2 January 2015

TechTank’s Top 10 Tech Innovations That Will Transform Society and Governance

Joshua Bleiberg
December 22, 2014

New technologies can have revolutionary impacts with widespread and unexpected benefits. Technology can also serve as a tool to enable governments to better serve their citizens. The public sector can also develop policies that utilize technologies to empower innovators. These are the 10 technologies from 2014 that innovators and governments are using to make the world a better place.
1. Open Health Data

Under the Obama administration’s leadership, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid have released previously obscured health data. Data transparency has the potential to improve many aspects of the health care sector and potentially help to slow rising costs. Consumers also have greater control over their own health records. This makes it easier to share the data with medical professional or to take advantage of health analytics apps.
2. 3D Printing

3D printers are a flexible platform that will disrupt the manufacturing sector. The technology uses metal and plastic “inks” to build an object with thousands of extremely thin layers. The flexibility of the technology enables regional factories to tailor products to local markets. This can bring manufacturing jobs home and unleash a new generation of American innovators.
3. Finding Criminals on the Deep Web

The “deep web” is the part of the Internet that is not indexed by commonly used search engines. Criminals use websites on the dark web to facilitate illegal activities including drug and human trafficking. Law enforcement officials are now using Big Data analytics to sort through the trove of websites and identify lawbreakers.
4. Financial Inclusion

Mobile technology has connected previously unserved populations to financial systems. Mobile allows millions of people access to credit and provide a simple and flexible platform for commerce. Though regulatory challenges still exist, governments around the world are developing novel approaches to connect all people to financial institutions. This has numerous benefits for the economy overall but can also provide lines of credit to millions of people who do not have access to banks.
5. Ubiquitous Internet with Mobile

Wireline Internet has facilitated the modern information revolution. But people who live in rural areas or can’t afford expensive Internet connections are not able to take advantage of this revolution. Mobile Internet is helping to overcome this gap. Many are developing new methods of Internet delivery including Super Wi-Fi and balloons. These new platforms will easily interface with mobile devices bringing the Internet to every corner of the globe.
6. Public Health Combating Disease
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Gun Trouble

DEC 28 2014

The rifle that today's infantry uses is little changed since the 1960s—and it is badly flawed. Military lives depend on these cheap composites of metal and plastic. So why can't the richest country in the world give its soldiers better ones?

A custom M4, similar to the one used by infantry today. The M4 is a lighter version of the M16, which killed so many of the soldiers who carried it in Vietnam. (Adam Voorhes)

One afternoon just a month and a half after the Battle of Gettysburg, Christopher Spencer, the creator of a seven-shot repeating rifle, walked Abraham Lincoln out to a grassy field near where the Washington Monument now stands in order to demonstrate the amazing potential of his new gun. Lincoln had heard about the mystical powers of repeating rifles at Gettysburg and other battles where some Union troops already had them. He wanted to test them for the rest of his soldiers. The president quickly put seven rounds inside a small target 40 yards away. He was sold.

But to Army bureaucrats, repeaters were an expensive, ammunition-wasting nuisance. Ignorant, unimaginative, vain, and disloyal to the point of criminality, the Army’s chief of ordnance, General James Wolfe Ripley, worked to sabotage every effort to equip the Union Army with repeating rifles, mostly because he couldn’t be bothered. He largely succeeded. The Civil War historian Robert V. Bruce speculated that had such rifles been widely distributed to the Union Army by 1862, the Civil War would have been shortened by years, saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

Ripley’s bureaucratic victory over Lincoln was the beginning of the longest-running defense scandal in American history. I should know. I was almost one of Ripley’s victims. In June of 1969, in the mountains of South Vietnam, the battery I commanded at Firebase Berchtesgaden had spent the day firing artillery in support of infantry forces dug into “Hamburger Hill.” Every person and object in the unit was coated with reddish-brown clay blown upward by rotor wash from Chinook helicopters delivering ammunition. By evening, we were sleeping beside our M16 rifles. I was too inexperienced—or perhaps too lazy—to demand that my soldiers take a moment to clean their guns, even though we had heard disturbing rumors about the consequences of shooting a dirty M16.
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THE CHALLENGE OF NON-LETHAL FORCE AT SEA


This year’s CIMSEC HQ Christmas party featured a number of ‘unofficial’ polls on the main naval developments of 2014 and prospects for 2015 (the results of which can be found in CIMSEC’s Twitter feed). These provided a most interesting glimpse both of recent events and of what the immediate future may hold in store. Needless to say, 2014 has indeed been an eventful year in the maritime domain, not least in the Indian Ocean-Pacific Region.

One of the main challenges of the year, highlighted in the polls, is how to respond to the use of non-lethal force, that is to coercion by means of a limited amount of violence, designed to gradually expand control over disputed bodies of water without leading to casualties or a major reaction by the victim country and other maritime democracies with a stake in freedom of navigation and the rule of law at sea (also known as “Salami Slicing“). This non-lethal force approach usually features coastguards, other state agencies, oil rigs, and civilian vessels (mainly trawlers) in lieu of navies. The difference is often rather academic however, due to the size, capabilities, and numbers of some of the vessels involved. Equipped with modern communication technologies these forces are bound together not just by institutional links but also subsidies, participation in part-time militias, extreme nationalism, and an integrated whole-of-government approach to the maritime domain. They operate in the grey areas between peace and war, naval warfare and law enforcement, public security and private enterprise, and have made significant advances in areas like the South China Sea. The use of ramming by these forces, rather than firing, is a reminder of ancient times, yet state of the art of technology is still very much in display.

