ISIS vs. Al Qaeda: Jihadism’s Global Civil War

Daniel BymanJennifer Williams

February 24, 2015 

Source Link

Al Qaeda and its rogue stepchild, the Islamic State, are locked in mortal combat. The two are now competing for more than the leadership of the jihadist movement—they are competing for its soul.

ALMOST OVERNIGHT, the Islamic State sent its enemies reeling—and turned U.S. policy in the Middle East upside down. Islamic State forces carved out a haven in Syria and, in June 2014, routed the Iraqi army, capturing large swathes of territory and prompting the Obama administration to overcome its long-standing aversion to a bigger U.S. military role in Iraq and Syria. Even in many Arab countries where the Islamic State does not have a strong presence, its rise is radicalizing those countries’ populations, fomenting sectarianism and making a bad region even worse.

But there is one person for whom the Islamic State’s rise is even more frightening: Ayman al-Zawahiri. Although the Al Qaeda leader might be expected to rejoice at the emergence of a strong jihadist group that delights in beheading Americans (among other horrors), in reality the Islamic State’s rise risks Al Qaeda’s demise. When Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi rejected Al Qaeda’s authority and later declared a caliphate, he split the fractious jihadist movement. The two are now competing for more than the leadership of the jihadist movement: they are competing for its soul.

Who will emerge triumphant is not clear. However, the implications of one side’s victory or of continuing division are profound for the Middle East and for the United States, shaping the likely targets of the jihadist movement, its ability to achieve its goals and the overall stability of the Middle East. The United States can exploit this split, both to decrease the threat and to weaken the movement as a whole. Washington must also adjust its counterterrorism policies to recognize the implications of this rivalry.

Iran Draft Deal: As Good as It Gets?

By Ankit Panda

March 20, 2015

Iran’s negotiations with the P5+1 may be at a point where both sides have conceded all they can realistically give. 

As Diplomat readers will be aware, negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program are continuing after repeated extensions and despite a seeming trend toward gridlock among the P5+1 group, composed of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, and Russia. On Thursday morning, the Associated Press ran an exclusive detailing the latest draft deal between the two sides, alleging that, given current diplomatic realities, Iran has agreed to reduce its enrichment hardware “by about 40 percent for at least a decade.” In exchange, the P5+1 will concede immediate sanctions relief.

Specifically, the number of Iranian uranium enrichment centrifuges would be capped at 6,000, down from a suspected all-time high of 20,000. Tehran currently operates 10,000 centrifuges, which it maintains produce uranium enriched at low levels for civilian use only. A major point of contention in the negotiations has been the actions Iran can take to assure the others (primarily the United States) that its “breakout capability” — or ability to create a deliverable nuclear weapon — is limited.

Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), notes in an email to The Diplomat, that with this draft, “[T]he Obama administration has secured a year-long breakout capability,” meaning that even if Iran were to throw out the deal sometime in the future, it would still take at least one year to develop nuclear weapons. The theoretical one-year breakout capability would additionally be guaranteed by international legal oversight and regular inspections of Iranian nuclear activities by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Iran, as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), is subject to international oversight and regulation of its civilian nuclear program.

ISIS Group Takes Credit for Tunis Museum Attack That Killed 23

March 19, 2015

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — The radical Islamic State group claimed responsibility Thursday for the attack on a famed Tunis museum that left 23 people dead and scores of tourists wounded, and upended the country’s struggling tourism industry.

Defying the extremists, hundreds of Tunisians rallied Thursday at the National Bardo Museum, the site of the attack, stepping around trails of blood and broken glass to proclaim their solidarity with the victims and with Tunisia’s fledgling democracy. One person carried a sign saying “Tunisia is bloodied but still standing.”

Tunisian security forces arrested nine people, five with alleged direct connections to Wednesday’s attack by two gunmen who were later slain by police, the president’s office said. The other four suspects arrested in the central part of the country were part of a cell supporting those involved in the attack, the statement said.

Prime Minister Habib Essid told France’s RTL radio that Tunisia was working with other countries to learn more about the slain attackers, identified as Yassine Laabidi and Hatem Khachnaoui. He said Laabidi had been flagged to the intelligence agency, although not for “anything special.”

The attack was the worst at a tourist site in Tunisia in more than a decade and prompted a leading Italian cruise ship line to announce it was canceling all stops in the North African nation indefinitely.

The deaths of so many tourists will create massive trouble for Tunisia’s tourism industry, which attracts thousands of foreigners every year to the country’s Mediterranean beaches, desert oases and ancient Roman ruins — and which had just started to recover after years of decline. Two major cruise ships whose passengers were among the victims quickly left the port of Tunis early Thursday, leaving behind grieving family members and slain passengers.

Razor wire ringed the museum entrance Thursday and security forces guarded major thoroughfares in Tunis, the capital.

U.S. Warplanes Attack ISIS Surveillance Drone

March 19, 2015

WASHINGTON — US warplanes have bombed a small drone used by Islamic State extremists in Iraq, marking the first time American-led forces had targeted an unmanned aircraft flown by the jihadists, officials said Wednesday.

The strike took place on Tuesday near the western city of Fallujah, destroying “a remotely piloted aircraft” and a vehicle with the IS forces, according to a statement from the US military command overseeing the campaign against the group.

The drone, used for battlefield surveillance, was “small-scale” and not a sophisticated aircraft equivalent to some US-made robotic planes that can fly at high altitudes or launch missiles, US defense officials said.

After flying the drone for a short period, Islamic State militants placed it on a vehicle. American aircraft then struck the vehicle near Fallujah, officials said.

