost $4 on October 14th alone. It was the largest single-day fall in more than a year and brought the price of Brent crude, an international benchmark, to $85 a barrel. At its peak in June, a barrel had cost $115.

Normally, falling oil prices would boost global growth. A $10-a-barrel fall in the oil price transfers around 0.5% of world GDP from oil exporters to oil importers. Consumers in importing countries are more likely to spend the money quickly than cash-rich oil exporters. By boosting spending cheaper oil therefore tends to boost global output.

This time, though, matters are less clear cut. The big economic question is whether lower prices reflect weak demand or have been caused by a surge in the supply of crude. If weak demand is the culprit, that is worrying: it suggests the oil price is a symptom of weakening growth. If the source of weakness is financial (debt overhangs and so on), then cheaper oil may not boost growth all that much: consumers may simply use the gains to pay down their debts. Indeed, in some countries, cheaper oil may even make matters worse by increasing the risk of deflation. On the other hand, if plentiful supply is driving prices down, that is potentially better news: cheaper oil should eventually boost spending in the world’s biggest economies.

The global economy is certainly weak. Japan’s GDP fell in the second quarter. Germany’s did too, and may be heading towards recession (recent figures for industrial production and exports were dreadful). America’s growth has accelerated recently, but its recovery is weak by historical standards. Just before this week’s oil-price slump, the International Monetary Fund cut its projection for global growth in 2014 for the third time this year to 3.3%. It is still expecting growth to pick up again in 2015, but only slightly.

Weaker growth translates into lower energy demand. This week, the International Energy Agency, an oil importers’ club, said it expects global demand to rise by just 700,000 barrels a day (b/d) this year. That is 200,000 b/d below its forecast only last month. Demand has been weak for a while but the recent slowdown—notably in Germany—took markets by surprise, hence the sharp fall in the price.

But feeble demand is not the only explanation. There has also been a big supply shock. Since April last year the world’s total output of oil has been rising strongly. Most months’ output has been 1m-2m b/d a day higher than the year before. In September, this expansion jumped dramatically (see chart); global output was 2.8m b/d above the level of September 2013.

When the Petrodollars Run Out

BY DANIEL ALTMAN

OCTOBER 17, 2014 

Oil and gas prices are falling through the floor. And some countries are woefully unprepared for the drop.

It's good to be Vladimir Putin these days. The Russian president can jerk most European countries around without fearing the consequences, thanks to their dependence on his natural gas. Meanwhile, Putin's customers are probably dreaming of the day when they can tell him to piss off. But when they can finally live independently of his resources, international influence won't be the only thing that crumblesfor Russia and other petrostates.

I'm not talking about the kind of energy independence that the United States may gain from fracking, or Brazil by exploiting its deep-sea oil reserves. I'm talking about the day when oil and gas are no longer used as fuel for vehicles and heating homes. For governments that depend on petroleum revenue, like Russia's does, it could be a day of reckoning. Recent fluctuations in the demand and prices for oil and gas are just a sneak preview.

Heating and motor vehicles are arguably the two biggest uses for petroleum that are vulnerable to technological change in the years to come. Right now, the United States still uses about two-thirds of its petroleum for gasoline and heating. The rest goes for jet fuel, propane,plastics, and other products that won't necessarily be replaced by electric cars, solar panels, and wind power. As demand for gasoline and oil-and-gas-based heating drop, crude and natural gas prices will probably fall as well. But then those other petroleum-based products will become cheaper and people will buy more of them, adding back some demand for oil and gas. And of course, the emerging economies growing fastest today will contribute some demand as well.

Nevertheless, it's fair to assume that revenue from selling oil and gas will decline within a few decades in countries that are unlikely to find much in the way of new reserves, like Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. Other industries linked to petroleum, such as chemicals and refining, may suffer as well.