While Beijing’s inability or unwillingness to take a Bismarck-like step by step, divide and rule approach to expansion has helped usher a new era of regional cooperation, contributing to the U.S.-Vietnamese reconciliation and Japan’s normalization as a military power, unless naval planning is geared toward the whole spectrum of conflict, including undeclared non-lethal wars, we risk preparing for a conflict that will never come, losing instead the one that actually takes place. We should never forget that, as the saying goes, the enemy has a vote too.
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A Mach 5 Arms Race? Welcome to Hypersonic Weapons 101

Robert Farley
December 30, 2015

They travel many times faster than sound, and defending against them won't be easy. Oh, and by the way, the United States, Russia, China and India all want them.

According to some analysts, the development of hypersonic weapons creates the conditions for a new arms race, and could risk nuclear escalation. Given that the course of hypersonic research has acknowledged both of these concerns, why have several countries started testing the weapons?

The United States is building hypersonics for two reasons. First, we want to kill people fast, without the messy danger of a global thermonuclear war. Second, we want to be able to punch through the defensive systems of peer competitors.

Unfortunately, these two justifications contradict one another. Given that China, Russia and even India appear on their way to similar systems, we should take care before letting the technology outpace the politics.

What Are Hypersonic Weapons?

The term “hypersonic” generally refers to a class of long-range precision strike weapons that travel at Mach 5 or better. This definition generally excludes such munitions as the LRLAP (long-range land attack projectile), fired by the Advanced Gun System, which can only travel sixty miles, as well as traditional cruise missiles such as the Tomahawk, which travel under the speed of sound.

Medium-range, conventionally armed ballistic missiles with precision-guidance (such as those operated by China and Russia) are arguably hypersonic weapons. The United States doesn’t operate any of this type, but it provides effectively the same capability as that offered by new hypersonic systems.
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A LOOK BACK AT 2014; AND FIVE, PROMINENT CYBER SECURITY TRENDS THAT ARE LIKELY TO DEFINE 2015

December 29, 2014 

A Look Back At 2014; And Five, Prominent Cyber Security Trends That Are Likely To Define 2015

The website TechCrunch.com takes a look back at 2014; and, forecasts what they see as the five most prominent cyber security trends they believe will define the sector in 2015. Yoav Leitersdorf and Ofer Schreiber, are partners in YL Ventures, which invests early in cyber security, cloud computing, big data, and Software-as-a-Service companies, and are authors of the article with the title above.

Their basic bottom line for 2014 was, nobody was safe — from JP Morgan Chase, to Sony Entertainment, to Home Depot, Neiman Marcus, government entities, Universities, and private companies/individuals, cyber criminals were brazen, active, persistent, and showed progress in their use of sophisticated, insidious, destructive malware. Industrial grade stealth malware, zero-day bugs selling for $1M a copy, the proliferation of The Dark Internet, the balkanization of the Internet and the rise of “gated-communities,” as well as the proliferation of the use and employment of encryption software were all prominent in 2014.

In a look ahead to 2015, the authors single out these five cyber security trends that they believe will define the year ahead: 1) The Rise of Automated Incident Response. “Today’s enterprises must not only detect and prevent potential threats; but, be prepared to react quickly when breaches occur. Enterprises like Target are being successfully sued by banks for failing to act on security alerts. One of the clear lessons from the Target hack,” the authors contend, “is that the traditional Incident Response process — which is mostly based on manual processes — is broken.” Companies have been slow to react to the threat posed to their systems; and, have mostly confined themselves to a reactive mode — hoping a major hack doesn’t occur — and, failing to adequately posture and prepare ahead of the time. “Reducing the time from discovery/detection, to response and remediation –could dramatically minimize an attacks damage,” they write.

“That’s where Automated Incident Response solutions come in — they don’t leave alerts unhanded, and can react instantly (much faster than humans) when bad scenarios unfold,” the authors write. “Enterprises with limited human resources, face escalating liabilities for failing to adequately respond to detected threats.”

TechCrunch forecasts that Chief Information/Security Officers will increasingly turn to Automated Incident Response solutions in 2015.

2) Cloud Security Becomes A Shared Responsibility: “Enterprise IT departments are generally behind in keeping the cloud secure, heavily relying on security features provided by cloud vendors. Most of the SaaS vendors in particular, don’t have security as a first priority; and so, they fail to provide sufficient data governance, control, and compliance,” TechCrunch notes. Thus, the trend by CIO’s and CISO’s that see the security of the cloud as a shared responsibility is likely to continue and perhaps accelerate on a broader scale in 2015.
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Crimea to Liberia: 2014 in 12 Pictures

DECEMBER 28, 2014 

January: A man hurls a rock during demonstrations in Kiev, Ukraine, in January. The crisis that resulted has prompted what many pundits are calling a “second cold war” between Russia and the West. Protesters occupied the central square of the Ukrainian capital demanding the resignation of the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych. Scores of demonstrators, armed only with stones, were shot by riot police. Within two weeks, the corrupt Yanukovych was ousted and escaped to Russia – but peace and stability in Ukraine have proved elusive.

Lucas Jackson LUCAS JACKSON/ REUTERS

February: A snowboarder competes during the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics in Russia. The games at Sochi were the first Olympics to be held in Russia since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991.

