Information OperationsNewsletter

Compiled by: Mr. Jeff Harley

US Army Strategic CommandG39, Information Operations Division

Table of Contents

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The articles and information appearing herein are intended for educational and non-commercial purposes to promote discussion of research in the public interest. The views, opinions, and/or findings and recommendations contained in this summary are those of the original authors and should not be construed as an official position, policy, or decision of the United States Government, U.S. Department of the Army, or U.S. Army Strategic Command.

ARSTRAT IO Newsletter on OSS.net

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Table of ContentsVol. 9, no. 08 (11 March – 1 April 2009)

1. United States Army Global Information Operations Conference, 4 – 8 May 09

2. The Cyber Menace

3. Dispatches from FOBistan: Letting the Message Drive the Operation (blog)

4. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Cyber—Is it Time for a Cyberwarfare Branch of Military?

5. New Electronic Warfare courses to be taught at Fort Sill

6. Pentagon readies its Cyberwar Defences

7. Burma's Generals Are Afraid Of Telephones and the Internet

8. A PAO That Mao Would Love

9. Stratcom Prepares for Future Capabilities, General Says

10. Federal Cybersecurity: Not for the Spooks?

11. Afghanistan's Media Explosion

12. Computer Experts Unite to Hunt Worm

13. Information Warfare Is Crucial in Combating Terrorism

14. Aussie Anthropologist Coaching American Generals On How To Win

15. Are Acts of Staged Controversy an Islamist Strategic Tactic?

16. Indian Army fears China attack by 2017

17. Pentagon Criticizes China on Military Transparency

18. Russian Army Inflates Itself with Fake Tanks

19. Senate Legislation Would Federalize Cybersecurity

20. Cyber war: Army says its systems are hack-proof

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ARSTRAT IO Newsletter on OSS.net

United States Army Global Information Operations Conference, 4 – 8 May 09

[Note: We had to postpone the Army Global IO Conference from 2-6 February to 4-8 May. Below is the message with changes and administrative information.]1. THE US ARMY SPACE AND MISSILE DEFENSE COMMAND/US ARMY FORCES STRATEGIC COMMAND (SMDC/ARSTRAT) AND HEADQUARTERS DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY G3/5/7 (DAMO-ODI) INVITE YOU TO THE SIXTH ARMY GLOBAL INFORMATION OPERATIONS (IO) CONFERENCE FROM 4 – 8 MAY 09. THE DATES CHANGED FROM 2 - 6 FEBRUARY 09. THE CONFERENCE WILL BE AT SCITOR CORPORATION, 745 SPACE CENTER DRIVE, COLORADO SPRINGS, CO 80915. A MAP TO THE CONFERENCE FACILITY IS POSTED TO THE CONFERENCE REGISTRATION WEBSITE AT: http://portal.smdc.army.smil.mil/C19/CVTI/default.aspx?Mode=Edit&PageView=Shared. 2. THE PURPOSE OF THIS CONFERENCE IS TO BRING THE ARMY IO COMMUNITY TOGETHER TO DISCUSS AND CAPTURE THOUGHTS ON HOW THE ARMY CAN OPERATIONALLY SUPPORT USSTRATCOM'S UNIFIED COMMAND PLAN - 2008 (UCP-08) INFORMATION OPERATIONS AND CYBERSPACE OPERATIONS MISSIONS.3. THE OBJECTIVES FOR THE CONFERENCE ARE 1) INTEGRATION AND COORDINATION OF ARMY IO IN SUPPORT OF USSTRATCOM AND OTHER COMBATANT COMMANDS, 2) IDENTIFY STRATEGIC ARMY IO GAPS AND SEAMS, AND 3) IDENTIFY POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS.4. THE FOLLOWING BROAD AGENDA OVERVIEW IS PROVIDED FOR YOUR INFORMATION. ADDRESSES ARE REQUESTED TO SUBMIT TOPICS FOR BRIEFINGS. UPDATES TO THE AGENDA WILL BE POSTED AT THE CONFERENCE WEBSITE. MONDAY (4 MAY 09) AND FRIDAY (8 MAY 09) ARE DESIGNATED FOR TRAVEL: - 4 MAY (MONDAY): TRAVEL DAY - 5 MAY (TUESDAY): BRIEFINGS FOCUS ON USSTRATCOM, FUNCTIONAL COMPONENTS, AND JOINT IO. EVENING SOCIAL. - 6 MAY (WEDNESDAY): BRIEFINGS FOCUS ON ARMY IO, MAJOR CHANGES, AND O-6 EXECUTIVE SESSION (TBD).- 7 MAY (THURSDAY): BRIEFINGS FOCUS ON ARMY AND OTHER SERVICE IO, MAJOR CHANGES, AND IO/CYBERSPACE/EW CAPABILITY COMBAT DEVELOPMENT AND ACQUISITION REQUIREMENTS.- 8 MAY (FRIDAY): MORNING BRIEFS AS NEEDED. AFTERNOON TRAVEL.5. INFORMATION BRIEFINGS IN THE FOLLOWING CATEGORIES ARE SOLICITED:- CURRENT OPERATIONS RELATED BRIEFINGS FROM USSTRATCOM, USSOCOM, USNORTHCOM, USEUCOM, USPACOM, USCENTCOM, USAFRICON AND USSOUTHCOM, JFCC-NW AND JTF-GNO IO ELEMENTS. - CURRENT OPERATIONS BRIEFINGS FROM ARMY SERVICE COMPONENT COMMANDS (ASCC) I.E.: USASOC, ARNORTH, USAREUR, USARCENT, USARSO IO ELEMENTS.- CURRENT OPERATIONS RELATED BRIEFINGS IN THE AREAS OF INFORMATION ENGAGEMENT, COMMAND AND CONTROL WARFARE, INFORMATION PROTECTION, MILDEC, PSYOP, CYBERSPACE, NETOPS, ETC.- THE NATIONAL GUARD BUREA (NGB), UNITED STATES ARMY RESERVE (USAR), ARMY RESERVE INFORMATION OPERATIONS COMMAND (ARIOC), AND THE THEATER INFORMATION OPERATIONS COMMANDS ARE INVITED TO PROVIDE IO RELATED BRIEFINGS THAT OUTLINE RECENT AND/OR PROPOSED USSTRATCOM AND/OR ARMY IO SUPPORT.- FINALLY INFORMATION OPERATIONS, CYBERSPACE, ELECTRONIC WARFARE, NETOPS AND PSYOP RELATED SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, ACQUISITION, MATERIEL DEVELOPMENT AND COMBAT DEVELOPMENT BRIEFINGS. - SECRET BRIEFINGS MAY BE SENT TO THE FOLLOWING POC (S) VIA SIPRNET: MR. JOSE CARRINGTON, JOSE.CARRINGTON@SMDC-CS.ARMY.SMIL.MILMR. FRANK GRAY, FRANK.GRAY@SMDC-CS.ARMY.SMIL.MIL MAJ BRUCE WILLIAMS, BRUCE.WILLIAMS@SMDC-CS.ARMY.SMIL.MILMR. T.K. HUNTER, THOMAS.HUNTER@SMDC-CS.ARMY.SMIL.MILMSG JEFFREY CLAYTON. JEFFREY.CLAYTON@SMDC-CS.ARMY.SMIL.MIL - JWICS BRIEFINGS CAN BE SENT TO GRAYF@ARMY.IC.GOV , TK.HUNTER@ARMY.IC.GOV. AND JEFFREY.CLAYTON@ARMY.IC.GOV . PRESENTATIONS MUST BE RECEIVED NLT MONDAY, 27 APRIL 09.6. CONFERENCE DETAILS:A. REGISTRATION FOR THIS CONFERENCE WILL COMMENCE 10 APRIL 09 AND MUST BE COMPLETED NLT FRIDAY, 1 MAY 09. THE CONFERENCE REGISTRATION WEB SITE IS: http://portal.smdc.army.smil.mil/C19/CVTI/default.aspx?Mode=Edit&PageView=Shared.

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B. CONFERENCE SECURITY REQUIREMENTS: PERSONNEL ATTENDING THIS CONFERENCE MUST HAVE A TOP SECRET CLEARANCE AND BE CURRENTLY SCI INDOCTRINATED WITH SI AND TK ACCESS. THE PREFERRED METHOD IS FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION TO SUBMIT VISIT-CLEARANCE REQUESTS VIA JPAS DIRECTLY TO SCITOR. PLEASE SEND JPAS SCI VISIT REQUESTS TO SMO 0NY502. IF YOU DO NOT USE JPAS, YOU MAY SEND VISIT REQUESTS BY UNCLASSIFIED OR CLASSIFIED FAX. SUBMIT HARD COPY OR FAX COPY SCI VISIT REQUESTS TO THE ADDRESS BELOW. ADDITIONAL HARDCOPY IS NOT REQUIRED IF THE REQUEST IS SENT BY UNCLAS OR SECURE FAX. VISIT REQUESTS WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED WITHOUT A SPECIFIC PURPOSE, AND NAME OF SCITOR TECHNICAL POC.SCITOR CORPORATION745 SPACE CENTER DRIVECOLORADO SPRINGS, CO 80915SECURITY: MR. KERRY COLEMAN (719) 380-4078 OR MR. ERIC PIARROT (719) 380-4124SFAX: (719) 380-4011 (AUTO-RECEIVE) UFAX: 719-380-4009CWAN: COLEMAN-KERRY@SCITOR.NPA.GOV SERVICING SSO: HQ AFSPC/INS (AFSPC SSO) – PETERSON AFB CO 80914 719-554-2402, OP 1 (INCLUDE INSTRUCTIONS TO FORWARD TO SCITOR CORPORATION)THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION MUST BE INCLUDED IN ALL VISIT REQUESTS:a) VISITOR NAME, SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, DATE OF BIRTH, PLACE OF BIRTHb) CLEARANCE LEVELc) DATE OF CLEARANCE, INVESTIGATION TYPEd) PURPOSE OF VISIT: ATTEND SMDC/ARSTRAT 6TH ANNUAL GLOBAL IO CONFERENCEe) DURATION OF VISIT: 4 – 8 MAY 2009f) TECHNICAL POC AT SCITOR CORP: MR. STEVE FERRELL, (719) 554-4237g) HAND-CARRY AUTHORIZATION: YOUR SECURITY DEPARTMENT MUST SPECIFY IF YOU ARE AUTHORIZED TO HAND-CARRY CLASSIFIED INFORMATION.C. ATTENDEES ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING THEIR OWN LODGING RESERVATIONS. PETERSON AFB BILLETING, HOTEL INFORMATION AND AREA MAPS ARE POSTED TO THE ABOVE WEB SITE. D. THERE WILL BE A $50.00 CONFERENCE FEE. SCITOR CORPORATION WILL PROVIDE RECEIPTS. THE FEE WILL COVER THREE WORKING LUNCHES, THE SOCIAL, SNACKS AND BEVERAGES THROUGHOUT THE CONFERENCE. THE NO HOST SOCIAL IS PLANNED FOR THE EVENING OF TUESDAY, 5 MAY AT THE FOX AND HOUND PUB FROM 1730 – 2100 HOURS.7. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT THE FOLLOWING CONFERENCE POCS WITH ANY QUESTIONS:MR. JOSE CARRINGTON, SMDC/ARSTRAT G39/IO, DSN: 692-8880; COMM: 719-554-8880; JOSE.CARRINGTON@SMDC-CS.ARMY.SMIL.MIL MR. FRANK GRAY, SMDC/ARSTRAT G39/IO, DSN: 692-8877; COMM: 719-554-8877; FRANK.GRAY@SMDC-CS.ARMY.SMIL.MILMAJ BRUCE WILLIAMS, SMDC/ARSTRAT G39/IO, DSN: 692-8883; COMM: 719-554-8883; BRUCE.WILLIAMS@SMDC-CS.ARMY.SMIL.MIL,MR. TK HUNTER, SMDC/ARSTRAT G39/IO, DSN: 692-8874; COMM: 719-554-8874; THOMAS.HUNTER@SMDC-CS.ARMY.SMIL.MIL MSG JEFFREY CLAYTON, SMDC/ARSTRAT G39/IO, DSN: 692-8898; COMM: 719-554-8898; JEFFREY.CLAYTON@SMDC-CS.ARMY.SMIL.MIL (719) 380-4124Table of Contents