The United States relies heavily on its own fleet of drones for air operations in Iraq and Syria, using them to bomb targets as well as provide intelligence on IS movements on the ground.

The Syrian regime said Tuesday it had shot down an American drone near the coastal province of Latakia and Pentagon officials acknowledged that a robotic aircraft had lost contact in the area.

The airstrike on the IS drone was among 11 carried out by US-led aircraft in Iraq and two conducted in Syria on Tuesday and Wednesday morning.

Report Recommends That Pentagon Rethink Its Approach to Fighting Boko Haram Militants in Nigeria

March 19, 2015

The Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) last week released a report that concluded that the U.S. will never be able to change the unsuccessful stratetgy currently being employed by the Nigerian government and military in trying to fight the Boko Haram militant group in northern Nigeria. Instead, the report recommends that the U.S. military throw all its support behind the military efforts of the Cameroons, Niger and Chad, who are fighting to prevent Boko Haram from operating inside their borders. 

These countries have proven to be far more flexible in their counterinsurgency approach to fighting Boko Haram, and do not suffer from the endemic corruption and widespread human rights problems that continue to dog the Nigerian government and security forces.

The CNA report can be accessed here.

Is ISIS Building A Drone Army?

Nancy A. Youssef

03.18.15

As U.S.-led coalition forces confirm they shot down an ISIS drone this week, experts warn the extremists could soon adapt the technology for battle purposes.

The self-proclaimed Islamic State—also known as ISIS or ISIL—has added drones to its arsenal, and for the first time, the U.S.-led coalition took one of their drones out, officials announced Wednesday.

“Near Fallujah, [Iraq], an airstrike destroyed an ISIL remotely-piloted aircraft and an ISIL vehicle," said a Wednesday press release from the Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF), which speaks on behalf of the 62-member U.S.-led coalition conducting strikes in Iraq and Syria.

Earlier this week, the unmanned drone had been conducting surveillance nearby, U.S. military officials told The Daily Beast. The drone was then loaded into a vehicle, which was subsequently destroyed—along with the drone—by coalition forces on Tuesday.

Some at the Pentagon were quick to dismiss the threat of ISIS drones, noting there was a big difference between what ISIS could have purchased off ofAmazon.com (as such drones are apparently available there), and the Reapers and Predators deployed by coalition forces.

While experts agree, they also warn that ISIS could convert this kind of technology into something deadly.

“ISIS surely has surveillance drone capability. It is nowhere near what [the coalition] has, but [the] civilian use drone market is so big, and live-linked camera technology so common, it really is inevitable that ISIS will have surveillance drones,” says Christopher Harmer, a senior naval analyst with the Middle East Security Project at the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War. 

Iran's Great Cultural Advantage

By Robert Kaplan

March 18, 2015

Source Link

Throughout all the vicissitudes of dealing with Iran, an obvious fact has been insufficiently addressed: The external behavior of Iran's regime is simply more dynamic and more effective than that of any other Muslim regime in the Middle East. Iran has constructed thousands of centrifuges. Tehran has trained and equipped Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shiite forces in Iraq and Yemen, and it has propped up Syria's embattled president. Turkey and the Arab world appear sleepy-eyed in comparison. Iran acts. The other Muslim countries struggle to formulate responses, and when they do, they are still less effective than the Iranians. Why is that so? What secret sauce does the Iranian regime have?

More than merely a state

Iran benefits from being both a civilization and a sub-state. Its Sunni counterparts are merely states, and often creaky ones at that, at a time in history when states are being undermined by other political forces. Indeed, the state model is failing in the Middle East, and Iran's advantage is that its leaders operate at levels both above and below the traditional state.

The modern state of Iran is heir to the imperial civilization of ancient Persia. Its territory broadly aligns with the Mede, Parthian, Achaemenid, Sassanid, Qajar, and Pahlevi states and empires, whose spheres of influence often extended from the Mediterranean to Central Asia. Persia was the ancient world's first superpower, and a bold if sometimes broken line connects the Persian monarchs of antiquity to the ayatollahs of today, whose very aggression is rooted in the geopolitics of their forebears. There are many Arab states, but there is only one Persian state - a state that has historically dominated its immediate Arab neighbours with its ample resources of cultural wealth and political organization. It took nothing less than the suffocating totalitarianism of Saddam Hussein to keep Iran out of Iraq. In the absence of such a dominant influence, Iraq must revert to its default, heavily Persian-influenced normal.

The Lost Civilizations of Asia

By Akhilesh Pillalamarri

March 19, 2015

Asian states need to pay more attention to protecting their invaluable cultural heritage. 

The tragic destruction of antiquities by militants in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere serves to remind us of the importance of antiquities and archaeological studies, their role in contemporary understandings of history and culture, and the need for their preservation. Many parts of the world outside of North America and Europe need to do a better job at preserving and marketing their historical sites, all too many of which are decaying due to a lack of funding. Those funding issues, in turn, are partially caused by the obscurity that comes with a lack of marketing and interest. For example, most visitors to India will only see a few historical sites in Delhi, Rajasthan, and the Taj Mahal in Agra, but the subcontinent is home to thousands of fascinating monuments, forts, palaces, and religious buildings, many of which are neglected. Contrast this to the loving care of many of Europe’s castles and cathedrals, many of which were situated in obscure principalities of minor historical significance.

