Category Archives: Treasury

Report for California, What About your State?

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Golfing, tequila and spa treatments: These are the gifts given to California lawmakers in 2015

LATimes: State legislators accepted more than $892,000 in gifts last year, including foreign trips, expensive dinners, concert and sports tickets, golf games, spa treatments, Disneyland admissions and bottles of tequila and wine, according to filings released Wednesday.

Lawmakers had their expenses covered by others for educational and trade trips to France, China, Argentina, Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, Mexico and Israel.

 

In fact, travel costs dominate the gift tallies from last year with a large number of lawmakers deciding to fly overseas for conferences or policy meetings paid for entirely by influential interest groups and foundations.

The travel included 21 lawmakers who attended a conference in Maui in November at a cost of about $3,000 per person, paid for by a nonprofit group funded by oil and tobacco firms and other interests lobbying the Legislature.

The flood of gifts, especially from groups tied to interests seeking favorable treatment at the Capitol, raises red flags for ethics experts including Bob Stern, former general counsel for the Fair Political Practices Commission and a co-author of the state Political Reform Act.

“The people that make these gifts are trying to influence legislators and create goodwill, and clearly it does,” Stern said. “The average citizen doesn’t get these gifts. It’s only when you are in a position of power that you get these gifts.”

The total value of gifts is up by about $50,000 from 2014. A group with interest in promoting climate change policy helped send a large delegation of legislators led by Gov. Jerry Brown to a United Nations summit on climate change held in Paris in December.

Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) had $4,077 of his travel expenses to Paris covered by the Climate Action Reserve, which advocates for solutions to climate change.

In all, De León received $30,200 in gifts, among the most of any lawmaker. Much of it was for educational trips to Japan, Mexico and Australia.

The $14,055 cost for de Leon’s Australian trip to look for drought solutions was covered by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy, a San Francisco think tank financed by special interests including PG&E, Shell, the State Building and Construction Trades Council and Chevron.

Claire Conlon, a spokeswoman for De León, defended both the travel and the way it is financed.

“As elected representatives of the world’s seventh-largest economy and a gateway to international trade corridors, building global relationships and studying best practices in other countries is an essential part of the job description,” she said. The funding arrangements with “respected nonprofits” mean “not a single taxpayer dollar is being spent,” she added.

De León also reported gifts of USC football tickets, bottles of tequila, meals and a tie. The disclosure forms that lawmakers must file annually do not require detailed descriptions of the gifts, so there is no way to know the brand of tequila or color of the tie.

Sen. Benjamin Allen (D-Santa Monica) reported receiving $37,900 in gifts, the most of any lawmaker, much of it to cover the cost of educational trips to China and Argentina.

“I represent a diverse coastal district with thousands of globally focused employers creating good jobs for our local economy,” Allen said. “The trips involved important public policy, environmental, economic and cultural exchanges, and I was honored to serve as part of these educational legislative delegations. Not a single taxpayer dollar was spent, and I fully reported and disclosed all such travel.”

Sen. Anthony Cannella (R-Ceres) reported $31,100 in gifts, including expenses for trips to Singapore and Australia. He also received more than $1,100 in green fees for golf paid for by supporters including the prison guards union and the California Independent Petroleum Assn.

A spa treatment, costing $396, was provided to Sen. Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) by the Legislative Black Caucus.

In the Assembly, Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) received the most gifts, $33,832 worth and mostly involving overseas travel. Her $17,000 trip to Taiwan was paid for by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Foundation and her $14,348 trip to Australia with De León was covered by the California Foundation on the Environment and the Economy.

Evan Low (D-Campbell) received more than $31,000 in gifts, including a trip to China paid for by a group called U.S.-Asia Innovative Gateway, and a trip to Newport Beach paid for by the California Independent Petroleum Assn. He also received a $287 ticket to a Giants baseball game from PG&E.

Many of the gifts received by lawmakers would have been prohibited by legislation the governor vetoed two years ago. The bill would have banned nontravel gifts over $200, and barred tickets to amusement parks, professional sports games and concerts, as well as green fees for golf.

The public can read each legislator’s gift report on the FPPC website.

In vetoing the gifts bill, Brown wrote that it would be “adding further complexity without commensurate benefit. Proper disclosure, as already provided by the law, should be sufficient to guard against undue influence.”