March: March Relatives of passengers on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing hear that the flight has been reported missing. What happened to the aircraft, carrying 239 passengers, remains a mystery since neither crash site nor wreckage has been identified. The international search, the largest and most expensive in history, continues.
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NSA Documents on Breaking Internet Encryption Systems, Anonymizers and Contemporary Cryptanalysis

Der Spiegel
December 28, 2014

NSA Documents: Attacks on VPN, SSL, TLS, SSH, Tor

Attacks against Crypto 

Attacks on SSL/TLS 

Attacks on VPN 
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U.S. Trying to Hurt ISIS Using Psychological Warfare

Eric Schmitt
December 29, 2014

In Battle to Defang ISIS, U.S. Targets Its Psychology

WASHINGTON — Maj. Gen. Michael K. Nagata, commander of American Special Operations forces in the Middle East, sought help this summer in solving an urgent problem for the American military: What makes the Islamic State so dangerous?

Trying to decipher this complex enemy — a hybrid terrorist organization and a conventional army — is such a conundrum that General Nagata assembled an unofficial brain trust outside the traditional realms of expertise within the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence agencies, in search of fresh ideas and inspiration. Business professors, for example, are examining the Islamic State’s marketing and branding strategies.

“We do not understand the movement, and until we do, we are not going to defeat it,” he said, according to the confidential minutes of a conference call he held with the experts. “We have not defeated the idea. We do not even understand the idea.”

General Nagata’s frustration is shared by other American officials. Even as President Obama and his top civilian and military aides express growing confidence that Iraqi troops backed by allied airstrikes have blunted the Islamic State’s momentum on the ground in Iraq and undermined its base of support in Syria, other officials acknowledge they have barely made a dent in the larger, longer-term campaign to kill the ideology that animates the terrorist movement.

Four months after his initial session with the outside advisers, General Nagata, one of the military’s rising stars and the man Mr. Obama has tapped to train a Pentagon-backed army of Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic State, is still searching for answers.

“Those questions and observations are my way of probing and questioning,” General Nagata said in a brief email this month, declining on orders from his superiors to say any more.

The minutes of internal conference calls between General Nagata and more than three dozen experts he convened through Pentagon channels in August and October offer an unusual insight into the struggle to understand the Islamic State as a movement, and where the American military’s top leaders are most focused.

One of the panel’s initial observations that has intrigued General Nagata is the Islamic State’s “capacity to control” a population, according to the minutes.

It is not so much the number of troops or types of weapons the militants use, the experts said. Rather, it is the intangible means by which the Islamic State, also called ISIS or ISIL, wrests and maintains control over territory and its people.
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Frontline SIGINT: Afghanistan Was GCHQ’s Largest Foreign Deployment Since WWII

Ben Farmer
December 28, 2014

GCHQ ran string of front-line listening posts in Afghanistan

GCHQ mounted its biggest overseas deployment since the Second World War and ran a string of listening posts across southern Afghanistan to protect troops from Taliban attacks, security sources have disclosed for the first time.

The Government’s electronic eavesdropping agency operated 10 top secret posts inside often remote British military bases across Helmand and the south to gather intelligence during the counter insurgency campaign.

Its operations climaxed over the course of 2014, monitoring Taliban communications to thwart plans to hit vulnerable British convoys as they withdrew from bases across Helmand.

The scale of GCHQ’s front-line involvement in the military campaign has only now been disclosed after the secretive Cheltenham-based agency completed its own pull out of staff and equipment.

The agency, which is currently battling the fallout from Edward Snowden’s allegations about its intelligence gathering techniques, has flown out more than 400 tons of monitoring and technical equipment as part of the withdrawal.

The equipment, equivalent to 100 shipping containers worth, was six times more kit than the agency deployed during Britain’s post-2003 Iraq campaign.

One security source said: “Signals intelligence is critical to dealing with an insurgency and it ended up being the biggest overseas deployment since the Second World War.”

At the height of the campaign, when dozens of British troops were being killed and maimed each month by insurgent homemade bombs, GCHQ waged its own battle trying to identify and target commanders smuggling bomb-making equipment into the country from Pakistan.

Analysts identified and stopped one commander ferrying more than 15 tonnes of precursor explosives across the border.

A security official said: “Huge quantities were being moved in, although the commander himself took great care to avoid being exposed.

“The intelligence enabled the military to take action to disrupt the commander and his supply network.”
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COUNTERING CYBER ATTACKS WITHOUT A PLAYBOOK: AS CYBER THREATS RISE, PUSH FOR INTELLIGENCE HEIGHTENED

December 24, 2014 

Countering Cyber Attacks Without a Playbook

WASHINGTON — For years now, the Obama administration has warned of the risks of a ”cyber-Pearl Harbor,” a nightmare attack that takes out America’s power grids and cellphone networks and looks like the opening battle in a full-scale digital war.

Such predictions go back at least 20 years, and perhaps that day will come. But over the past week, a far more immediate scenario has come into focus, first on the back lots of Sony Pictures and then in back-to-back strategy sessions in the White House Situation Room: a shadow war of nearly constant, low-level digital conflict, somewhere in the netherworld between what President Obama called ”cyber vandalism” and what others might call digital terrorism.

In that murky world, the attacks are carefully calibrated to be well short of war. The attackers are hard to identify with certainty, and the evidence cannot be made public. The counterstrike, if there is one, is equally hard to discern and often unsatisfying. The damage is largely economic and psychological. Deterrence is hard to establish. And because there are no international treaties or norms about how to use digital weapons — indeed, no acknowledgment by the United States government that it has ever used them itself — there are no rules about how to fight this kind of conflict.

”Until now, we’ve been pretty ad hoc in figuring out what’s an annoyance and what’s an attack,” James Lewis, a cyber expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said last week. ”If there’s a lesson from this, it’s that we’re long overdue” for a national discussion about how to respond to cyber attacks — and how to use America’s own growing, if unacknowledged, arsenal of digital weaponry.

