Category Archives: Cyber War

And Then N. Korea Fired off 2 More Missiles

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But while Barack Obama dispatched Michelle to attend Nancy Reagan’s funeral memorial, he is going to a music festival.

North Korea Fires More Missiles into the Sea

VoA: South Korea’s military says North Korea has fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the sea, apparently a response to continuing military exercises by South Korea and the United States.

The South Korean Defense Ministry says the missiles were fired early Thursday morning from North Hwanghae Province. They traveled about 500 kilometers and fell into the water off the country’s east coast, officials in Seoul said.

Such firings are not uncommon when animosity rises on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea hates the massive military drills by Seoul and Washington, calling them a preparation for invasion.

Pyongyang also is angry about tough United Nations sanctions imposed following its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.

North Korea has a large stockpile of short-range missiles and is developing long-range and intercontinental missiles.

The North fired six rockets into the sea last week, supervised by leader Kim Jong Un, who ordered his military to be prepared to launch pre-emptive attacks against its enemies.

On Wednesday, Kim said his country has miniaturized nuclear warheads to mount on ballistic missiles.

The U.S. State Department declined to comment.

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Meanwhile Special Operations Command General Votel did comment:

NUMBER OF US SPECIAL FORCES ON KOREAN PENINSULA REACHES ALL TIME HIGH

US Special Operations Command General Joseph Votel stated that United States has increased the number of Special Operations Forces (SOF) on the Korean Peninsula in the past year-and-a-half to their highest level.

The United States has increased the number of Special Operations Forces (SOF) on the Korean Peninsula in the past year-and-a-half to their highest level, US Special Operations Command General Joseph Votel told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

“I am pretty proud to say, right now, today there are more SOF men and woman on the [Korean] Peninsula than we have had any time in the past,” Votel stated.

In the past two months, North Korea has engaged in multiple long-range rocket launches and a nuclear weapons test, raising concerns in the United States and among members of the international community.

Votel noted that the Special Operations Forces presence on the Korean Peninsula has increased over the past 18 months in partnership with South Korean forces.

The United States and South Korea just launched their largest ever military exercises in the region this week.

North Korea has argued the yearly exercises posed a threat to its interests, and announced last week that it had put its nuclear weapons on high alert, ready to carry out a preemptive nuclear strike.

Then Reuters has an additional report on North Korea’s newest nuclear weapons:

N.Korea’s Kim says country has miniaturized nuclear warhead

SEOUL, March 9 (Reuters) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the country has miniaturized nuclear warheads to be mounted on ballistic missiles, the North’s KCNA news agency reported on Wednesday.

“The nuclear warheads have been standardized to be fit for ballistic missiles by miniaturizing them,” KCNA quoted him as saying as he inspected the work of nuclear workers, adding “this can be called true nuclear deterrent.”

The comments were Kim’s first direct mention of the claim previously made repeatedly in the country’s state media to have successfully miniaturized a nuclear warhead to be mounted on a ballistic missile, which is widely questioned.

Kim also inspected the nuclear warheads designed for thermo-nuclear reaction, KCNA said, referring to a hydrogen bomb that the country claimed to have tested in January.

North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6 and claimed it was a successful hydrogen bomb test, which was disputed by many experts and the governments of South Korea and the United States.

The U.N. Security Council imposed harsh new sanctions on the isolated state last week for the nuclear test, and Pyongyang has stepped up its belligerent rhetoric through state media.

Last week Kim ordered his country to be ready to use nuclear weapons at any time in the face of growing threats from enemies.

Operating Military Drone Flights over U.S.

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Pentagon admits operating military drone flights over U.S.

WashingtonTimes: The Pentagon has deployed spy drones to fly over U.S. territory for non-military missions over the past decade, but the flights were few and lawful, according to a new report.

The domestic drone flights have occurred less than 20 times between 2006 and 2015 and were always conducted in compliance with existing laws, according to the report by the Pentagon Inspector General which was made public under a Freedom of Information Act request, according to USA today.

The Pentagon did not provide details of the domestic spy missions, but said it takes the issue of military drone flights over America soil “very seriously.”

The list of domestic drone operations was not made public in the report, but some examples were cited.

In one case, an unnamed mayor asked the Marine Corps to use a drone to identify potholes in the mayor’s city. The Marines denied the request because obtaining the required approval from the defense secretary to “conduct a UAS mission of this type did not make operational sense.”

The issue of unmanned aerial surveillance drone flights over the U.S. first arose in 2013 when then-FBI director Robery Mueller told a Congressional committee that the bureau employed spy drones to aid in investigations, but in a “very, very minimal way, very seldom.”