What will this mean for the future of the petrostates? In many of them, the governments are dependent on revenues from oil and gas. Two years ago, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published a paper on budgeting with extractive industries that included a version of the following graph:

Twenty countries depend on petroleum for at least half of their government revenue, and another 10 are between half and a quarter. These countries are clearly vulnerable to big changes in the price and quantity of oil and gas that they might sell. But which ones would have the hardest time coping?

One factor that will affect them is the diversification of their economies. In countries where petroleum is responsible for a lot of revenue but not much of overall economic output, there is at least the possibility of broadening the tax base. Starting with Qatar in the graph above, all the countries depend on petroleum for less than a fifth of gross domestic product. But some of them are lousy at collecting taxes, which is the revenue they'll rely on when earnings from oil and gas decline.

According to estimates compiled for 2005 to 2007 by Andreas Buehn of the Utrecht School of Economics and Friedrich Schneider of the Johannes Kepler University of Linz, the shadow economy -- or black market -- may make up more than half of Nigeria's GDP, and more than 40 percent in Chad, Russia, Myanmar, and Ivory Coast. (Of course, this may be part of the reason why petroleum revenue accounts for so much of their governments' budgets.) Recovering from a dent in government revenue would be especially tough for any of them.

Moreover, several of the countries that depend so heavily on petroleum do a poor job of providing public services even with the revenue it brings. Of the five countries with the narrowest tax bases, four -- Chad, Ivory Coast, Myanmar, and Nigeria -- rank in the bottom 20 percent globally for government effectiveness in the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators. 

Were oil and gas prices to dip sharply, these countries might well collapse altogether.

The World Is Full of Grain

MOISÉS NAÍM

OCT 14 2014

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Agricultural production is at record levels—and that could make the planet less stable.

Grain harvested in Hampshire, England (Neil Howard/Flickr)

Apple sold over 10 million iPhone 6s in a single weekend—a record. Google is under pressure from European authorities on two fronts: concerns over anti-competitive practices and privacy violations, following an EU court ruling recognizing citizens’ “right to be forgotten” by the web. Amazon is embroiled in a commercial dispute with Hachette and retaliated by discriminating against writers working with the publisher. In reaction, many prominent authors have signed an open letter denouncing Amazon’s behavior.

Information-technology and Internet companies are magnets for media attention. But we hear far less about the companies that produce the food we eat—especially those involved in agriculture. And yet agricultural activity is breaking records in ways that will have huge consequences for hundreds of millions of people. Did you know that worldwide wheat production is the highest it’s ever been? And that despite growing consumption, farms and granaries are overflowing with excess production?

What a Grain Co-op Can Teach Us About Changing the Food World The International Grains Council estimates that inventories of soy, wheat, barley, and corn are reaching their highest volume in 30 years. In the United States, this year’s corn harvest is expected to top last year’s, which was also unprecedented. Europe is setting records with its wheat and corn harvests, and Canada is doing the same with wheat, barley, and oats. “The new abundance will have broad effects, weakening incomes of farmers and companies that supply them, fattening profit margins at food and biofuel companies and—eventually—slowing food price inflation for consumers in rich and poor countries alike,” writes Gregory Meyer of the Financial Times.

And what has caused this explosion in grain supplies? Prices. They’ve been unusually high in recent years and have encouraged farmers to pour money into boosting production. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, from 2005 to 2013 the land used to cultivate wheat, soy, and corn grew by 11 percent globally. Never before has such a large swath of the earth been tilled.

There are four main factors behind these rising prices: world population growth; increased food consumption in poor countries (in large part due to rising middle classes and their disposable income); the use of grains in the production of fuels like ethanol; and the greater frequency of extreme climatic occurrences that have the potential to destroy harvests or limit farm yields. High prices served as an enormous incentive to invest in agriculture and more investment propelled production to unprecedented levels, which in turn is now pushing prices down.

The Five Biggest Disasters in American Military History

http://nationalinterest.org/feature/the-five-biggest-disasters-american-military-history-11536?page=show

"What are the biggest disasters in American military history, and what effect have they had on the United States?"