A major component of preserving antiquities is knowing about them to begin with. This, in turn, leads to an interest in archaeological and historical sites, instead of indifference. While the main civilizations and artifacts of South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East are well-known among scholars and mainstream society (for example, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Indus Valley Civilization, and so on), there are many awe-inspiring sites built by lesser known civilizations that escape attention, both in the West, and among the natives of those regions. Perhaps if more is done to shed light on these sites, the attitude of indifference to their preservation and marketing will disappear. Increased tourist and archaeological attention will also make local people more likely to contribute to the preservation of sites and resistant to their destruction. It could also instill in people a sense of pride in their own local past, instead of seeing ancient sites as the work of peoples disassociated with the modern inhabitants of such regions.

It is important, then, to shed light on and write and speak about historical sites throughout the world, but especially in regions where they face the most neglect. As I myself discovered while writing about the ancient civilizations of southern Arabia, there are many little-known civilizations, and many cultures and ways of life that have been almost lost to the sands of time. Yet civilizations have thrived and evolved in multiple ways almost everywhere throughout the world.

Is China’s Economic Power in ASEAN Overblown?

By Prashanth Parameswaran

March 20, 2015

A new report suggests there is less to Beijing’s influence than meets the eye. 

While a lot has been written about China’s growing economic influence in Southeast Asia, the analysis is often based on a survey of certain ambitious initiatives that have yet to play out – like the Maritime Silk Road – or flowery statements and declarations by leaders rather than measuring its actual impact using hard data. I’ve pointed out the folly of this before, most recently in an article on Sino-Indonesian relations for The Diplomat.

A recent report released by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission attempts to actually measure China’s economic ties with the ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) using trade and investment data. The report’s findings suggest that China is actually much less of a juggernaut than it is often portrayed to be in Southeast Asia, and that there are still lingering problems with Beijing’s economic relationships in the region. While some analysts have been stressing this for years, it is worth briefly summarizing what recent data says about China’s economic power in Southeast Asia.

First, one needs to look beyond rankings to get a more granular understanding of China’s economic influence in Southeast Asia and the purported ‘dependence’ it creates. As the report notes, while China consistently appears among the top five ASEAN trade partners, the degree of dependence on China as a source of exports, imports, or both varies. In general, wealthier ASEAN countries have a more diversified set of trading partners, while poorer ones depend more heavily on China, especially for imports. The distribution of Chinese export and import flows is also much more complex – Vietnam’s share of Chinese flows within ASEAN has increased a lot, but Singapore’s share has dropped. Given this, one should be careful about making sweeping statements about ASEAN states becoming pliant to Beijing.

Second, attention should be paid to the balance of trade rather than just the amount of trade. Since the full enactment of the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement in 2010 – the largest free trade area in the world by population – ASEAN’s trade in goods with China has gone from a surplus to a deficit reaching $45 billion in 2013. “The causal link between ASEAN’s deficit and ACFTA,” the report notes, “merits scrutiny.” This is not just an academic point. An unfavorable trade balance for Southeast Asian countries in their relationships with China has been a political issue in the past, and in some cases this has been highlighted as a priority to fix.

A Strategy for Japan’s Public Diplomacy in the United States

By Marta McLellan Ross

March 20, 2015

Japan has lost ground to Korea and China in U.S. public perceptions. Here’s what it can do about it. 

Japan has found itself in a public diplomacy race in the United States, and in many respects it may be losing. China and Korea are its principal competitors in a contest to shape American views about Japan’s behavior in World War II, its current role in the world, and new policies to lessen its limitations on military activities. In a year that commemorates the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, the prize for Japan isrecognition of its remorse for the war and acceptance of its role in regional and international security. The loss of this competition, however, risks diminished U.S. support during a time of critical reforms.

Unlike Western Europe, after World War II, Asia remained a competitive, chaotic region with the civil war in China in the late 1940s and war on the Korean Peninsula in the 1950s. While the United States and Japan put to rest their animosities shortly after the war and realized the value of strategic cooperation during the Cold War, Japan, Korea, and China were unable to fully reconcile. To date, China and Korea remain unsatisfied with Japan’s attitude toward its wartime behavior and seek deeper expressions of remorse, but also have not clearly defined what would be an acceptable expression. On the other hand, while Japan has issued apologies for its wartime behavior, as Jennifer Lind noted in Foreign Affairs on March 5, 2015, “Tokyo has sent confusing signals that seem to undermine those apologies.” Thus, the historic competition between Japan, China, and Korea continues in a public relations scramble in the United States. As a result, more Americans are paying attention.

Public scrutiny of Japan’s actions and policies by the general American public is a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. Since the end of the Cold War and collapse of Japan’s bubble economy of the 1980s, Japan has remained largely out of the spotlight. As educational and cultural exchanges with the United States have declined, Japan has not really developed a broad base for American public support, even though American views toward Japan are generally positive. Additionally, Japan does not have a base of recent immigrants in the United States, whose expatriates often maintain close economic ties and kinship, and has historically not recognized Japanese-Americans as “Japanese.”

This chart shows the massive scale of Russia's planned fortification of the Arctic

JEREMY BENDER0

MAR 17, 2015

Source Link

The Arctic ice is slowly melting, and Russia is positioning itself in order to take advantage of new shipping routes along with natural resources available beneath the Arctic seabed.

In order to capitalize on a changing Arctic, Russia is undertaking a major military upgrade of its northern coast and outlying Arctic archipelagos. These bases - which include search-and-rescue stations, military ports and airstrips, and military headquarters - are positioning Russia to become the dominant power in the region.

The following chart from The Heritage Foundation's 2015 Index of Military Strength shows the massive scope of Russian construction throughout the Arctic.

