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Russia looks for weakness, they have found it. The War College understands and warns that Russia is at war with the West, is the West paying attention? Some are, others not so much. The White House relented or was ‘all-in’ from the beginning.
War has changed in the 21st century and combat is not always kinetic. Russia’s battlefields are the internet, financial markets and television airwaves. The goal is not necessarily to take and hold territory but to expand Russia’s sphere of influence and achieve political goals.
This is hybrid warfare, or gibridnaya voina, the much hyped and discussed way of war. But, as intelligence expert Mark Galeotti tells us on this week’s War College, Moscow’s conception of hybrid war isn’t new – it’s a reaction to and an Eastern adaptation of American military strategy during the Cold War. The goal is simple – expand Russian soft power to make the world more agreeable to the Kremlin’s point of view.
At least the entire Bush family held their pledge in the smooth transfer of power and respect for the Office of the Presidency. There were a few times Dick Cheney spoke out, yet he has and was careful to not to intrude with few exceptions over terror and diplomatic failures. Obama and his team are clearly plotting and his post presidency staff is working the ranks remaining inside the Beltway.
The Obamas, who traveled from a long weekend in Palm Springs to the islands on Branson’s private jet last Monday, were spotted on a neighboring British Virgin Island.
The pair are believed to be staying at one of Branson’s private islands. He owns both Necker and the recently opened eco-resort Moskito Island.
Yesterday the former President released a statement through a spokesperson, rather than directly through his Twitter account, in response to Trump’s travel ban.
‘President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country,’ according to a statement released by his post-presidential office.
‘Citizens exercising their Constitutional right to assemble, organize and have their voices heard by their elected officials is exactly what we expect to see when American values are at stake,’ Obama said.
Obama, who said he would jump into the political fray when ‘core issues’ are at stake, invoked ‘comparisons to President Obama’s foreign policy decisions. More here.
Barack Obama and his aides expected to take on President Donald Trump at some point, but they didn’t think it would happen this quickly.
Now they’re trying to find the right balance on issues that demand a response, and how to use Obama to deliver the selective pushback. Obama and his team are monitoring what’s happening at the White House, and not ruling out the possibility that Obama will challenge Trump more forcefully in the coming months, according to people who’ve been in contact with the former president.
It depends on Trump. It also depends, the people close to the former president said Monday, on whether speaking out would just set him up to have no effect and be dismissed, and result in empowering Trump more, which is a very real worry for them.
From his vacation spot in the Caribbean, Obama has been keeping up with news from Washington and the protests around the country. Friends and former aides have been emailing and talking to him. His staff at his post-presidential office, still unpacking its boxes, told him about the reporters who kept asking, even in Trump’s first week as president, whether enough had happened already to meet his threshold to speak up.
He decided he finally had to say something about the immigration executive order that’s sparked outrage across the country. But he decided he couldn’t say it himself—not yet, at least.
The result was an extraordinary statement Monday from an Obama spokesperson that “President Obama is heartened by the level of engagement taking place in communities around the country.”
But Obama won’t weigh in on Trump’s firing deputy attorney general Sally Yates for refusing to enforce the executive order that sparked the statement, wary of getting drawn in to every battle.
Democrats are desperate for leadership, but some fear the battle could become all about him. There are frustrations over Obama’s handling of the party, and how he insisted on a low-drama transfer of power.
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) took a long pause when asked if he’d want to see Obama out more forcefully.
“I wouldn’t be opposed if he spoke out,” Lieu said. “I just don’t know what effect it would be.”
“In hindsight, I believe it was wrong for Barack Obama to normalize Donald Trump,” Lieu added.
Lieu isn’t the only one with hesitations. Several Democratic officials passed on the chance to say if Obama’s decision to wade in was a positive.
By focusing in the statement Monday on the efforts of protesters, Obama tried to draw a connection to the call to action to his supporters in his farewell address three weeks ago in Chicago. By including a line that “American values are at stake,” Obama issued a reminder of what would pull him in more.
What they don’t want, though, is for Obama to become the face of the anti-Trump movement.
“The only way that our values get reinstated is if people take this responsibility on themselves,” said Eric Schultz, a former White House aide who’s serving as a senior adviser to the former president’s office.
Obama knows there are many much more drastic measures that he might want to speak out on, and he’s saving more direct intervention for maximum impact, people familiar with his thinking say. He knows he only gets one chance at it being the first time that he takes on Trump himself.
“He’ll know the right time,” said one person involved. “He will have the best sense of when he needs to do it directly.”
