All posts tagged: Department of Defense

A Vigilante Hacker Took Down North Korea’s Internet. Now He’s Taking Off His Mask

A Vigilante Hacker Took Down North Korea’s Internet. Now He’s Taking Off His Mask

“That’s not nice, and it’s not a good norm,” says Schneider. She says that much of the US government’s slow approach to cyberattacks stems from its care to ensure it avoids unintentionally hitting civilians as well as breaking international law or triggering dangerous blowback. Still, Schneider concedes that Caceres and Angus have a point: The US could be using its cyber forces more, and some of the explanations for why it doesn’t amount to bureaucracy. “There are good reasons, and then there are bad reasons,” says Schneider. “Like, we have complicated organizational politics, we don’t know how to do things differently, we’re bad at using this type of talent, we’ve been doing it this way for 50 years, and it worked well for dropping bombs.” America’s offensive hacking has, by all appearances, gotten less aggressive and less nimble over the past half decade, Schneider points out. Starting in 2018, for instance, General Paul Nakasone, then the head of Cyber Command, advocated a “defend forward” strategy aimed at taking cyber conflict to the enemy’s network rather …

US Lawmaker Cited NYC Protests in a Defense of Warrantless Spying

US Lawmaker Cited NYC Protests in a Defense of Warrantless Spying

The second slide in Turner’s presentation featured the tweet by Foldi, which likewise references a march on Schumer’s home. That protest, however, took place nearly a month after the first. HPSCI’s claim that Hamas may have incited the demonstration appears solely based on this remark by Foldi, who claims the protesters were responding to a call issued by a pro-Palestinian group known as Samidoun. However, that wasn’t the case. The only evidence of the Palestinian group’s involvement is that the protest was included on a calendar maintained by Samidoun on its website. The calendar currently lists more than 5,000 protests that have taken place around the world, from Australia and England to Finland, Nigeria, Iceland, and Japan. The same site bears a disclaimer that notes the list includes protests not organized by Samidoun, and visitors are encouraged to submit details about events being organized in their respective countries. Foldi went on to portray Samidoun as having been “banned from Germany and booted from numerous payment processors over suspicions of acting as a Hamas front group.” …

The 4 Big Questions the Pentagon’s New UFO Report Fails to Answer

The 4 Big Questions the Pentagon’s New UFO Report Fails to Answer

But what, then, were those programs? Herein lies the most intriguing—and potentially ground-breaking—question that the Pentagon study leaves us wondering: What exactly are the secret compartmentalized programs that the whistleblowers and government witnesses misidentified as being related to UAP technology? What, exactly, are the Pentagon, intelligence community, or defense contractors working on that, from a concentric circle or two away inside the shadowy world of SAPs, looks and sounds like reverse-engineering out-of-this-world technology or even studying so-called “non-human biologics”? There are at least four clear possibilities. Secret Tech From Foreign Nations First, what exotic technological possibilities have been recovered from unknown terrestrial sources? For example, if the government is working on reverse-engineering technologies, those technologies are likely from advanced adversary nation-states like China, Russia, and Iran, and perhaps even quasi-allies like Israel that may be more limited in their technology-sharing with the US. What have other countries mastered that we haven’t? A Question of ‘Peculiar Characteristics’ Second, what technologies has the US mastered that the public doesn’t know about? One of the common threads of …

How the Pentagon Learned to Use Targeted Ads to Find its Targets—and Vladimir Putin

How the Pentagon Learned to Use Targeted Ads to Find its Targets—and Vladimir Putin

Most alarmingly, PlanetRisk began seeing evidence of the US military’s own missions in the Locomotive data. Phones would appear at American military installations such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina and MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida—home of some of the most skilled US special operators with the Joint Special Operations Command and other US Special Operations Command units. They would then transit through third-party countries like Turkey and Canada before eventually arriving in northern Syria, where they were clustering at the abandoned Lafarge cement factory outside the town of Kobane. It dawned on the PlanetRisk team that these were US special operators converging at an unannounced military facility. Months later, their suspicions would be publicly confirmed; eventually the US government would acknowledge the facility was a forward operating base for personnel deployed in the anti-ISIS campaign. Even worse, through Locomotive, they were getting data in pretty close to real time. UberMedia’s data was usually updated every 24 hours or so. But sometimes, they saw movement that had occurred as recently as 15 or …

