Posts Tagged ‘NG36B’

Open Skies and Comcast Cable: Both things that need to be cut

Posted: November 2, 2019 by ng36b in Uncategorized
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One of the Russian Open Skies Aircraft
By Oleg Belyakov – http://www.airliners.net/photo/Russia—Air/Tupolev-Tu-214ON/2007280/L/, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17241781

Anytime President Trump goes to cancel a treaty, it sure causes a ruckus. Open Skies, a treaty we’ve had with Russia and 32 other countries since 2002 (although the idea traces back to 1955) that allows flights by very specific aircraft with very specific imaging equipment to fly anywhere over the countries of the signatories. It was designed as a mutual-trust building measure to help the then-Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries build trust with their NATO counterparts.

Now President Trump doesn’t see any point to it. Similar to the INF Treaty, Open Skies has outlived its usefulness, for a lot of reasons:

China is a bigger threat. Yup, China. China is absolutely loving the world created for it by the post-World War Two winners, and has benefited tremendously. Not being constrained by Open Skies, INF, START, or a host of other treaties, it remains openly belligerent to its neighbors. Dropping out of US-Russia agreements allows us to restart negotiations and add in China.

We have other surveillance. Open Skies flights are announced in advance, and both sides take steps to limit what can be observed. The actual usefulness of the flights is pretty limited. Plus, with advances in satellite technology, the flights don’t add much value unless you don’t have access to any satellite imagery. Given that you can purchase public imagery, the Open Skies treaty is increasingly becoming irrelevant.

It’s a swipe at Russia. Russia continues to behave aggressively. Ukraine? Georgia? Still missing pieces of territory. If you’re in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, you’re not exactly comfortable with this trend. This, on top of Russia’s push to legitimize tactical nuclear weapon use, makes them increasingly dangerous. Why reward that behavior?

Open Skies is like Comcast Cable. The subscription gives you so little, yet benefits the other side an awful lot. You know you can do better, but that inertia to keep it remains.

We need to cut the cord on Open Skies and all other deals until Russia stops invading its neighbors.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Breaking the SCIF phones

Posted: October 26, 2019 by ng36b in Uncategorized
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What all phones should look like after a SCIF visit.

If you’ve never heard of a SCIF before this past week, you probably don’t work in government. SCIFs are Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities. If you want to read or work on a document that is classified Top Secret, you work in a SCIF. As you can see from a released set of specifications, SCIFs are fairly intensively constructed. Floors and ceilings are solid, wires are in buried conduits checked by the NSA’s TEMPEST program, and access is tightly controlled.

It’s not surprising that when Republican lawmakers go into the SCIF with cell phones, it causes alarm. And it should. Photography equipment isn’t allowed, nor is anything that can conduct two-way communication. Already you have people calling for removal of clearances. But is that appropriate?

In short, no. Congressional Representatives and Senators get access to classified information based on their position. While they are required to take an oath of secrecy, they don’t have to go through the SF86 process. By electing them to their office, the people of the United States (whether they realize it or not) have declared their comfort with that individual having access to classified access.

While some very sensitive information is only released to certain individuals, its pretty small. A Congressman visited a site I worked at before and had access to everything. Now, his staff members did not, and I had to keep them out of certain briefings, but the Congressman himself was good.

In short though, you can’t take away access, unless you kick them out of office.

However, there should be consequences for violating rules. All the Armed Services have harsh and effective ways of dealing with this. Cell phones brought into a SCIF are normally sent to NCIS to be scanned. With people having most of their lives on a phone, losing it for a week while NCIS painstakingly goes through every image and file tends to be good persuasion. The Marines in Iraq, in response to people plugging their personal devices into classified computers, simply confiscated the devices and nailed them to a wooden board outside the SCIF. After walking by a board with iPhones and tablets nailed and screwed to the wall, you get the message quickly.

Confiscate and scan some phones, and put a policy in place that repeat offenders lose their devices. After a few of those, you won’t have idiots bringing phones into a SCIF.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency. The author kindly reminds you to keep your damn phone out of the SCIF!

How’s that Africa plan working out for us?

Posted: October 12, 2019 by ng36b in economy, war
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Map of Nigeria, from Nigeria.ru

With the focus on the Middle East, its easy to forget there are other parts of the world. Africa in particular tends to not make our news feeds. It always makes mine though, and yesterday was more bad news:

Nigeria looks to sign military cooperation deal with Russia this month

with this gem:

““We’re sure that with Russian help we’ll manage to crush Boko Haram, given Russia’s experience combating Islamic State in Syria,” Nigerian envoy Steve Ugbah said in an interview with Russia’s RIA news agency.”

Steve Ugbah, Nigerian Envoy

Ugh.

As a nation we suck at African relationships. Nigeria in particular is a key nation, with not only a relatively functioning democracy, but also a large population and large economy. Nigeria will be a leading force in Africa over the next 20 years. And that is about where our relationship ends.

Our State Department is not pushing relationships forward enough, unlike China and Russia, who are more than happy to offer economic and military incentives to advance their influence in the region. On the military side, we should be pushing for a military collective with African Nations that would help build military standards (similar to NATO), allow collective exercises, provide personnel exchanges and open markets to military sales. On the economic side, Africa presents a unique opportunity break China’s grasp on low-cost manufature and invest in a region that is unlikely to build a military super-giant devoted to destroying the United States. While we’re at it, let’s reevaluate how we do sanctions, since we seem happy to put sanctions on African countries for human rights violations while willfully ignoring those of Arab countries.

Africa could be our answer to China if we let it be. Let’s make that choice vice letting China and Russia turn Africa into their next backyard.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

It was always about burden sharing

Posted: September 21, 2019 by ng36b in Uncategorized
Tags: ,

It’s easy to pick on President Trump for his treatment of allies, given his willingness to call out countries like Germany for not spending their fair share on defense. It’s also easy to gloss over the fact that Europe has taken for granted a strong US presence that guarantees security. Relying on the US to be the muscle in any fight is one thing, but purposely passing the buck and not defending your own nation is another.

Not anymore. An op-ed in the Norwegian news site DN.no written by Professor Janne Matlary outlined a new policy spelled out by the new Secretary of Defense Mark Esper:

“Secretary Esper’s message to NATO countries were that “if you receive infrastructure that we [USA] are building, it’s just fair that you are paying for it”, and Matlary states that the same policy will be valid for Norway and the building of new shelters at Rygge Airport. Matlary states that European countries (including Norway) have avoided the self-imposed 2 percent goal while at the same time believing that burden sharing is limited by that number, now challenged by Secretary Esper’s new policy. Professor Matlary also referred to Ambassador Braithwaite’s NATO op-ed in VG on August 12, asking if Norway’s security should be more important to American tax payers than for Norwegians. She is puzzled the Ambassador has not received any response, asking if Norwegian media and politicians are taking United States for granted, or if it’s too unpleasant to respond to.”

We need allies in any future fight. That is a given. But allies are worthless if they can’t do the basics of providing for some sort of defense of their own country. It would take the US some time to muster forces to defend or possibly liberate any European country, and the fact that Norway, like many other countries, has taken a constant US presence for granted is sad. Our alliances should not be an excuse to stand quietly by while other countries avoid burden sharing.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

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