That means there won’t be a statement from Obama on Trump’s Supreme Court pick, or on other more standard issues of the political fray, with the former president continuing to be concerned both about sticking to the tradition of giving deference to successors and worried that being too active will keep a new generation of Democrats from rising up.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said he shared the concerns that Obama becomes the face of the opposition or makes it seem purely partisan.
“At the end of the day we have to have an all-hands-on-deck policy here to deal with this moving target,” Lieu said, but “I would welcome and acknowledge and accept whatever President Obama decides to do.”
Obama’s closest aides, though, have been speaking up with increasing force.
“Trump is succeeding in uniting the country — against him. Above all, he cares about his popularity. Will his yes men ever challenge him?” wrote Obama’s friend and former Education secretary, Arne Duncan.
Using Twitter so that they can get their thoughts out in a completely controlled way, they’ve hit him on the immigration executive order, the White House statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day that purposefully left out mention of the six million Jews killed and the reorganization of the National Security Council to elevate Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon.
Susan Rice, Obama’s former national security adviser, called the NSC move “stone cold crazy,” wondered about “what sickness enables” the Holocaust statement without the reference to the Jews and called the refugee order “nuts.”
Ben Rhodes, the former deputy national security adviser and now serving as a foreign policy adviser to Obama in his post presidency, slammed Trump and his White House for comparing Friday’s executive order to actions Obama took in 2011 to add screening to Iraqis after learning of a direct threat.
“This is a lie,” Rhodes wrote. “There was no ban on Iraqis in 2011. Anyone pushing that line is hiding behind a lie because they can’t defend the EO.” In another tweet, Rhodes added that Trump is doing “precisely what Obama argued against over and over and over again in 2015-2016.”
“I immigrated to US as 9yo & became UN ambass; other diplomats marveled @familiar American story. Now they’re horrified by unAmerican madness,” wrote Samantha Power, Obama’s former ambassador to the United Nations.
Another common question posed by former Obama aides: How would Republicans have reacted if Obama had done what Trump had, such as issue a Holocaust Remembrance Day statement that doesn’t specifically mention Jews?
“Just imagine the response if Pres. Obama did that,” Rice wrote.
“If Obama omitted the Jewish people from a statement on the Holocaust are we really supposed to believe the RNC wouldn’t have been critical?” Rhodes wrote.
Monday night, former Attorney General Eric Holder, another friend of Obama’s, spoke up for Yates.
“For standing up for what is right,” read the text over the photo of her he tweeted, “#THANKYOUSALLY.”
Iran violating United Nations Security Council Resolution 2231. General Flynn, the White House National Security Advisor has announced the gauntlet. NSC, General Flynn did not declare what the responses would be or consequences to be applied now or in the near future.
“Recent Iranian actions, including a provocative ballistic missile launch and an attack against a Saudi naval vessel conducted by Iran-supported Houthi militants, underscore what should have been clear to the international community all along about Iran’s destabilizing behavior across the Middle East.
The recent ballistic missile launch is also in defiance of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which calls upon Iran “not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.”
These are just the latest of a series of incidents in the past six months in which Houthi forces that Iran has trained and armed have struck Emirati and Saudi vessels, and threatened U.S. and allied vessels transiting the Red Sea. In these and other similar activities, Iran continues to threaten U.S. friends and allies in the region.
The Obama Administration failed to respond adequately to Tehran’s malign actions—including weapons transfers, support for terrorism, and other violations of international norms. The Trump Administration condemns such actions by Iran that undermine security, prosperity, and stability throughout and beyond the Middle East and place American lives at risk.
President Trump has severely criticized the various agreements reached between Iran and the Obama Administration, as well as the United Nations – as being weak and ineffective.
Instead of being thankful to the United States for these agreements, Iran is now feeling emboldened.
As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.”
Iran confirmed for the first time that it recently carried out a missile test and told other nations not to meddle in its defense affairs, hours after the U.S. called the launch unacceptable and vowed to act.
Defense Minister Hossein Dehghan on Wednesday said the test was part of Iran’s ongoing defense program, according to Tasnim news agency. “We have no other aim but to defend our interests and in this path we will neither seek permission nor allow anyone to interfere.”
The launch, in just the second week of Donald Trump’s presidency, is the first test of the new U.S. administration’s policy on the Islamic Republic. A United Nations resolution that endorses world powers’ 2015 nuclear deal with Iran calls on it not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic technology. Iran has maintained it does not have a nuclear weapons program.
After an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Tuesday that the U.S. called to discuss the missile issue, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said Iran’s launch was “absolutely unacceptable.” The U.S. is “not going to stand by, you will see us call them out as we said we would and we will act accordingly,” she said, without elaborating.