According to the report, which was completed in March 2015, the Pentagon established guidance in 2006 governing when and whether drones could be used domestically.

The interim policy allowed spy drones to be used for homeland defense purposes and to assists civil authorities.

However, the policy said that any use of military spy drones for civilian authorities must be cleared by the Secretary of Defense or someone delegated by the secretary. The report found that the defense secretaries never delegated that responsibility, according to USA Today.

 Truthseeker/UK

But the desire for domestic drone operations is growing, according to the report. Military units that operate the drones told inspectors that they would like more opportunities to fly them on domestic missions, even just to give pilots more experience.

Shortly before the report was completed a year ago, the Pentagon issued a new policy on the use of spy drones requiring the defense secretary to approve all domestic drone operations.

Unless permitted by law and approved by the secretary, drones “may not conduct surveillance on U.S. persons,” under the new policy.

**** Is it is nefarious? Very doubtful:

Plotted out all the information we’ve (Electronic Frontier Foundation) received about applications to fly domestic drones on our Map of Domestic Drone Authorizations. (Clicking this link will serve content from Google.)

US Federal Agencies:

Pages

 

Yikes, the IMF is Sounding the Alarm

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Deja Vu? Imagine what a new president of the United States is about to inherit? Terrifying…

The IMF Is Sounding the Alarm. Is Anyone Listening?

WSJ: The International Monetary Fund is sounding louder and louder alarms about the state of the global economy. The problem is, few major economies seem to be hearing them.

“The IMF’s latest reading of the global economy shows once again a weakening baseline,” the fund’s No. 2 official, David Lipton, warned Tuesday in a speech to the National Association for Business Economics.

While the world economy is still expanding, he said, “we are clearly at a delicate juncture, where risk of economic derailment has grown.”

The IMF alerted finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 largest economies gathered in Shanghai late last month, signaling it would likely downgrade its outlook for the global economy in April.

IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said a coordinated effort was needed, urging governments with room in their budgets to ramp up spending and all countries to accelerate delivery of long-promised economic overhauls.

Unlike the G-20’s massive joint-stimulus effort in 2009 to combat the financial meltdown wreaking havoc across the globe, IMF members are at odds about the severity of the problem and how to fix it.

“We are strictly against announcing publicly that the G-20 is preparing a stimulus program,” German officials privately told other countries as the group drafted its joint communiqué.

The IMF fears such an attitude risks jeopardizing the global economic expansion.

Mr. Lipton, at his speech Tuesday, cited a World War II-era quote by Winston Churchill: “I never worry about action, but only inaction.”

Part of the problem is a growing concern that policy makers are running out of ammunition or have lost the resolve to deploy growth-reviving measures.

“For the sake of the global economy, it is imperative that advanced and developing countries dispel this dangerous notion by reviving the bold spirit of action and cooperation that characterized the early years of the recovery effort,” Mr. Lipton said.

The IMF calls come as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said leading indicators already suggest global growth will slow in the coming months. And the Bank for International Settlements cautioned against diminishing returns for central banks as they keep pushing easy-money policies to boost growth, including “great uncertainty” about navigating deeper into uncharted waters of negative interest rates.

There are few signs policy makers are shifting into higher gear. “There’s a great deal of economic uncertainty in the world, but there’s not a crisis and it would not be reasonable to expect a crisis response,” a senior U.S. Treasury official said during the recent meeting.

While the IMF is pushing the G-20 to boost spending, it is not a call to do so at the expense of monetary policy. The fund has long pushed the Federal Reserve to delay its planned rate increases and asked the European Central Bank to rev up its stimulus efforts.

Mr. Lipton worries premature withdrawal of central bank support could pitch the global economy into a deflationary death trap.

Then, “vicious and self-reinforcing dynamics” would plague the world in the form of higher real interest rates, falling output, building debt and higher unemployment, he said.  Such effects are “notoriously difficult to combat once they become entrenched.”

If recent history is any guide, the IMF may once again have to turn its downside scenario for the global economy into its baseline.

 
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This was also the major topic at DAVOS in January.
Fear, Uncertainty Causing Market Chaos and Davos Isn’t Helping

The trouble with the World Economic Forum is that it has a propensity to become something of an echo chamber. Rather than promoting a plurality of different views, ideas and sentiments, the mood tends to get focused on a single, self-reinforcing consensus which is endlessly repeated and passed around, as if trending on social media. So it is with financial panics, which have an unnerving tendency to coincide with the annual conference in Davos. I’ve seen it happen on a number of occasions, most memorably in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, when the sense of fear for the future among financiers and policymakers was palpable.