The size of some of the gifts received last year troubled Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor and president of the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission.

“It’s fair to ask public officials to forgo gifts over certain thresholds,” she said.

A new bill proposes to outlaw travel gifts like the annual Maui convention put on by the Independent Voter Project, which received financing for the event from groups including the Western State Petroleum Assn., Shell Oil, Sempra, tobacco giant Altria, AT&T, the California Cable and Telecommunications Assn. and Koch Industries.

Many event sponsors send lobbyists or representatives to rub elbows with the elected officials poolside or on the golf course.

North Korea Nukes are Ready, Angered by Sanctions

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Report: North Korea readying nukes

AP: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has ordered his country’s nuclear weapons made ready for use at a moment’s notice, the official state news agency reported Friday.

Kim also said his country will ready its military so it is prepared to carry out pre-emptive attacks, calling the current situation very precarious, according to KCNA.

On Thursday, North Korea fired six short-range projectiles into the sea off its east coast, South Korean officials said, just hours after the U.N. Security Council approved the toughest sanctions on the North in two decades for its recent nuclear test and long-range rocket launch.

The firings also came shortly after South Korea’s National Assembly passed its first legislation on human rights in North Korea.

The North Korean projectiles, fired from the eastern coastal town of Wonsan, flew about 100 to 150 kilometers (60 to 90 miles) before landing in the sea, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.

It wasn’t immediately known exactly what North Korea fired, and the projectiles could be missiles, artillery or rockets, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said.

North Korea routinely test-fires missiles and rockets, but often conducts weapons launches when angered at international condemnation.

Thursday’s firings were seen as a “low-level” response to the U.N. sanctions, with North Korea unlikely to launch any major provocation until its landmark ruling Workers’ Party convention in May, according to Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

North Korea has not issued an official reaction to the new U.N. sanctions. But citizens in its capital, Pyongyang, interviewed by The Associated Press said Thursday they believe their country can fight off any sanctions.

“No kind of sanctions will ever work on us, because we’ve lived under U.S. sanctions for more than half a century,” said Pyongyang resident Song Hyo Il. “And in the future, we’re going to build a powerful and prosperous country here, relying on our own development.”

North Korean state media earlier warned that the imposition of new sanctions would be a “grave provocation” that shows “extreme” U.S. hostility against the country. It said the sanctions would not result in the country’s collapse or prevent it from launching more rockets.

The U.N. sanctions include mandatory inspections of cargo leaving and entering North Korea by land, sea or air; a ban on all sales or transfers of small arms and light weapons to the North; and the expulsion of North Korean diplomats who engage in “illicit activities.”

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said China, North Korea’s closest ally, hoped the U.N. sanctions would be implemented “comprehensively and seriously,” while harm to ordinary North Korean citizens would be avoided.

At the United Nations, Russia’s ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, asked about the North’s firing of short-range projectiles, said, “It means that they’re not drawing the proper conclusions yet.”

Japan’s U.N. ambassador, Motohide Yoshikawa, said, “That’s their way of reacting to what we have decided.”

“They may do something more,” Yoshikawa said. “So we will see.”

In January, North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test, which it claimed was a hydrogen bomb. Last month, it put a satellite into orbit with a long-range rocket that the United Nations and others saw as a cover for a test of banned ballistic missile technology.

Just before the U.N. sanctions were unanimously adopted, South Korea’s National Assembly passed a bill that would establish a center tasked with collecting, archiving and publishing information about human rights in North Korea. It is required to transfer that information to the Justice Ministry, a step parliamentary officials say would provide legal grounds to punish rights violators in North Korea when the two Koreas eventually reunify.

North Korea, which views any criticism of its rights situation as part of a U.S.-led plot to overthrow its government, had warned that enactment of the law would result in “miserable ruin.”

In 2014, a U.N. commission of inquiry on North Korea published a report laying out abuses such as a harsh system of political prison camps holding up to 120,000 people. The commission urged the Security Council to refer North Korea to the International Criminal Court over its human rights record.