Robert Farley

October 23, 2014

Nations often linger on their military defeats as long as, or longer than, they do on their successes. The Battle of Kosovo remains the key event of the Serbian story, and devastating military defeats adorn the national narratives of France, Russia and the American South. What are the biggest disasters in American military history, and what effect have they had on the United States?

In this article, I concentrate on specific operational and strategic decisions, leaving aside broader, grand-strategic judgments that may have led the United States into ill-considered conflicts. The United States may well have erred politically in engaging in the War of 1812, World War I, the Vietnam War and Operation Iraqi Freedom, but here I consider how specific failures worsened America’s military and strategic position.

Invasion of Canada

At the opening of the War of 1812, U.S. forces invaded Upper and Lower Canada. Americans expected a relatively easy going; the notion that Canada represented the soft underbelly of the British empire had been popular among American statesmen for some time. Civilian and military leaders alike expected a quick capitulation, forced in part by the support of the local population. But Americans overestimated their support among Canadians, overestimated their military capabilities, and underestimated British power. Instead of an easy victory, the British handed the Americans a devastating defeat.

Anatomy of an “Intelligence Failure”

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This post was provided by Phil Walter, a former Infantryman, Intelligence Officer, and Counterterrorism Planner. Phil currently serves in a policy role in the Executive Branch of the United States Government. The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and do not contain information of an official nature.

Listen closely and you can hear it. Far off in the distance an angry mob has formed and wants the heads of every intelligence organization across the United States Government on pikes. The stale mantra of “intelligence failure” and “strategic surprise” has returned. This time, the stimulus is the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) which then became the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and is presently called the Islamic State (IS). Before we can discuss the intelligence focus or lack thereof on the recent events in Iraq and Syria, we need to establish a baseline of knowledge.

The United States Intelligence Community website states, “Our primary mission is to collect and convey the essential information the President and members of the policymaking, law enforcement, and military communities require to execute their appointed duties.” Another portion of the webpage describes the intelligence cycle and how “[t]he process begins with identifying the issues in which policy makers are interested and defining the answers they need to make educated decisions regarding those issues.”[i]Note the part where the issues of interest are identified. Intelligence is a support function to something larger. That something larger is the effort undertaken by the customer who consumes the intelligence.

Despite the money spent and hours worked, there will always be a gap between customer expectations and the capability of the intelligence organization that supports them. Intelligence organizations are not omnipotent nor are they omnipresent. Products generated by intelligence organizations do not cure all ailments nor do they serve a Tabasco sauce-like role by making even the worst meal more palatable. Customers should understand that the intelligence organizations supporting them are manned by dedicated professionals collecting and analyzing inconceivable amounts of information, some of which may be conflicting or have veracity issues, and struggling to synthesize it into a useful and meaningful document free from bias.

The success of an intelligence organization is tied to the direction it receives from its customers. If the customer doesn’t direct its intelligence organization to focus in depth on Syria then one should not be angry when events in Syria seem surprising. The intelligence organization to customer relationship is also a two way street. If direction does not materialize, the intelligence organization must demand direction from its customer.

Service Culture: You’re Doing it Wrong

http://www.jqpublic-blog.com/service-culture-youre-wrong/

by Tony Carr on October 22, 2014 • 

General T. Michael Moseley introduced the Airman’s Creed in 2007, destroying informal service creeds that had developed over decades. It’s been a failed experiment in cultural engineering and should be repealed for the good of the service and its airmen.

Every Air Force Chief of Staff yearns to leave an indelible mark on the service. Seven years ago, General T. Michael Moseley chose to spend his dime on “reinvigorating a warrior ethos,” though he acknowledged at the time that airmen had been going “above and beyond the call of duty every hour of every day.”

