Counter-Terrorism: How The West Became Collateral Damage

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htterr/articles/20141107.aspx

November 7, 2014: People in the West are greatly alarmed and concerned about Islamic terrorism. This fear is largely misplaced and a product of modern media, not the reality of what is going on in the Islamic world. The fact is that well over 90 percent of Islamic terrorism victims are Moslems. In 2013 that was more like 99 percent. Although there has been a huge increase in Islamic terrorist activity since September 11, 2001, it has mainly been directed at other Moslems. For the last century there has been growing incidence of Islamic terrorism and this is largely the result of the many ancient and unresolved religious disputes in Islam, plus modern technology. The tech allowed Moslems to travel more freely and allowed Moslem nations to do more business with the spectacularly successful economies in the West. Finally, there is oil wealth, which makes it possible for large numbers of Moslems to migrate from their poorly run countries to the more prosperous and pleasant West. The last of these to arrive was the oil wealth and that made it easy for Moslem rebels to blame the West for “supporting” (by paying for the oil rather than just taking it) the local Moslem tyrants. These threats led to some attacks in the most notably the ones on September 11, 2001. But overall, the Islamic terrorism was largely directed at other Moslems. There is much talk about attacking the West but the vast majority of the attacks are still, as they have been for over a thousand years, against fellow Moslems. 

Looking at the Islamic terrorism situation as an historical event you see that the current outbreak began in the 19th century, as Western influences began to be felt throughout the Islamic world. There followed the collapse of Turkish control in the Middle East, the rise of radical socialism (fascism and communism) which were both attractive to many Moslem radicals. Finally there were the efforts by the newly (in the 1970s) wealthy Saudi kingdom to spread its own form of conservative Islam as far as possible. 

At the core of this war is an Arabs family feud over which forms of Islamic radicalism are acceptable and which are to be condemned as Islamic terrorism, heresy or whatever. The main dispute is between those who consider “moderates” like the Moslem Brotherhood an acceptable Islamic conservative group and others (like Saudi Arabia) that identifies the Brotherhood a terrorist organization. This is the continuation of a centuries old struggle over what the most acceptable form of Islamic conservatism is. 

At the center of this dispute is Saudi Arabia and its effort to defend its form of Islamic government. Saudi Arabia has long supported Islamic conservative groups. Yet in 2013 the Saudis came out against the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt and against al Qaeda two decades earlier. At the same time the Saudis have no problem supporting Islamic radicals in Syria, including some who belong to al Qaeda. 

Tackling Islamic State: a message from Lebanon

Gareth Smyth for Tehran Bureau

7 November 2014 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2014/nov/07/-sp-lebanon-iran-islamic-state-isis 

In an interview, author Michael Young argues that ending violence in Syria and Iraq requires regional and international powers – including Iran – to face up to the realities of sectarian politics 

Black-clad militants descend in front of a giant Hezbollah banner. Photograph: Haytham Musawi /EPA

The recent paperback launch of a book on Lebanon published four years ago might seem a strange move given the dramatic changes in the Middle East since 2010. But Michael Young’s The Ghost of Martyrs Square has stood up remarkably well not just as a sharp analysis and gripping narrative of the crucial period of 2005-2010 in Lebanon but as a strikingly topical example of a Middle Eastern country facing sectarian conflict.

Lebanon has often fallen victim to proxy battles between regional powers, especially Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, although the three also underwrote the 1989 Taef agreement that ended the 15-year civil war. The links between the country’s religious sects and these regional powers – or, in the case of Christians, the United States and France – have encouraged many Lebanese to question the country’s sect-based political system, which has developed, as Young points out, over several centuries.

The third intifada is here

Author Shlomi EldarPosted November 6, 2014

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Israeli border police officers walk in front of the Dome of the Rock in the compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City, Nov. 5, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Ammar Awad)

A third intifada. People have been talking about it for more than a year already, threatening that its eruption is just around the corner and that it’s likely to be more violent and hellish than its two predecessors.

Periodic situation evaluations of the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) highest command echelons warned that the harsh economic situation, lack of a diplomatic horizon and overall feeling of frustration and that there is no way out are likely to be the catalysts. Shin Bet assessments disseminated in 2013 even showed worrisome data regarding growing unrest in the West Bank, and painted the picture of the lone terrorist going out on his own to carry out an attack without the backing of organizational infrastructure. These assessments even led to closer security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority with the goal of detecting and thwarting the first signs of terrorist organization if and when they appear on the ground.

But apparently the Israeli security system didn't imagine that the third intifada it had anticipated, warned against and prepared for would erupt specifically in Jerusalem, and with such intensity.

The vehicular terror attack carried out on Nov. 5, and the one committed two weeks previously on Oct. 22 claimed the lives of three Israelis and wounded many others. When we add the attempted murder of right-wing activist Yehuda Glick on Oct. 30, one of the prominent members of the Temple Mount Faithful group, there is no room left for doubt: An additional ''Al-Aqsa intifada” (as the second intifada was named) is taking place now, and Jerusalem is both the battlefield as well as the cause of the unrest. Or, to be more precise: the Temple Mount is the catalyst for the eruption of the current intifada in Jerusalem. We can deduct this from the words of relatives of two terrorists who carried out the recent vehicular terror attacks in the city.