Chronology of U.S.-North Korean Nuclear and Missile Diplomacy

North Korea’s Efforts to Acquire Nuclear Technology and Nuclear Weapons: Evidence from Russian and Hungarian Archives

North Korea’s Congressional Report on Nuclear Weapons

Russia aided North Korea’s and Iran ’s Nuclear Weapons Program, begin page 61

  

 

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Branch by branch, a Look at N. Korea’s Massive Military

By ERIC TALMADGE – Associated Press –

TOKYO (AP) – With tensions high and the United States and South Korea ready to hold their massive annual war games next week, which North Korea sees as a dress rehearsal for invasion, Pyongyang is warning it will respond to any violations of its territory with “merciless” retaliation, including strikes on Seoul and the U.S. mainland.

“Military First” is the national motto of North Korea, which is ever wary of threats to its ruling regime and still technically at war with Washington and Seoul. Nuclear-armed and boasting the world’s fourth-largest military, it is persistently seen as the biggest challenge to the security status quo in East Asia, an image it loves to promote and showcased in an elaborate military parade last October.

The joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises are to begin March 7 and last more than a month. Tensions always go up when they do.

Pyongyang has poured huge resources into developing its nuclear and missile arsenals and maintaining its conventional forces. About 5 percent of its 24 million people are on active military duty, and another 25-30 percent are in paramilitary or reserve units, ready for mobilization.

But just how strong is Kim Jong Un’s army?

Here’s a look, based on what AP reporters and photographers have seen on the ground and the latest report to the U.S. Congress by the Office of the Secretary of Defense:

ON THE GROUND:

BY THE NUMBERS: 950,000 troops, 4,200 tanks, 2,200 armored vehicles, 8,600 pieces of field artillery, 5,500 multiple rocket launchers.

BEHIND THE NUMBERS: This is, and always has been, North Korea’s real ace in the hole. While its threat to launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. mainland appears to be well beyond its current capabilities, turning the South Korean capital into a “sea of fire” is not.

The ground forces of the Korean People’s Army form the largest segment of the military, by far. Seventy percent of them are forward-positioned around the Demilitarized Zone for quick mobilization in a contingency with South Korea; they are extremely well dug-in with several thousand fortified underground facilities.

Their arms are mostly “legacy equipment,” produced or based on Chinese and Russian designs dating back as far as the 1950s. But they have in recent years unveiled new tanks, artillery and infantry weapons. In the October parade, the KPA displayed a new 240 mm multiple rocket launcher with eight tubes on a wheeled chassis. Kim Jong Un was recently shown by state media observing a new, longer-range anti-tank weapon.

“Despite resource shortages and aging equipment, North Korea’s large, forward-positioned military can initiate an attack on the ROK (South Korea) with little or no warning,” the U.S. report concluded. “The military retains the capability to inflict significant damage on the ROK, especially in the region from the DMZ to Seoul.”

AT SEA:

BY THE NUMBERS: 60,000 sailors, 430 patrol combatant ships, 260 amphibious landing craft, 20 mine warfare vessels, about 70 submarines, 40 support ships.

BEHIND THE NUMBERS: Divided into east and west fleets with about a dozen main bases, the navy is the smallest branch of the North Korean military. But it has some significant strengths, including hovercraft for amphibious landings and one of the largest submarine forces in the world. An estimated 70 attack, coastal or midget-type subs provide stealth and strongly bolster coastal defenses and possible special operations. It has no “blue water” – or long-range – naval forces and relies heavily on a large but aging armada of small coastal patrol craft. But it, too, is upgrading some of its surface ships and has made a show of its efforts to domestically develop a submarine capable of launching a ballistic missile.

IN THE AIR:

BY THE NUMBERS: 110,000 troops, over 800 combat aircraft, 300 helicopters, more than 300 transport planes.

BEHIND THE NUMBERS: Here’s where the “legacy” aspect of the North Korean military really kicks in. North Korea hasn’t acquired any new fighter aircraft for decades. Its best fighters are 1980s-era MiG-29s bought from the Soviet Union, the MiG-23 and SU-25 ground attack aircraft. They all suffer chronic fuel shortages and pilots get little training time in the air. Its air-defense systems are aging and it continues to maintain lots of 1940s-era An-2 COLT aircraft, a single-engine, 10-passenger biplane, which would probably be most useful for the insertion of special forces troops behind enemy lines. Interestingly enough, it also has some U.S.-made MD-500 helicopters, which it is believed to have acquired by bypassing international sanctions. They were shown off during a parade in 2013.

SPECIAL FORCES:

BY THE NUMBERS: Not specified in report to Congress. Somewhere around 180,000 troops. Estimates vary.