In truth, Moseley was probably less animated by his love of warrior tradition than he was by his obligation to keep the service perceptually relevant enough in a persisting ground war to preserve its share of the defense budget. He may also have been driven to rein in the paternalistically misperceived “selfishness” of younger generations of airmen, a disease of impression that has consistently caused senior officers to view the service’s junior members in downcast terms. Whatever his reasoning, Moseley decided to “gift” the Air Force with one of its most controversial and least useful cultural epithets: the Airman’s Creed.

Whatever he was trying to do (assuming it was something positive), it didn’t work. The creed was immediately reviled by career airmen who had come of age ascribing themselves to a family of creeds that had risen informally over time. With the swipe of Moseley’s pen, decades of tradition were destroyed, ironically in an attempt to manufacture tradition. The enmity didn’t stop there. As unit level vanguards of assimilation continually foisted the creed throatward, airmen choked on it. Rejection, resentment, sneering, and jokes prevented the creed’s implantation in service culture, and it quickly receded into practical irrelevance.

Our Idea: A New Way Forward – Professional Military Education

October 10, 2013

http://def2013.com/my-def-idea-a-new-way-forward-professional-military-education/

Much has been done in the military to improve and adjust our Professional Military Education system. This can be seen in documents like the Army’s Learning Concept 2015, which go a long way to addressing how courses are taught and what the focus of them should be. Whether such documents influence the overall bureaucracy that is the military education system remains to be seen. Anecdotally, great strides have been made at the lower levels (the courses that teach largely the technical and tactical aspects of the military), while much remains to be done at the mid-grade and senior level schooling. We hope to further this change with our ideation group this weekend.

Content and method of teaching aside, there are really three mechanisms that would greatly strengthen our schools: improving instructor selection, creating a more rigorous form for professional accountability, and increasing course standards.

Today, as the ALC 2015 details, institutions within the military “often assign instructors arbitrarily, rather than through a selection process that accounts for subject matter expertise or aptitude to facilitate adult learning. Some instructors have skill gaps due to multiple deployments in non-military occupational specialty (MOS) and/or branch assignments. With few exceptions, instructor positions are not perceived to be career-enhancing assignments.”[i] If we truly desire our PME schools to develop our future (and current) leaders, then we must expect their instructors/facilitators are up to the task. This is not a process that has to be invented. Institutions like the US Military Academy and the US Naval War College have very rigorous selection criteria for their faculty. We should do the same for all our PME schools. This would not only ensure we are getting the people we need for each position, but would allow an opportunity for future instructors to get an advanced degree in the subject they are to teach (as USMA instructors do), while simultaneously increasing the desirability of instructor positions and the impact they will have on their career. We should institute a boarding process within the PME institutions that select men and women for each position, fund them to study in preparation for instruction, then put them to work.

We all know, however, that no matter how proficient the instructor, the student must be prepared and willing to receive the instruction. If the student is not properly prepared before they arrive or held accountable for the material, they not only waste precious education slots, they hamper those around them…and ultimately the profession. We must ensure our units, and the officers themselves, are preparing for PME schools. An example of a possible solution exists to this issue, as well, though it a little more removed than a military academy on the Hudson. The Interwar Prussian/GermanKriegsakademie, founded by Scharnhorst and ultimately headed by Clausewitz and discussed in Jorg Muth’s Command Culture, was designed to pull the operational force up intellectually to a higher level. There were strict educational and testing standards to even enter schooling, and the performance required was even more rigorous. This paradigm made field units focus their efforts on preparing leaders for these schools, putting much of the onus of leader development with commanders. This freed up the schools to focus on intellectually stretching students, not simply bringing them to the lowest common denominator level.

The German military education system was not perfect. They lost two world wars, after all. But they did know how to prepare their personnel for the next level of education, select them to attend, and hold them accountable for performance when they were there. We should emulate this approach. Signs in the Army are that they institutionally understand this; education at the major level is going back to board selection. It remains to be seen if they also improve on the second half of the equation – a rigorous and challenging curriculum that holds its students (and faculty, to be honest) accountable.

