The committee applauds the administration for developing a serious, major initiative to begin to close the vulnerabilities in the government's information networks and the nation's critical infrastructure. The committee believes that the administration's actions provide a foundation on which the next president can build.

However, the committee has multiple, significant issues with the administration's specific proposals and with the overall approach to gaining congressional support for the initiative.

A chief concern is that virtually everything about the initiative is highly classified, and most of the information that is not classified is categorized as `For Official Use Only.' These restrictions preclude public education, awareness, and debate about the policy and legal issues, real or imagined, that the initiative poses in the areas of privacy and civil liberties. Without such debate and awareness in such important and sensitive areas, it is likely that the initiative will make slow or modest progress. The committee strongly urges the administration to reconsider the necessity and wisdom of the blanket, indiscriminate classification levels established for the initiative.

The administration itself is starting a serious effort as part of the initiative to develop an information warfare deterrence strategy and declaratory doctrine, much as the superpowers did during the Cold War for nuclear conflict. It is difficult to conceive how the United States could promulgate a meaningful deterrence doctrine if every aspect of our capabilities and operational concepts is classified. In the era of superpower nuclear competition, while neither side disclosed weapons designs, everyone understood the effects of nuclear weapons, how they would be delivered, and the circumstances under which they would be used. Indeed, deterrence was not possible without letting friends and adversaries alike know what capabilities we possessed and the price that adversaries would pay in a real conflict. Some analogous level of disclosure is necessary in the cyber domain.

The committee also shares the view of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that major elements of the cyber initiative request should be scaled back because policy and legal reviews are not complete, and because the technology is not mature. Indeed, the administration is asking for substantial funds under the cyber initiative for fielding capabilities based on ongoing programs that remain in the prototype, or concept development, phase of the acquisition process. These elements of the cyber initiative, in other words, could not gain approval within the executive branch if held to standards enforced on normal acquisition programs. The committee's view is that disciplined acquisition processes and practices must be applied to the government-wide cyber initiative as much as to the ongoing development programs upon which the initiative... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

SASC Criticizes Secrecy of National Cyber Security Initiative

Shown here for the first time, these sixty patches reveal a secret world of military imagery and jargon, where classified projects are known by peculiar names (“Goat Suckers,” “None of Your Fucking Business,” “Tastes Like Chicken”) and illustrated with occult symbols and ridiculous cartoons. Although the actual projects represented here (such as the notorious Area 51) are classified, these patches—which are worn by military units working on classified missions—are precisely photographed, strangely hinting at a world about which little is known.

By submitting hundreds of Freedom of Information requests, the author has also assembled an extensive and readable guide to the patches included here, making this volume one of the best available surveys of the military’s black world—a $27 billion industry that has quietly grown by almost 50 percent since 9/11.

I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Pentagon's Black World

SIPRI data on arms transfers refer to actual deliveries of major conventional weapons. Data on arms transfers are presented in the form of SIPRI Trend Indicator Values (TIVs). TIVs are expressed in US$ m. at constant (1990) prices. However, although figures are expressed in US$, TIVs do not represent the financial value of goods transferred. Instead, TIVs are an indication of the volume of arms transferred. Hence, TIVs can be used to measure trends in international arms transfers, such as changes in the total flow of weapons and the geographic pattern of arms exports or imports. The data can also be used to measure a particular country's share of the overall import or export market or the rate of increase or decline in its imports or exports. However, since TIVs do not represent the financial value of the goods transferred, they are not comparable to official economic data such as gross domestic product or export/import figures.

In order to calculate the financial value of the arms trade, the Arms Transfers Project collects official government and industry data on the value of countries arms exports. This information is available here.

"There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?"

ARMSFLOW

Imagine you're a soldier in Baghdad, don't speak Arabic and you must shout a command to a pack of angry-looking insurgents: "Drop your weapons!" You could fire warning shots, or take out a handheld computer and use a stylus to scroll through a list of preprogrammed phrases on a touchscreen and then flip the device around to show enemy combatants the command in Arabic. Not what you want to do in a hostile situation or combat zone.

MilTrans VRT tactical eyes-free, hand-free voice translator is a solution. The device is stand alone; MICH/ACH Integrated; or Integrated into Headset with Phased Array System and Speakers.

Applications include providing instructions during force protection, house/vehicle searches, combat patrol, civil aid missions, entry control duty, basic medical triage, ship boarding and prison control.

These are our booth neighbors at Blogworld Expo. They have over 4,500 of these units in the field in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is what the wearable system looks like:

MilTrans - Voice Response Translator

There's nothing like the right TV spot to heal the sectarian divide.

Virtually every action, message, and decision of a military force shapes the opinions of an indigenous population: strategic communication, treatment of civilians at vehicle checkpoints, and the accuracy or inaccuracy of aerial bombardment.

Themes of US goodwill mean little if its actions convey otherwise. Consequently, a unified message in both word and deed is fundamental to success.

Business marketing practices provide a useful framework for improving US military efforts to shape the attitudes and behaviors of local populations in a theater of operations as well as those of a broader, international audience.

