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Not a week goes by that my news tab doesn't have a few stories on the American survivalist movement, courtesy of the presence of doomsday electromagnetic pulse references in all such pieces. The homespun country paranoids are now firmly in the US entertainment mainstream, notably...
Read all of "White, right wing and paranoid is a terrible way to go through life" »
Al Qaeda's barrel-scrapers continue to be portrayed as capable of posing a huge threat to this country. Now virtually destroyed by US operations, a handful of al Qaeda pismires in a couple of dirt poor countries continue to putter with things that don't work. For...
Read all of "Republic totters on news of innovative underwear bomb" »
Several weeks ago, North Korea launched a missile that, if successful, would have been capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to the continental U.S. In spite of such dangers and despite promises to maintain a vigorous missile defense program, when one looks at budget proposals...
Read all of "Wanted: Missile Defense Program to Meet Threats the U.S. Faces" »
The US military, through a West Point terrorism training school, released documents seized during the Osama bin Laden raid, a year ago this week. Readers know that despite the formidable achievement, for which the President deserves great credit, there has been no bin Laden dividend....
US history is filled with powerful companies and agencies breaking the law to discredit and destroy popular movements that threaten their interests. And so today comes news of powder hoax mail sent throughout NYC, timed to coincide with legitimate May 1 protest....
Read all of "Dirty tricks unleashed on Occupy Wall Street?" »
It is said that a wise man learns from the mistakes of others while a foolish man only learns from his own mistakes. The same applies to disaster preparedness and recovery. The U.S. would be wise to learn from the experiences of Japan in handling...
Read all of "One Year Later: Lessons from Recovery After the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake" »
A year ago this week, the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed was heard throughout the world and headlines read that "justice had been served." To be sure, the death of bin Laden marked a major victory in the war on terrorism. It...
This week's news cycle has been especially full of natsec experts and government men speaking of the threat of Chinese attacks in cyberspace. Such intelligence wars are unsurprising. It is equally unsurprising that foreign powers have always engaged in extensive operations to obtain military and...
History means a lot on the cybersecurity/cyberwar beat. Particularly not knowing it. If you're reporter on the cyber-disaster line you probably don't remember what went on five years ago. And, under no circumstances, do you recall or even care what transpired before that. Short attention/retention...
About a month ago, a want-to-be suicide bomber was arrested just blocks away from Capitol Hill and my office at The Heritage Foundation. Thankfully, a sting by law enforcement agencies kept the public from harm, but the story should be a stark reminder that the...
When trivial e-mails show your analysts are looking at PETA for Coca-Cola, you look bad. When you look bad, your schedule clears out. When your schedule clears out, you grow a scraggly beard. When you grow a scraggly beard, people think you're a beggar. Don't...
Creating bogeymen is a specialty of the US national security complex. It's business, pure and simple. And what better place to gin up fear-based economy business than in the newspaper of America's business, the Wall Street Journal....
Bombing Paupers Incorporated, drone business, is already deployed in the US. But there's a new vigorous push on, and it's all about the money. With the taxpayer already shelling out about the same for unmanned bombing and spying as it does for the FDA, defense...
Read all of "Bombing Paupers Inc comes home: It's all about the money" »
Oklahoma is a place of idiotic whims. This week a Republican legislator moved to outlaw castor seed production. In talking to the local newspaper a bunch of rationalizations bearing no relationship to truth were employed to explain legislation that would ban lowly castor plant agriculture....
Inundated with weekly national security news on a variety of approaching Doomsdays I've occasionally asked, "Which is it to be?" All of them? One? Some? None? How can you tell from reading the usual public testimony of our experts? The answers: (1) You can't tell;...
Ever since 9/11 the United States has been in a war with castor plants. It has done this by making people believe castor seeds are a deadly horror and putting in jail everyone stupid enough to pound them. The rest of the world has shrugged....
The recently released Department of Defense Non-Lethal Weapons Reference Book shows the current listing of mostly useless gadgets, some of which can kill or maim people, currently fielded for the US military. Some have bled into US police forces as a result of the weapons...