This Executive Order is in draft form and does not include Russia, which is quite curious. The question of ‘why’ must be asked based on information noted below.
Those people involved in internet forensics and that track hackers, malicious code, malware, ransomware and intrusions are all dedicated to finding the cracks in code and even more finding the hackers while further understanding their code and patterns. I get emails about this topic every day that include a variety of global companies operating in this realm.
Back in December of 2015, ODNI James Clapper announced Russian intrusions into several American infrastructure locations. This was before the announcement of Russian intrusions into the U.S. political apparatus. In can be presumed the United States has long had the help of operatives inside adversarial countries, most of all Russia. Spies are out there and further, it is estimated there are 100,000 foreign spies inside the United States as of this moment. Heh, before Barack Obama left his presidency, he did expelled many Russians and closed two Russian compounds.
IN 2014, U.S. Cyber operations quietly penetrated Russian systems without declaring in specific language the exact operations.
In 2014, National Security Agency chief Adm. Mike Rogers told Congress that U.S. adversaries are performing electronic “reconnaissance” on a regular basis so that they can be in a position to disrupt the industrial control systems that run everything from chemical facilities to water treatment plants.
“All of that leads me to believe it is only a matter of when, not if, we are going to see something dramatic,” he said at the time.
Rogers didn’t discuss the U.S.’s own penetration of adversary networks. But the hacking undertaken by the NSA, which regularly penetrates foreign networks to gather intelligence, is very similar to the hacking needed to plant precursors for cyber weapons, said Gary Brown, a retired colonel and former legal adviser to U.S. Cyber Command, the military’s digital war fighting arm. More here.
It is unclear if we have recruited people inside Russia to work on the behalf of the United States, but clues tell us we did, with success.
In part from RFEL: At the simplest level, two FSB officers working in cyberdefense, Sergei Mikhailov and Dmitry Dokuchayev, as well as Ruslan Stoyanov, a former Interior Ministry official who works for the cyber security company Kaspersky Lab, are reportedly being charged with espionage.
According to Russian media reports, Mikhailov is suspected of alerting U.S. intelligence to the FSB’s connection to a Russian server-rental company called King Servers.
Last year, the U.S.-based cybersecurity firm ThreatConnect had identified King Servers as the nexus for hacking attacks against the United States.
If U.S. intelligence did indeed have a highly placed source like Mikhailov, it would explain why it was able to conclude with such a high degree of confidence that Russia was behind the cyberattacks during the election campaign.
The timing of the arrests and the timing of the decision by former U.S. President Barack Obama to declassify and make public parts of the U.S. intelligence report on the alleged Russian hacking also makes sense.
Mikhailov was arrested in December. And the U.S. released the intelligence report a month later, in January.
If Mikhailov was indeed a source, then Washington would have been reluctant to declassify its intelligence for fear of compromising him.
After he was arrested, this, of course, would no longer be an issue.
So far, so straightforward. Until it isn’t.
Leaks to the Russian media have also connected Mikhailov and his subordinate Dokuchayev to a hacker group known as Shaltai-Boltai, or Humpty Dumpty, which in the past has released embarrassing material about top Russian officials.
Vladimir Anikeyev, the founder of Shaltai-Boltai, has also been arrested, but is not being charged with espionage.
Moreover, Russian media reports claim that Dokuchayev is actually a former hacker known as Forb, who was serving a prison sentence for credit-card theft when he was recruited by the FSB, where he held the rank of major.
As Leonid Bershidsky notes in his column for Bloomberg, “parallel to their official duties, officers often run private security operations involving blackmail and protection. If Mikhailov ran such a business out of the FSB’s Information Security Center, he wouldn’t stand out among his colleagues.”
And it’s also not unusual for the FSB to recruit former hackers. In fact, it’s pretty much standard practice.
This is where the story diverts into the murky world of FSB officers and their civilian collaborators monetizing their positions and forming protection rackets.
“An FSB officer, recruited from the hacking community, can use his rank and position to obtain compromising material and sell it to wealthy clients. A team profiting from these opportunities can include both officers and civilians,” Bershidsky writes.
“The Russian government can hire such a team through intermediaries if it needs something sensitive done — but so can foreign intelligence services. It’s a murky world in which actors are both predator and prey. The Kremlin enjoys access to brilliant and unscrupulous people; the downside, of course, is that they may be hard to control.”
If you follow this line of logic, then it’s easy to imagine that Mikhailov and Dokuchayev inadvertently or unwittingly sold information exposing King Server’s FSB connections to a front for U.S. intelligence.