Family members and neighbors of Abed a-Rahman a-Shaludi from Silwan, who rammed his vehicle into the train station, killing the infant Chaya Zisel Braun and Karen Yemima Muskara, told reporters who arrived in the neighborhood on Oct. 23 that nothing would pacify the crowd as long as Jews ascended to the Temple Mount.

Obama’s Quagmire America’s campaign against ISIS has already lost its way.

By Fred Kaplan

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Kurdish refugees from Kobani watch as thick smoke covers their city during fighting between ISIS and Kurdish peshmerga forces on Oct. 26, 2014.

America’s war against ISIS is quickly turning into a quagmire.

A few signs of progress have sprung up in recent days. U.S. airstrikes have slowed down the Islamist group’s onslaught against the Kurdish town of Kobani in northern Syria. A much-cheered caravan of Kurdish peshmerga fighters is making its way from Iraq to join the battle.

Fred Kaplan is the author of The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War and 1959: The Year Everything Changed.

But even if the Kurds push ISIS out of Kobani, what does that signify in the larger struggle? What happens next? And what is the Obama administration’s desired endgame and its path for getting there? These questions have no clear answers, and that speaks volume.

When President Obama delivered histelevised address on Sept. 10, announcing that he would now pursue ISIS throughout Iraq (not just where they threatened U.S. diplomats) and even into Syria, he clarified that the focus would remain on Iraq. To the extent he launched airstrikes in Syria, they would be clustered along the border, to keep the jihadists from moving back and forth between the two countries or seeking safe haven. And at first, the bombs dropped on Syria did fall along the ISIS cross-border paths.

But by early October, Obama was dropping more bombs on Syria than on Iraq. What happened? Kobani. ISIS launched an assault against this town on the Turkish border. Intelligence indicated the town would soon fall. Local Kurds were running out of ammunition. Turkish President Recep Erdogan lined up tanks, but refused to roll them forward; he also blocked Turkish Kurds from crossing the border to help their Syrian brethren. So, to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe, Obama sent in the drones and the fighter planes.

Defeating ISIS: A Strategy for a Resilient Adversary and an Intractable Conflict

Michael Eisenstadt

November 2014 

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A new study on how Washington can overcome various military and political obstacles -- some of them self-imposed -- to improve the chances of success against ISIS.

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President Obama's decision to launch a campaign aimed at "degrading and eventually destroying" the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) marks a major turning point in U.S. policy toward the Middle East. But the administration's approach faces major challenges, including the resiliency of ISIS, the complexity of the operational environment, and the coalition's limited ability to exploit the group's military, geographical, political, and financial vulnerabilities. Moreover, the president's reluctance to adequately resource the effort, commit additional reconnaissance and strike assets, or deploy small numbers of troops to the fight will further limit U.S. options and reduce the prospects for near-term success.

In this Washington Institute study, military expert Michael Eisenstadt describes how the administration can overcome these obstacles, work through the contradictions inherent in its current approach, adequately resource the military campaign, and make substantial progress in addressing a key threat to American interests.

THE AUTHOR

Lt. Col. Michael Eisenstadt, USAR (Ret.) directs the Military and Security Studies Program at The Washington Institute. His military service included active-duty stints in Iraq with the United States Forces-Iraq headquarters and in a civilian capacity with the Multinational Force-Iraq/U.S. Embassy Baghdad Joint Campaign Plan Assessment Team. He has also served as an advisor to the congressionally mandated Iraq Study Group, the Multinational Corps-Iraq Information Operations Task Force, and the State Department's Future of Iraq defense policy working group.

The Iraq Troop-Basing Question and the New Middle East

James F. Jeffrey

November 2014 

An examination of allegations that the Obama administration’s failure to secure a long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq after 2011 was the "original sin" that led to the ascendance of ISIS.

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The meteoric rise of ISIS has justifiably spurred an examination of what U.S. policies might have led to a less dire outcome in territories now controlled by the group. One common focus is the Obama administration's decision to forgo a troop presence in Iraq after 2011. Yet while troops would have given Washington more leverage, the question of whether they could have prevented the rise of ISIS is hardly clear-cut.

In this new Policy Note, James F. Jeffrey, who served as U.S. ambassador to Iraq from 2010 to 2012, draws on his intimate experience with the troop-basing issue to explain what really happened three years ago. By discussing complex factors such as judicial immunity for American forces, political shifts in Baghdad, and rhetorical shifts within the Obama administration, he outlines lessons that Washington can draw from the Islamic State's ascendance.

Read Ambassador Jeffrey's accompanying Wall Street Journal article "Behind the U.S. Withdrawal From Iraq."

Ambassador James F. Jeffrey is the Philip Solondz distinguished visiting fellow at The Washington Institute, where he focuses on U.S. strategies to counter Iran's efforts to expand its influence in the broader Middle East.