As The Heritage Foundation notes, most Arctic states have developed some kind of military presence in the region in order to bolster economic activities. Only Russia has taken the additional step of completely militarizing its Arctic frontier.

It's even moving most of its ships to the region. "Russia's Northern Fleet," The Heritage Foundation reports, "based at Severomorsk, account for two-third of the Russian Navy."

The Northern Fleet itself is due for a massive upgrade starting in 2015 that will last through the rest of the decade. The fleet has now been upgraded to a unit called the Russian Joint Strategic Command North (JSCN) which, according to the Polish Institute of International Affairs, won't be an ordinary naval force.

Oil Prices Cripple Iraq's ISIS War

Daniel R. DePetrisDavid Andrew Weinberg

March 19, 2015

Iraq had a miserable 2014. The Islamic State (IS) reentered the country in large numbers early in the year, routing the Iraqi security forces in June with its swift territorial conquests and gaining tacit support from a large segment of Iraq’s Sunnis in the process. But the Iraqi government is also confronting a fiscal crisis that threatens to compound its security morass. It wants help from Saudi Arabia and the other major Arab oil producers in the Gulf but is in for a big disappointment.

Nouri al-Maliki—who last summer was in the last few months of his premiership—was unable to pass a national budget through the Iraqi parliament. Disputes with the Kurds over oil revenue sharing reached its peak. And the Iraqi parliament itself resembled a freewheeling, but useless, debating society increasingly being ignored as an impediment by the prime minister’s office.

In fact, the only upshot for the Iraqi Government was the price of crude oil: by July 2014, the average price for a single barrel of Iraqi crude was slightly above $102.

Now, even that windfall has changed. Brent crude prices over the past several months have declined by roughly 60 percent from last year’s peak. The Iraqi Government, predictably, comes out as another major loser from these developments. Indeed, it lost 27 percent of its projected revenues in 2014 alone. At a time when Baghdad is fully engaged in taking back their country from IS and expending more funds on defense-related costs like salaries for soldiers, military equipment, and battlefield intelligence assets, the dip in crude is severely straining Iraq’s budget. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has bluntly stated that the lower value of crude exports will make the job of extinguishing the Islamic State terrorist movement from Iraqi territory far more difficult.

The Rise of Alien Warfare

Dominic Tierney

February 25, 2015 

http://www.nationalinterest.org/feature/the-rise-alien-warfare-12314?page=show

From the War of 1812 to today’s campaigns in the Middle East, both Washington’s enemies and the local populations have become steadily less familiar in terms of language, religion and social traditions. 

IN 2011, the United States launched a new television show in Afghanistan called Sesame Garden. It was an Afghan-themed version of Sesame Streetdesigned to win local hearts and minds. Unfortunately, the producers had to cut the Count von Count character because Afghans had not heard of Dracula and could not comprehend the fangs.

The fate of the Count epitomizes the new Age of Alien Warfare—defined by U.S. military operations in culturally unknown environments. From the War of 1812 to today’s campaigns in the Middle East, both Washington’s enemies and the local populations have become steadily less familiar in terms of language, religion and social traditions. Alien warfare reached its apogee with the post-9/11 mission to refashion Afghanistan—a landlocked country seven thousand miles away, with a largely unknown culture and a literacy rate lower than that of America in 1650.

The rise of alien warfare has crippled America’s capacity at both waging war and making peace. Paradoxically, as U.S. power grew, the nation’s record on the battlefield deteriorated alarmingly. From 1812 to 1945, the United States had a miniscule peacetime army but won most major campaigns. After World War II, Washington constructed the most expensive military machine that ever existed, yet it suffered an era of military reverses. Reeling from battlefield failure, Washington was forced to negotiate a way out of the quagmire. But alien warfare impeded effective diplomacy and prolonged difficult campaigns. In culturally unfamiliar environments, the United States could neither win wars nor end them.

A Bank Too Far?

Interviewee: Robert Kahn, Steven A. Tananbaum Senior Fellow for International Economics

Interviewer: Eleanor Albert, Online Writer/Editor

March 17, 2015

http://www.cfr.org/global-governance/bank-too-far/p36290

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has gained a boost with the announcement that at least four Group of Seven countries have agreed to become founding members, drawing surprise and alarm from Washington. The Beijing-backed bank appears to be gaining momentum for its expressed goal of addressing wide infrastructure gaps in Asia. But the bank also reflects Beijing’s dissatisafaction with existing global institutions and its desire to play a leading role in the Asia-Pacific, says CFR's Robert Kahn. Though it would be a positive step for Washington to join the bank, Kahn says that there is little chance that Congress would approve U.S. participation. 

China's Finance Minister Lou Jiwei (L) gives a speech with the guests of the signing ceremony of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank in Beijing, October 24, 2014. (Photo: Takaki Yajima/Courtesy Reuters) 

What is the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and what are its goals? 

The AIIB is a regional international financial institution originally proposed by the Chinese government in 2013 and launched in October 2014. The objective of the bank is to finance road, rail, port, and other infrastructure construction projects. More than twenty countriesjoined the AIIB at the start, but leading G7 economies, as well as South Korea and Australia, initially declined to join. Over the past several months, more countries have signed on, and with the decision of the UK and three eurozone economies to join, there are now about thirty members. The bank was established with $50 billion in capital, making it roughly one-third the size of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), but that capital is expected to grow to $100 billion as more countries join. The AIIB expects to make its first loan late this year. 

"The AIIB is a challenge to the existing global economic order." 