PAUL FARMER: HARVARD PROF. OF GLOBAL HEALTH ON EBOLA; AND HIS RECENT RETURN FROM LIBERIA

London Review of Books

LRB Cover

October 19, 2014 

http://fortunascorner.com/2014/10/19/paul-farmer-harvard-prof-of-global-health-on-ebola-and-his-recent-return-from-liberia/

Paul Farmer is a professor of global health at Harvard, an infectious disease physician at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a co-founder of Partners in Health.

Vol. 36 No 20 · 23 October 2014

pages 38-39 | 4426 words

Diary

Paul Farmer

I have just returned from Liberia with a group of physicians and health activists. We are heading back in a few days. The country is in the midst of the largest ever epidemic of Ebola hemorrhagic fever. It’s an acute and brutal affliction. Ebola is a zoonosis – it leaps from animal hosts to humans – which is caused by a filovirus (a thread-like virus that causes internal and external bleeding). It was first described in 1976 in rural Congo, not far from the Ebola River, as an acute-onset syndrome characterized by complaints of weakness, followed by fever and abdominal pain. Patients became dehydrated as a consequence of fever, vomiting and diarrhea. Many became delirious and started to hemorrhage from the mouth, nose, vagina, at sites where intravenous lines had been placed, even from the eyes.

The Ebola virus is terrifying because it infects most of those who care for the afflicted and kills most of those who fall ill: at least, that’s the received wisdom. But it isn’t clear that the received wisdom is right. It’s true that many of those who have died were medical professionals. The 1976 epidemic, for example, started in a mission hospital where Belgian nuns worked as nurses alongside Congolese colleagues. But even then it was known that the virus could be transmitted as the result of a failure to follow the rules of modern infection control: the nurses reused needles and did not wear gloves, gowns or masks, which were all in short supply. Nor did the nurses, still less their patients, receive what in Brussels, Boston or Paris would count as modern medical care.

Even without a specific antiviral therapy, the treatment for hypovolaemic shock – which occurs when there isn’t enough blood for the heart to pump through the body and is the end result of many infections caused by bacteria and some caused by hemorrhagic viruses – is aggressive fluid resuscitation. For those able to take fluids by mouth, shock can often be forestalled by oral rehydration salts given by the litre. Patients who are vomiting or delirious are treated with intravenous fluids; hemorrhagic symptoms are treated with blood products. Any emergency room in the US or Europe can offer such care, and can also treat patients in isolation wards.

Both nurses and doctors are scarce in the regions most heavily affected by Ebola. Even before the current crisis killed many of Liberia’s health professionals, there were fewer than fifty doctors working in the public health system in a country of more than four million people, most of whom live far from the capital. That’s one physician per 100,000 population, compared to 240 per 100,000 in the United States or 670 in Cuba. Properly equipped hospitals are even scarcer than staff, and this is true across the regions most affected by Ebola. Also scarce is personal protective equipment (PPE): gowns, gloves, masks, face shields etc. In Liberia there isn’t the staff, the stuff or the space to stop infections transmitted through bodily fluids, including blood, urine, breast milk, sweat, semen, vomit and diarrhea. Ebola virus is shed during clinical illness and after death: it remains viable and infectious long after its hosts have breathed their last. Preparing the dead for burial has turned hundreds of mourners into Ebola victims.

Many of the region’s recent health gains, including a sharp decline in child mortality, have already been reversed, in large part because basic medical services have been shut down as a result of the crisis. Most of Ebola’s victims may well be dying from other causes: women in childbirth, children from diarrhea, people in road accidents or from trauma of other sorts. There’s little doubt that the current epidemic can be stopped, but no one knows when or how it will be reined in. As Barack Obama said, speaking at a special session of the United Nations, ‘Do not stand by, thinking that somehow, because of what we’ve done, that it’s taken care of. It’s not.’ Preventing the next eruption is an even more distant goal.