The Billion-Dollar Game Designer Who Became a Future-War Theorist

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Former ‘Call of Duty’ creative director Dave Anthony wants to change the way America thinks about conflict

Video games are huge business. For years now, digital games have earned more than the music and film industries combined. And of all of the billion-dollar properties in the industry, Call of Duty is one of the biggest.

For eight years, Dave Anthony steered the franchise. He wrote and directed five of the series’ 11 titles, helping to transform a World War II shooter into a cultural touchstone and annual entertainment event for millions of people.

After producing some of the most successful video games of all time, Anthony left the industry. A year later, the Atlantic Council—a Washington, D.C. think tank—hired Anthony to help predict the future of warfare.

Now the man who imagined video-game wars helps an influential think tanks talk about real war. At least, the ways real war might evolve.

His reception has been … chilly. Frankly, a lot of people find Anthony’s ideas pretty repulsive.

In any event, Anthony still has a hard time processing how he got from there to here. “It still boggles my mind,” Anthony tells War Is Boring. “I grew up in a really poor sort-of suburban Liverpool.”

Liverpool is the industrial city in England that’s most famous for being the birthplace of the Beatles. Anthony didn’t care for it. “ I don’t know if you know much about Liverpool,” he says, “but it’s not the greatest place to live. Not great weather. There’s lots of poverty.”

Money was always a concern for Anthony growing up. He finished college broke. “I got into the games industry out of necessity,” he says. “All I could really do was play games, so I got a job as a games tester.”

That was 20 years ago. The companies were smaller then, not the thousand-person affairs they are today. Anthony endeared himself to the heads of the studio he worked for.

“I got to know them and I offered to write on a game for free,” he says. “They accepted.”

He loved the work and did such a good job that his bosses paid him for the writing work he offered to do gratuit. “I worked on a bunch of different stuff,” he adds. “I worked on a Star Trek game. I worked on an X-Men game, but Call of Duty was when things really started to get interesting.”

The battle of Stalingrad in the very first Call of Duty. Activision capture

China builds computer network impenetrable to hackers

By Malcolm Moore, Hefei

07 Nov 2014

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China is building the world’s first long-distance quantum encryption network, a 1,200-mile line between Beijing and Shanghai that will be theoretically unhackable

China will soon have the world's most secure major computer network, making communications between Beijing and Shanghai impenetrable to hackers and giving it a decisive edge in its quiet cyberwar with the United States.

In two years' time, a fibre-optic cable between the two cities will transmit quantum encryption keys that can completely secure government, financial and military information from eavesdroppers.

"We learnt after the Edward Snowden affair that we are always being hacked," said Prof Pan Jianwei, a quantum physicist at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in Hefei, who is leading the project.

"Since most of the products we buy come from foreign companies, we wanted to accelerate our own programme," he added. "This is very urgent because

classical encryption was not invented in China, so we want to develop our own technology."

The £60 million cable, which is being funded by the central government and has been supported by the Central Military Commission, will initially mostly be used for money transfers by ICBC, the world's largest bank.

However, Prof Pan said eventually all communications in China, down to storing photographs on cloud servers, could feature quantum encryption.

America's paid boots on the ground

November 8, 2014

http://theweek.com/article/index/271389/americas-paid-boots-on-the-ground

The U.S. may turn to military contractors to fight ISIS. What are the implications of outsourcing war?

The U.S. used thousands of private contractors in both Iraq and Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic, file)

What are military contractors?

They are the legions of civilian workers who are hired to provide support tasks for the military. Some are former soldiers, but the vast majority of them don't carry weapons. The jobs they do range from building barracks and staffing cafeterias to guarding diplomats and intelligence gathering. Armies have always relied on such support staff. But since 9/11, U.S. reliance on contractors has metastasized. In the Iraq conflict, the U.S. employed 155,000 contractors — about the same as the number of U.S. soldiers there — while toward the end of the Afghanistan War, 207,000 contractors supported 175,000 soldiers. Even now, there are some 1,600 military contractors still working for the U.S. in Iraq. It's unclear what role they're playing and whether any of them will directly join in the fight against ISIS. For contractors paid by the U.S., "it's technically illegal to operate offensively or to take part in combat," said Molly Dunigan of the RAND Corp. "But lines blur quickly in the fog of war."

Why did the U.S. shift to contractors?

The practice really took off under President George W. Bush, as the U.S. fought simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, stretching the supply of soldiers. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also believed the Pentagon could save money by bypassing government workers and contracting support tasks out to the private sector. Halliburton, DynCorp, Blackwater, and other companies were paid $200 billion to build infrastructure, feed and support troops, and provide security in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Did they do a good job? 

They did a tremendous amount of work, but not without inefficiencies of their own. The Commission on Wartime Contracting, established by Congress in 2008 to sift through the accounts, found that up to $60 billion — or about one of three dollars spent — was lost to waste or fraud. The major contractors subcontracted out parts of their contracts to other firms, which then sub-subcontracted to still other firms. Some companies listed salaries for phantom employees or billed for services not rendered. An audit of just four invoices out of 129 submitted by Aecom Government Services found $4 million in overbilling out of $30 million in charges — including one charge of nearly $200 for a bag of washers that cost $1.22. Worse than the fraud, though, were allegations that some of the armed contractors unjustly used their weapons against Iraqi civilians.