All those issues have been swirling in the background in the drama of North Korea’s effort to intimidate Sony Pictures, and the retaliation by the United States — if that was the case — against one of its oldest Cold War adversaries. ”If you had told me that it would take a Seth Rogen movie to get our government to really confront these issues, I would have said you are crazy,” one senior defense official said a few days ago, referring to the Sony Pictures film ”The Interview.” ”But then again, this whole thing has been crazy.”

With Tuesday’s announcement that ”The Interview,” a crude and poorly reviewed comedy about a C.I.A. effort to hire two bumbling journalists to knock off Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader, will be shown in a limited number of theaters, it is very possible that this confrontation with the least predictable of the nine nations possessing nuclear weapons may not yet be over.

Like most cyber attacks, it started with a simple question: Who did it? But this was no ordinary effort to steal credit card data, like what happened at Target and Home Depot. What made the attack on Sony different was its destructive nature. By some accounts, it wiped out roughly two-thirds of the studio’s computer systems and servers — one of the most destructive cyber attacks on American soil.
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NEW THEORY EMERGES: SECURITY EXPERTS WHO ANALYZED SONY HACK CLAIM CULPRIT IS RUSSIAN — NOT NORTH KOREAN

December 28, 2014

New Theory Emerges: Security Experts Who Analyzed Sony Hack Claim Culprit Is Russian — Not North Korean

Joel Christie and Chris Spargo, writing in the December 28, 2014 edition of TheDailyMailOnline, note that “a new theory has emerged that downplays North Korea’s involvement in the Sony hack and instead — fingers Russian hackers instead — based on a linguistics examination of leaked emails. Cyber security experts believe “the origins of now infamous Guardians of Peace are Russian after analyzing 1,600 words attached to a Sony emails that the hacking group leaked to a variety of media outlets.”

TheDailyMailOnline reports that they were investigated by a Seattle-based cyber security firm — Taia Global. “Our preliminary results show that Sony’s attackers were most likely Russian, possibly not likely Korean, and definitely not Mandarin Chinese, or German,” the company wrote in a Christmas Eve blog post, according to the New York Daily News. The firm concluded that their analysis did not absolve North Korea of any involvement in the hack, — but, they believe that placing the blame on Pyongyang is misguided. Taia Global analyzed 15-20 phrasings in the emails matched Russia language. Nine phrases matched Korean, none were Mandarin nor German.

According to the cyber analytical firm – Deadline – a group called The Lizard Squad, is taking credit for shutting down Sony’s PlayStation network on Christmas Day.

Keep it simple stupid. Conspiracy theories abound. But, it usually is more simple — most of the time — than we often think. And, Taia Global failed to provide convincing evidence — at least as far as I can tell – to substantiate their claim that the Sony hack likely had Russian ‘fingerprints’ on it. North Korea had the means, the motive, and the ability to carry out this kind of hack — and, it probably did — unless and until compelling evidence to the contrary is presented. V/R, RCP

Joel Christie and Chris Spargo, writing in the December 28, 2014 edition of TheDailyMailOnline, note that “a new theory has emerged that downplays North Korea’s involvement in the Sony hack and instead — fingers Russian hackers instead — based on a linguistics examination of leaked emails. Cyber security experts believe “the origins of now infamous Guardians of Peace are Russian after analyzing 1,600 words attached to a Sony emails that the hacking group leaked to a variety of media outlets.”

TheDailyMailOnline reports that they were investigated by a Seattle-based cyber security firm — Taia Global. “Our preliminary results show that Sony’s attackers were most likely Russian, possibly not likely Korean, and definitely not Mandarin Chinese, or German,” the company wrote in a Christmas Eve blog post, according to the New York Daily News. The firm concluded that their analysis did not absolve North Korea of any involvement in the hack, — but, they believe that placing the blame on Pyongyang is misguided. Taia Global analyzed 15-20 phrasings in the emails matched Russia language. Nine phrases matched Korean, none were Mandarin nor German.
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5 Ways Being The Boss Changes After The Military


December 29, 2014

Here are five simple things to remember so that your new team has an even-keeled perception of your leadership.

Being a boss in the military was about hard and fast conformity. But this stops after service, and civilian employees can actually quit when they want (and they do). This alone can be hard to swallow for some veterans. In addition, negative stereotypes continue to shadow veterans, despite a generation of Americans that take great pride in their vets. It’s become so widespread that even the joint chiefs of staff are making public note of it. Today’s veterans are having to think more and more about how people are perceiving their transition as much as the transition itself.

Being a freshly minted civilian in a position of authority can come with a little pressure. What will your new subordinates think of your ability to lead? Should they refrain from confrontation with you?

Here are five simple things to remember so that your new team has an even-keeled perception of your leadership:

1. You can’t make people do push-ups.

Gone are the good old days of “Do it because I said so, or else I’ll make you sorry.” The first and most important thing you can learn about your new leadership position is why people will listen to you. Motivating people to want to listen to you is a long sought after objective in leadership (with plenty of YouTube videos to help). Ugly punishments tends to decrease morale, reduce productivity, and increase self-terminations (which costs you experience). So, instead of wasting your time trying to force people to work hard for you, take some time to show them why they should want to work hard for you.