BEHIND THE NUMBERS: North Korea is fully aware that it is outgunned, technologically inferior and logistically light years behind its adversaries. But it also knows how to shift the equation through asymmetric tactics that involve stealth, surprise and focusing on cheap and achievable measures with an outsized impact. Special forces operations are among them – and the North’s special forces are the “most highly trained, well-equipped, best-fed and highly motivated” units in the KPA. Commandos can be inserted into the South by air or sea, and possibly on foot through tunnels across the DMZ. The North is working hard on its cyberwarfare capabilities, another key asymmetric military tactic. It is believed to have a growing number of drones.

NUKES AND MISSILES:

BY THE NUMBERS: Number of nuclear weapons not specified in report to Congress. Possibly more than a dozen, outside sources estimate. 50 ballistic missiles with 800-mile range, 6 KN08 missiles with a range of 3,400-plus miles, unknown number of Taepodong-2 missiles with roughly same or longer range. Possibly one submarine-launched ballistic missile. Various shorter-range ballistic missiles.

BEHIND THE NUMBERS: North Korea claims to have tested its first hydrogen bomb on Jan. 6, the day after the Department of Defense report came out. That claim has been disputed, but there is no doubt it has nuclear weapons and its technicians are hard at work boosting their quantity and quality. Major caveat here: The operational readiness of its nuclear weapons and many of its ballistic missiles is debatable.

Pyongyang’s main hurdles are making nuclear warheads small enough to fit on its missiles, testing re-entry vehicles required to deliver them to their targets on an intercontinental ballistic missile and improving and testing the arsenal for reliability and accuracy. Its Taepodong-2 ballistic missile is the militarized version of the rocket it launched on Feb. 8 with a satellite payload. North Korea has yet to demonstrate that it has a functioning ICBM, generally defined as having a range of over 3,418 miles.

CHEMICAL, BIOLOGICAL:

This one is a question mark. The U.S. Defense Department claims Pyongyang is continuing research and development into both, and could use them, but offered no details on biologicals in its recent assessment. It said Pyongyang “likely” has a stockpile of “nerve, blister, blood and choking agents” that could be delivered by artillery shells or ballistic missiles. The North is not a signatory of the Chemical Weapons Convention and its troops train to fight in a contaminated environment.

 

 

When Sharia/ISIS Goes Capitalist and Trading

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Islamic State ‘earning millions by playing the stock market’

Group using cash looted from banks in Mosul to speculate on international currency markets

Telegraph: Isil is making millions of dollars for its war chest by playing foreign currency markets under the noses of bank chiefs, it was revealed today.

The terror group is earning up to $20m (£14.29m) a month by funnelling dollars looted from banks during its takeover of the Iraqi city of Mosul into legitimate currency markets in the Middle East.

It then makes huge returns on currency speculation, which are then wired back via unsuspecting financial authorities in Iraq and Jordan, a parliamentary committee was told on Wednesday.

Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (Isil) extraordinary venture into white collar crime is now a major source of income, along with oil smuggling and extortion from people living in Isil-controlled areas.

Details of the scam emerged during a hearing of a specially-convened Foreign Affairs sub-committee set up to examine Britain’s role in Isil financing.

The hearing was told that Isil finance chiefs would play the international stock markets using cash looted during their 2014 take over of Mosul, in which the group got its hands on an estimated $429m from the city’s central bank.

They also used money “siphoned off” from pension payments that are still being made by the Iraqi government to civil servants living in the city.

The details were revealed to the hearing by John Baron, the sub-committee’s chair, who demanded to know whether the British government – which has pledged to help cut off Isil’s finance networks – was taking proper action against it.

“The cash that Isil has looted, along with siphoned off pension payments, is routed into Jordanian banks and brought back into the system via Baghdad,” he said. “That allows the system to be exploited by Isil, in that they take a turn (profit) on the foreign currency actions and siphon that cash back.”

The profits were channeled back into Isil coffers by “hawala” transfers, an unregulated system of money transfer whereby cash payments are made via agents in one country after a similar amount is presented as collateral in another.

Infographic: How Does ISIS Fund Itself? | Statista

Tobias Ellwood, a junior Foreign Office minister, admitted to the committee that there was a “porousness” in the local financial system but said that work was now underway to shut it down. It had been done without the active connivance of bank staff, he added.