How did that happen?

India’s ‘Look East’ Policy Begins with Myanmar

By Tridivesh Singh Maini

November 08, 2014

Modi’s visit highlights Myanmar as a first step in countering China. 

On November 11, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi begins a 10-day tour of Myanmar, Australia and Fiji – his longest overseas trip to date. All eyes will be on the East Asia Summit in Myanmar, as well as the G-20 Summit in Australia. Modi will also be the first Indian prime minister to visit Australia in 28 years. But first stop in Myanmar should not be overlooked; it isimportant for a number of reasons.

First of all, Myanmar is India’s link to Southeast Asia, and thus a crucial component of its “Look East Policy,” now also called “Act East” by the current government. Over the past two decades successive governments have made assiduous efforts to reach out to Myanmar, realizing its strategic importance, especially in the context of India’s regional ties. While the late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited the country in 1987, the real opening up toward Myanmar took place in the early 1990s during the government of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. As the architect of India’s Look East Policy, Rao realized that India needed to adopt a more pragmatic approach towards Myanmar.

Economic relations between both countries were thus initiated, and a trade agreement signed in 1994 gave a strong initial stimulus to the relationship. Modi’s immediate predecessor, Manmohan Singh, visited Myanmar in 2012 accompanied by a 25-member business delegation. It was a reasonably successful trip, with the signing of 12 MOUs, including a $500 million line of credit, a development deal to establish the Indo-Myanmar border huts, an increase in bilateral airline services, and assistance for setting up centers for research in information technology and agriculture.

Still, there is ample scope to develop India’s economic and other ties with Myanmar. A number of projects have been commenced, the most important of which – the Kaladan Multi-Modal transport project, which will connect Calcutta with Sittwe port, and the India-Myanmar-Thailand trilateral highway – are still ongoing. Infrastructure at border posts like Moreh-Tamu, which is in dire need of repair, and the bus service between Imphal and Mandalay, which was supposed to begin in October, are still on the drawing board.

The Myth of the Indispensable Nation

BY MICAH ZENKO

NOVEMBER 6, 2014 

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The world doesn’t need the United States nearly as much as we like to think it does. 

In 1996, political journalist Sidney Blumenthal and foreign policy historian James Chace struggled to come up with a memorable phrase to describe America's post-Cold War role in the world. "Finally, together, we hit on it: ‘indispensable nation.' Eureka! I passed it on first to Madeleine Albright," Blumenthal recalled.

In his memoir of the Clinton presidency, The Clinton Wars, Blumenthalelaborated on what the phrase was intended to represent: "Only the United States had the power to guarantee global security: without our presence or support, multilateral endeavors would fail." Albright, then secretary of state, began using the phrase often, and most prominently in February 1998, while defending the policy of coercive diplomacy against Iraq over its limited cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors when, during an interview on the "Today Show," she said: "If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us."

Over the last six months, the notion of American indispensability has resurfaced in a big way. U.S. President Barack Obama has emphasized this point repeatedly, and most expansively in May while giving acommencement address to West Point cadets: "When a typhoon hits the Philippines or schoolgirls are kidnapped in Nigeria or masked men occupy a building in Ukraine, it is America that the world looks to for help. So the United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century past and it will be true for the century to come." Beyond the White House, this assertion has recently been made by Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal,Marco Rubio, and Michelle Bachman. This bipartisan group may not agree on much, but they are all proudly "Indispensables."

The Trade Deal Tokyo and Washington Need to Seal

Gen. James L. Jones 

November 6, 2014

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Japan and the United States have the best opportunity to elevate our bilateral relationship in many years - by concluding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations. The deal is about much more than expanding bilateral and regional trade, important as that is. The TPP stands to establish a new and enduring foundation for U.S.-Japan relations. The pact can guarantee Asia's future economic architecture and its trade rules, and it can cement our joint leadership at a time when regional economic competition is growing more intense and maintaining regional security is increasingly difficult.

There is much positive activity in the bilateral relationship. U.S. and Japanese companies from a wide variety of industries embark on new collaborative relationships on a daily basis. New defense guidelines are scheduled for completion this year; energy cooperation is moving forward, with the approval of new licenses to export U.S.-produced liquefied natural gas to Japan; and Washington has indicated its support for Japanese administration of the Senkaku Islands, as well as its willingness to help defend the isles under the U.S.-Japan security treaty.

But for the benefits of geopolitical cooperation to take full form, we need a new economic framework that strengthens Japan's economy and regional leadership while firmly establishing the long-term commitment of the United States to Asia. The TPP is the centerpiece of any such framework. 

While Washington and Tokyo agree on most of the rules being negotiated in the pact, Japanese and U.S. negotiators are hobbled by disagreements over market access to the agricultural and automotive sectors. The impasse has created a rough patch in the bilateral relationship and is holding up the overall negotiations - an outcome in neither party's interest.