America Is 'Rooting' for China

Ju-Yeong June Shin

March 18, 2015 

The United States is “rooting” for China’s continued rise, a senior Obama administration official reaffirmed last week.

In a recent speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Wendy Sherman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, gave a sweeping overview of U.S. policy towards Northeast Asia.

“Throughout the remainder of the Obama Administration,” Sherman told the think tank audience, “Northeast Asia will continue to be a major focus of U.S. foreign policy.”

That’s because, Sherman said, the Obama administration knows that international peace and prosperity increasingly hinges on this region. “Events in East Asia will inarguably affect the future of us all,” she said.

Indeed, having recently traveled to the region herself, Sherman said she “returned with a strong sense that we are at a pivotal moment; amid chronic dangers, there are also opportunities for the region to reduce tensions and became one of the globe’s sturdiest platforms for international prosperity and peace.”

China will be crucial to whatever trajectory Northeast Asia takes in the coming decades. As a result, Sherman dismissed the “suspicion in some quarters that because of our differences, America is rooting against China.” Instead, “the reality is that the United States very much wants China to be stable and prosperous.”

Indonesia: Can Jokowi Recover?

By Jon Emont

March 19, 2015

The Indonesian president has disappointed his supporters, yet many remain optimistic. 

President Joko Widodo – popularly known as Jokowi – took office last October to extraordinarily high expectations. Jokowi was very different from the Indonesian presidents who came before him. He didn’t come into office with a military background, or from the country’s political aristocracy. He demonstrated his capacity for the presidency instead, by working doggedly as mayor and governor to solve local problems and respond to constituent concerns. He was a reformist who, on the campaign trail, promised to further empower the country’s powerful anti-corruption bureau, and who made clear his commitment to protecting Indonesians right to elections.

When Jokowi won office by narrowly beating a right-wing general with strong ties to the country’s recent dictatorship, it seemed that Indonesia’s young democracy was finally beginning to produce competent, non-corrupt leaders. Jokowi promised to enact a “Mental Revolution,” in which ordinary Indonesians would lose their tolerance for graft, and start demanding more from themselves and from their politicians. He immediately issued bold promises of reform, the boldest of which was that his cabinet would be filled entirely by technocrats, instead of the mediocre and often corrupt political appointees who usually run the country’s powerful ministries.

That promise in particular was always going to be a difficult one to keep: The political coalition that backed Jokowi would inevitably demand control of key cabinet posts. Jokowi – a relative political outsider running without a political party of his own – needed to shore up his coalition’s support. Understanding this, political observers generally reacted sympathetically when, in October, Jokowi announced his cabinet selections, which included many more political appointees than Jokowi had first suggested.

The reaction was very different a few months later, when Jokowi’s January nomination of Budi Gunawan for chief of National Police set off a political firestorm. Gunawan is a client of Megawati, who is the leader of the PDI-P, Jokowi’s political party. And Gunawan has a checkered past: He is a former police general who became mysteriously wealthy despite receiving relatively humble pay as a police commissioner throughout his career.

The KPK – the nation’s preeminent anti-corruption bureau that has successfully investigated dozens of high-level Indonesia officials for graft – immediately pounced, placing Gunawan under investigation. Instead of withdrawing the nomination of Gunawan and selecting a candidate not suspected of corruption, Jokowi insisted for weeks on staying the course, declaring that he would wait for the investigation to finish before nominating another chief of Police. The president held to this tack despite the huge public outcry – in demonstrations, newspaper editorials, and social media – against the appointment by citizens who thought the nominee for chief of National Police should be above suspicion.

NSA Chief Says U.S. Cyber Defense Efforts Not Working; More Cyber Offensive Capability Needed

Ellen Nakashima

March 19, 2015

Head of Cyber Command: U.S. may need to boost offensive cyber powers

The government’s efforts to deter computer attacks against the United States are not working and it is time to consider boosting the military’s cyber-offensive capability, the head of U.S. Cyber Command told Congress on Thursday.

“We’re at a tipping point,” said Adm. Michael S. Rogers, who also directs the National Security Agency, at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We need to think about: How do we increase our capacity on the offensive side to get to that point of deterrence?”

Rogers noted that the command, which launched in 2010, has focused mostly on defense. But, he said, “in the end, a purely defensive, reactive strategy will be both late to need and in­cred­ibly resource-intense.”

His testimony picks up where his predecessor, retired Gen. Keith Alexander, left off. Alexander, who retired last year and started a cybersecurity firm, had long advocated a more robust offensive capability. But concerns over the years from the White House, the State Department and even some within the Pentagon that the use of cyberweapons could trigger unintended consequences and might harm diplomatic relations have slowed their deployment.

Rogers said that President Obama has not yet decided to delegate authority to him to deploy offensive tools.

He indicated that policymakers still were not convinced that it was time. “We’ve got to increase our decision-makers’ comfort and level of knowledge with what capabilities we have and what we can do,” he said.

Information Warfare: Good Guys Allowed To Hire Bad Boys

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20150319.aspx

March 19, 2015: The U.S. Department of Defense was recently given permission to hire 3,000 Internet and software engineers without going through the standard screening process for such civilian specialists. While the top pay was not great ($143,000 a year) the big thing was people with real software and Internet skills could be hired. There was also apparently an understanding that some types of youthful indiscretions (black hat hacking) could be overlooked. All this leeway was allowed, which is rare, because the Department of Defense is the largest user of networks and computers on the planet. Since it was Department of Defense research (and money) that developed the Internet it has also the most vulnerable to attack. Unfortunately the attackers (spies, mercenary hackers or just very skilled and bored but talented hackers) have a lot more skills than the people the Department of Defense currently has playing defense. In effect there is a Cyber War and the Department of Defense finds itself outnumbered and outgunned. Desperate measures are required.