As of 1 October, a third of all Ebola cases ever documented were registered in September 2014. More than seven thousand cases have been recorded since March, more than half of them fatal. In epidemiological terms, the doubling times of the current Ebola outbreak are 15.7 days in Guinea, 23.6 days in Liberia and 30.2 days in Sierra Leone. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested at the end of September that unless urgent action is taken, more than a million people could be infected in the next few months.

The worst is yet to come, especially when we take into account the social and economic impact of the epidemic, which has so far hit only a small number of patients (by contrast, the combined death toll of Aids, tuberculosis and malaria, the ‘big three’ infectious pathogens, was six million a year as recently as 2000). Trade and commerce in West Africa have already been gravely affected. And Ebola has reached the heart of the Liberian government, which is led by the first woman to win a presidential election in an African democracy. There were rumors that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was not attending the UN meeting because she was busy dealing with the crisis, or because she faced political instability at home. But we knew that one of her staff had fallen ill with Ebola. A few days ago, we heard that another of our Liberian hosts, a senior health official, had placed herself in 21-day quarantine. Although she is without symptoms, her chief aide died of Ebola on 25 September. Such developments, along with the rapid pace and often spectacular features of the illness, have led to a level of fear and stigma which seems even greater than that normally caused by pandemic disease.

JOINT FORCE QUARTERLY 75 (4^TH QUARTER, OCTOBER 2014)

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Dialogue

From the Chairman

True and Steady, Inspection Ready
By Bryan B. Battaglia and Curtis L. Brownhill

Forum

Executive Summary

An Interview with Raymond T. Odierno

Theater Airlift Modernization: Options for Closing the Gap
By Robert C. Owen

The Afghanistan National Railway: A Plan of Opportunity
By Lawrence J. Pleis, Richard Lliteras, David A. Wood, Matthew D. Bain and Steven J. Hendrickson

The USCENTCOM Train: The Deployment and Distribution Operations Center Turns 10
By Mark A. Brown

Essay Competitions

2014 Winners

Deterrence with China: Avoiding Nuclear Miscalculation
By David S. Forman

The Limits of Cyberspace Deterrence
By Clorinda Trujillo

Opportunities in Understanding China's Approach to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands
By Bradford John Davis

JPME Today

Cyber Security as a Field of Military Education and Study
By Eneken Tikk-Ringas, Mika Kerttunen, and Christopher Spirito

Why Military Officers Should Study Political Economy
By Rebecca Patterson and Jodi Vittori

Low Cost, High Returns: Getting More from International Partnerships
By Russell S. Thacker and Paul W. Lambert

Commentary

Asymmetry Is Strategy, Strategy is Asymmetry
By Lukas Milevski

Is Military Science "Scientific"?
By Glenn Voelz

The Best Man for the Job? Combatant Commanders and the Politics of Jointness
By R. Russell Rumbaugh

Features

A Potent Vector: Assessing Chinese Cruise Missile Developments
By Dennis M. Gormley, Andrew S. Erickson, and Jingdong Yuan

Blurred Lines: Cultural Support Teams in Afghanistan
By Megan Katt

Determining Hostile Intent in Cyberspace
By Ramberto A. Torruella, Jr.

Understanding the Enemy: The Enduring Value of Technical and Forensic Exploitation
By Thomas B. Smith and Marc Tranchemontagne

Recall

Challenges in Coalition Unconventional Warfare: The Allied Campaign in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945
By J. Darren Duke, Rex L. Phillips, and Christopher J. Conover

Book Reviews

You Cannot Surge Trust
Reviewed by Dov S. Zakheim

Engineers of Victory
Reviewed by Bryon Greenwald

Next-Generation Homeland Security
Reviewed by Katie Kuhn

Joint Doctrine

Implementing Joint Operational Access: From Concept to Joint Force Development
By Jon T. Thomas

Dealing with Corruption: Hard Lessons Learned in Afghanistan
By Richard J. Holdren, Stephen F. Nowak, and Fred J. Klinkenberger, Jr.

Joint Doctrine Update