The economic benefits of the TPP have been well documented. Eliminating tariffs on agricultural and manufactured goods and non-tariff measures that hinder services trade through TPP will give a major boost to the participating economies. According to widely reported work by Peter Petri of Brandeis University, Japan stands to gain more than almost any other TPP economy - a $105 billion boost to GDP by 2025, and $125 billion if South Korea ultimately joins, as is likely.

Will Obama become a foreign policy president?

By Fareed Zakaria Opinion writer 

November 6

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A paramilitary police officer stands in front of banners for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum displayed outside the China National Convention Center in Beijing, China, on Thursday, Nov. 6, 2014. Heads of state including U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are scheduled to attend the APEC leadership summit Nov. 10-11. (Tomohiro Ohsumi/Bloomberg)

Despite this week’s elections, President Obama has the time and scope to do big things over the next two years. But they will have to be in the world beyond Washington. Next week’s trip to Asia would be a good place to start. In fact, it’s odd that Obama has not already devoted more time, energy and attention to foreign policy. It has been clear for a while that there is little prospect of working with the Republican Party on major domestic initiatives. This is hardly unprecedented. Administrations often devote their last few years in office to international affairs, an arena where they have latitude for unilateral action. 

If Obama wants significant accomplishments in foreign policy in his last years in office, he will first need the discipline with which he began his presidency. The incremental, escalating interventionism in Syria and Iraq — were it to continue — would absorb the White House’s attention, the public’s interest and the country’s military resources. It also would not succeed, if by success we mean the triumph of pro-democratic forces in the Syrian civil war. 

Fareed Zakaria writes a foreign affairs column for The Post. He is also the host of CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS and a contributing editor for The Atlantic. 

Obama’s biggest foreign policy initiative is powerful, intelligent and incomplete: the pivot to Asia. The greatest threat to global peace and prosperity over the next decades comes not from a band of assassins in Syria but from the rise of China and the manner in which that will reshape the geopolitics of Asia and the world. If Washington can provide balance and reassurance in Asia, it will help ensure that the continent does not become the flashpoint for a new Cold War. 

Noam Chomsky: The Long, Shameful History of American Terrorism

BY NOAM CHOMSKY

NOVEMBER 3, 2014

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Photos of the six Jesuit priests and their housekeeper murdered by U.S.-supported soldier in El Salvador's civil war—one of many examples of American-sponsored terrorism—at a 2009 commemoration. (Steve Rhodes / Flickr)

President Obama should call our country’s history of supporting insurgents abroad for what it is: U.S.-backed terrorism.

A recent New York Times articles lists three major examples of "covert aid," in Angola, Nicaragua and Cuba. In fact, each case was a major terrorist operation conducted by the U.S.

“It's official: The U.S. is the world's leading terrorist state, and proud of it.”

That should have been the headline for the lead story in the New York Times on October 15, which was more politely titled “CIA Study of Covert Aid Fueled Skepticism About Helping Syrian Rebels.”

The article reports on a CIA review of recent U.S. covert operations to determine their effectiveness. The White House concluded that unfortunately successes were so rare that some rethinking of the policy was in order.

The article quoted President Barack Obama as saying that he had asked the CIA to conduct the review to find cases of “financing and supplying arms to an insurgency in a country that actually worked out well. And they couldn't come up with much.” So Obama has some reluctance about continuing such efforts.

The first paragraph of the Times article cites three major examples of “covert aid”: Angola, Nicaragua and Cuba. In fact, each case was a major terrorist operation conducted by the U.S.

How to Use Satellite Imagery to Verify YouTube Videos and Other OSINT Regarding Russian Military Activities in the Eastern Ukraine

Eliott Higgins 

November 8, 20143 

Geolocating the June Russian Buk Convoy in Millerovo

One of a series of videos that shows a convoy containing the Buk linked to the downing of MH17 was reportedly filmed near the town of Millerovo. The following demonstrates how it’s possible to use a combination of satellite map imagery and Google Street View imagery to find the exact location the video was filmed. 

The video was originally uploaded here, with the date and time on the camera shown to be 11:31am on June 25th. 

Based on details visible in the video it seems clear the video was filmed on this road running south of Millerovo towards the Ukrainian border 25km to the west, with the road in Ukraine continuing to rebel held Luhansk. 

Google Streetview in that area ends at the point where the video begins. 

There’s a number of elements of the Streetview image and video that matches. For example, here the position of large poles and the shape of the tree line matches 

At the start of the video, on the right hand side of the road the small pole with a blue sign is also visible (left three images from the video, right hand image from Google Streetview) 

Trojan Horse Malware Has Penetrated (Since 2011) Software That Runs Much Of U.S.’s Critical Infrastructure — Likely Russian State-Sponsored Cyber Op — Digital Preparation Of The ‘Battlefield’

November 7, 2014 

Jack Cloherty and Pierre Thomas from ABC News reported yesterday (Nov. 6, 2014), that “a destructive “Trojan horse” malware program has penetrated the software that runs much of the nation’s critical infrastructure; and, is poised to cause an economic catastrophe,” according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). ABC News cites “national security sources as saying that the malicious malware was most likely inserted by the Russian government; and, that the threat remains very serious.” ABC News adds that “the hacked software is used to control industrial operations like oil and gas pipelines, power transmission grids, water distribution and filtration systems, wind turbines, and even some nuclear plants.”