In December, the Central Bank of Iraq named 142 currency-exchange houses in Iraq that the US suspected of moving funds for Islamic State. It banned them from its twice-monthly dollar auctions in a bid to stop the terror group getting its hands on the cash – a main source of exchange in war-torn Iraq.

But Mr Ellwood conceded: “Iraq could have moved faster on this”. Asked if the similar moves had been made in Jordan, he said he was unable to give an answer.

“Jordan plays an important role in the (anti-Isis) coalition,” he added. “Work is being done to close it down, I don’t think there is anything near as much from that source of revenue as before.”

The committee heard claims that Isil’s “rake off” from foreign currency speculation was a “significant part of their income stream”, although Mr Ellwood said he thought that estimates of $20m were excessive.

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Spiegel: Some members of the intelligence community even view spying in the global financial system with a certain amount of concern, as revealed by a document from the NSA’s British counterpart — the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) — that deals with “financial data” from a legal perspective and examines the organization’s own collaboration with the NSA. According to the document, the collection, storage and sharing of “politically sensitive” data is a highly invasive measure since it includes “bulk data — rich personal information. A lot of it is not about our targets.”

Indeed, secret documents reveal that the main NSA financial database Tracfin, which collects the “Follow the Money” surveillance results on bank transfers, credit card transactions and money transfers, already had 180 million datasets by 2011. The corresponding figure in 2008 was merely 20 million. According to these documents, most Tracfin data is stored for five years.

Monitoring SWIFT

The classified documents show that the intelligence agency has several means of accessing the internal data traffic of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a cooperative used by more than 8,000 banks worldwide for their international transactions. The NSA specifically targets other institutes on an individual basis. Furthermore, the agency apparently has in-depth knowledge of the internal processes of credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard. What’s more, even new, alternative currencies, as well as presumably anonymous means of payment like the Internet currency Bitcoin, rank among the targets of the American spies.

The collected information often provides a complete picture of individuals, including their movements, contacts and communication behavior. The success stories mentioned by the intelligence agency include operations that resulted in banks in the Arab world being placed on the US Treasury’s blacklist.

In one case, the NSA provided proof that a bank was involved in illegal arms trading — in another case, a financial institution was providing support to an authoritarian African regime. Full article here.

Hey SEALS, Turnover your Weapons

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Twisted priorities at the Pentagon, mandated by the White House and congressional budgets, then couple that with waste, fraud and abuse, ladies and gentlemen, our problems are much worse than can be defined.

Just WHOA…

SOCOM investigating Navy SEAL weapons shortages

STRIPES: WASHINGTON — The general in charge of U.S. Special Operations Command said Tuesday that he is looking into claims that Navy SEALs and other elite forces have shortages of key equipment.

Gen. Joseph Votel assured House lawmakers that the command will resolve any problems that it discovers in equipping special operators, such as a lack of service weapons, in preparation for increasingly common missions around the world.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., and other House lawmakers raised the alarm earlier this month on supply shortages in the special operations community, causing soldiers to dip increasingly into their own pockets to purchase basic military gear such as helmets, global positioning devices and medical supplies.

Most concerning, according to Hunter, is SEALs are now asked to hand over their personalized weapons after returning from deployment so they can be handed off to other SEALs who are deploying.

“I look forward to talking to Navy Special Warfare Command about this specific issue and make sure we understand it,” said Votel, who was testifying to members of the House Armed Services Committee. “If there is something that we are contributing to that is impacting the readiness of our operators, we’ll certainly take immediate actions to kind of correct that.”

Votel said the issue might be related to maintenance and the high usage of SEAL weapons.

“These guys do put a lot of rounds through the weapons,” he said. “What we do try to do is ensure with that many rounds going through our weapons that they do have the right level of depot maintenance when they do come back from deployments or long training periods.”

Hunter, who wrote a letter in February to the Navy Special Warfare Command about the concerns, brushed aside the general’s suggestion.

“This is not a factor of too many rounds going through the weapon barrel, and then you just change out the barrel anyway,” Hunter said.

He said the weapons are the most important pieces of equipment for the SEALs. They put time into calibrating their weapons and applying optics and lasers, then are forced to turn them over for reconfiguration.

“I’ve had multiple SEALs at multiple times over the last six months come to me in San Diego … and tell me how things have changed dramatically from five or six years ago, meaning they don’t get weapons now to work up with for two years,” Hunter said. “They get their weapon when a guy comes back and hands over the weapon.”