Pentagon chief in critical care unit, transfers power to deputy

Pentagon chief in critical care unit, transfers power to deputy

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was admitted into the critical care unit for a bladder issue on Sunday night after transferring his duties to the deputy defense secretary earlier Sunday, Walter Reed Military Medical Center officials announced. Austin, 70, underwent a series of tests and evaluations Sunday night at Walter Reed after showing symptoms “suggesting an emergent bladder issue,” earlier in the day, the hospital’s doctors said in a statement. He was later admitted into the critical care unit for “supportive care and close monitoring,” doctors added. The Pentagon announced Austin’s hospitalization earlier on Sunday and confirmed Austin transferred his functions and duties to Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks shortly before 5 p.m. Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder initially said Austin would be “retaining” his functions and duties of the office, but noted the deputy secretary was prepared should she need to assume duties. Walter Reed officials did not have an estimate for how long Austin will remain in the hospital. The top defense chief was diagnosed with prostate cancer in early December, with …

Jeffries says Pentagon leader shouldn’t resign after scandal

Jeffries says Pentagon leader shouldn’t resign after scandal

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said he thinks Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin should not resign following a scandal about the transparency behind his recent hospitalization. Austin underwent surgery for prostate cancer in a Dec. 22 hospital visit that was kept secret from the White House. On Jan. 1, he was taken to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for complications, a visit he also kept secret for days. The Pentagon and the Biden administration have faced extreme scrutiny in recent days after it was revealed that Austin had been hospitalized for four days. It was later revealed that President Biden and top defense officials had not been aware of the secretary’s condition for three days. “From my standpoint we need far more information before I can make any detailed comment on the appropriate comment on the ways forward. But I do not believe Secretary Austin should resign,” Jeffries said at a press conference Thursday. Jeffries said his thoughts and prayers are with Austin, a man who “served his country for decades.” He said he …

Operation Warp Speed, but for Everything Government Does

Operation Warp Speed, but for Everything Government Does

The U.S. government can achieve great things quickly when it has to. In November 2020, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency-use authorization to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for COVID-19. Seven days later, a competing vaccine from Moderna was approved. The rollout to the public began a few weeks later. The desperate search for a vaccine had been orchestrated by Operation Warp Speed, an initiative announced by the Trump administration that May. Developing, testing, manufacturing, and deploying a new vaccine typically takes a decade or more. OWS, which accomplished the feat in months, belongs in the pantheon of U.S. innovation triumphs, along with the Manhattan Project and the Apollo moon-landing program. It’s a case study in how the U.S. government can solve complex, urgent problems, and it challenges the narrative that public institutions have lost their ability to dream big and move fast. Read: The one area where the U.S. COVID-19 strategy seems to be working That narrative, sadly, has ample basis in recent history. Many efforts to upgrade the nation’s transportation systems falter because, as …

Qatar Can’t Go On Like This

Qatar Can’t Go On Like This

As Israel and Hamas sink deeper into conflict, Doha finds itself in a delicate position. As a long-standing backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, Qatar has huge influence over the movement’s Palestinian affiliate, Hamas. That offers a significant opportunity in the short run. Doha’s deep connections with the Gaza-based Islamist group make Qatar a central player in the current diplomatic game. But for exactly the same reason, Doha faces the looming risk of being called to account over its record of support for such radical Islamist groups, and especially for Hamas. Doha has a long history of serving as a broker, and in the past, this has often worked well for the Gulf state. By allowing the Taliban to establish a Doha office, Qatar provided the U.S. with a channel for negotiations with the group. Doha thus facilitated the agreement to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan concluded under the Trump administration and carried out by President Joe Biden in 2021. Qatar hopes to play a similar role now. Doha has provided a home for much of …