But the fact of the matter is we simply don’t know.
And if things aren’t confusing enough yet, there is also the matter of the bitter personal and clan rivalries in the shadow world of the Russian security services.
In a recent post on his blog KrebsOnSecurity, Brian Krebs, author of the book Spam Nation: The Inside Story Of Organized Cybercrime, suggested the whole affair might be traced to a personal rivalry between Mikhailov and Pavel Vrublevsky, an Internet businessman whose partner owns King Servers.
Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russia’s security services and a senior research fellow at the Institute of International Relations in Prague, notes that the FSB’s Information Security Center, which Mikhailov headed and where Dokuchayev was his subordinate, has emerged as “a pivotal agency” and “a source of power.”
And this makes it a prime arena for fierce rivalries and power plays.
“This is probably an intelligence leak that is being cleared up. But the question is: why now? And I wonder if domestic politics explains the leaking of the information now. It could be a rebuke to the FSB for having messed up,” Galeotti said on last week’s Power Vertical Podcast.
Oh Donald, Mr. President sir…you’re the expert here….need an immediate executive order on this one. By the way, don’t stay in the Waldorf Astoria any more, perhaps don’t go to movie theaters either if you’re concerned for personal reasons.
First on CNN: Report finds national security agencies at risk in foreign-owned buildings
Washington (CNN)US law-enforcement agencies are at risk of being spied on and hacked because some of their field offices are located in foreign-owned buildings without even knowing it, according to a new government report.
The report by the Government Accountability Office, which was obtained by CNN and is due to be released later Monday, reveals that a number of FBI, Homeland Security, Secret Service and Drug Enforcement Agency offices across the country are housed in space leased from firms based in China and other nations.
Experts told the GAO that the agencies could be vulnerable to espionage and cyber intrusions because the foreign owners could gain unauthorized access to the properties, be able to secretly install surveillance equipment, and have knowledge of building systems like heating, ventilation and electronics which could facilitate hacking.
The General Services Administration, which handles leasing for many federal agencies, is renting space in 20 buildings from foreign owners — and its investigators were unable to identify who the property owners for about one-third of the government’s more than 1,400 “high-security leases.”
Nine of the 14 agencies the GAO contacted were unaware the building space they were using was foreign owned.
“It’s an eye opener,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told CNN about the report. “Certainly our security professionals should know who owns the piping in the buildings that they occupy.”
Chaffetz, along with Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, and Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, called for the GAO review.
The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said he doesn’t necessarily think the agencies should be barred from leasing office space from foreign owners, but added that he would feel “much more comfortable if they’re at least aware.”
Currently, the GSA is not required to determine whether a building is foreign owned when it is considering whether to lease space.
Among the report’s findings were that DEA, Homeland Security and Secret Service offices in Little Rock, Arkansas, Jacksonville, Florida, and Shreveport, Louisiana, along with an FBI office in St. Louis, Missouri, were leased from “Gemini Investments” — a company based in China.
The GAO report noted that Chinese-owned properties were of particular concern because the country has been linked to numerous instances of hacking.
After the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in Manhattan was sold to Chinese investors, then-President Barack Obama didn’t stay there, as had long been the custom of US presidents, with security concerns being one of the factors.
Other federal offices listed in the study are located in buildings owned by companies in Canada, Israel, the United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea and Japan.
GAO investigators talked to officials who assess foreign investments in the US, as well as real estate representatives, who warned about the potential danger.
” … (L)easing space in foreign-owned buildings could present security risks such as espionage, unauthorized cyber and physical access to the facilitates, and sabotage,” the report said. “For example, a DHS foreign investment official said that potential threat actors could coerce owners into collecting intelligence about the personnel and activities of the facilities when maintaining the property.”
The report also noted other possible “insider threats,” referring to “disgruntled employees, contractors, or other persons abusing their position of trust” who pose a “significant threat” to building access.
But this doesn’t mean that the threats have materialized. Chaffetz said he was unaware of any specific instances where sensitive information had been compromised. The report also said two real estate representatives determined it wasn’t a security risk to lease foreign-owned space.
“One of the representatives said that access at high-security facilities is strictly controlled, including access by the owners, and that passive investors in properties do not have access to the buildings,” the report said.
In addition to hacking and espionage, the report also cautioned that renting from foreign owners presented the possibility of the US agencies becoming unwittingly involved in money laundering, since real estate purchases are often used to conceal the criminal source of the investment funds.
The report recommended that the GSA should start informing the agencies if their space is foreign owned, so they can put the necessary security precautions in place. The GSA said it agreed with the recommendation.
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