The Cyber Menace By Rebecca Grant, Air Force Magazine, vol 92, no 3, March 2009 The world has yet to see all-out cyber-war, but it’s getting closer.It was a milestone in the short but nasty history of cyber-war. In November, Washington suffered from a severe, painful, and widespread attack on the Pentagon’s most sensitive computers. The most worrisome aspect was evidence that the attack had official Russian state origins.Defense officials said the strike damaged networks in US Central Command, overseer of US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and affected vital computers in combat zones. Moreover, the attack

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penetrated at least one highly protected and classified DOD network, according to published reports."This one was significant; this one got our attention," a defense official told the Los Angeles Times.The world has yet to see an all-out, no-kidding cyber-war, but the skirmishes are growing larger, and more numerous, a fact that does not go unnoticed in US security circles.Russia, which has picked around the edges of DOD cyber systems for years, may finally have done it. Several intelligence sources say there is evidence of Russian government involvement, making this the first time a major cyber power has successfully invaded classified US military networks.The specific threat in this incident was "agent.btz," a computer worm. Computer experts have reported that agent.btz can allow attackers remotely to take control of computers and rifle their files. The infection spreads via removable disk such as a flash drive. Knowing this, DOD banned the use of external computer drives—a drastic move.USAF’s Chief of Staff, Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, received a specialized briefing about the attack. Officers at the Air Force Network Operations Center outlined efforts to halt the spread of the agent.btz worm and protect military computers.Events in 2008 have made it only too clear that cyber threats have become everyday dangers. Leaders of USAF and other government bodies have moved from merely ruminating about threats in cyberspace to treating them as real and present dangers, especially regarding potential effects on US military forces.Call 2008 the year that cyberspace—its vulnerability, its defense, and its exploitation—passed the point of no return as a major issue for national security officials. International events and the confluence of several major government moves drove the subject of cyberspace higher up the list of priorities.Overseas, the August 2008 conflict between Russia and the small neighboring state of Georgia included a wave of Russian cyber assaults directed against the government of Georgia; civilian computer experts had to step in to restore services.Attack of the "Botnets"With cyberspace, the challenges are large and onerous. They range from mastering the forensic tasks of attack attribution all the way to much broader questions about proportionality of response and legitimacy of certain targets.Even before the agent.btz attack last November, there had been a string of foreign-origin attacks on networks at the State, Commerce, and Homeland Security departments, as well as on the Pentagon.As last year’s Russian attack on DOD systems illustrated, cyber peers are already here. Most agree on the need for strong, offensive cyber options. The steady drumbeat of attacks on US systems underlines the point.The potential threats are difficult to characterize. Said Michael G. Vickers, assistant secretary of defense for special operations, low-intensity conflict, and interdependent capability: "Nation states and nonstate actors continued to seek ways and means to counter the advantages we obtain from our use of information and to turn those same advantages against us in both conventional and unconventional ways."Air Force Gen. Kevin P. Chilton, commander of US Strategic Command, speaking with Pentagon reporters in Washington, D.C., expressed growing concern from a military standpoint. "I firmly believe we’ll be attacked in that domain," said Chilton. "Our challenge will be to continue to operate in that domain."Chilton later said: "The kind of attack that you would worry about is [what] we saw in Estonia [in April 2007]—a denial-of-service attack, where they flood the system with so many e-mail ‘botnets’ you don’t shut the system down, but you slow it down to the point that it’s unusable."Russia is not the only problem. China is also on the move. There, cyberspace operations already have been incorporated into a sophisticated "layered" national defense strategy, the point of which

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is to confuse Taiwan’s military reactions to any Chinese aggression and to slow down the anticipated deployment of US forces in response.Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, USAF’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, had this to say: "In terms of computer network operations, the PRC remains the greatest state-sponsored threat." Deptula went on to call attention to China’s proliferating abilities to deny, degrade, and disrupt cyberspace operations, labeling it a "major threat" to joint force operations.The greatest nightmare for the US is that of an intrusion by a software program able to reach command and control or early warning systems. The November attack did not appear to reach that level, but its success was still worrisome.At home, Washington launched a multistep program to put cyber security on a more urgent footing. President Bush in early 2008 signed a directive expanding Intelligence Community powers to monitor Internet traffic and repel mounting attacks on federal government computer systems.The classified memorandum—National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23—applies to several agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency. It authorized a new task force, headed by the director of national intelligence, which now manages US efforts to identify the source of cyber-attacks against government systems. DHS will work to protect the computer systems; the Pentagon will prepare plans for counterattacks.A Big Change of CourseThe approval of the combined NSPD/HSPD marked the most far-reaching effort to date by the United States government to neutralize threats in cyberspace. Meanwhile, the Air Force and Navy both tightened their focus on cyberspace with key organizational changes to cyberspace commands, while NATO stood up a cyber response organization.The shock of the cyber-attacks’ scope and magnitude was a point of consensus among top government officials.With threats on the rise, the Air Force and the wider defense, intelligence, and security community spent much of the past year juggling how they will organize to meet cyber challenges. A series of major reviews, international events, and a big change of course for the Air Force shook out more details of this new warfighting domain.Concluded a February 2008 report of the Defense Department’s inspector general: "DOD mission-critical systems may not be able to sustain warfighter operations during a disruptive or catastrophic event.""The most important conclusion we reached is that credible offensive capabilities are necessary to deter potential attackers," testified James A. Lewis, lead author of a new report on cyberspace for President Obama.The task of coping with cyberspace attacks never ends. As a result, the cyber defense mission is less about stopping cyber-attacks than it is about configuring and training national military forces to be able to fight through them.Chilton has said that the US needs to be able to operate, defend, and attack in the domain, and also across various domains.For the Air Force in particular, this crucial domain is a source of opportunity and vulnerability. USAF is the quintessential "net-centric" force. What that means, in practical terms, is that virtually all data and information of value pass at some point through cyberspace.Brig. Gen. Mark O. Schissler, director for cyber operations on the Air Staff, explained that cyber was a bit like electricity. "Many assume it’s always available," he said by way of comparison. "I assume we’ll have to work to have it."The constellation of cyber capabilities is too important—and too tempting a military target—for the Air Force ever to take it for granted. "It’s not if we’ll be attacked, it’s if we’ll be prepared for the attack," said Schissler.

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With that and other operational imperatives in mind, USAF had planned to stand up in late 2008 a new major command responsible for cyber operations and defense.Yet the service was in for a big course correction. In August 2008, Schwartz, the new USAF Chief of Staff, put that plan on indefinite hold. "Transfers of manpower and resources, including activation and reassignment of units, shall be halted," a memo from USAF headquarters stated.There were a number of motives for the stop order. First, the Air Force’s efforts to consolidate its extensive cyberspace units and budgets generated pushback almost from the start. Some in other service branches derided the planned stand-up of Air Force Cyber Command as a power grab by the Air Force.The move toward a major command was controversial within the service, too. Indeed, the internal debate over the best way to structure cyber organizations had a bit of a history.In 1999, for example, USAF seriously considered standing up a numbered air force to present cyber and information operations as a combat unit. "You go to war with a NAF, not a major command," noted one general who was involved in the decisions then.That logic remained compelling to many. In fact, according to Schissler, forging a numbered air force was one of the original options presented by the Secretary of the Air Force Cyberspace Task Force in 2006. Many cyber planners remained convinced a NAF was the best way for the Air Force to go.The Air Force’s cyber plans have been "largely misunderstood," said Schissler, who characterized the strategy of then-Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. Wynne as "a wake-up call, not a takeover."Gordon England, the recently departed deputy secretary of defense, spelled out a broad Pentagon view in a May 2008 memo. It stated: "Because all combatant commands, military departments, and other defense components need the ability to operate unhindered in cyberspace, the domain does not fall within the purview of any one particular department or component."At the Corona conference in fall 2008, the Air Force put the cyber mission back on track toward the numbered air force solution. Under the new plan, USAF will stand up the new 24th Air Force under Air Force Space Command in mid-2009.Natural FitThis NAF thus will become the Air Force’s cyber combat element. It will combine network operations as well as offensive and defensive cyberspace capabilities for presentation to the joint warfighter, US Strategic Command.Although this decision was announced at about the same time as USAF’s choice to create the new MAJCOM-level Air Force Global Strike Command, the decisions were actually unrelated.Among the key elements that will move under 24th Air Force are the existing 67th Network Warfare Wing and the Air Force Information Operations Center, both located at Lackland AFB, Tex. The two units currently fall under 8th Air Force, which is part of Air Combat Command. When those units become part of the new 24th Air Force, however, they will align under Space Command.While the stand-up of 24th Air Force tracks with earlier thinking, the choice of Air Force Space Command as the home for cyber is an about-face on how to manage the new domain.Previously, some worried that linking cyber to space would blur the budget authority and career path for cyber-warriors. The old decision to tuck cyber into Air Combat Command reflected those concerns.In 2007, Gen. Ronald E. Keys, then commander of ACC, explained the logic of keeping cyber within the combat command. "There’s a dynamic in Washington, when you have something new [like Cyber Command]: Either they will stiff you, or they will run with you because they think there’s money they can get from you," he said. "So we have hooked all the cyber/Internet systems into Air Combat Command."Missionwise, the cyber world may have a more logical connection with Space Command, however. "It’s a natural fit," commented Schissler.