2. Decisions generally aren’t “life-or-death.”

Unless you’ve gone from being a military doctor to a civilian doctor, or something similar, you’re generally going to find that your decisions are less on the plane of “dissecting a village’s insurgency problem” and more like “figuring out why your supplier is late on their deliveries again.” Leniency is no longer a sign of weakness, but actually counts toward a reputation of being understanding and flexible. Remember that a good sign of leadership is how you handle your team’s mistakes. Normal people don’t enjoy the thought of being a failure, and subordinates can often make mistakes due to a process failure that needs attention. A calm demeanor in the face of error, combined with a level-headed approach to repairing it, can earn your people’s trust and loyalty.

3. No one’s going to salute you. Ever.
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WarBooks Profile: Admiral James Stavridis



A Florida native, Jim Stavridis attended the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, and spent over thirty years in the Navy, rising to the rank of 4-star Admiral. Among his many commands were four years as the 16th Supreme Allied Commander at NATO, where he oversaw operations in Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, the Balkans, and piracy off the coast of Africa. He also commanded US Southern Command in Miami, charged with military operations through Latin America for nearly three years. He was the longest serving Combatant Commander in recent US history.

In the course of his career in the Navy, he served as senior military assistant to the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of Defense. He led the Navy’s premier operational think tank for innovation, Deep Blue, immediately after the 9/11 attacks. 

He won the Battenberg Cup for commanding the top ship in the Atlantic Fleet and the Navy League John Paul Jones Award for Inspirational leadership, along more than 50 US and international medals and decorations, including 28 from foreign nations. He also commanded a Destroyer Squadron and a Carrier Strike Group, both in combat.

He earned a PhD from The Fletcher School at Tufts, winning the Gullion prize as outstanding student in his class, as well as academic honors from the National and Naval War Colleges as a distinguished student. He speaks Spanish and French.

Jim has published six books on leadership, Latin America, ship handling, and innovation, as well as over a hundred articles in leading journals. An active user of social networks, he has tens of thousands of followers on Twitter and friends on Facebook. His TED talk on 21st century security in 2012 has had over 700,000 views. He tweeted the end of combat operations in the Libyan NATO intervention. His memoir of the NATO years, “The Accidental Admiral,” was released in October 2014.

Admiral Stavridis is also the Chair of the Board of the US Naval Institute, the professional association of the Nation’s sea services: Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marine.
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Iran Tests ‘Kamikaze’ Suicide Drone

Zachary Keck
December 29, 2015

Iran tested its new “suicide” drone for the first time late last week, according to a senior Iranian military officer.

Brigadier General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, the Commander of Iran’s Ground Forces, told reporters on Friday that Iran first deployed its “kamikaze drones” during ongoing military drills near the Strait of Hormuz.

“The kamikaze drone was for the first time used in Mohammad Rasoulallah (Mohammad, the Messenger of God) maneuvers,” Pourdastan said, referring to the military drills, state-owned Iranian media outlets reported. “The drone can be used for hitting the aerial and ground targets and can carry out an attack when it identifies a suspicious target.”

Pourdastan first announced that the Iranian army had developed a “new type of suicide drone” back in September 2013, which he referred to as the Ra'ad 85 (Thunder 85).

At the time, Pourdastan claimed “This drone is like a mobile bomb, and is capable of destroying fixed and mobile targets,” including enemy helicopters. He also said that the drone was being produced in different sizes in order to target and destroy different kinds of targets. Elsewhere, Iranian press outlets reported that the Ra’ad 85 had a range of about 100 km.

However, the drone was widely mocked by foreign experts in October 2013 after Iranian TV stations first aired video displaying the the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The drone in the video was reportedly patched with duct tape in various areas, prompting many to dismiss it as an “an amateurish project.”

Nonetheless, Iran has sought to incorporate UAVs into its armed forces, and placed an especially high premium on developing an indigenous UAV industry over the past decade. Although Iran’s “indigenous” UAVs often appear to be modeled off of foreign drones, Tehran has an increasingly wide-range and sophisticated domestic drone industry. As The National Interest noted earlier this month, Iranian officials appear eager to begin exporting some of these UAVs.
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1 January 2015

A NON-COMBATENT WHO WITNESSED AND FILMED THE FIRST FLIGHT TO LEH & BATTLES FOR ZOJI-LA AND NAMKA CHHU

A  NON-COMBATENT  WHO  WITNESSED  AND  FILMED
THE  FIRST  FLIGHT  TO  LEH & BATTLES  FOR   ZOJI-LA   AND  NAMKA  CHHU.
By
Lieutenant  General (Retd)  Baljit  Singh. 
             
   “…the fall of Leh will be a strategic blow to India. It has to be saved at all cost….. I will be on that    flight in your cock-pit. So let’s go.”  Major General K S Thimayya, DSO, 23 May, 1948.

             “An eye witness to two stunning Himalayan Battles fought at either end of the range… had savored the joy of victory at Zoji La ……. And the sadness of withdrawal at Se La, from poor preparedness …”  W M (Bill) Aitken, 2009.

            “ … very special thanks are due to Serbjeet Singh for his kind permission to reproduce the spectacular panorama of the Namka Chhu Valley and Thagla ridge which he was still painting, perched on a hill over-looking the Battle-field, when the Chinese launched their attack on 20 October, 1962.” Major General D K Palit, Vr C, 1991. 
 
It was in 1978, when waiting to catch the attention of the Director General Military Operations in his office, that I noticed a card-board object lying on a table by the window. On a closer look subsequently, that cratered card-board was in fact a paper-mache, three dimensional model of the Namka Chhu Valley. It was a stunning replica of the terrain over which 7 Infantry Brigade had sited its defenses and engaged the PLA troops in October 1962. The master crafts man was, Serbjeet Singh!   