It happened again in early 2009, in the depths of the banking crisis, when an end-of-days mentality hung over the conference. Somehow or the other, Davos amplifies these panics rather than calming them. This year threatens to be little different. Nobody here knows quite what to make of the latest stock market sell-off, and that, indeed, is part of the problem, for uncertainty breeds fear of loss and can easily degenerate into a collective dash for the exit. The danger is that we talk ourselves into something a good deal more serious than it should be.

There is no particular trigger for the latest panic. Most of, if not all, the concerns that underlie it have been with us for some time now — the apparent incompetence of once omnipotent Chinese policymakers in the face of a slowing economy, the collapsing oil price and the growing sense of geo-political instability that accompanies it. As for the rise in American interest rates, that happened a month ago, and had been widely signalled by the Federal Reserve for more than a year beforehand. Yet it is only now that this slight tweak to monetary policy has transmogrified in the eyes of investors from a benign and well-flagged response to an accelerating US economy into a grievous policy mistake that threatens to destabilise the world economy.

So what are we dealing with here; a long-overdue adjustment to asset prices unduly inflated by years of central bank money-printing, or a signal of tough times ahead for the real economy? It’s not hard to make the case for financial Armageddon; certainly, there are plenty of people here only too willing to imagine the worst. Start with the plunging oil price, which ought to be positive for the big consumer economies of the West — given that it puts more money in people’s pockets for spending on other things.

One worry, though, is that it is already causing such a hiatus in oil industry investment that today’s glut will in short order turn to famine, causing the price to surge anew. Back in the late Nineties, the Economist ran a cover on why the oil price would remain at $5 a barrel “for ever”. But as everyone knows, nothing is for ever and little more than 10 years later, it had risen to nearly $150.

The same cycle is being repeated today, with investment cut to a level that, in the long term, will leave supply more than a third lower than present demand. Markets are now anticipating the cooling effect of these higher prices to come. Another worry is that the low oil price will end up bankrupting Saudi Arabia, causing further chaos in an unstable region. Isil taking control of some of the world’s biggest oil reserves scarcely bears thinking about.

Meanwhile, a strong dollar in combination with collapsing commodity prices is threatening a wave of corporate bankruptcies in a world awash with dollar debt. To this list of woes must be added continued worries over China’s transition from to a consumer-led economy. Since the financial crisis, China has been the key source of growth in an otherwise stagnant global economy, but now this progress seems to have stalled. Stories abound of extreme unhappiness within the notoriously secretive Chinese high command. There is even talk of attempted coups. These scenarios may seem far-fetched, but what is undeniable is that all these concerns play into a world of extreme flux. Investors may crave stability and predictability. But for now, these are in lamentably short supply.

Whistleblowers, Watch Your Back

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This tells me it is official cover for Hillary. What are your thoughts?

U.S. Government Seeking New Top Secret Classification Czar

FreeBeacon: The Obama administration is seeking to hire a new information security director who will be responsible for overseeing the classification and declassification on all sensitive U.S. government information, according to a posting on the government’s jobs website.

The administration wants to fill the post of director in the National Archive’s Information Security Oversight Office. The previous director, John Fitzpatrick, left the job in January.

The director holds one of the most powerful and sensitive national security jobs in the U.S. government. The official has authority over many classification and declassification matters, meaning that he or she could potentially remove classification if it is deemed in violation of policies.

The post is not subject to confirmation by Congress.

The new director can make up to $185,000 a year.

***** Implications already realized?

 

Intel Whistle-Blowers Fear Government Won’t Protect Them

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Bloomberg: Nearly three years after Edward Snowden bypassed the intelligence community’s own process for reporting wrongdoing and leaked troves of classified documents to Glenn Greenwald, the system for protecting whistle-blowers inside the national security state remains broken.

This is the view of current and former intelligence officials, national security lawyers and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Their message is simple: Whistle-blowers are often too intimidated to take their case to the inspectors general and Congress.

“There is a systemic problem with the whistle-blower process,” Representative Devin Nunes told me. “There is no easy way for them to come forward that doesn’t jeopardize their careers, across the whole defense and intelligence community enterprise.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has in the past two years tried to address this problem, with mixed results at best. Dan Meyer, the executive director of the Intelligence Community’s Whistle-Blowing & Source Protection program, said in a statement that more whistle-blowers were coming forward in the last two years since the intelligence community began implementing a 2012 executive order from President Barack Obama that gave them additional protections. He said his office was also doing more, for example, to educate agencies on the new law and regulation.