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As many as 8,000 airmen will become part of 24th Air Force. Many of these are in place at other organizations, and Air Force units host cyber specialists from other organizations. The Air Force has announced six possible locations for the headquarters of 24th Air Force. A final decision is expected by June, an Air Force news release said.Schissler also envisions a big role for Guard and Reserve forces. "They have remarkable capabilities and potential," he said. Many Guardsmen and Reservists work in private-sector information technology positions. Meanwhile, many of the nation’s Total Force units are slated to lose their traditional flying missions.Other parts of the cyber bureaucracy were in motion, too. Two particular changes were aimed at strengthening cyber security by recasting the battlespace.The first focused on the Department of Homeland Security. The second involved the agency at the core of US cyberspace missions: the National Security Agency, home of elite cryptologists and those most skilled in offensive and defensive operations.January 2008 brought a new Comprehensive National Cyber Security Initiative (CNCI). It wasn’t exactly unveiled, as the initiative is classified, but some of its content seeped out in appropriations discussions and other settings.Released on Jan. 8, 2008, the classified, joint directive reportedly authorized a 12-step program to improve the overall security situation. The steps took aim at everything from intrusion detection and trusted Internet connections to classified network security and global supply chain security.The CNCI also tasked NSA to monitor all federal networks to improve cyber intrusion detection. Those not complying could have their access turned off.Early in 2009 came word of another decision with great significance for cyber warfare. This was the move to put the NSA director in charge of US Strategic Command’s Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations.For many years, a network warfare component has resided within the supersecret cryptological agency based at Ft. Meade, Md. This component has focused mostly on defense of national networks from intrusion and exploitation. Personnel from various armed services work at NSA in cyber warfare roles. The Air Force, in particular, has a large number of cyber specialists working there within that component.What’s new is the formal assignment of both offensive and defensive cyber roles to a component at NSA.The Air Force’s Schissler observed that this new national arrangement is actually building on a proven pattern: It mirrors the organizational concept embodied in the Air Force’s 67th Network Warfare Wing, in that it puts "the main exploiters" and the "main defenders" together under one roof.Determining AttributionOutsiders cannot tell at present exactly what NSA will do with this authority. Schissler said one prospect was for NSA to create a national cyber center resembling the National Counterterrorism Center, a multiagency organization within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.In Schissler’s view, the goal would be to forge a single, joint monitoring center combining the intelligence, military, homeland security, and law enforcement cyber specialists. It could also serve as a command post for offensive and defensive cyber options. With the current fragmented system, Schissler noted, "we make it work," but it’s not easy.Many think the United States needs to do more to develop an offensive cyber-war capability rather than just focus on defending its networks from attack.Yet the concept of military campaigns in cyberspace is still hung up on the issue of attack attribution."We have a tremendous amount of trouble determining attribution: ... where an attack actually came from, who was responsible, who might have been behind that computer," former White House cyber security official Paul Kurtz told the House Intelligence Committee in recent testimony. "And we

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have a very, very long way to go on that. Until we start to get clarity in that piece, it’s going to be very difficult to contemplate the military option, of responding appropriately."Schissler confirmed the difficulties of knowing "who in a country has attacked you." Any peer is likely to have strong network capabilities, he said, and "our most dangerous opponents are the militaries and intelligence services of foreign governments."One thing is certain: The services will continue to provide a large share of the personnel dedicated to cyberspace. "Secretary of Defense [Robert M.] Gates has told us to fill all the seats" at joint cyber schoolhouses, noted Schissler.Cyberspace still is not part of DOD Directive 5100.1, an omnibus document covering official department responsibilities and authorities. Thus, neither the Air Force nor any other service has a special claim on it. Yet it is the services that have recognized their dependence on the cyber domain and set out to organize, train, and equip forces for cyber operations.The way is wide open for someone to step forward and give shape to the new challenge. Said Schissler, "It’s a Billy Mitchell moment."----------March 10, 2009Letter to EditorAs always, I enjoyed the March edition of the Air Force Magazine. What a great publication to keep us all informed of the news and issues concerning the world's greatest Air Force.With anticipation, I read the article by Dr. Rebecca Grant, "The Cyber Menace," because cyberspace is a critical domain to our US military, and as you know, the United States Strategic Command is the combatant command charged with the defense of our .mil and .smil domains.There was one item in the article that did not accurately portray the recent changes to the two components that support USSTRATCOM and our nation's military networks. The article stated that, "the NSA director is in charge of US Strategic Command's Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations. In fact, the commander of USSTRATCOM's Joint Functional Component Command-Network Warfare (who also is dual-hatted as NSA's director) is in charge of USSTRATCOM's Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations. While a subtle nuance, this reflects the broad capacity of STRATCOM to better integrate its mission areas, both network warfare and defense of the global information grid under a single commander.The changes that better align the NW and GNO relationships will, in the long run, help USSTRATCOM better execute the defense and offense activities to protect our military's networks.Thanks for your help in clarifying this important fact. Keep up the great work keeping our nation informed about some very vital issues.Sincerely,General Kevin P. Chilton, USAFCommanderUS Strategic CommandTable of Contents

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Dispatches from FOBistan: Letting the Message Drive the Operation (blog)

From Resitran.net, 10 March 2009FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, AFGHANISTAN — The other night, I found myself on the south end of Bagram—past the Egyptian hospital, the “Hearts and Minds Gym,” Camp Blackjack, even the rotary wing terminal. I had wanted some air, something to break the psychotic monotony that is Bagram Air Base, and found myself near the base mosque. It was sunset. The most beautiful sound floated down the street, competing with the rattle of the junky old Korean buses and Toyota diesels: the muezzin. I come from a rather conservative Christian background; while I certainly wouldn’t use the term “conservative” to describe my faith anymore, it remains quite firmly Christian. And yet… I could not shake the feeling that this was something spiritual. Holy.Not to get all mushy on everyone, it was just a remarkable moment. I’ve traveled in Muslim countries before, even heard the muezzin’s call before (sometimes at painful times of the day). But for some reason, this one time, it just struck me as beautiful—heartbreaking, even. Which got me to thinking…As this war grinds on and on, and people come to the depressing realization that we just don’t seem to want to get it, it becomes more obvious that our strategy is misplaced. On Tuesday, as I was catching a chilly helicopter flight from Bagram Air Base to FOB Salerno, I saw the perfect example of just how sloppy our planning has been: FOB Shank. Now nothing personal on Shank—I’ll be there soon—but the way this little-base-that-could has grown into a major hub for U.S. operations exemplifies how reactionary U.S. strategy in Afghanistan has been. The home to a Czech PRT, and an enormous outpouring of money for expansion, FOB Shank straddles a large highway. Why? It was originally built to be a small base… then expanded… and now, you must have an armed escort to go outside the wire from one half to the other. It makes absolutely no sense, aside from the fact that it is born solely from the original decision to build it on one side of the highway.But that is Afghanistan. It is much like this story, noted first by Nathan Hodge, about how the U.S. paused special operations for two weeks to try to alleviate some of the nasty IO, or information operations. Hodge kindly linked to a post in the series I wrote last year on the Azizabad bombing incident last year, one of the main takeaways of which was that the U.S. military has worse than a tin ear for how its operations and their consequences will be received: they have an anti-ear. The list of “unanswered questions” about the incident are still relevant:There also still remain several unanswered questions: if photos and video exist, why can’t they be made public? If they reside primarily with Afghan Intelligence, why aren’t they being shared with the Coalition or made public? Oliver North was on-scene—does he have any documentary evidence that Mullah Siddiq was among the dead, or were the dead all employees of Reza’s security firm working at the local FOB?Routinely, there are protests and bad press after U.S. operations. In almost all cases, they are false—the initial round of casualty claims in Azizabad were off by a factor of three—yet they have sticking power. Why is that?Put simply, Insurgent messages (and sometimes, let it not be forgotten, base rumor) are, for lack of a better term, locally generated. For many, the way a Taliban message is constructed has the same resonating power as that one little incident I had at the mosque hearing the muezzin at sunset: it just rings true, and countering such a thing is incredibly difficult. Making matters especially worse is Afghanistan’s culture: in general, at least where the insurgency is worst. there is not what one could call an fact-based culture. One of the stranger things about the United States is our obsession with statistics: 4 of 5 dentists like this chewing gum, the President has this percentage approval, that liquer has this percentage alcohol, and so on. It is everywhere. What is you’re dealing with a culture where rumor actually is fact? What then?This is the primary challenge the U.S. faces. Sloppy or even mis-planned operations can be accounted for if you know how to approach the population in a way they find credible. The U.S. military faces two main challenges in that regard: its own culture, and American ignorance. The latter is no one’s fault, as even the best Afghanistan experts, like Barnett Rubin, seem to have an expertise primarily of Kabul (there are obvious, less wonky exceptions to this rule, but it’s generally

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true). Kabul is like the Manhattan of Afghanistan: it is everyone’s punching bag for moral decadence and disconnect from “Real Afghanistan” in the countryside.The military culture issue is another matter entirely. Aside from the problems stemming from severe risk aversion, there is the engineering problem. By this I mean that almost everyone in the Army, and all of its operations, stem from an engineering approach to the world: the assumption that one can plan out every course of action, and that if you just set the preconditions right you can guarantee the outcome. It is stunningly effective at industrial warfare. People, though, are messy and unpredictable apart from intuition (which, too, can be wrong). Counterinsurgencies are not examples of mass industrial warfare: they are people wars, messy and complicated and imprecise. Even knowing this, the military has yet to fundamentally alter its approach to fighting, so we’re left with a messaging system that lags sometimes days behind operations, and even then is structured in a deeply unconvincing way to ordinary people.How would you react if a foreign military didn’t speak your language, and their explanations for everything they did just rang false? We ought to know: we have had a similar reaction to, say, the Russian military invading Georgia. Nothing about it rang “true” to American audiences, so, despite massive domestic support in Russia, they were widely viewed as evil and worthy of opposition here and in Tblisi. This is how serious it is to have operations driving messaging: without having actions to confirm an idea, it comes off as shallow… especially if your actions are already unpopular. There is more to this story, and if I can get permission to write about it I will. This is not an insurmountable problem by any stretch of the imagination. We just need to modify our frame of reference when planning both a kinetic and an IO campaign—flip around a few sections of planning and be willing to change our message if it goes wrong just as quickly as we change our tactics. We’re just not there yet.Table of Contents

Army, Navy, Air Force, and Cyber—Is it Time for a Cyberwarfare Branch of Military?

By Lt Col Gregory Conti and Col John “Buck” Surdu, Information Assurance Newsletter, vol 11, no 4 Winter 2008The Army, Navy, and Air Force all maintain cyberwarfare components, but these organizations exist as ill-fitting appendages that attempt to operate in inhospitable cultures where technical expertise is not recognized, cultivated, or completely understood. The services have developed effective systems to build traditional leadership and management skills.

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New Electronic Warfare courses to be taught at Fort SillBy Army Public Affairs, March 12, 2009WASHINGTON (Army News Service, March 12, 2009) -- Immediate openings are available for the Army's premier training courses in Electronic Warfare, as announced in an Army message March 10. The courses will be conducted at Fort Sill, Okla., and are available to officers, warrant officers and enlisted personnel.The officer (FA29) course will run 11 weeks beginning June 29. The warrant officer (MOS 290A) course will run 16 weeks beginning April 1, and the enlisted (MOS 29E) course will run 10 weeks beginning April 1. The courses are not available through the Army Training Requirements and Resources System, known as ATRRS. Instead, interested Soldiers should contact the EW proponent, Maj. Michael A. Brock at michael.brock@us.army.mil, DSN 552-9494 and commercial (913) 684-9494. Ms. Addie

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House can also be contacted at addie.house1@conus.army.mil, DSN 552-9459 and commercial (913) 684-9459 for information and registration. Electronic Warfare expertise is critical to units deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, officials said. The courses are part of the Army's process to institute electronic warfare as an Army enduring core competency, implementing this expertise at all echelons of the force structure. Graduates will provide commanders with EW subject-matter expertise while serving as integrators, advising commanders on how to leverage lethal and non-lethal effects in support of tactical and operational objectives. More than 1,600 EW personnel are projected to begin serving at every level of command, throughout the Army over the next three years. An additional 2,300 personnel will be added to this career field in the near future as personnel become available to the Army, officials said. Unit commanders of deployable and deploying units are strongly encouraged to nominate officers (captain to lieutenant colonel), warrant officers (W01-W05), and noncommissioned officers (E5-E9) to attend. Sending commands are responsible for Soldier's travel and select per diem costs while attending the course, which is chargeable to the military training specific allotment, or MTSA account. A message to All Army Activivies, or ALARACT, is available at https://www.us.army.mil/suite/doc/15619201. For more information about the 29 series career field visit http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cew/FA29 and http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cew/index.asp.Table of Contents

Pentagon readies its Cyberwar Defences By Paul Marks, New Scientist, 16 March 2009 CYBER-ATTACKS on a nation's military and commercial computers have grown a lot more sophisticated since the days of the lone hacker targeting a system's defences just for the thrill of it.Nowadays, electronic attacks are increasingly seen as a cheap and easy way for one nation to attack another. "It's the ultimate bargain hunter's way of destroying everyone's way of life," says Glenn Zimmerman, a cyberspace specialist at the Pentagon. "It may even be free."It's the ultimate bargain hunter's way of destroying everyone's way of life. It may even be free So worried are governments by the prospect of an all-out cyber-attack that last month UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon revealed that cyber-weapons are to be added to the list of arms falling under the remit of the UN's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters, which develops policy on weapons of mass destruction. Ban said recent breaches of critical systems represent "a clear and present threat to international security", since the public and private sectors have grown increasingly dependent on electronic information.But despite the threat, current NATO war games tend to treat cyber-attack simulations as an afterthought, according to military sources. Now the Pentagon is hoping to change that by developing a centre at which the military can play realistic electronic war games.Called the National Cyber Range, the centre will mimic not only the hardware that might be used to inflict cyber-attacks, but also the likely behaviours of the people behind the attacks. The centre, being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), is part of the US government's Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, launched last year.Until now, cyber-attacks have been relatively limited in scope. In 2006, for instance, Russian hackers, angered by the removal of a Soviet war memorial, launched a sustained denial of service attack on government and business websites in former soviet state of Estonia. In 2007, Chinese hackers attacked US and UK government websites, knocking them temporarily offline, and in 2008 Georgia suffered massive internet outages alongside its military battle with Russia. In January, Kyrgyzstan became the latest victim when its two largest internet service providers were targeted by a denial of service attack from hackers in Russia.