I had known the name but not the Man, leave alone his stupendous deeds and fame.  A graduate in History (First Division) from Forman College, Lahore but his life’s calling lay elsewhere; the Himalayas were his load-stone, not just their physical attraction but rather the philosophical introspection they inspire among human beings at different levels and how they shape the lives and cultures of those who dwell in and around them. Above all, Serbjeet Singh (SS) perhaps even understood the geo-strategic significance of the Himalayas as India’s Northern frontier. For, how else can one explain the presence of a twenty four year old film-maker-cum-artist (Charcoal, water colour and Oils), participating of his free volition in the First Flight to Leh (24 May, 1948), and witness the Battles at Zoji La (01 November, 1948), watch the history-making exploits of the Stuart Tanks of 7 Cavalry beyond Zoji La and all other engagements culminating with the capture of Kargil, on 23 November, 1948!! And all of it filmed, sketched, painted and recorded in text too, in his personal diaries.


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New challenges from China

G Parthasarathy
Jan 1 2015 

Sri Lanka, Nepal keen on China's admission to SAARC
The year 2014 ended with China seeking and obtaining a measure of support for its attempts to gatecrash into SAARC during the Kathmandu summit. New Delhi will now face sustained attempts in 2015, from Sri Lanka and Nepal, to enhance Chinese influence and power across India's land and maritime frontiers. Sri Lanka is headed for Presidential elections on January 8. Nepal's Prime Minister Koirala has served notice that he is determined to adopt a new Constitution by January 22, whether or not there is a parliamentary consensus. Koirala is evidently ready to use the huge majority in the legislature that he and his coalition partners, the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN-UML) command, brushing aside demands from the Madhesi people, who are calling for a federal set-up, reflecting the linguistic and ethnic diversity of the country.

Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse has sought re-election two years before the end of his second term Mr. Rajapakse was swept back to power in 2010 after he successfully brought an end to three decades of ethnic conflict, crushing the LTTE and eliminating its leader, Velupillai Prabhakaran. But the years thereafter have been troublesome domestically for Rajapakse, who has also faced serious international challenges arising from excesses allegedly committed by the Sri Lankan armed forces in the last days of the civil war. This has led to moves by the US and its Western allies to censure Sri Lanka and demand action against those allegedly guilty of killing innocent Tamils.

President Rajapakse faces challenges not only from the opposition UNP led by former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe, but also from within his own party, mounted by former President Chandrika Kumaratunga. His rival in the coming Presidential election, Mathripala Sirisena, is an influential and long-serving general secretary of the ruling SLFP who was also his Transport Minister. The Presidential election is being held when Mr. Rajapakse's popularity appears to be waning, with his party candidates recording a distinct fall in their vote share in the recent provincial elections. Recent communal violence directed at Muslims by the Buddhist clergy has raised concerns. There is disappointment amongst Tamils at the manner in which the Northern Province Government has been denied any meaningful powers for governance, contrary to what President Rajapakse had assured earlier. All this is creating a situation wherein the President could well lose the support of minority communities constituting 25% of the electorate. Moreover, sections of his own party, led by his rival Sirisena and Chandrika Kumaratunga, could split votes of the President's own SLFP. The UNP has been reinvigorated by these developments.

The Rajapakse family, now holding virtually all key positions in the government and the legislature, is a formidable force. There is, moreover, a generally submissive judiciary and formidable State machinery. It would be unrealistic to presume that the President would not be returned to office. Moreover, Sri Lanka has done very well economically in recent years. Allegations that the Western powers are seeking to end the Rajapakse era are now widespread. 
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The Centre we need

Written by Pratap Bhanu Mehta
January 1, 2015 
The prime minister rightly said that countries with ideologies falter, those with values endure.

New year resolutions, for the most part, are platitudes. This is because, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, it is the obvious that eludes us the most. The government is generating a lot of activity, but in a form more likely to cause greater economic uncertainty rather than restore clarity. And this is most true of the finance ministry, the economic face of the government. We all hope the new year will bring new resolve and clarity. But the signals are a bit confusing. So here are reminders in terms of the five key transitions needed in the new year.

First, the government was elected to restore institutional credibility, not erode it further. Frankly, the defence of the ordinance route for important legislation like coal and land acquisition is dubious on two grounds. The Opposition may have stalled Parliament. But the prime minister could have seized the political initiative with simple gestures like, “I will answer all questions in both Houses of Parliament for at least one hour a week.” A prime minister’s question hour would have restored the dignity of Parliament. It would not have given the impression that he is running away. And if, after that, the Opposition were still obtuse, at least legitimacy would be on the government’s side. There has not been a single major gesture by the government to restore institutional credibility. The prime minister rightly said that countries with ideologies falter, those with values endure. He should have added: Those with strong institutions thrive.