Meyer conceded, however, there were holes in the process. “Protections are imperfect given their differences, the most notable being the lack of equivalent laws protecting intelligence community contractors from reprisal actions by the private companies employing them,” he said. He also acknowledged: “There will likely be some reluctance on the part of whistle-blowers to come forward. In our experience, this is understandably a very emotional event in someone’s career given what’s at stake.”

Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer who has represented dozens of whistle-blowers over the last two decades, went further. “I have not seen any noticeable improvement in the ability of a national security whistle-blower to come forward and be confident they will be protected,” he told me.

Snowden himself has said that he went to the press because of the experience of whistle-blowers before him. Specifically, he has talked about Thomas Drake, a former official at the National Security Agency. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Drake tried to warn his superiors and other oversight bodies of what he saw as a wasteful and illegal NSA program, known as “Trailblazer,” to collect personal data from digital networks.

For Drake, the system didn’t work. Out of frustration, he eventually leaked what he has says was unclassified information about the program to the Baltimore Sun. The Justice Department prosecuted him in 2010, but dropped his case the following year. His career was ruined.

A staff member on the House Intelligence Committee who took Drake seriously, Diane Rourke, soon found she too was under investigation. She told me that because of her interest in Drake’s complaints, and lobbying within the system on his behalf, the Justice Department and eventually her own committee put her under the microscope.

“They wanted to ruin our lives and make an example out of us to anyone else in the intelligence community,” she told me, even though she said she never took Drake’s complaints to the press.

Speaking anonymously, other U.S. intelligence officials told me analysts often face milder forms of intimidation if they are suspected of talking to Congress. This includes threats to suspend one’s security clearance, or being deliberately kept out of loop on important programs.

At issue is anonymity. The inspector general for the intelligence community is required by law to tell the Office of the Director of National Intelligence the identities of whistle-blowers that seek to speak with Congress. The DNI office has also bolstered its monitoring of intelligence professionals and their browsing habits on classified computer systems since the first mass disclosures by WikiLeaks in 2010.

Congress and others have adjusted. Nunes told me he has found creative ways for intelligence professionals to get him information. One was through an annual survey provided to intelligence analysts on the integrity of their product.

At a hearing last month Nunes disclosed that 40 percent of analysts at U.S. Central Command, or CentCom, who responded to the survey complained their reports on the Islamic State were skewed by higher-ups to make the U.S.-led campaign seem more effective than it really was. (The Pentagon’s acting inspector general, Glenn Fine, is also looking into these claims).

Nunes said analysts filled out extensive comments in response to the survey describing how their work was politicized, with the intention of getting them to the committee. Yet Nunes is still trying to get those in-depth comments from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

While some analysts at Central Command have gone directly to the inspector general at the Pentagon (who declined to comment for this column), Nunes said there were many more at CentCom who did not want to risk potential retribution and file a formal complaint.

Nunes also said intelligence officials who have helped his investigation into cost-padding for the construction of a new Joint Intelligence Analysis Center in Europe have been too intimidated to go through the formal whistle-blower process.

It’s understandable that lawmakers like Nunes would raise concerns about weak protections for whistle-blowers. His committee is supposed to perform oversight, even though his predecessors have not made this an issue.

But fixing the system is also in the interest of the national security state itself. In the last five years, the intelligence community has invested great resources to protect its secrets from the next mega-leaker. But if whistle-blowers inside the system see no recourse to address legitimate grievances, then the intelligence community should brace itself for more Snowdens.

Iran’s 800km Ballistic Missile, Did Anyone Notice?

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It is no wonder that Prime Minister Netanyahu cancelled his meeting with Obama this month.

In part USAToday: WASHINGTON — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has canceled his trip to Washington this month, prompting annoyance and surprise from White House officials who said they had been working to schedule a meeting with President Obama.

The incident is just the latest outward sign of tension between the two leaders, who also missed out on a meeting a year ago as Netanyahu addressed a joint meeting of Congress to voice his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal. The White House said a meeting then wouldn’t have been appropriate because it was just two weeks before Netanyahu faced a re-election bid.

The dust-up comes as Vice President Biden touched down in Tel Aviv on Tuesday during his week-long visit to the Middle East. He’s scheduled to meet with Netanyahu on Wednesday. The two countries are in the midst of renegotiating a 10-year security agreement.

The White House said the Israeli government first initiated talks about a meeting this month, requesting a meeting of the two leaders March 17 or March 18. The White House had offered March 18 — two days before Obama’s trip to Cuba and Argentina when the trip was canceled.