Enlisting Madison Avenue extracts lessons from these business practices and adapts them to US military efforts, developing a unique approach to shaping that has the potential to improve military-civilian relations, the accuracy of media coverage of operations, communication of US and coalition objectives, and the reputation of US forces in theater and internationally.

Foremost among these lessons are the concepts of branding, customer satisfaction, and segmentation of the target audience, all of which serve to maximize the impact and improve the outcome of US shaping efforts.

Beware the AdWords on Google Arabic:

We were surprised at the success with Arabic. Keywords in Arabic were among the top performers with click-through rates often exceeding 30%.

Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation

Here, in a study published in June 2006 by the military's Joint Special Operations University, two "information warfare" specialists mull over how the US armed forces and intelligence agencies might influence opinion overseas through foreign bloggers:

... [I]t may be easy for foreign audiences to dismiss the US perspective with "Yes, but you aren't one of us, you don't really understand us."

In this regard, information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence already within the target nation, group or community to pass the US message. ... Sometimes numbers can be effective; hiring a block of bloggers to verbally attack a specific person or promote a specific message may be worth considering. On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the US military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.

An alternative strategy is to "make" a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however. ...

There will also be times when it is thought to be necessary, in the context of an integrated information campaign, to pass false or erroneous information through the media ... in support of military deception activities. ... In these cases, extra care must be taken to ensure plausible deniability and nonattribution, as well as employing a well-thought-out deception operation that minimizes the risks of exposure.

General Memetics, on Tom Ricks's Inbox

Here is retired Army Gen. John Abizaid, former CENTCOM commander, on June 20, at Transformation Warfare '07:

“The enemy is in fact more networked, more decentralized, and operates within a broader commander’s intent than any 20th century foe we’ve ever met,” he said. “In fact, this enemy is better networked than we are.”

Tapping information is particularly vital to empower lower-level American soldiers in theater, but the “architectures and the switches” are now being pulled by generals and politicians, he said.

He said because too many stovepipes and bureaucrats hamper the effective use of technology in the field, it may be time for a national dialogue after the 2008 elections about reforming the defense establishment to fight future wars.

Abizaid scolded reporters for not telling enough stories about the enemy.

Audio for sale here.

See also the on-scene report:

"It does take a network to beat a network, and our network must be better."

"It's more about people; it's more about taking risks," General Keys said. "It's more about changing the rules and (getting) a clean sheet of paper."

Abizaid: US military has failed to embrace cyberspace in terror war

Black Helicopters (BH) are not just helicopters with a black paint-job as you may have been told. They are, in fact, autonomous agents -- lifeforms -- created by New World Order (NWO) agencies via nanobiotechnology. Their primary purpose is to spy on the activities of average citizens in order to gather tactical information and discover "subversives" who are not bowing to the will of the Liberati's UN-backed Federal Government. Furthermore, when the NWO Invasion takes place in the not-too-distant future, they will round up citizens for internment in concentration camps or carry out the elimination of the more vocally anti-Liberati.

This page tickles my conspiracy theory funny-bone in almost every conceivable way. This page will arm you with all the information you need to know about Black Helicopters in order to convince anyone that you are completely nuts.

It's even got posters you can print out and hang up: "The Nanobiotechnological Menace of Black Helicopters (PDF)"

The TRUTH About Black Helicopters!

Noah's recent posts on the Airborne Laser and reflected laser beams reminded me of a spoof on a Pentagon PowerPoint briefing that was making the rounds in the Defense Department a couple fiscal years ago. Better than any article, this briefing captures everything that is wrong, funny and horrifying about outrageous Pentagon weapons that sound too good to be true. I'm posting the briefing, called Directed Energy Sea Mammals, for those who weren't on the e-mail chain when it first came out. The author of the original Air Force PowerPoint is a mystery (I've also seen a Navy variant of it).

The presentation is question is quite amusing.

Danger Room - Flipper Fires Lasers in Air Force Brief

When the Air Force formed Air Force Space Command in 1982, it marked formal recognition that space was a distinct operating arena. The first commander, Gen. James V. Hartinger, said, “Space is a place. ... It is a theater of operations, and it was just a matter of time until we treated it as such.”

Meanwhile, around that same time, sci-fi author William Gibson published a novel entitled Neuromancer, a work that gave the world a strange new term—“cyberspace.” The book didn’t call cyberspace “a place” but a “consensual hallucination” of billions of humans. Few military men gave it much thought.

Nearly a quarter of a century later, though, it’s deja vu all over again. The Air Force has come to recognize cyberspace, like “regular” space, as an arena of human activity—including armed activity. It is, to reprise Hartinger, a theater of operations.

“This is probably the only warfighting domain in which we have peer competitors,” said Keys of ACC. “We have to stay ahead of them.”

Whenever I say that we are riding on the crazy train to the world envisioned by William Gibson, people usually chuckle, thinking that I am making a joke of some sort...

War in the Third Domain