Second, the government needs to make a transition from “we are a too-clever-by-half lawyers’ government” to a people’s government. This hubris did the last government in. The land acquisition act needed modification, particularly on procedures. But the nature of the proposed modifications is a recipe for future problems. First, the social impact assessment (SIA) needed rationalisation. But this could have been done by promulgating rules. It did not need an ordinance. Second, the exemption granted to PPP projects will make the act liable to misuse. The courts will step in and we will be back to square one. A typical government manoeuvre: Preserve the form of the SIA but hollow it out. And third, the ordinance does not clean up anomalies in the act. (An odd one is that if the property of a minority education institution is acquired, the market value should be such that it would not abrogate the right of the institution to function, but the same protection does not apply to majority-run educational institutions. So, as a Jain, my private institution has more protection than as a Hindu.) The intent seems to have been more to create a splash. As my colleague, Partha Mukhopadhyay, colourfully puts it, this government seems to believe not in MGNREGA, but LEGA (legal employment generation acts).
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ENSURING NATIONAL SECURITY IN 2015

01 January 2015

The focus must be on pre-empting massive terror strikes and carrying out strong counter-terror operations against insurgents. Accurate intelligence will be crucial for both

Threats to national security and measures to counter these will perhaps be India's most important preoccupation in 2015. The challenges and response will encompass two broad, and sometimes overlapping, areas of conflict — conventional and non-conventional (terrorism and insurgency). The two countries which menace India are well known — Pakistan and China; internally the main insurgent forces are the Maoists while a clutch of organisations in North-East India make up for their size by the level of their violence and savagery. Witness the recent slaughter unleashed in Assam by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit).

As is well-known, one of the most important factors in conventional warfare is military hardware. Unfortunately, the preceding United Progressive Alliance Government's record in supplying the Army, Navy and Air Force with the wherewithal of warfare was dismal. Starkly underlying this fact is the report that in March 2014, the Indian Army did not have enough ammunition for waging a full-scale war, involving severe fighting, for even 20 days! And this when relations with Pakistan, which had armed itself massively against this country by using most of the huge economic aid it received from the United States, were constantly on the edge.

The argument that Pakistan did not wage a full-scale war against this country and would not have done so, displays a staggeringly cavalier approach to national security. India can hardly take chances with a country which has the balkanisation of India as its strategic goal and has fought four wars against this, besides a continuing unconventional warfare through cross-border terrorism since 1980.

Efforts to adequately equip the military have accelerated with the installation of the present Government at the Centre. But then while orders have been and are being placed for hardware, the arrival and deployment of aircraft, ships, armoured vehicles, artillery and so on will take time. Meanwhile, there is need for a strategy to neutralise Pakistan's enhanced military muscle gained through unchecked mis-utilisation of American aid.
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PROXIMITY THAT SHOULD MAKE INDIA SIT UP

01 January 2015

Modi had offered Nepal a line of credit of one billion dollar for development projects. It was not appreciated. As a result, China has decided to increase by more than five times its official aid to the former kingdom

January 1 is a day for new resolutions. It is also a day for predictions. I will abstain from the first, but indulge in the second. The year 2015 will witness a slow takeover of Nepal by China. Here are some facts. In November 1950, a few days after China invaded Tibet, the young editor of Mother India, (published in Mumbai) asked Sri Aurobindo, the great Indian freedom-fighter and yogi about these ominous happenings in the Himalayas. The sage gave his views. In his next editorial, KD Sethna, the journalist wrote: “Let us not blink to the fact that Tibet is useful to China principally as a gate of entry to India. Nepal …appears to be the most likely objective (of Mao).” It is what is happening 64 years later.

Last week, Mr Wang Yi, the Chinese Foreign Minister, visited Kathmandu, where he declared: “Nepal is an important neighbour of China and developing ties with Nepal is one of China’s priorities in developing ties with its neighbours.” While expressing ‘his gratitude toward Nepal for its firm and precious support in China’s core interests including the issue of Tibet,’ Mr Wang added: “China and Nepal should not only be friends of mutual trust and mutual support, but also should be good partners of common development and common prosperity.”

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Nepal for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation meeting last month, he offered Nepal a line of credit of one billion dollars. It was probably not appreciated on the other side of the Himalayas. As a result, China has decided to increase by more than five times its official aid to the former kingdom. Reuters reported: “The jump in assistance was announced after talks between visiting Chinese Foreign Minister and his Nepali counterpart Mahendra Bahadur Pandey, part of a deepening engagement which is expected to lead to a visit by President Xi Jinping next year.”

China has three objectives. One, Beijing needs to control the Tibetan refugees living in Nepal and make sure that their ranks do not increase in the coming years. Two, the communist leadership wants to render Kathmandu economically dependent on the trade with Tibet (read China). Three, China believes in ‘culturally’ infiltrating Nepal.
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B.G. Verghese (1927-2014)

ObituaryRamachandra Guha

In a column published in this newspaper in May 2006, I wrote of B.G. Verghese that - unlike other Delhi-based editors, serving or retired - he was "utterly honest, non-partisan, and interested in the world beyond the hotels and offices of the capital". Some weeks after this was published, I had the opportunity to test the last of these claims at first-hand. In June of that year, Verghese and I were part of an 'independent citizens' initiative' to study the civil conflict then raging in the Bastar area of Chhattisgarh. Verghese, then pushing eighty, was twice the age of the younger members of the group. Yet he was as energetic as the rest of us, as willing to drive through bumpy hill roads and walk through jungle paths to get to tribal hamlets.

Boobli George Verghese was born in 1927 of Malayali-speaking parents in Burma, where his father was a medical doctor. He was educated at The Doon School, Dehradun, St Stephen's College, Delhi, and Trinity College, Cambridge. With that kind of background he could comfortably have joined the ranks of the Indian - or indeed global - elite, taking a job in a merchant bank or the diplomatic corps. Yet he chose what at the time was a distinctly unglamorous (as well as poorly paid) profession, that of journalism.

On coming down from Cambridge, Verghese joined the Times of India. He worked in that paper in the first, heady decades of Independence, covering the first elections, the conflicts with Pakistan, and the construction of high prestige projects such as the Bhakra-Nangal dam. This was a time of hope and idealism, when the politicians and bureaucrats were honest and committed to building a new India, a time Verghese describes with empathy and zest in his immensely readable memoir, First Draft.