Cyber War has a problem with the fact that many of the most effective Cyber Warriors are criminals. That's because Cyber War operators are basically expert programmers who prefer to hack (find ways to break or misuse software). There is not a lot of demand for these skills on the job market. While most hackers are not criminals, many of the best ones find that there is easy (and safe) money to be made by exploiting hacking skills to steal via the Internet. Many, if not most, of the best hackers are honest folks who make a lot of money fighting the criminal hackers, often as a hobby. But the criminals go where the money is, so the "white hat" (honest) hackers find the highest paying jobs protecting financial institutions and other wealthy corporations. The military and government in general cannot compete (in terms of pay and benefits) for the best people and are further restricted by rules that eliminate a lot of the most talented Internet security people. The top people (working for civilian firms with more realistic hiring practices) can be hired temporarily as consultants but the government has to pay the going rate. Thus the new effort to try and attract some superior Cyber War talent by dispensing with some of the usually red tape.

It has long been realized that eventually, and preferably sooner rather than later, the military would have access to the expensive and capable talent they need. That's because this sort of thing has happened before. The Internet is but the latest new technology to arrive and upset the traditional way of doing things. This sort of thing got going in a big way during the 19th century, when telegraph, steam powered ships, and railroads quickly became key military technologies. The military was almost entirely dependent on civilian experts to use these technologies and it took decades before the military was able to establish its own supply of experts.

Going into the 20th century it was the same problem with the flood of new technologies (radio, flight, still more electronic devices, modern cryptography, and major advances in medical tech). In all these cases the military had to compete with better paying civilian organizations for the people who knew how to use and exploit these technologies.

We need a cyber corps as a 5th service

BY THOMAS E. RICKS

MARCH 18, 2015 

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/03/18/we-need-a-cyber-corps-as-a-5th-service/

At U.S. Cyber Command at Fort Meade last week, newly appointed Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said that a new, independent branch is “one of the futures cyber might have.” He is right. We need a new branch of military service. We need a U.S. Cyber Corps.

In today’s increasingly connected world, critical infrastructure such as energy and communications utilities, as well as key corporations and the financial markets, are increasingly vulnerable to cyber-attack. In 2010, a targeted computer worm named Stuxnet destroyed at least one fifth of Iranian nuclear centrifuges, setting back Iran’s project to develop nuclear weapons significantly. In 2012, an Iranian cyber-attack struck Saudi Arabia’s national oil company, Aramco, destroying more than 30,000 computers and significantly impacting the oil production which forms the basis of Saudi Arabia’s economic strength. In 2012, then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta warned that the United States faced the possibility of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor”. In the wake of the recent high-profile cyber-attack against Sony by North Korea, few would contest that the United States must take cyber-attacks seriously and move to shore up our defenses against this emerging threat. Yet despite the damage inflicted through cyber-attacks in the past, only a fraction of this technology’s destructive potential has ever been unleashed.

Secretary Panetta’s description of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor” paints a picture of an attack that would clearly constitute an act of war. “An aggressor nation or extremist group could use these kinds of cyber tools to gain control of critical switches. They could derail passenger trains, or even more dangerous, derail passenger trains loaded with lethal chemicals. They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.” This kind of attack would be no less devastating if caused by a virus than it would be if caused by a bomb. It is certain that the capacity to unleash such destruction would be a critical piece of any war between two developed countries which rely on digital infrastructure.

Electronic Weapons: Blue Force Tracker Rapidly Evolves

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htecm/articles/20150312.aspx

March 12, 2015: The U.S. Army is sending the latest version of its electronic troop location and communications system, JBC-P (Joint-Battle Command Platform) to troops to use during training and special exercises to specifically test the new features of JBC-P. This new version was eagerly awaited by troops who had used earlier models. The most welcome improvement was much faster (almost instantaneous) updates of information. The satellite signals are now encrypted and work no matter the weather, temperature of distance. While every vehicle is equipped with one of these devices, Individual troops on the ground now have a smartphone type device that allows them to chat and quickly shows on the display the location of nearby JBC-P users and has a zoom capability similar to Google Earth. Troops can quickly update enemy locations, bombs or otherwise dangerous areas. These smartphones are typically worn on the forearm for easy use in combat. The purpose of all these improvements is to enable troops arriving (by land or air) in an area where contact with the enemy is expected to immediately go into action knowing where everyone (on foot or in vehicles) is and where they are moving to.

These location devices and their subsequent improvements have changed the way American troops fight. The location devices allow brigade, battalion and company commanders to see, in real time where there troops are and what they are doing. The latest JBC-P version gives squad and platoon level operations instant awareness of their situation whenever there is a clash with the enemy or a patrol or raiding party looking for the enemy. This makes a big difference in the effectiveness of the operation, reduces friendly casualties as well as accidental injuries to nearby civilians.

There have been regular upgrades in these devices since first introduced as Blue Force Tracker (BFT) in 2003. In early 2013 the previous upgraded device, JCR (Joint Capabilities Release), was sent to Afghanistan for use in combat. JCR is part of an effort to link everyone in a combat brigade electronically while in the combat zone and, most importantly, while in combat. The new JCR version equipped individual troops as well as vehicles. Commanders could use a handheld device or laptop to view BFT locations. The commanders app could also be used to take data from troops about enemy locations or where minefields or other obstacles are and post it, so that everyone else with JCR equipment can see and share it. JCR also included better encryption and improved reliability.