According to a DHS bulletin, the hacking campaign has been ongoing since at least 2011; but, no attempt to activate the malware has been made — to “modify, damage, or otherwise disrupt the industrial control process.” DHS sources reportedly told ABC News that “they think this is no random attack; and, they fear that the Russians have torn a page from the Cold War playbook; and, have placed the malware in key U.S. systems as a threat — and/or, as a deterrent to a [potential future] U.S. cyber attack on Russian systems — a Mutually Assured [Cyber] Destruction.” The breach reportedly became known last week when a DHS alert bulletin was issued by the agency’s Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team to its industry members. The bulletin said the “Black Energy,” penetration recently had been detected by several companies.

DHS added that “Black Energy,” is the same malware used by a Russian cyber-espionage group dubbed “SandWorm,” to target NATO, and some energy and telecommunications companies in Europe earlier this year. “Analysis of the technical findings in the two reports shows linkages in the shared command-and-control infrastructure between the campaigns, suggesting both are part of a broader campaign by the same threat actor,” the DHS bulletin noted. 

ABC News added that “the software is very advanced; and, allows workers to control various industrial processes through the computer, an iPad, or, smartphones, — as well as information sharing and collaborative control.

Nato frontline in life-or-death war on cyber-terrorists

30 October 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/30/nato-frontline-cyber-terrorists-war

From attackers trying to bring down planes to criminals targeting banks, the danger is growing 

“The nature of cyber-defence is that we are constantly behind the adversaries and not just two but more like 20 steps." Photograph: Ints Kalnins/Reuters

It’s been a busy week in the skies above Europe’s periphery, as Nato has repeatedly scrambled jets to track “unusual” sorties by Russian bombers

However lively the aerial game of cat and mouse has been, it is nothing compared to the digital skirmishing that goes on in and around the servers and systems that sustain the western alliance.

“The threat landscape is vast, from malware and hacktivists to organised criminals and state-sponsored attacks,” says Ian West, a former RAF officer who now heads up Nato’s cyber-security services. “Things that we thought impossible can be done.”

West’s 200-strong team covers operations for about 100,000 people at 34 Nato sites. Their task is formidable even by the hyperbolic standards of the internet. “Our intrusion detection systems find around 200m suspicious events each day,” West says.

While only a fraction of those are seen as serious attacks on Nato computers, it still adds up. The unit dealt with more than 3,600 abnormal activity or intrusion attempts last year, of which there were about five confirmed cyber-attacks per week.

This month, cyber-intelligence firm iSight Partners revealed that Russian hackers had exploited a bug in Microsoft Windows to spy on Nato computers in a five-year hacking campaign dubbed Sandworm, which also targeted Ukrainian computers. Earlier this week, hackerssuccessfully breached the White House computer network.

“With cyber-attacks, defenders are trying to find the needle in the haystack,” West says.

“It is serious. If a business gets attacked, it can go under. If our systems at Nato fail, people may die.”

How NSA Director Wants to Build an IoT Security Coalition

By Chris Preimesberger 

2014-10-30

http://www.eweek.com/security/how-nsa-director-wants-to-build-an-iot-security-coalition.html

How NSA Director Wants to Build an IoT Security Coalition

BALTIMORE, Md.--The chief warrior in the U.S. battle against the world's cyber-bad guys is just as worried about having his personal data breached as any of us.

Also, like many of us, he admits to being a bit bewildered about how governments, enterprises and individuals can fend off insider attacks, DDoS events, zero-day exploits, malware and other security issues that have become as common as drinking water in this Age of Internet.

But Admiral Michael S. Rogers (at left in photo with Jeffrey Wells), chief of the U.S. Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, is convinced that through effective working partnerships among government agencies, the military, law enforcement and key players in the private sector, long-term solutions will be found in the ongoing efforts to secure personal and business data and keep it out of the hands of cyber-criminals. 

Rogers on Oct. 29 addressed attendees at the two-day Cyber Maryland Conference here at the Baltimore Convention Center. About 1,000 stakeholders were registered. eWEEK was on hand both to cover the event and to moderate a panel discussion on Internet of things (IoT) security.

Because more than 250 companies and service providers are located in the Maryland-Virginia-Washington, D.C., region, it is fast becoming global ground zero for the cyber-security business.

Cyber Maryland Initiative Providing Leadership in Security Sector

Are today's leaders prepared for cyberwarfare?

Mark Colvin reported 

November 5, 2014

http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2014/s4122281.htm

MARK COLVIN: One reason the First World War got so bogged down over four years was that generals used to 19th century warfare took so long to understand the new technologies of air and tank warfare.

Australia's general John Monash was among the first to realise the need to co-ordinate all the forces - the move that brought on the great advances of 1918.