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As if such attacks weren't worrying enough, military and private sector security experts attending a recent Cyber Warfare conference in London claimed attacks can only get worse because our electronic infrastructure is so poorly defended. What's more, computer scientists do not yet know how to defend critical systems against attacks, says Amit Yoran of NetWitness, an electronic security company based in Herndon, Virginia. "We are largely blind and ignorant of how to protect ourselves against cyber-attacks," he told delegates. "Advanced threats continue to evade deployed solutions."With this in mind DARPA is ploughing $30 million into developing its testing range for cyber-warfare countermeasures, or "cyber sidearms" as it refers to them. The facility will allow teams to engage in lengthy fights in cyberspace using faithful replications of the US military's global satellite, wireless and landline networks. Many of the range's functions are classified, but DARPA says it wants it to have a sophisticated "nation-state quality" enemy team against which to test its countermeasures.Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar, an adviser to the Estonian ministry of defence, says that because a cyber-attack can destabilise a country without sending forces across a border, it is a likely first strike tactic. Russia did just that in the Georgian conflict last summer. DARPA shouldn't expect that such attackers will use easily fought viruses, says Yoran. "They have fantastic engineering resources and can develop customised and very powerful ones."One likely target, says Julian Charvat, a cyber-terrorism analyst with NATO in Ankara, Turkey, is the control systems for power stations, chemical plants and water utilities. These Supervisory, Control and Data Acquisition systems (SCADAs) often lack adequate cyber-defences.Another risk comes from the fact that western microchip firms have outsourced manufacture to Asia, where saboteurs could design hardware-based viruses into chips. "Our semiconductor devices now need authenticating," says Zimmerman. That could have a strange corollary: because the internet is to acquire many billions more IP addresses, machines will get internet addresses - leading to fears that rogue chips within, say, fridges, TV sets and cars could launch cyber-attacks.Ultimately, the best hope lies in organisations like DARPA developing early warning systems for cyber-attacks, says Charles Williamson, a US air force cyberspace analyst at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. Convincing military leaders of the urgent need for such a system may not be easy, he admits. "Our biggest threat is senior leaders who think the computer is technologically equivalent to a toaster."Table of Contents

Pentagon Official Warns of Risk of Cyber AttacksBy Walter Pincus, Washington Post, March 17, 2009The head of the Pentagon's Strategic Command warned Congress today that the United States is vulnerable to cyberattacks "across the spectrum" and that more needs to be done to defend against the potential of online strikes, which could "potentially threaten not only our military networks, but also our critical national networks." But Air Force Gen. Kevin Chilton made clear to a House Armed Services subcommittee that he has not been asked to defend most government Web sites nor the commercial and public infrastructure networks whose destruction could cripple the nation. Chilton's command, instead, has the responsibility "to operate and defend the military networks only and be prepared to attack in cyberspace when directed," he said, adding, "I think the broader question is, who should best do this for the other parts of America, where we worry about defending power grids, our financial institutions, our telecommunications, our transportation networks, the networks that support them." The responsibility of protecting civilian networks currently rests with the Department of Homeland Security, but Chilton's testimony comes at a time when a presidential-chartered 60-day study of cybersecurity is underway. A report from that study is expected next month. Asked whether Homeland Security's cyber role fits within his command structure, Chilton responded, "It does not fit at all today." But that may change after the 60-day review is completed, he added.

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As Stratcom commander, Chilton has responsibility not only to operate and defend military networks, but also to prepare cyber attack capabilities against an enemy when a president orders it. Operational control over both, Chilton said, has been delegated to Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, the head of the National Security Agency -- the intelligence agency that deals with the monitoring and intercepting of electronic messages. NSA, according to Chilton, already has a role in information security, and the agency's support "has been instrumental in our efforts to operate and particularly to defend our networks," he said. Combining oversight of cyber defense and offense made sense, Chilton said, "because they're so interconnected. . . . As you consider offensive operations, you want to make sure your defense are up." Also, he said, giving NSA those jobs adds the intelligence support the Pentagon needs to defend its networks.Table of Contents

Burma's Generals Are Afraid Of Telephones and the InternetBy Htet Aung Kyaw, The Nation, March 24, 2009LAST WEEKEND, the Paris-based media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) published a report entitled "Enemies of the Internet", which named Burma as one of 12 countries that actively practices censorship and restricts freedom of speech on the Internet. "The 12 enemies of the Internet … have all transformed their internet into an intranet in order to prevent their populations from accessing 'undesirable' online information," the RSF report said. As I work for a daily news service, this report is nothing surprising for me. But I was surprised when I learned that a group of hackers from the jungle capital of the low-speed intranet country attacked high-speed websites in the world's richest country. "Yes, this cyber attack was made by Russian technicians. However, they are not in Moscow but in Burma's West Point cyber city", claimed Aung Lin Htut, the former deputy ambassador to Washington and a former spy for ousted Burmese prime minister Gen Khin Nyunt. (Many Burmese observers compare the country's Maymyo Academy of Defence Services to the US Army's West Pont academy). Last September, which was the anniversary of the "saffron revolution" led by Buddhist monks, the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB) website and two others leading websites (of the Chiang Mai-based Irrawaddy magazine and Delhi-based Mizzima) were attacked by unknown hackers. "We can easily say that the Burmese government is behind this attack," said a DVB statement. They used DdoS, or distributed denial-of-service, which overloads websites with an unmanageable amount of traffic."But the DVB technicians doubt that the attackers are government-backed hackers who are based in Russia. "Technically, it is of course difficult to say who is behind the attack," the statement said. According to Aung Lin Htut, thousands of Burmese army officers are studying Defence Electronic Technology at the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI), and hundreds of them return to Burma each year to work in Maymyo after they receive the four-year Masters Degrees. The subjects for Burmese officers studying there are computer software programs, nuclear technology, short range and long range missiles, and aeronautics and engineering. "There is full-scale electricity supply and hi-speed Internet connections at Napyidaw (the country's official capital city) and the West Point cyber city. The cyber attack is just the beginning of their plan to attack the democracy movement," the former spy told this correspondent in an electronic conversation from Washington. I asked how these officers would be able to apply their knowledge in Burma, where the electricity supply is intermittent.

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Although the two VIP locations are very advanced in IT, the rest of the country is still in the dark. There is not enough electricity, telephone lines, or hi-speed Internet connections for the general population. "Our office telephone line has been cut for over two years. There is no response from the authority whenever we ask the reason," said Nyan Win, a spokesman for the opposition National League for Democracy. "To open an e-mail address for the NLD may lead me to Insein (prison)" he added. The junta recently arrested dozens of students and activists, including Min Ko Naing's 88 Generation students' group, which took part in the September 2007 uprising and who were involved in distributing relief after Cyclone Nargis ripped through the country last year. A number of the students and activists were sentenced to 65 years in prison for violations of the electronic law, meaning that they had used cellphones, cameras, e-mail and the internet without permission from the authorities. "I'm very interested in IT and so I learned something about it on the Internet. This is only my guilt that will send me to Insein," said one activist named Zagana as a judge sentenced him to jail. A recent UN report says that 6 out of every 10 people in the world use a mobile phone. "But I think the NLD is the only political party in the world that has no telephone, no Internet or website in the 21st century," Nyan Win lamented to me during a cellphone (which he rents from friends) conversation from Rangoon. The NLD members and activists have no permission to buy a cellphone, and are not permitted to own or even use an Internet line or a laptop computer in Burma. If you live in Burma, you need permission from the authorities to buy a cell or land phone, a fax machine, an Internet line, computer, camera, satellite TV, or short-wave radio. "This is an unacceptable condition for the party that won the 1990 election, while the junta allows everything for the USDA - the pro-government Union Solidarity Development Association - for the 2010 election campaign," said Soe Aung, a spokesman for exiled 88 Generation students and the Forum for Democracy in Burma. "Cellphones and the Internet are daily basic necessities for politicians and the party," he said to this correspondent in a text message from his Blackberry. "This is very useful and you will see how US President Obama does his daily job using this phone," he added from Bangkok. But in Burma, the ageing NLD leadership in Rangoon and the army generals in Napyidaw have no Blackberry or cellphone. The generals have banned cellphones in the capital for security reasons, while the NLD leaders have not been able to get either a land phone, a cellphone or an e-mail account. "This is not just the nature of a generation gap between Obama and Than Shwe. Burma's politics is wrong indeed," Soe Aung added.Table of Contents

A PAO That Mao Would LoveFrom Strategy Page, 25 March 2009March 25, 2009: The Chinese armed forces now have their own professional Public Affairs Officers (PAOs). The first class of 51 Chinese PAOs recently graduated from a two week course. Western forces have had such media professionals for decades, but in China, propaganda/media specialists from the Chinese Communist Party have long handled the media needs of the military. But now the military will increasingly handle its PR itself, largely because military affairs involve a lot of highly technical matters that are best handled by specialists (army officers). In the United States, the Defense Information School was established right after World War II, and many other major nations followed suit in subsequent decades. These schools educated officers and NCOs to handle the media effectively. The communist nations, following the lead of the Soviet Union, tightly controlled their own domestic media (which was all state owned). All of these police states maintained large propaganda organizations, which had media specialists trained to deal with foreign media. But since these media specialists spent most of the time in a police state, where

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there was no free, and aggressive, media, they had problems dealing with reporters who could ask embarrassing questions.China is still a police state, but it has a growing media industry that is partly free. These privately owned publishers and broadcasters are expected to self-censor, or know when to call a government media specialist for the correct "guidance." But China is now a major importer and exporter, and host to millions of foreign visitors each year. There are a lot more opportunities for people in China to ask government officials, including those from the military, tricky questions. China is also sending more troops on peacekeeping or disaster relief missions. So now the military is training officers to handle a free press, or at least have a fighting chance.The PAO (Public Affairs Officers) is very much a post World War II development. Before that, bright young officers were generally appointed to deal with the media. The understanding was that if the improvised "press officer" did well, promotions would come faster. After World War I, Douglas MacArthur was appointed by the army to deal with the mass media, and he did quite well. MacArthur was head of the army before too long. But as the mass media became more complex, so did the job of the PAO. The solution was to make it a military specialty, and provide appropriate training for it.Table of Contents