This all is part of an effort that began in 2003 to perfect the “battlefield Internet”. All of this goes back to the American 1990s era Force XXI Battle Command Brigade-and-Below (FBCB2) project. Back in 2003, parts of FBCB2 (mainly BFT) were quickly issued to the troops for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. BFT is a GPS/satellite telephone device that was suddenly in thousands of combat vehicles. Anyone with a laptop, satellite data receiver, the right software, and access codes could then see where everyone was (via a map showing blips for each BFT user). The spectacular success of BFT got the attention of generals everywhere.

Admiral: Navy’s Surface Fleet Vulnerable to Attacks Without EW Upgrades

by KRIS OSBORN

MARCH 17, 2015

The Navy needs to upgrade electronic warfare technology faster on more of its surface ships because potential enemies are developing weapons designed to penetrate defensive systems on many U.S. cruisers and destroyers, service leaders said.

The service is now in the process of upgrading its existing SLQ-32 Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program, or SEWIP — an electronic warfare sensor now on many guided missile cruisers and destroyers.

SEWIP is designed to detect approaching threats, such as anti-ship cruise missiles in time for ship commanders to take defensive or protective actions. It is configured to provide early detection, signal analysis and threat warnings against a range of threats.

“We need to keep working on our electromagnetic spectrum but we need to also be able to counter the weapons that they build. I am buying as many SEWIPs as I can. The SLQ-32 is a little panel that looks like an old electronic TV set with panels on the front. We had SLQ-32s when I was a junior officer – on a lot of our ships and that is still what we have,” Vice Adm. Joseph Mulloy, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Integration of Capabilities and Resources, said Tuesday.

Ship-based electronic warfare is designed to detect electromagnetic signals from potential adversaries and provide counter-targeting and counter-surveillance technology. For example, the receiver, antenna and software built into the SEWIP system would help detect the presence of an incoming enemy missile, enemy radar or radio activity and aircraft or a surface vessel.

The Cybersecurity Podcast

Passcode and New America are launching a podcast featuring the leaders and thinkers of cybersecurity

New America's Peter Singer and Passcode's Sara Sorcher interview Lt. Gen. Edward Cardon, the Army's top cyber commander, about how the Army is beefing up its cyberforces, competition for talent with the private sector, and what role the military should play when a nation-state attacks a private company. 

Shane Harris, reporter at The Daily Beast and author of '@War, The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex' talks about tensions between the East and West Coasts in a post-Snowden era. This episode is sponsored by Mach37. 

FAQ: 

What is the podcast about?

Cybersecurity is not just computers and digital processes. Whether it's the threat or the response, the most important, and most interesting, part of the story is the people behind the keyboard.

That’s why we’re launching The Cybersecurity Podcast, a monthly program featuring key leaders and thinkers in this space. Our half-hour podcast will go beyond the headlines to discuss some of the most pressing issues and newest ideas in cybersecurity.

Who hosts the podcast? 

It’s hosted by Peter W. Singer, Strategist at the New America think tank and author of 'Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know,' and Sara Sorcher, deputy editor of The Christian Science Monitor’s new cybersecurity section, Passcode.

Where can I find the podcast?

You can find The Cybersecurity Podcast on New America's Soundcloud page and we’ll be updating this page with each episode.

What's the typical episode structure, and who will be on it?

Each episode will begin with a roundtable discussion with a leading thinker about big-picture trends that fuel the latest news in cybersecurity, as well as their own work. In our first episode, for instance, we tackle the tension between the East and West Coasts over cybersecurity policy and encryption, as well as look at a new book on the potential rise of a “military-Internet complex.”

After the panel, we’ll interview a leader making news. Some of the guests already lined up include CEOs, generals, and technologists. We’ll get their take on key issues in cybersecurity, as well as a taste of what it’s like to spend a day doing their jobs.

Who should listen?

You. No issue connects more areas of concern, whether its personal privacy and the security of your bank account to corporate policy and business planning to national security and global affairs. Cybersecurity affects us all. So, whether you’re an IT wonk or simply a curious about this key issue now all over the news, we hope you’ll join us for the Cybersecurity Podcast.

Silicon Valley’s Web of Lies

Christine Rosen

February 26, 2015 

Source Link

The Internet will not save you.

Andrew Keen, The Internet Is Not the Answer (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2015), 288 pp., $25.00.

DURING THE past few years, if you were one of the many people trawling the dating website OkCupid in search of love, you might have received a notice letting you know it had found someone who was an “exceptionally good” match for you. You might have contacted this match and even gone on dates with this person, comfortable in the knowledge that a sophisticated algorithm had done the difficult work of sorting through millions of profiles to find someone with just the right balance of appealing quirks and concupiscent charms to match your own delightful attributes.

What you didn’t know is that OkCupid was experimenting on you. Engineers programmed the site to send its users matches that it claimed were “exceptional” but that were in fact bogus—all for the purpose of finding out if you would believe the assessment and pursue the match. Not surprisingly, most users did. We are nothing if not suggestible when it comes to love, even if Cupid’s arrow has been replaced by OkCupid’s algorithm.

This past summer, Christian Rudder, the founder of OkCupid, was prompted to publicize his company’s manipulation of its users in response to the furor created by Facebook’s acknowledgement that it, too, often uses the social network as a massive online behavioral-science experiment. In January 2012, more than half a million Facebook users became unwitting lab rats when the company deliberately massaged its users’ news feeds by putting either more or less positive information in them, ostensibly to determine if emotions are “contagious.” (Short answer: yes, but behavioral science had already proven this; Facebook, by contrast, was not doing this for science. The company wanted to show advertisers that it could manipulate its users.)