Are today's military leaders similarly unprepared for the need to bring cyber warfare into the mix?

Peter W Singer, a strategist and senior fellow at the New America Foundation, is lecturing on cyber security and cyber war at Sydney University tonight.

We began by talking about definition of cyber warfare, and I asked him first if the 2007 internet attack which brought Estonia to an electronic standstill could have been seen as an act of war.

PETER SINGER: Yes but that's not war. Count me as a traditionalist, even though we're talking about cyber, is that there still has to be some kind of violence, some kind of physical effect, so the so-called cyber war that hit Estonia several years ago, essentially a couple of their public facing websites on government institutions got defaced, it would be a lot like someone running up to the parliament and spray painting the side of it.

And then some of the traffic was blocked, it would be like someone standing there in the road blocking it for a couple of hours. If these were physical things, if it was people doing the spray painting, or standing in the road, you wouldn't describe that as war.

MARK COLVIN: You could use another analogy, you could say that one country bombs another one’s power station, kills nobody, that's defiantly an act of warfare and it makes just as much difference, just as much damaged doesn't it?

PETER SINGER: Exactly. But fortunately we've not had that happen yet. We've not had someone carry out this kind of attack that knocks power grids offline or disrupts traffic in a way that people die or the like. We haven't had…

Cyber Retaliation: A Byte for a Byte?

Co-authored by Dr. Stephen Bryen, Founder & CTO Ziklag Systems

11/06/2014 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-abrahams/cyber-retaliation-a-byte_b_6115630.html 

The Pentagon has Plan X --a scheme to retaliate against cyber attacks. No one knows what the warfare rules are for Plan X, but the fact that the Defense Department thought it necessary to put Plan X in place tells us that the attacks on the US critical infrastructure are rising to a level that threatens America's security directly.

Exactly what would trigger a counter-attack, a cyber war, can only be guessed. Would an attack on America's banking system that threatened our economy, or an attack on a nuclear power plant that could set off another Three Mile Island or Chernobyl type incident be enough to trigger a counter attack from the United States? Are we entitled under the rules of war to destroy an adversary's nuclear power plants or banking system?

For the past decade the US has tolerated cyber attacks on the critical infrastructure. Government agencies have tried to help private sector companies and organizations, but that's done little to stem the assault on critical infrastructure. In fact, securing computer networks is an uphill battle.

Virtually every system used by private companies, government agencies and the military are built on commercial off the shelf systems (COTS) which are mainly open systems. None of the commercial systems was built with security in mind and trying to patch holes in a sinking ship is only a delaying action at most. There are too many gaps in the underlying computer code that can be exploited. Making matters worse, most of America's computer hardware is manufactured in China. As is becoming increasingly clear, microcode spyware is being surreptitiously built into foreign-made gear. Everything from USB flash drives, computer mother boards, and mobile phones have been compromised.

Line dividing hacker cyber crime, state-sponsored terror attacks murky

By Andrew Conte

Nov. 6, 2014

http://triblive.com/news/editorspicks/7099811-74/cyber-warfare-security#axzz3IZyzD9W7

Daniel Garrie, founding editor of the Journal of Law & Cyber Warfare, (left) and Mitchell Silber, executive managing director of K2 Intelligence, talk about the blurred lines between cyber crime and warfare, during a one-day symposium at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, on Thursday, Nov. 11, 2014.

NEW YORK — The lines between online thefts and all-out cyber warfare continue to blur as hackers become more effective at attacks that threaten to cause serious economic damage, computer security and legal experts said here Thursday.

“It's not a clear, bright red line,” Mitchell Silber, executive managing director of K2 Intelligence, a cyber security company based here, said at a daylong cyber warfare conference. “It really is more murky, the difference between where a cyber criminal hack ends and where some type of state or state-sponsored event begins.”

The Department of Homeland Security last week issued a bulletin to cyber security insiders reporting that a destructive malware program known as “BlackEnergy” has been placed in key U.S. infrastructure systems that control everything from telecommunications and power transmission grids to water, oil and natural gas distribution systems and some nuclear plants.

The bulletin — issued through DHS' Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team — said several utility companies recently discovered the Trojan horse malware, which was first detected in the United States in 2011. There has been no attempt to “damage, modify or otherwise disrupt” these critical infrastructure systems by unleashing the malware, the bulletin said.

How NSA’s Cyber Warriors Helped Win (Sorta) The Last War in Iraq

Shane Harris 

November 9, 2014 

How the NSA (Sorta) Won the (Last) Iraq War

In an excerpt from his new book, @War, Daily Beast reporter Shane Harris shows how the NSA went partners with the military in Iraq and changed warfare forever. 

Bob Stasio never planned to become a cyber warrior. After he graduated high school, Stasio enrolled at the University at Buffalo and entered the ROTC program. He majored in mathematical physics, studying mind-bending theories of quantum mechanics and partial differential equations. The university, eager to graduate students steeped in the hard sciences, waived the major components of his core curriculum requirements, including English. Stasio never wrote a paper in his entire college career. 