Stratcom Prepares for Future Capabilities, General Says By Staff Sgt. Michael J Carden, OSD Public Affairs, 03.17.2009WASHINGTON - The global financial crisis and the threat of nuclear proliferation and persistent warfare in the Middle East and Central Asia are playing a major role in determining future national security capabilities, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command told Congress today. Air Force Gen. Kevin P. Chilton told the House Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on strategic forces that "2009 is an especially noteworthy year" because of the unique security challenges America faces. Those challenges, along with the ever-changing rate of technology "often outpaces capabilities and policies," Chilton said. He added that he is looking forward to the upcoming Congressional Commissions Report on the Strategic Posture of the United States, as well as this year's Defense Department Quadrennial Defense Review and Nuclear Posture Review. "The recommendations made in these studies will shape our national security capabilities long into the future," he said. This year will be an important year for Congress to act on the issue of the aging U.S. nuclear stockpile, Chilton said. The stockpile, nuclear infrastructure and human capital are the most urgent concerns for the U.S. nuclear enterprise, he said. Modernization, he added, will "relieve growing uncertainty about the stockpile's future reliability and sustainability." Credible deterrence operations depend on a reliable stockpile of nuclear weapons, Chilton said. And although U.S. nuclear weapons deployment, production, and testing have reduced substantially since the Cold War, many allies rely on the United States for those capabilities, he noted. "Deterrence remains as central to America's national security as it was during the Cold War," Chilton said, "because, as ever, we would prefer to prevent war rather than to wage it." On space operations, Chilton said space-based capabilities give the nation essential, but often unnoticed, capabilities. However, the satellites that carry those capabilities require more and careful attention to eliminate possibly lethal delays in missile defense launches. "We have made progress in space situational awareness, but capability gaps remain, and require sustained momentum to fill," he said, noting last month's collision between the U.S. Iridium communication satellite and Russia's decommissioned military satellite. Cyberspace, another key aspect of Stratcom's mission, has become increasingly important to the warfighter, Chilton said. He remains concerned about growing threats on computer networks and is calling for changes within the Defense Department's "fundamental network of culture, conduct and capabilities to address this mission," he said.

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"We also endeavor to share our best [networking] practices with partners across the government," he said. "Still the adequate provisioning of cyber missions, especially with manpower, remains our greatest needs." Stratcom continues to be proficient in executing operations in the realms of space, cyberspace and deterring war, Chilton said. He praised his command for its ability to provide "a unique global perspective in advocating for" missile defense, information operations, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance – capabilities the country needs to ensure national security, he said. "In this uncertain world, [Congress's] support is critical to enabling successful execution across the command's assigned missions," he said, "and in realizing [the U.S.] vision to be leaders in strategic deterrence and preeminent global war fighters in space and cyberspace."Table of Contents

Federal Cybersecurity: Not for the Spooks?By Kenneth Corbin, Internet News, March 11, 2009WASHINGTON -- Cybersecurity experts told a House panel Tuesday that the federal government's defense mechanisms against online threats to the nation's infrastructure are in disarray, hobbled by interagency turf wars and a failure to broker effective partnerships with the private sector. Corralling the multitude of federal agencies overseeing national cybersecurity is no easy feat. Trying to determine the appropriate roles for the FBI, Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, National Security Agency and others can quickly devolve into a muddled bowl of alphabet soup. To try to make sense out of that hash, the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, Science and Technology held the first of three hearings it plans this month to review the federal cybersecurity mission. The next, scheduled for March 24, will examine the threats to the nation's electrical system as an Internet-enabled smart grid begins to materialize. The renewed congressional interest comes at the midpoint of a 60-day review President Obama ordered of the government's efforts to combat cyber threats. Today's hearing also comes just days after the resignation of Rod Beckstrom, who had been heading the National Cyber Security Center at the Department of Homeland Security. Beckstrom complained that too much of the federal cybersecurity efforts are housed in the National Security Agency, a highly secretive intelligence agency administered by the Defense Department. The witnesses at today's hearing echoed Beckstrom's concern that the unique culture of the NSA is not conducive to fighting cyber threats the way that companies in the private sector are accustomed. "There is a clear and distinct conflict of interest between intelligence objectives and those of system operators," said Amit Yoran, chairman and CEO of NetWitness, and a former head of cybersecurity operations at DHS. "Simply put, the intelligence community has always and will always prioritize [intelligence operations] over the defenses and protection of our nation's digital systems." Don't consolidate cyber defensesYoran agreed with Beckstrom and the other witnesses that the NSA has the deepest talent pool of cybesecurity experts, but warned against the continued consolidation of the nation's cyber defenses in the hands of the secretive agency. "It is in grave peril if this effort is dominated by the intelligence community," he said. The panelists also stressed the importance of government partnering with private industry to combat cyber threats, a collaboration that can break down in an intensely classified environment with burdensome regulations. Several of the witnesses and lawmakers called for a strengthening of DHS' role in cybersecurity. That agency has suffered from a reduced budget and a declining stature since George W. Bush enacted his Cyber Initiative in January 2008.

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Obama has pledged to create a new position of a federal cyber advisor, who would report to him and coordinate among the various agencies involved in cybersecurity. Critics of the government's lackluster response to cyber threats in the past -- including some who appeared at today's hearing -- have argued that for cybersecurity to become a top priority in a crowded national security agenda, the effort needs a leader in the White House with the president's ear. Scott Charney, Microsoft's vice president for trustworthy computing, told the lawmakers that DHS is best suited to playing a coordinating role in various agencies' operations, but that the ultimate responsibility for a national cybersecurity strategy should be placed at the highest level. "It has to determine very difficult questions like when is a cyber attack an act of war, and what is your proportional response? Those kinds of key decisions have to be done at the White House level," Charney said. Table of Contents

Afghanistan's Media ExplosionBy Jan Forrester, Eureka Street, March 20, 2009Before 2001 Afghans had only the Taliban's Radio Sharia. So they depended on transistor radios tuned to external services, primarily the BBC Persian service, for independent information. In that light the explosion of media in Afghanistan following the end of Taliban rule in 2001 is a success story. But Afghan journalists are being killed on the security frontline, jailed or silenced. The government and parliament are in conflict over the country's media law, and journalistic professionalism is in its infancy. The current diverse clutch of Afghan media owners include the Australian-Afghan Mohseni brothers, wannabe politicians who lives overseas, mullahs with links to Iran and powerful provincial warlords who were cashed up by the US during the 1980s civil war. But they also notably include more than 35 independent, community radio stations across the country. Two are owned and managed by women. In a country with high illiteracy rates, especially in rural areas, newspapers are struggling but radio is strong. Network and local television are growing, particularly in those regions, like Herat, which have electricity. Measuring audiences is still an infant science and quantitative and qualitative research is bedevilled by demography and security. But the Mohseni brothers' Tolo TV is probably the most popular television network in Afghanistan. An overwhelmingly young population enjoys its Indian soap operas, racy by conservative Afghan mores. So it is popular with advertisers. The Government has tried to censor Tolo and another leading network. The latter bowed to pressure. Tolo refused, more out of respect for its bottom line than for media freedom. Financial viability is crucial in an industry which has expanded so rapidly, with networks and stations vying for a share of the advertising market which in 2006 was worth up to AUD $31 million. The International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) is a dominant advertiser. As part of its psychological operations to win hearts and minds, it produces and pays stations to broadcast a range of messages on human rights, health, agriculture and Western development assistance. In some regions military advertising is considerably greater than commercial advertising. This calls into question Afghan media's long-term financial viability. From ISAF's strategic perspective, to rely on one-way messages in an era of multi-platform, interactive media is curiously old-hat. Mobile phones have leapfrogged the internet as a communications channel. Phone-in audience participation — from discussion forums to music requests — is clearly popular. Television is fine for broadcasting community messages or warnings such as 'don't approach military convoys: you run the risk of being shot'. But its use to persuade locals that Western Coalition forces are in Afghanistan to protect Afghans is problematic. The Afghan rumour mill tells

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people of the increasing number of civilians being wrongly targetted and killed. So many locals believe foreigners are in Afghanistan to promote their own interests. Remarkably, the greatest fuss in post-conflict Afghanistan has arguably been the government's resistance to a media law which was ratified by parliament. In September 2008 the parliament ratified a media law which the President refused to have published. Although the law was based on recommendations by an Afghan group, the Government argued that it was influenced by foreigners. Journalists are left unclear whether they should follow the outdated restrictions of the 2006 law or the new, ratified but not official law. They are also under many other pressures: death on assignment in an insecure area, jailing, or a late-night phone call at home where an unidentified voice suggests they drop a story. In February this year the daily newspaper, Payman, was closed after its editor was briefly jailed for alleged blasphemy. It had carried a contentious article, downloaded from an Afghan website. The article carried the predictions of a Bulgarian woman which cast doubt on all prophesies, including those of Jesus Christ and the Prophet Mohamed. The Ulema issued a fatwa against the paper. Despite Payman acknowledging that it had printed the article in error and frequently apologising for it it, the Ulema threatened national action. The government caved in. The Attorney General stated: 'Our society cannot tolerate anti-Islamic propaganda.' President Karzai was also under pressure. After his term expires in April, he plans to contend for the position of interim President until national elections are held in August. Despite the difficulties in developing a professional journalistic culture many heartening stories can be told. At a training course in Kabul, where the journalists came from Taliban country, young men talked about a close shave outside Kandahar. They had taken a route through dangerous country in their eagerness to do training, 'because we must'. They were stopped and interrogated at a roadside checkpoint by Taliban who, luckily, did not search and discover their journalist ID cards. If they had the story might have had a different ending: some of their names were on anti-Taliban stories in the local media. I pin my hopes for an independent Afghan media on this simple story, because I must.Table of Contents

Computer Experts Unite to Hunt Worm By John Markoff, New York Times, March 18, 2009 An extraordinary behind-the-scenes struggle is taking place between computer security groups around the world and the brazen author of a malicious software program called Conficker.Since then, the program’s author has repeatedly updated its software in a cat-and-mouse game being fought with an informal international alliance of computer security firms and a network governance group known as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Members refer to the alliance as the Conficker Cabal.The existence of the botnet has brought together some of the world’s best computer security experts to prevent potential damage. The spread of the malicious software is on a scale that matches the worst of past viruses and worms, like the I Love You virus. Last month, Microsoft announced a $250,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the Conficker author.Botnets are used to send the vast majority of e-mail spam messages. Spam in turn is the basis for shady commercial promotions including schemes that frequently involve directing unwary users to Web sites that can plant malicious software, or malware, on computers. Botnets can also be used to distribute other kinds of malware and generate attacks that can take commercial or government Web sites off-line. One of the largest botnets tracked last year consisted of 1.5 million infected computers that were being used to automate the breaking of “captchas,” the squiggly letter tests that are used to force applicants for Web services to prove they are human.