Drones and the rise of the high-tech assassins

BY ANDREW COCKBURN

http://boingboing.net/2015/03/11/drones-and-the-rise-of-the-hig.html

How twenty-three innocent Afghani civilians were wiped out by self-deceiving drone operators seven and a half thousand miles away.

In a cold February dawn in 2010, two small SUVs and a four-door pickup truck headed down a dirt road in the mountains of southern Afghanistan. They had set out soon after midnight, traveling cross-country to reach Highway 1, the country’s principal paved road, which would lead them to Kandahar and north to Kabul. Crammed inside were more than thirty men, women, and children, four of them younger than six. Everyone knew one another, for they all came from the same cluster of mountain villages roughly two hundred miles southwest of Kabul. Many of the men, unemployed and destitute, were on their way to Iran in hopes of work. Others were shopkeepers heading to the capital to buy supplies, or students returning to school. The women carried turkeys, gifts for the relatives they would stay with in Kabul. A number were Hazaras, an ethnic minority of Shia Muslims whom the Taliban treated with unremitting cruelty whenever they had the opportunity. Now they were in western Uruzgan Province, Taliban country and therefore very dangerous for them, but they risked the shortcut because they were short on gas.

They met no other cars and little foot traffic; the world around them must have seemed empty. But it was not. Unbeknownst to them, they were being watched and their every movement – even the warmth from their bodies – transmitted across the globe. As the ramshackle vehicles – one of them kept breaking down and another blew a tire – clattered along, people they would never meet conferred across oceans and continents as to who they were, where they were going, what they were carrying, and whether they should live or die.

Unwittingly, the little group was driving toward an Operational Detachment Alpha, a U.S. Special Forces patrol dropped in with a supporting force of Afghan soldiers soon after midnight to attack the nearby village of Khod. Such raids were routine in Afghanistan, planned and executed by the semimythic Special Operations Command that specializes in the pursuit and elimination of “high-value targets.” Someone thought this operation important enough to give it the code name Operation Noble Justice.

Sunday, February 21, 4:12 a.m.

Indonesia Plans New Joint Military Commands

By Prashanth Parameswaran

March 20, 2015

Jakarta is reorganizing its military for the future. But specifics still remain unclear. 

On Tuesday, Indonesian President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo held a limited cabinet meeting at the State Palace in Jakarta to discuss the ongoing modernization of the country’s military (TNI) and the national police.

One of the subjects discussed was the status of Indonesia’s new joint regional military commands – locally abbreviated Kogabwilhan – which are supposed to be in place by 2024. As I’ve written before for The Diplomat,the essence of the Kogabwilhan concept is to structure the military into multi-service regional commands consisting of a combination of army, air force and navy units and led by generals who would be able to respond quickly and flexibly to flash points with greater autonomy relative to the central leadership in Jakarta. The idea is not entirely new. Plans to begin implementing it had begun as early as 2008 under former Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, and Jokowi had agreed to continue with ongoing efforts last November.

According to The Jakarta Post, TNI commander General Moeldoko, who is overseeing the progress of this, saidJokowi reiterated his support for Kogabwilhan at the meeting but said “it should be done gradually.”

As I’ve argued before, getting these commands finalized was always going to be a slow process given challenges such as the army’s traditional dominance in Indonesia as well as lingering questions like how leadership would work and what sorts of threats the commands should each be responsible for. Moeldoko, who is rumored to be retiring soon, said this probably means Indonesia will establish a first regional unit first, and then later continue with building the second and then the third.

There is also talk about bringing back the role of deputy TNI commander, which was previously scrapped under former Indonesian president Abdurrahman “Gus Dur” Wahid. The logic of the move, according to Moeldoko, is that this would ensure that the deputy can act even when the TNI commander is absent.

Why Did Brunei Slash Its Defense Budget?

By Prashanth Parameswaran

March 19, 2015

Defense spending for the Southeast Asian state has been cut by over 25 percent. 

Brunei’s defense spending has been slashed by over 25 percent for 2015 as the tiny, oil rich Southeast Asian state’s revenue is projected to decline partly due to falling global oil prices, according to local media reports.

According to The Brunei Times, Second Finance Minister at the Prime Minister’s office, Abdul Rahman Ibrahim, told the 11th Legislative Council on March 10 that the country’s budget would be around BND 537.49 million ($387.66 million) this year, down from the previous year’s BND 719.15 million.

In terms of the breakdown, around BND 336.15 million of the 2015 budget will be dedicated to personnel expenses, BND 169.34 million will go towards recurring annual costs of the military, and the remaining BND32 million is likely to be classified as “special expenditure”.

Within that breakdown, personnel expenses increased by around BND 15.28 million relative to last year. The rise was attributed to increments, the filling of existing vacancies, and the addition of new positions to maintain the extra equipment that the Royal Brunei Navy and Royal Brunei Air Force had acquired. Recurring annual costs, meanwhile, decreased just slightly.

But the largest shift – and a key reason for the large budget decrease – was due to an 86 percent slashing of the special expenditure portion of the budget. The minister attributed this largely to a transfer of funding for the Defense Capability Enhancement Project from the Ministry of Defense (MinDef) to the Ministry of Finance (MoF). But he also admitted that the cut occurred after a more general “review of priorities” on military capabilities and work buildings “in line with the current economic situation.”