Stasio arrived at Fort Lewis, Washington, in 2004, when he was 22 years old. His new brigade intelligence officer took one look at the second lieutenant’s résumé, saw the background in math and physics, and told Stasio, “You’re going to the SIGINT platoon.” 

SIGINT, or signals intelligence, is the capture and analysis of electronic communications. Like all branches of intelligence, it’s a blend of science and art, but it’s heavy on the science. The brigade intelligence officer had worked at the National Security Agency and recognized that Stasio’s physics training would come in handy, because so much of SIGINT involves the technical collection of radio signals, fiber-optic transmissions, and Internet packets. 

Stasio was assigned to a Stryker brigade, a mechanized force designed to be light on its feet, capable of deploying into combat in just a few days. It was Stasio’s job to locate the enemy on the battlefield by tracking his communications signals. And he was also supposed to divine his adversary’s intentions by eavesdropping on the orders a commander gave to troops, or listening for the air strike that a platoon leader was calling in from behind the lines. Stasio would join the Fourth Brigade, Second Infantry Division, “the Raiders,” and deploy to Iraq. He’d be working with a team of linguists, who would be essential, since Stasio didn’t speak Arabic. 

Stasio arrived in Iraq in April 2007 as part of a new “surge” of American troops. He might have wondered if they arrived too late. Stasio and his team found U.S. forces under relentless assault from insurgents, roadside bombers, and mortar attacks. Iraq was collapsing amid an escalating civil war. Foreign fighters were pouring into the country from neighboring Syria and Iran, and a ruthless terrorist network, known as al Qaeda in Iraq (which would later evolve into ISIS), ran a brutal campaign of attacks against U.S. and coalition forces, the Iraqi government, and Iraqi Shiites. The terror group aimed to break the back of the fledgling government with a theocratic dictatorship. 

Memo to NSA and GCHQ: Sending encrypted emails doesn’t make you a criminal

John Naughton

November 9, 2014

Yes, Isis exploits technology. But that’s no reason to compromise our privacy

The Guardian

Isis fighters in Syria. ‘How come GCHQ failed to notice the rise of the Isis menace until it was upon us?’ Photograph: Alamy/Zuma Press Inc

A headline caught my eye last Tuesday morning. “Privacy not an absolute right, says GCHQ chief”, it read. Given that GCHQ bosses are normally sensibly taciturn types, it looked puzzling. But it turns out that Sir Iain Lobban has retired from GCHQ to spend more time with his pension, to be followed no doubt, after a discreet interval, with some lucrative non-exec directorships. His successor is a Foreign Office smoothie, name of Robert Hannigan, who obviously decided that the best form of defence against the Snowden revelations is attack, which he mounted via an op-ed piece in the Financial Times, in the course of which he wrote some very puzzling things.

Much of his piece is a rehearsal of how good Isis has become at exploiting social media. Its members “use messaging and social media services such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp, and a language their peers understand. The videos they post of themselves attacking towns, firing weapons or detonating explosives have a self-conscious online gaming quality. Their use of the World Cup and Ebola hashtags to insert the Isis message into a wider news feed, and their ability to send 40,000 tweets a day during the advance on Mosul without triggering spam controls, illustrates their ease with new media. There is no need for today’s would-be jihadis to seek out restricted websites with secret passwords: they can follow other young people posting their adventures in Syria as they would anywhere else.”

Iran Is Still Using Old American Drones to Keep Its Fighter Pilots Sharp This is one downed American UAV in Iran that no one is sweating

Adam Rawnsley 

Nov 7

Source Link

Crashed American drones have been a boon to Iran’s rusty military, giving it propaganda tokens to parade and, if you buy the government’s claims, useful technical data from reverse-engineering.

But it also appears that U.S. robotic hardware is doing another job for the Iranians—helping keep their fighters pilots ready for war.

Pictures from back in September indicate that Iran has managed to maintain at least a few of its American-made Chukar II target drones—leftovers from the days of the Shah and warmer relations with the U.S. more than 30 years ago—up and running for training exercises. The drones simulate enemy planes and give the Iranian aviators something to chase.

At this point, Tehran’s Chukar IIs are nearly 40 years old.

The photos and report, published on a Baluchistan activist Website and on social media, show a clearly-marked MQM-74 washing up on a beach with its parachute deployed. According to the report, local youths found the aircraft near Konarak in Sistan and Baluchistan province on the coast of the Gulf Oman.

The turbojet-powered drones were designed to give fighter pilots and naval gunners practice intercepting aircraft. That said, Chukar operators have also used the drone for missions other than target practice before. Israel and the United States sent versions of the remote-controlled aircraft into enemy airspace in order to confuse enemy air defense systems during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the 1991 Gulf War, respectively.

Still, the target plane’s arrival on the shores of Konarak likely has to do with training. Clues as to its ownership and usage lie in the location and photos of its recovery. The photos show personnel from the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force dressed in flight suits carrying the Chukar out of the ocean and onto the back of a pickup truck.

At top and at right—troops from IRIAF’s 91st Tactical Fighter Squadron remove a Chukar II from the sea. Photos via BalochCampaign.com