“We were looking forward to hosting the bilateral meeting, and we were surprised to first learn via media reports that the prime minister, rather than accept our invitation, opted to cancel his visit,” said Ned Price, the spokesman for Obama’s National Security Council. “Reports that we were not able to accommodate the prime minister’s schedule are false.” Full article here.

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) fired a 800-km range ballistic missile, dubbed Qiam, from an underground silo during a nationwide missile exercise on Tuesday.   

According to Tasnim dispatches, one of the projectiles launched from a silo on Tuesday was Qiam, a ballistic missile with pinpoint accuracy.  

A report broadcast by the state television showed missile silos at seemingly impregnable underground facilities, full of advanced missiles. The underground silos are seen as complementary gear for the IRGC’s underground “missile cities.”  

In comments on the sidelines of the drill, codenamed ‘Might of Velayat’, IRGC Commander Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari said the launch of various types of missiles in the exercise was only a slight indication that the IRGC’s missile silos, scattered all over the country, are fully operational. The missile drill has been in progress for a couple of days, but its final stage kicked off on Tuesday in different parts of the country. 

According to the IRGC, the exercise is meant to demonstrate Iran’s might and sustainable security in light of unity, convergence, empathy and harmony.

Iran Threatens to Walk Away From Nuke Deal After New Missile Test

Islamic Republic breached international agreements by test-firing ballistic missiles


FreeBeacon: Iran on Tuesday again threatened to walk away from the nuclear agreement reached last year with global powers, hours after the country breached international agreements by test-firing ballistic missiles.

Iran’s most recent ballistic missile test, which violates current U.N. Security Council resolutions, comes a day after the international community’s nuclear watchdog organization disclosed that it is prohibited by the nuclear agreement from publicly reporting on potential violations by Iran.

Iranian leaders now say that they are poised to walk away from the deal if the United States and other global powers fail to advance the Islamic Republic’s “national interests.”

“If our interests are not met under the nuclear deal, there will be no reason for us to continue,” Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, warned during remarks delivered to a group of Iranian officials in Tehran.

“If other parties decide, they could easily violate the deal,” Araqchi was quoted as saying by Iran’s state-controlled media. “However, they know this will come with costs.”

Araqchi appeared to allude to the United States possibly leveling new economic sanctions as a result of the missile test. The Obama administration moved forward with new sanctions earlier this year as a result of the country’s previous missile tests.

Iran’s latest missile test drew outrage from longtime regime critics on Capitol Hill.

“The administration’s response to Iran’s new salvo of threatening missile tests in violation of international law cannot once again be, it’s ‘not supposed to be doing that,’” Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) said in a statement. “Now is the time for new crippling sanctions against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Ministry of Defense, Aerospace Industries Organization, and other related entities driving the Iranian ballistic missile program.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) warned that the nuclear agreement has done little to moderate Iran’s rogue behavior.

“Far from pushing Iran to a more moderate engagement with its neighbors, this nuclear deal is enabling Iran’s aggression and terrorist activities,” McCarthy said in a statement. “Sanctions relief is fueling Iran’s proxies from Yemen to Iraq to Syria to Lebanon. Meanwhile, Khamenei and the Iranian regime are acting with impunity because they know President Obama will not hold them accountable and risk the public destruction of his nuclear deal, the cornerstone of the president’s foreign policy legacy.”

McCarthy went on to demand that the Obama administration step forward with new sanctions as punishment for the missile test.

Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department had difficulty Monday explaining why the nuclear agreement limits public reporting by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, on potential deal violations by Iran.

Yukiya Amano, the IAEA’s chief, disclosed on Monday that his agency is no longer permitted to release details about Iran’s nuclear program and compliance with the deal. The limited public reporting is a byproduct of the nuclear agreement, according to Amano.

When asked about these comments again Tuesday, a State Department official told the Free Beacon that the IAEA’s reports would continue to provide a complete picture of Iran’s nuclear program, though it remains unclear if this information will be made publicly available.

“There isn’t less stringent monitoring or reporting on Iran’s nuclear program,” the official said. “The IAEA’s access to Iran’s nuclear program and its authorization to report on it has actually expanded. It’s a distortion to say that if there is less detail in the first and only post-Implementation Day IAEA report then that somehow implies less stringent monitoring or less insight into Iran’s nuclear program.”

While the IAEA “needs to report on different issues” under the final version of the nuclear agreement, the agency continues to provide “a tremendous amount of information about Iran’s current, much smaller nuclear program,” the source maintained.

The IAEA’s most recent February report—which was viewed by nuclear experts as incomplete and short on detail—“accurately portrays the status of Iran’s nuclear program,” including its efforts to uphold the nuclear deal, the official added.

“We expect this professional level of reporting to continue in the future,” the official said.