The military has increased its reliance greatly on special operations forces since 9/11. As such operations hit a high mark, other reports of supply shortages have come up as well.

Last month, the nonprofit group Troops Direct reported the Marine Corps Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team deployed to Benghazi, Libya after the embassy attack there and lacked crucial equipment including sniper supplies and batteries.

Meanwhile, troops often have to buy their own medical equipment such as tourniquets, and shell out about $1,000 each for their own helmets or $500 for GPS devices, according to the group.

The shortfalls in SEAL weapons have surfaced, as the Navy Special Warfare Command budget increased by $11 million during the past couple of years, according to Hunter.

Rep. Richard Nugent, R-Fla., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he could not understand why the Navy would rotate SEALs’ service weapons and that he wanted answers.

“That’s the [weapon] you sleep with, the one you work with, so I will be interested to hear from Rep. Hunter the answer you come back with,” Nugent told Votel.

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Lacking basic gear, special operators stuck buying their own equipment

STRIPES: WASHINGTON – Sean Matson, who recently left active-duty as a Navy SEAL, said the military measured his head four times – each time before deployment – with plans to provide him a more advanced ballistic helmet.

But the new helmet never materialized. During a deployment in Africa, Matson and six of his fellow SEALs each shelled out about $900 for updated helmets that held the lights, communications devices and batteries needed for their missions.

“There was never a clear solution to it, so guys were going out spending $800-$900 on their own ballistic helmet,” said Matson, who is now CEO of the military supply company Matbock.

Elite troops such as the SEALs are more and more forced to dip into their own pockets to purchase basic military gear such as helmets, global positioning devices and medical supplies, according to Matson and others involved in the military’s unofficial civilian-side supply network who came to Capitol Hill on Thursday.

House lawmakers have taken notice and said they will request an explanation from Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

“These are the guys we assume have the best gear all the time,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., a Marine Corps combat veteran.

Hunter said special operations troops have been approaching him in his California district complaining about the inability to get needed materials and he has been investigating the issue.

Numerous individual instances point to a systemic problem in the military’s supply chain but a blind spot exists between Defense Department vendors and the troops who need the gear and supplies, Hunter said.

“It’s been impossible for me to find out how the money is getting stopped and why it is not going down to where it’s supposed to be,” he said.

Aaron Negherbon is the executive director of the nonprofit group Troops Direct, which ships needed and requested supplies – from boot laces to tablet devices — to servicemembers who cannot get it through their commands.

Less than two days after the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi, Libya, Negherbon said he was contacted by the commander of a Marine Corps Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team that was being deployed there.

The commander told him the team lacked a variety of crucial equipment, including sniper supplies, he said.

“They came to us for…batteries because they didn’t have any of those … It is kind of like, ‘What the heck is going on?’” Negherbon said.

He said troops often have to buy their own medical equipment such as tourniquets, and shell out about $1,000 each for their own helmets or $500 for a GPS device that they need for duty during a deployment.

“The question is, why can’t you get this?” Negherbon said.

Often the answer seems to be a higher command does not have the money budgeted or the equipment was approved but not available from vendors.

“That is a good thing, we know where the problem is but [those issues] are very profound,” he said.

A small group of House Republican lawmakers gathered Thursday to hear the concerns.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., an Air Force combat veteran, said the military has to weigh the concerns of supplying needed equipment with the desire of troops to always have the newest gear on the market.

Still, Kinzinger said the shortfalls in the supply chain could become a major issue if deployments ramp up again to the levels seen during the height of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Rep. Chris Gibson, R-N.Y., an Army veteran, said the group should write a letter to Carter, saying they have serious concerns about supply breakdowns, including the inability of Matson and his fellow SEALs to get helmets capable of mounting lights, though the equipment was approved.

“If you’ve got a situation where unit is approved for an Ops-Core [brand ballistic] helmet and it’s not getting it, we need to understand what the problem is … that is unacceptable,” he said.

Hey Pentagon, Hiring Hackers, a Good Idea?

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Personally I do see some positives, but I see more downsides….what say you?

The Department of Defense announced today that it will invite vetted hackers to test the department’s cybersecurity under a unique pilot program.  The “Hack the Pentagon” initiative is the first cyber bug bounty program in the history of the federal government.