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The inability of the world’s best computer security technologists to gain the upper hand against anonymous but determined cybercriminals is viewed by a growing number of those involved in the fight as evidence of a fundamental security weakness in the global network. “I walked up to a three-star general on Wednesday and asked him if he could help me deal with a million-node botnet,” said Rick Wesson, a computer security researcher involved in combating Conficker. “I didn’t get an answer.”An examination of the program reveals that the zombie computers are programmed to try to contact a control system for instructions on April 1. There has been a range of speculation about the nature of the threat posed by the botnet, from a wake-up call to a devastating attack.Researchers who have been painstakingly disassembling the Conficker code have not been able to determine where the author, or authors, is located, or whether the program is being maintained by one person or a group of hackers. The growing suspicion is that Conficker will ultimately be a computing-for-hire scheme. Researchers expect it will imitate the hottest fad in the computer industry, called cloud computing, in which companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems sell computing as a service over the Internet.Earlier botnets were devised so they could be split up and rented via black market schemes that are common in the Internet underground, according to security researchers.The Conficker program is built so that after it takes up residence on infected computers, it can be programmed remotely by software to serve as a vast system for distributing spam or other malware. Several people who have analyzed various versions of the program said Conficker’s authors were obviously monitoring the efforts to restrict the malicious program and had repeatedly demonstrated that their skills were at the leading edge of computer technology. For example, the Conficker worm already had been through several versions when the alliance of computer security experts seized control of 250 Internet domain names the system was planning to use to forward instructions to millions of infected computers.Shortly thereafter, in the first week of March, the fourth known version of the program, Conficker C, expanded the number of the sites it could use to 50,000. That step made it virtually impossible to stop the Conficker authors from communicating with their botnet.“It’s worth noting that these are folks who are taking this seriously and not making many mistakes,” said Jose Nazario, a member of the international security group and a researcher at Arbor Networks, a company in Lexington, Mass., that provides tools for monitoring the performance of networks. “They’re going for broke.”Several members of the Conficker Cabal said that law enforcement officials had been slow to respond to the group’s efforts, but that a number of law enforcement agencies were now in “listen” mode.“We’re aware of it,” said Paul Bresson, an F.B.I. spokesman, “and we’re working with security companies to address the problem.” A report scheduled to be released Thursday by SRI International, a nonprofit research institute in Menlo Park, Calif., says that Conficker C constitutes a major rewrite of the software. Not only does it make it far more difficult to block communication with the program, but it gives the program added powers to disable many commercial antivirus programs as well as Microsoft’s security update features.“Perhaps the most obvious frightening aspect of Conficker C is its clear potential to do harm,” said Phillip Porras, a research director at SRI International and one of the authors of the report. “Perhaps in the best case, Conficker may be used as a sustained and profitable platform for massive Internet fraud and theft.”“In the worst case,” Mr. Porras said, “Conficker could be turned into a powerful offensive weapon for performing concerted information warfare attacks that could disrupt not just countries, but the Internet itself.”

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The researchers, noting that the Conficker authors were using the most advanced computer security techniques, said the original version of the program contained a recent security feature developed by an M.I.T. computer scientist, Ron Rivest, that had been made public only weeks before. And when a revision was issued by Dr. Rivest’s group to correct a flaw, the Conficker authors revised their program to add the correction. Although there have been clues that the Conficker authors may be located in Eastern Europe, evidence has not been conclusive. Security researchers, however, said this week that they were impressed by the authors’ productivity. “If you suspect this person lives in Kiev,” Mr. Nazario said, “I would look for someone who has recently reported repetitive stress injury symptoms.”Table of Contents

Information Warfare Is Crucial in Combating TerrorismBy Tudor Vieru, Softpedia, 18 March 2009The fight against international terrorism is not just one that is to be carried on the battlefield, a new study conducted by Israeli researchers says. Rather, information warfare is at the forefront of the struggle, as the support or critics of the general population, in any country, can be won or lost very easily through TV shows, newspapers, or the Internet. The security experts warn that the Western world, as well as Israel, are currently on the defensive with this section of the war, and that they must even out the odds, or move to the offensive, if the counter-attacks are to be successful.The new paper has been published in the National Security College's journal, Bitachon Leumi, and has been authored by University of Haifa Ezri Center for the Study of Iran and the Gulf researcher Dr. Yaniv Levyatan. He argues that information is oftentimes even more important when dealing with terrorist groups than conventional weapons and open confrontations.“The terrorist organizations invest efforts in information warfare tools, which enables them to bridge the physical gap between them and their conventional fighting forces. Today, these organizations frequently hold an advantageous stance in this field,” the expert says.“There is a major difference between gathering intelligence for military fighting and gathering intelligence for information warfare. Intelligence for information warfare must relate to components such as who the enemy's elitists are, what their social structure is, and what their political and tribal affiliations are. It is important to know what symbols are significant to the opponents, what the population's primary information channels are, and which messages would be engaged or discarded,” the study also reads.“Information is a weapon, and just like an army invests in tanks and planes, the army must also invest in information weapons. The army must develop abilities and skills that are not always considered as an intrinsic part of its activities – such as computer games, culture products, video clips, and television programs. When the army succeeds in presenting a product of information that incriminates the guerrilla organization, it might be able to meet its required target more efficiently than if it had acted with physical force,” Levyatan concludes.Table of Contents

Aussie Anthropologist Coaching American Generals On How To WinA Conversation With David KilcullenBy Carlos Lozada, Washington Post, March 22, 2009Why is an Aussie anthropologist coaching American generals on how to win wars? David Kilcullen, an Australian army reservist and top adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus during the troop surge in Iraq, has spent years studying insurgencies in countries from Indonesia to Afghanistan, distinguishing hard-core terrorists from "accidental guerrillas" -- and his theories are revolutionizing military thinking throughout the West.Kilcullen spoke with Outlook's Carlos Lozada on why Pakistan is poised for collapse, whether catching Osama bin Laden is really a good idea and how the Enlightenment and Lawrence of Arabia helped Washington shift course in Iraq. Excerpts:

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What is the real central front in the war on terror?Pakistan. Hands down. No doubt.Why?Pakistan is 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the U.S. Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds of the country that the government doesn't control. The Pakistani military and police and intelligence service don't follow the civilian government; they are essentially a rogue state within a state.We're now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state, also because of the global financial crisis, which just exacerbates all these problems. . . . The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today.How important is it to kill or capture Osama bin Laden?Not very. It depends on who does it. Let me give you two possible scenarios. Scenario one is, American commandos shoot their way into some valley in Pakistan and kill bin Laden. That doesn't end the war on terror; it makes bin Laden a martyr. But here's scenario two: Imagine that a tribal raiding party captures bin Laden, puts him on television and says, "You are a traitor to Islam and you have killed more Muslims than you have killed infidels, and we're now going to deal with you."They could either then try and execute the guy in accordance with their own laws or hand him over to the International Criminal Court. If that happened, that would be the end of the al-Qaeda myth.President Obama has said that he will be "as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in." Is his decision to remove combat forces by August 2010 and leave 50,000 non-combat troops careful or careless?I think it is politically careful. The distinction between combat and non-combat forces in a counterinsurgency environment is largely theoretical. Anyone who is still in Iraq will actually or potentially be engaged in combat.How much longer will the war last?The intervention ends when the locals can handle it. Right now they can't. I think that within three to five years, we can say that the chance that the Iraqis will be able to hold their own against their internal threats is pretty high. So I'd say we have another three to five years of substantial engagement in Iraq. But one other factor here is external interference. What are the Iranians doing, what are the Saudis doing, what are the Jordanians and the Syrians doing? The Iraq part is not the problem, it's the regional security part that is the problem.When history has its say, who will be the real father of the surge? Is it Jack Keane, David Petraeus, Raymond Odierno, Fred Kagan? Someone else?It's Petraeus. If this thing had [expletive] up, everyone would be blaming Petraeus. You wouldn't find Keane and Odierno and Kagan and President Bush and everyone else stepping forward. So I think the true father of the thing was and is Petraeus.You argue in your book, "The Accidental Guerrilla," that if Petraeus had been killed in Iraq, the impact on morale alone could have lost the war.Do you fault President Bush for feeding the cult of Petraeus?Our biggest problem during the surge was a hostile American Congress.They could have killed the thing. There was really nobody except [Senators] McCain and Lieberman arguing for a continued commitment. So I don't fault President Bush for pushing General Petraeus forward. I think what he was trying to do was to find a figure with sufficient credibility to restore hope within Congress and to gain a measure of support for the effort from the U.S. domestic population.What are the lessons of Iraq that most apply to Afghanistan?I would say there are three. The first one is you've got to protect the population. Unless you make people feel safe, they won't be willing to engage in unarmed politics. The second lesson is, once

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you've made people safe, you've got to focus on getting the population on your side and making them self-defending. And then a third lesson is, you've got to make a long-term commitment.Obama has suggested that it might be possible to reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, along the lines of the Anbar Awakening in Iraq.Would that work?If the Taliban sees that we're negotiating for a stay of execution or to stave off defeat, that's going to harden their resolve. . . . I'm all for negotiating, but I think the chances of achieving a mass wave of people turning against the Taliban are somewhat lower in Afghanistan than they were in Iraq.Did the U.S. military take too long to change course in Iraq?I think it took them a historically standard period of time. In Vietnam it took three to four years to reorient. In Malaya the British took about the same amount of time. In Northern Ireland they took longer. The British in Iraq took longer than the Americans in Iraq. And again, it was Petraeus. . . . He put forward this whole change movement within the military. We were almost like insurgents within the U.S. government. My marker of success is that when I first arrived, we had to talk in whispers about stuff that is now considered commonplace. The conventional wisdom now was totally unorthodox in '04, '05.Does having a medieval scholar as a father affect how you see war?My father is a true believer in the Enlightenment. He always encouraged me to develop an evidence-based approach to whatever you do. But the other thing is, when I was 10 years old, my dad gave me a copy of a book by Robert Graves called "Good-Bye to All That," which is about the first World War. That was where I first encountered T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. And as a child I was steeped in Lawrence's way of thinking about tribes.. In tribal warfare you don't go directly to your objectives, you work through a ladder of tribes. You go from one tribe to the next tribe to the next tribe to get to your objective. That's what we tried to do in Iraq.In 2006 you wrote an essay on counterinsurgency called "28 Articles,"one-upping Lawrence's "27 Articles." Do you consider yourself a modern-day Lawrence of Arabia?No. I don't think there is a modern equivalent of Lawrence of Arabia.But we can all learn from his thinking about insurgency. The other thing about Lawrence is he understood and worked with the cultures that he dealt with, and he spent the rest of his life advocating policies to support the welfare of those people. He was one the biggest advocates of Arab independence, even when his own nation's policies were against that.Table of Contents

Are Acts of Staged Controversy an Islamist Strategic Tactic?By Madeleine Gruen and Edward Sloan, IPT News, February 27, 2009Through careful study of terrorist incidents and investigations and study of the histories of the terrorist groups, U.S. law enforcement officers, security officials, and intelligence analysts have developed an understanding of the tactics, techniques and procedures used by terrorists preparing for and conducting attacks. Professionals can usually distinguish between a truly suspicious incident and benign behavior. However, there is a third category of non-violent activities that is more difficult to identify, which we will refer to as "acts of staged controversy."There are some cases where witnesses describe actors' behavior as "odd" yet very overt—behavior apparently designed to attract attention. Viewed under differing prisms, the behavior could be classified as either benign or as some type of terrorist activity. Decision makers and practitioners should consider the possibility that certain incidents are staged or that they are escalated by manipulation of the media and the legal system to create controversy and to provoke a response to serve strategic purposes.It is very difficult to prove ulterior intentions behind what we are referring to as "acts of staged controversy." Perhaps these acts are deliberately provocative. Or, it is possible these are innocent events that may be seized upon by advocacy groups for political gain. We present this hypothesis to provide an alternative way of analyzing these types of incidents.