In the 1960s, Verghese worked briefly as the prime minister's press adviser, before joining the Hindustan Times as editor. He was an inspirational presence at this newspaper, encouraging young journalists to do in-depth field stories. One such story was about the malign influence of Sanjay Gandhi in national politics. This brought him in conflict with the proprietor; shortly afterwards, the Emergency was proclaimed, and Verghese sacked.

After the Emergency was lifted, Verghese stood as an independent candidate in the 1977 elections, from the constituency of Mavelikara. Here, he possibly pioneered the model of 'crowd-sourced' funding, since the money for his campaign came from hundreds of his friends and well-wishers who wished to have a man of integrity and patriotism in Parliament.

Verghese gave the Congress candidate a good fight, but ultimately lost, in part because (as he jokingly recalled to me years later) his Malayalam was rusty and inflected with the accents of St Stephen's and Cambridge. Now, in a shining display of integrity and patriotism, he took the unspent money from his campaign fund and created the Media Foundation for India, which endowed annual awards for women journalists, and commissioned studies on the history of journalism. (The awards, named after Chameli Devi Jain, still exist; among the awardees have been some remarkably courageous journalists.)
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After Peshawar, Pakistan’s litmus test

ASHOK MEHTA
January 1, 2015

Nawaz Sharif’s new blueprint to defeat terrorism, a monumental task, is not one for Pakistan alone. Assuming that Islamabad is serious about rolling back what is an existential threat, the challenge has to be dealt with locally, regionally and internationally

December 16 is a day of shame for Pakistan. On this day the Pakistan Army, the custodian of the nation’s core values and national interests, faced the ultimate humiliation of surrendering before the Indian Army at Dacca. Forty-three years later to the day, the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a terrorist group nurtured by the Pakistan Army, carried out the most barbaric and macabremassacre of over 130 schoolchildren to avenge the Army’s six month-old Operation Zarb-e-Azb. However, India-haters and India-baiters — this includes Hafiz Saeed and Gen. Pervez Musharraf — were quick to blame India. Only those living in denial in Pakistan could have defended this atrocity.

Long ago, the Pakistan Army created armed militias, which it called the Mujahideen and the Taliban (terrorist proxies to the rest of the world), to act as force multipliers of Pakistan’s foreign policy against its neighbours. Instead, some of these strategic assets are now rebounding and rather than facilitating strategic depth in Afghanistan and India, have secured strategic space for themselves within Pakistan. Successive Army Chiefs, while admitting that the primary threat is from within, are unable and unwilling to take their eye off the eastern front — India — but with reason. Without this bogey, the Army would lose its primacy in the hierarchy of state order. Pakistan remains the epicentre of terrorism.

A turning point?

The statistics are mind-boggling. In 2013, according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), jihaditerrorism worldwide resulted in the killing of 18,000 people. Of these, 80 per cent were Muslims with Pakistan figuring among the five worst-affected countries; the others being Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Since 9/11, nearly 60,000 terrorists, civilians and security force personnel have been killed in Pakistan. The Pakistan Taliban and al-Qaeda have killed 15,000 security personnel — nearly as many have died in wars against India. These figures show that the enterprise of bleeding India through a thousand cuts is working in the reverse. Pakistani apologists say their country is the biggest victim of terrorism without conceding that it is hara-kiri.

The Peshawar incident has reportedly united the political opposition and government and one hopes that the India-centric military which is substantially Islamised and radicalised, will now be willing to mainstream its misguided Muslim brothers. After Peshawar, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif outlined his vision to tackle the unaddressed challenges of terrorism and extremism, making four salient points. The first was ending the divergence over the ownership of the war (since many claim Pakistan is fighting America’s war) and his categorical statement that “this is our war”.
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World View: Facebook needn’t apologise for its Year in Review

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Rupert Myers
January 1, 2015 

If its algorithm throws out some jarring moments, perhaps it’s time to think twice about how much we share online

You don’t need to go out this New Year’s Eve to find yourself trapped by a stranger, being bored humourless by humblebragging references to their achievements in 2014, because the Internet has mainlined this straight into your home. Where once manners might have prevented the nastiest excesses of oversharing and boasting, we can now unashamedly wallow in how epic our lives are, or how stunning we can make them seem, by piping a stream of our curated moments out to our friends.

We now churn so much of ourselves out onto the Internet that Facebook has had to apologise for its Year In Review generator, after users complained that the algorithm generated galleries contained “jarring” content, including, in some cases, images of their deceased children.

Facebook should not have to apologise for regurgitating what people have uploaded themselves. The past isn’t over any more but rather the ceaselessly searchable present. And the Year In Review is a reminder of just how much of ourselves — our elation, grief and despair — we record and spray into the vast electronic mind palace of the Internet.Commodification of privacy

Most of us lost all sense of shame, any notion of privacy, any concerns about boastfulness when Facebook and other social networks tricked us into thinking that we would enjoy becoming the star of our own Internet experience. The commodification of our privacy and the gamification of our popularity transformed our social lives at electric speed. No longer were our thoughts and feelings our own; they were a currency to be swapped publicly. We soon became self-publishers of misery and joy. The Facebook wall became a community noticeboard, on to which we would announce births, engagements and deaths.

Yet this passive-aggression of boasting online, the uploading of expensive plates of food in restaurants, checking into airports, and the photographing of our own faces rather than the view, are all strands to the new social web that Facebook is now feeding back to us. People I know are starting to leave, exhausted by what one described as a “bragbook” effect.Disliking accuracy
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