 

Under the pilot program, the department will use commercial sector crowdsourcing to allow qualified participants to conduct vulnerability identification and analysis on the department’s public webpages.  The bug bounty program is modeled after similar competitions conducted by some of the nation’s biggest companies to improve the security and delivery of networks, products, and digital services. The pilot marks the first in a series of programs designed to test and find vulnerabilities in the department’s applications, websites, and networks.

 

Participants in the bug bounty will be required to register and submit to a background check prior to any involvement with the pilot program.  Once vetted, these hackers will participate in a controlled, limited duration program that will allow them to identify vulnerabilities on a predetermined department system.  Other networks, including the department’s critical, mission-facing systems will not be part of the bug bounty pilot program.  Participants in the competition could be eligible for monetary awards and other recognition.

This innovative project is a demonstration of Secretary Carter’s continued commitment to drive the Pentagon to identify new ways to improve the department’s security measures as our interests in cyberspace evolve.

Pentagon to Establish Defense Innovation Advisory Board

WASHINGTON, March 2, 2016 — In an effort to enhance the Defense Department’s culture, organization and processes by tapping innovators from the private sector in Silicon Valley and beyond, Defense Secretary Ash Carter announced plans today to establish a Defense Innovation Advisory Board, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said.

 Google, CEO

The initiative represents the secretary’s enduring commitment to building lasting partnerships between the public and private sectors, Cook said in a statement.

“Just as the Defense Business Board provides advice to the department on best business practices from the private sector, the Defense Innovation Advisory Board will provide advice on the best and latest practices in innovation that the department can emulate,” Cook added.

The board’s mandate is to provide department leaders independent advice on innovative and adaptive means to address future organizational and cultural challenges, the press secretary said, including the use of technology alternatives, streamlined project management processes and approaches — all with the goal of identifying quick solutions to DoD problems.

Areas Deeply Familiar in Silicon Valley

The board will seek to advise the department on areas that are deeply familiar to Silicon Valley companies, such as rapid prototyping, iterative product development, complex data analysis in business decision making, the use of mobile and cloud applications, and organizational information sharing, Cook said, and will not engage in discussion of military operations or strategy.

Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt will chair the board, which will be composed of up to 12 people who have successfully led large private and public organizations and excelled at identifying and adopting new technology concepts, Cook said.

Carter and Schmidt will jointly select the board, Cook said. “Members will represent a cross-section of America’s most innovative industries, drawing on technical and management expertise from Silicon Valley and beyond,” he added.

As chairman of Alphabet and as the author of “How Google Works,” Schmidt has a unique perspective on the latest practices in harnessing and encouraging innovation and in the importance of technology in driving organizational behavior and business operations, Cook said.

**** Background

US spy chief James Clapper highlights cyber threats

BBC: US intelligence agencies have placed cyber attacks from foreign governments and criminals at the top of their list of threats to the country.

Online assaults would increasingly undermine US economic competitiveness and national security, said Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

A report issued by his office said Russia’s military was setting up a cyber command to carry out attacks.

The report also describes China, Iran and North Korea as leading threats.

In testimony to a congressional committee on Thursday, Mr Clapper said he no longer believed the US faced “cyber Armageddon”.

The idea that major infrastructure such as financial networks or power grids could be disabled by hackers now looked less probable, he said.

However he warned: “We foresee an ongoing series of low-to-moderate level cyber attacks from a variety of sources over time, which will impose cumulative costs on US economic competitiveness and national security.”

Mr Clapper highlighted the case of Russia, which he said posed the greatest a cyber risk to US interests. He said that threat from the Russian government was “more severe” than previously realised.

He also said profit-minded criminals and ideologically driven hackers were also increasingly active.

Over the past year there have been a series of high-profile cyber attacks against US targets.

North Korea was accused of being behind the theft of a huge data cache from Sony Pictures in November.

Mr Clapper also mentioned the example of an alleged Iranian attack on the Las Vegas Sands Casino Corporation last year.

Meanwhile in January the Twitter and YouTube accounts of the US military command were hacked by a group claiming to back Islamic State (IS).

During the hearing, Mr Clapper acknowledged that the US had its own “offensive capabilities”.

In 2010 Iran experienced a cyber attack on its nuclear program. Tehran accused Israel and the US of planting malware.