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Strategic Motivations of Islamist GroupsIslamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, do not necessarily intend to engage in violence (though some branches of the Muslim Brotherhood are very violent). Nevertheless, they share the same long-term goal as violent jihadist groups: to establish an Islamic society. Part of their strategy is to weaken and dismantle democratic regimes.[1] They endeavor to "Islamize" society using a bottom up approach[2] so that eventually their doctrines are accepted as the norm rather than considered extreme or marginal.This article offers two cases, both involving the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which describes itself as a Muslim advocacy organization. These cases are meant to be illustrative of how acts of staged controversy may be implemented by groups with an Islamist agenda.Many of CAIR's founding members were members of the Muslim Brotherhood[3] and of a support network created by the Brotherhood to benefit Hamas. Some experts believe that CAIR continues to be deeply involved with the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas and supports their objectives.[4],[5] The Muslim Brotherhood is not considered a monolithic organization, and its various branches may disagree on specific tactics, but all are consistent in their commitment to its core ideological principles, including the adoption of their political version of Islam as a governing standard for all Muslims around the world.[6]In 1991, the Muslim Brotherhood issued a memorandum outlining its strategic goal in North America.[7] It reads, in part:"The [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and "sabotaging" its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah's religion is made victorious over all other religions."Minnesota ImamsOn November 20, 2006, six imams boarded a US Airways jet that was about to depart from Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport for Phoenix, Arizona. They had attended a three-day conference of the North American Imams Federation. Three only had one-way tickets and no checked luggage.[8] Various witnesses reported observing the group praying in an unusually loud20way in the waiting area prior to boarding.[9]One of the witnesses, a clergyman who was familiar with Islamic practices, described their behavior at the gate as "atypical."[10] This same witness was later seated next to one of the imams on the plane and intentionally engaged him in conversation. The imam initially expressed to the witness that he was in the United States to do work related to his Ph.D. Later in the discussion, he admitted he was not doing academic work but instead intended to "represent Muslims in the United States" by generating support for Shari'a law.[11]Upon boarding the plane, the imams dispersed. Two sat in the front of the plane, two in the middle, and two in the rear.[12] The flight crew and passengers observed them changing seats, and several of the men requested seat-belt extenders.[13] Crew members thought the request was odd, as none of the imams appeared overweight.[14] Although the extenders were provided, they were never used and were left on floor of the plane.[15] One passenger stated that she believed that the imams deliberately acted out as a part of an attempt to intimidate airline employees.[16] Another passenger said, "I can't explain it, but it was like they were definitely trying to raise suspicion."[17] The flight was delayed and the imams were removed from the plane by the airport police, questioned, and released after their plane had already departed.CAIR=2 0filed a complaint with the Department of Transportation, and a separate civil suit in federal court on behalf of the imams against US Airways and the Metropolitan Airports Commission, citing civil rights violations. CAIR also sued the "John Does" who alerted the aircrew and authorities after becoming alarmed by the imam's behavior in the terminal and on the plane.[18] While the "John Doe" provision of a bill (designed to protect citizens who report possible terrorist-related behavior from being sued, and to protect officers acting in an official capacity to prevent terrorist attacks) was moving through Congress, CAIR persisted with its lawsuit, claiming the right to discover whether the complaints were actually made "in good faith" or if they were racially motivated.[19]

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President George W. Bush signed the "John Doe" provision[20] into law on August 3, 2007 and CAIR dropped its claims against the "Does."[21] There may be a residual "chilling effect," however, that would prevent concerned citizens from reporting suspicious incidents for fear of getting sued.[22] Causing reluctance to report suspicious incidents in which Muslims are involved may be an aspect of Islamist strategy to reduce resistance to the Islamization of society.In January 2009, the U.S. Department of Transportation ruled that US Airways did not discriminate against the imams and that the airline's actions were reasonable. The civil suit is scheduled to go to trial in August, 2009.[23]Giants StadiumDuring a football game September 19, 2005 at Giants Stadium, five Muslim men were questioned by FBI agents after they prayed near the stadium's main air intake duct located in a sen sitive area.[24] Former President George H.W. Bush attended the game and security was high. After approximately 20 minutes of questioning, FBI agents determined that the group did not pose a threat and allowed them to return to the game.This group may have acted completely innocently. The issue, however, was not dropped by the men, and a few weeks later, on November 2, 2005, the group joined forces with the New Jersey-based American Muslim Union and the New York City chapter of CAIR for a joint press conference concerning the incident. At the conference, the men complained that they had been humiliated at Giants Stadium, and that their "main aim [in publicizing the episode] was to bring to light and educate people about what it is we're supposed to do."[25] They also took the opportunity to promote a campaign called "Pray for Understanding,"[26] which the executive director of the New York office of CAIR described as a w ay to teach people about Islam. The tie-in to the "Pray for Understanding" campaign at the press conference suggests the possibility that the incident at Giants Stadium may have been staged to create a platform to promote an ulterior public relations agenda.What Islamists Might Gain from "Acts of Staged Controversy"The Minnesota Imams and Giants Stadium incidents are just two examples where unusual but overt behavior has been investigated, dropped (because there was no clear indication of wrongdoing), and subsequently taken up and intensified by CAIR or by other Muslim groups. Due to the involvement of Islamist advocacy groups, news stories are generated and controversy stirred.If the objective of Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, is to establish Islam as the dominant global societal doctrine, then how would creating acts of controversy - or seizing on opportunities to create controversy - further their strategy to achieve their objective? If they intend to achieve their objective through non-violent means then it is logical to conclude that they would want Muslims to embrace their perspective and to eschew democratic principles..For example, acts of staged controversy could be used to:Cause Muslims to feel disaffection for the democratic system by promoting feelings of betrayal and abandonment. Convince Muslim Americans that they are not accepted as Americans. Acts of staged controversy provoke a response from authorities that can foment an "us vs. them" rift between Muslims and non-Muslims. Incite political divides that may ultimately cause political instability. Influence legislators to call for laws to outlaw profiling and/or repeal existing laws such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Patriot Act. Draw attention from foreign media in an attempt to show that the U.S. rhetoric about acceptance is hollow.Acts of staged controversy could also be exploited by groups who seek to use violence. For example, acts of staged controversy could be used to:Desensitize security personnel by making activity that common sense would deem suspicious instead seem routine and not wor th any special effort.

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Intimidate security personnel and citizens by threatening lawsuits; making them reluctant to report suspicious behavior.Handling Acts of Staged ControversyUnfortunately, hatred, bigotry, and mistrust exist in the United States, and it is the role of civil rights groups to respond appropriately when acts of hatred do occur. It is the duty of responsible officials to monitor political, religious, and social tensions so that violent acts motivated by hatred can be prevented. The long view for homeland security, however, cannot be compromised by hasty responses to ambiguous situations. It is possible that some Islamist groups may exaggerate the occurrence of anti-Islamic discrimination in order to validate the premise that "Islamophobia" is rampant. According to FBI statistics, out of a total 7,624 hate crimes reported in the United States in 2007, 115 were motivated by anti-Islamic bias.[27] By contrast, 2,658 were motivated by bias against blacks, 749 were anti-white, 1,265 targeted people based on sexual orientation and 969 of the hate crimes reported were motivated by bias against Jews.[28]Law enforcement and security personnel, airline and airport managers, legislators, politicians, media, and private citizens all have roles to play to prevent the spread of extremist ideology, which could lead to radicalization and, ultimately, a possible terrorist event.Response at the Federal, Law Enforcement and Media LevelsPoliticians must acknowledge Islamist ideology is being promoted in the United States, recognize who is promoting it, and understand the subtle tactics used by the Islamist groups before they can introduce effective counter-measures against terrorism. Politicians must realize that Islamist groups are competing for hearts and minds in the United States, so commitment to democratic values cannot be taken for granted.How does law enforcement play a role in acts of staged controversy if there is no apparent crime committed? It is unlawful to conspire and to deliberately disrupt or interfere with the legitimate activities of law enforcement and security personnel. Engaging in deliberately suspicious behavior in order to distract security and law enforcement authorities is a tactic that has been discussed on Islamist message boards.[29] Of course, in ambiguous situations it is hard to prove the actual intent of the actors. Difficult though it may be, investigations should be conducted and cooperating witnesses sought and developed. The stakes are high, especially when the results of these incidents are considered in the aggregate and not individually.Associations with terrorists or terrorist groups are not evidence of a crime, but are valuable data points in evaluating the true nature of an incident. If there are nefarious or questionable associations or prior activities that could shed light on possible motivations for ambiguous acts, they should be made known as much as possible. For example, one of the six imams involved in the Minnesota airport case, Omar Shahin, raised money for the Holy Land Foundation and for the Illinois-based KindHearts Foundation, which the government shut down last year for alleged support of Hamas."[30]Additionally, the media should be aware of the possibility that it is being used to further an Islamist agenda. Media cooperation and extensive coverage is a key element of successful acts of staged controversy. Historically, global political Islamist groups have skillfully manipulated the media as part of their effort to circulate their message.[31] Statements made by spokespeople representing Islamist groups are often taken at face value by the media, and past involvements and associations often go unmentioned. Just as it is for law enforcement, it is important for the media to consider incidents in the aggregate.ConclusionIt could be that individuals or groups unintentionally behave in a way that is deemed suspicious, and that official response may cause embarrassment. It also is true that innocent events create opportunities for groups like CAIR to influence the public's view of Islam, both politically and ideologically.Acts of staged controversy or public relations campaigns manipulat ing otherwise innocent events may be an aspect of Islamist group strategy to Islamize society. Authorities dealing with such incidents should assess the behavior as an aggregate. Their responses should address the root of

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the problem, rather than potentially allowing such incidents to compel a response that supports the Islamist agenda.

[1] Stephen Coughlin,20Analysis of Muslim Brotherhood's General Strategic Goals for North America, Statement entered as evidence in U.S. v. Holy Land Foundation, September 7, 2007.[2] Zeyno Baran, The Muslim Brotherhood's U.S. Network, Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, Vol. 6, Hudson Institute, 2008.[3] Douglas Farah, Ron Sandee, and Josh Lefkowitz, The Muslim Brotherhood in the United States: A Brief History, NEFA Foundation, October 26, 2007, http://www1.nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/nefaikhwan1007.pdf   (last accessed February 26, 2009)[4] See: "Government's Memorandum in Opposition to Council on American-Islam ic Relations' Motion for Leave to File Amicus Curiae Instanter and Amicus Brief in Support of the Unindicted Co-Conspirators' First and Fifth Amendment Rights," USA v. Holy Land Foundation, 3:04cr240 (TXND September 4, 2007) in which prosecutors say "CAIR has been identified by the Government at trial as a participant in an ongoing and ultimately unlawful conspiracy to support a designated terrorist organization, a conspiracy from which CAIR never withdrew."[5] "Beware of CAIR" letter from U.S. Reps. Sue Myrick, Pete Hoekstra, John Shadegg, Paul Broun and Trent Franks to other House members. January 30, 2009. It says "There are indications that this group has connections to HAMAS." And, letter from U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf to Michael Heimback, FBI Assistant Director, Counter Terrorism Division, February 2, 2009. Wolf asks about news reports that the FBI has cut off communication with CAIR "amid mounting evidence that it has links to a support network for Hamas."[6] See The Muslim Brotherhood's English-language web site, http://ikhwanweb.com/index.asp.[7] The Muslim Brotherhood's document outlining their strategy in North America and analysis of the document can be found on the NEFA Foundation web site: http://www.nefafoundation.org/hlfdocs.html. See Exhibit GX 4-21 (last accessed February 26, 2009).[8] Minnesota Airport Police Incident Report, OCA # 06004536, November 20, 2006.[9] Katherine Kersten, Ordering Imams Off Flight Was Reasonable Act, Minneapolis-St. Paul20Star-Tribune, December 7, 2006.[10] Minnesota Airport Police Incident Report, OCA # 06004536, November 20, 2006.[11] Ibid.[12] Ibid.[13] Ibid.[14] Ibid.[15] Ibid.[16] Ibid.[17] Ibid[18] Steven Huntley, Travelers Need Shield From Lawsuit, Chicago Sun-Times, July 29, 2007.[19] Ibrahim Hooper, National Communications Director for CAIR, appearance on "Tucker," MSNBC, July 29, 2007.[20] The Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007 (H.R.1)[21] Audrey Hudson, Imams Drop Lawsuit Against Doe Passengers, Washington Times, August 23, 2007.[22] See Congressman Peter King appearance on Fox News Channel, July 20, 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYbev9SDMtc (last accessed February 24, 2009).[23] David Hanners, Feds Refute Imams' Bias Case Against US Airways, Twin Cities Pioneer Press, February 18, 2009.[24] A Place to Pray During Games, New York Times, November 23, 2005.[25] Jeff Diamant and Russell Ben-Ali, Meadowlands to Add Worship Area, Newark Star Ledger, November 22, 2005.[26] Ibid.[27] Federal Bureau of Investigations, 2007 Hate Crime Statistics, http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2007/incidents.htm (last accessed on February 24, 2009).[28] Ibid.[29] U.S. Department of Homeland Security, HSIA 04-0042, September 2, 2004.[30] Ibid.[31] Madeleine Gruen interview with former high-ranking member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, December 8, 2008. Also see Habib's Get Rich Quick Schemes, Manchester Evening News, December 18, 2008.Table of Contents

Indian Army fears China attack by 2017By Rahul Singh, Hindustan Times, March 26, 2009The Indian military fears a ‘Chinese aggression’ in less than a decade. A secret exercise, called ‘Divine Matrix’, by the army’s military operations directorate has visualised a war scenario with the nuclear-armed neighbour before 2017.“A misadventure by China is very much within the realm of possibility with Beijing trying to position itself as the only power in the region. There will be no nuclear warfare but a short, swift war that

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could have menacing consequences for India,” said an army officer, who was part of the three-day war games that ended on Wednesday.In the military’s assessment, based on a six-month study of various scenarios before the war games, China would rely on information warfare (IW) to bring India down on its knees before launching an offensive.The war games saw generals raising concerns about the IW battalions of the People’s Liberation Army carrying out hacker attacks for military espionage, intelligence collection, paralysing communication systems, compromising airport security, inflicting damage on the banking system and disabling power grids. “We need to spend more on developing information warfare capability,” he said.The war games dispelled the notion that China would take at least one season (one year) for a substantial military build-up across India’s northeastern frontiers. “The Tibetan infrastructure has been improved considerably. The PLA can now launch an assault very quickly, without any warning, the officer said.The military believes that China would have swamped Tibet with sweeping demographic changes in the medium term. For the purposes of Divine Matrix, China would call Dalai Lama for rapprochement and neutralise him. The top brass also brainstormed over India’s options in case Pakistan joined the war to. Another apprehension was that Myanmar and Bangladesh would align with China in the future geostrategic environment.Table of Contents

Pentagon Criticizes China on Military Transparency From Javno, 25 March 2009 China's failure to be transparent about its rapidly growing military capabilities has created uncertainty and risks of miscalculation, the Pentagon said in an annual report released on Wednesday. The report, the first under the Obama adminstration, came weeks after Chinese boats jostled with a U.S. Navy surveillance ship in the South China Sea in a confrontation that heightened tensions over Chinese military activities near its coasts."Much uncertainty surrounds China's future course, particularly regarding how its expanding military power might be used," according to the report on Chinese military power, which was submitted to the U.S. Congress.China was making advances in denying outsiders access to offshore areas and was improving its nuclear, space, and cyber warfare while making its military modestly more transparent, it said, noting potentially global implications to this trend.China's People's Liberation Army has "left unclear to the international community the purposes and objectives of the PLA's evolving doctrine and capabilities," the report added.Risks to the United States and its allies in the Pacific region arise from incomplete Chinese defense spending figures and actions that appear inconsistent with declared policies, said the report, the first under the Obama administration."The limited transparency in China's military and security affairs poses risks to stability by creating uncertainty and increasing the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation," the report said.The emerging Asian superpower could allay concerns and boost transparency through military-to-military discussions with the United States and by publishing better defense papers and other documents, a senior U.S. defense official said.Beijing usually criticizes the Pentagon report, saying it unfairly portrays China as a military threat when it is committed to a "peaceful rise" as its economic power grows.CYBER ATTACKS A CONCERNThe report noted that the recent naval showdown between the two sides took place near Hainan island, where the construction of a navy base gives the Chinese navy access to international sea lanes and allows stealthy deployment of submarines into the South China Sea.

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"The base appears large enough to accommodate a mix of attack and ballistic missile submarines and advanced surface combatant ships," it said. The Pentagon analysis said China is developing weapons that would disable its enemies' space technology such as satellites, and boosting its electromagnetic warfare and cyber-warfare capabilities.China continued to modernize its nuclear arsenal, improving its fleet of ballistic missile submarines to give itself greater strategic strike capability, said the report. China's aircraft carrier research program supported its navy's intention to build multiple carriers by 2020, it added.The United States was increasingly concerned about "computer network intrusions that appear to originate in China," said the defense official, who pointed to a focus on computer defense and computer attack in Chinese doctrine. "Some of these intrusions for the acquisition of data would involve the same types of skills, applications and capabilities that would be consistent with a computer network attack," the official said.In the Taiwan Strait, the balance of forces continued to shift in China's favor as it rapidly built up an arsenal of short-range missiles opposite Taiwan, the report said.Asked if the Pentagon was concerned the analysis could derail bilateral military talks by angering China, press secretary Geoff Morrell said the "straightforward, fact-based report" had "nothing inflammatory or derogatory in it."The Pentagon hoped the report would help in "fostering greater cooperation, greater understanding, greater transparency between our two militaries," he added.Table of Contents

Russian Army Inflates Itself with Fake Tanks From Russia Today, 28 March, 2009Security is not all about super modern technology and powerful weapons. The Russian Army is being equipped with dummies and decoys: inflatable tanks, planes and rocket launchers. Even from a distance of only100 metres, fake military hardware looks exactly like the real thing and it’s effectively used on battlefield positions and to protect Russian strategic installations from the eagle eye of surveillance satellites.Their main task is to distract attention and protect real combat units from strikes.All fitted out to their natural size, the equipment that’s intended to deceive the enemy is produced by ‘Rusbal’, a Research and Development enterprise in the Moscow region.Channel One reports it’s been three years since the Russian Army began purchasing military dummies. Initially, mock-up models were made of plywood, rubber or plastic. But in addition to being heavy, those dummies looked unnatural.Rusbal designers came up with an idea to inflate tanks like air balloons. That the new dummies look very similar to real military hardware is by far not their only virtue.Aleksandr Talanov, the plant’s Director General, told Channel One:“They can reproduce a radar band, a thermal and near infra-red band similar to those produced by night vision instruments. All these makeshift models appear as real hardware on all these instruments.”The dummies irradiate warmth, making an impression of engines being warmed up and repel the radio waves of enemy radars as if they were real combat vehicles.Moreover, to make the illusion more convincing a launcher, for example, can assume traveling or combat positions when photographed from air or from outer space.Yury Stepanov, the enterprise’s laboratory chief explained:“In a real district, a tank’s tower can be fixed more to the left or more to the right, so we show all these positions. There can be additional fuel tanks. The real vehicles can have them.”

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It takes an inflatable tank four minutes and a missile launcher five minutes to be set up on the battlefield. Aleksandr Talanov said that his company plans to create models not only with radar but also with radio-technical bands to enable them to imitate radio traffic and the appearance of working radar aids.Still, the best way to make this sham equipment look real to spy satellites and reconnaissance planes other than to send a group of soldiers to allegedly service this hardware: they can mount guards, carry out repairs and engage in training.In a long-term perspective, Rusbal plans to create dummies of all military equipment that is in the service of the Russian army. Well, maybe except for inflatable soldiers.Whether it’s moral or not, dummies have been used throughout world history as part of military deception.Table of Contents

Senate Legislation Would Federalize CybersecurityBy Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus, Washington Post, April 1, 2009Key lawmakers are pushing to dramatically escalate U.S. defenses against cyberattacks, crafting proposals that would empower the government to set and enforce security standards for private industry for the first time. The proposals, in Senate legislation that could be introduced as early as today, would broaden the focus of the government's cybersecurity efforts to include not only military networks but also private systems that control essentials such as electricity and water distribution. At the same time, the bill would add regulatory teeth to ensure industry compliance with the rules, congressional officials familiar with the plan said yesterday. Addressing what intelligence officials describe as a gaping vulnerability, the legislation also calls for the appointment of a White House cybersecurity "czar" with unprecedented authority to shut down computer networks, including private ones, if a cyberattack is underway, the officials said. How industry groups will respond is unclear. Jim Dempsey, vice president for public policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, which represents private companies and civil liberties advocates, said that mandatory standards have long been the "third rail of cybersecurity policy." Dempsey said regulation could also stifle creativity by forcing companies to adopt a uniform approach. The legislation, co-sponsored by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), was drafted with White House input. Although the White House indicated it supported some key concepts of the bill, there has been no official endorsement. Many of the proposals were based on recommendations of a landmark study last year by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Currently, government responsibility for cybersecurity is split: The Pentagon and the National Security Agency safeguard military networks, while the Department of Homeland Security provides assistance to private networks. Previous cybersecurity initiatives have largely concentrated on reducing the vulnerability of government and military computers to hackers. A 60-day federal review of the nation's defenses against computer-based attacks is underway, and the administration has signaled its intention to incorporate private industry into those defenses in an unprecedented way. "People say this is a military or intelligence concern, but it's a lot more than that," Rockefeller, a former intelligence committee chairman, said in an interview. "It suddenly gets into the realm of traffic lights and rail networks and water and electricity." U.S. intelligence officials have warned that a sustained attack on private computer networks could cause widespread social and economic havoc, possibly shutting down or compromising systems used by banks, utilities, transportation companies and others.

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The Rockefeller-Snowe measure would create the Office of the National Cybersecurity Adviser, whose leader would report directly to the president and would coordinate defense efforts across government agencies. It would require the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish "measurable and auditable cybersecurity standards" that would apply to private companies as well as the government. It also would require licensing and certification of cybersecurity professionals. The proposal would also mandate an ongoing, quadrennial review of the nation's cyberdefenses. "It's not a problem that will ever be completely solved," Rockefeller said. "You have to keep making higher walls." Last week, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told reporters that one agency should oversee cybersecurity for government and for the private sector. He added that the NSA should be central to the effort. "The taxpayers of this country have spent enormous sums developing a world-class capability at the National Security Agency on cyber," he said. Blair acknowledged there will be privacy concerns about centralizing cybersecurity, and he said the program should be designed in a way that gives Americans confidence that it is "not being used to gather private information."Table of Contents

Cyber war: Army says its systems are hack-proofFrom The Times of India, 31 Mar 2009NEW DELHI: The Army is geared up for skirmishes in the digitised battlefield as well. The force is quite confident that its information systems are quite "secure'' from hostile strikes in the backdrop of China-based hacker groups increasingly mounting attacks on computer networks across the globe. "We have put in place a very secure network and I can confidently say that it cannot be tampered with,'' said signal officer-in-chief Lt-General P Mohapatra on Monday. "There are various cryptographic controls that we have put in place and there are training activities to ensure that no loss of information takes place,'' he added. Lt-Gen Mohapatra's statement comes in the wake of reports that a vast cyber spy network controlled from China has hacked into nearly 1,300 government and private computers across 103 countries, including those of the Indian embassy in Washington and the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama. As earlier reported by TOI, the Army is boosting the "cyber-security'' of its information networks right down to the level of divisions, which are basically field formations with over 15,000 troops. Apart from creating cyber-security organisations down to the division-level to guard against cyber-warfare and data thefts, the Army top brass has also underlined the urgent need for "periodic cyber-security audits'' by the Army Cyber Security Establishment (ACSE). This becomes important since both China and Pakistan are known to be bolstering their cyber-warfare or information warfare capabilities at a rapid clip. China, in particular, has made cyber-warfare one of its topmost military priorities, with Chinese hackers breaking into sensitive computer networks of the US, UK, Germany and even India on a regular basis.Table of Contents

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