Read all of "Blinding lasers, pepper spray and electric rays" »
Yesterday, the Rachel Maddow Show devoted a short segment to non-lethal weapons and the Occupy Wall Street protests. It started with a showing of graphics and citations on the more exotic and menacing non-lethal gadgets developed for the US military, justified by and during the...
Read all of "The rotten cost of non-lethal weaponry comes home " »
Contained within one FBI affidavit, the Georgia Ricin Beans Gang -- Frederick Thomas, Samuel Jerry Crump, Dan Roberts and Ray Adams -- are a number of chats conducted between themselves and an FBI informant. Here is a transcript, with some notes, of the more interesting...
The geriatric Georgia ricin beans gang affords us a look at Old Weird America. It's that dark place that has always been obsessed with self-protection and armaments and driven by paranoia and animosities toward government agency of any kind....
Read all of "Old Weird America, ricin kooks and extremism" »
One of America's weirdest subcultures, the white male ricin kook, is big news today, folks! It's the geriatric Atlanta ricin beans gang, caught by the FBI with one making the absurd claim that he'd just get up on the highway and throw it out of...
Today's top news item, a whoopie cushion expose -- a memoir book teaser from Condoleeza Rich -- in which the lousiest national leadership in national history, the GWB administration, believed it was exposed to botulinum toxin. In its own words they looked an unselfconscious and...
Read all of "Scary Story: Book teaser reveals leaders as lousy as their press" »
A steady stream of press releases from the private sector homeland security industry demonstrates corporate welfare on a daily basis. As example, take one recent announcement on a Department of Homeland Security contract for ricin detection. Like many it shows a company that pretty much...
Read all of "Corporate welfare/entitlement spending in homeland security " »
Computer viruses/malware on US military networks are not remarkable. Ever since I wrote a book on computer viruses in 1994, so it has been. Some of them rise to newsworthiness. Most don't. But because Wired pushed the news of a virus on a computer network...
The New York Times again did no one any favors earlier this week in pushing another story on the regular campaign, by a few from the fringe, to revise the anthrax case. It was high button publicity for the anthrax Ivins-denial-and-conspiracy crew, keeping up the...
Read all of "Fun Cult of Anthrax Deniers Deploys Word Processors for Ivins" »
Counterterrorism has been a central component of policing in the United Kingdom since Irish republicans carried out their first bomb attacks on British soil in 1881. But the attacks that unfolded an ocean away on September 11, 2001, prompted profound changes in British counterterrorism strategy...
Here's my conclusion from ten years of war on terror, one drawn from expert perspective. It's simple: The bad guys won. I don't mean bin Laden or al Qaeda. My view deals with the US mechanism, the security and threat assessment machine that was part...
In the run up to the 10th Anniversary of the 9/11 attack on New York and Washington, the administration has been making the case that has addressed the flaws in homeland security. Furthermore, it has proposed a new counterterrorism strategy that moves the administration from...
Read all of "New Approaches to Homeland Security and Combating Terrorism " »
The weekend's most odious news came from the New York Times and concerned an alleged plot by al Qaeda in Yemen. And the plot (or ongoing plan) involved -- ricin bombs....
Within the body of President Obama's June 2011 National Strategy for Counterterrorism there exists a tension between traditional values and the need for security. The Strategy states that one of our core values is respect for privacy rights, civil liberties, and civil rights, while later...
From the Dept. of It Had to Happen, comes a homeland security warning on terrorists boarding airplanes with surgically implanted bombs. Mount the photo taken from a Batman movie, the one where the Joker has implanted an explosive cell phone in one of his henchmen....
Downloading the wrong papers from the Internet is a cheap ticket to the big house or Her Majesty's hospitality, thanks to the decade-long war on terror. In the Eighties the US survivalist fringe minted the mayhem papers of high stupid that traveled 'round the world....
Read all of "Documents to get you jailed, courtesy of the US survivalist fringe" »
By Benjamin Bahney, Renny McPherson, and Howard J. Shatz Osama bin Laden's death will not end the operations of terrorist cells linked to him or his affiliates. But every bit of evidence pieced together sheds more light on how terrorist groups operate and helps counter...
Read all of "Glimpse of bin Laden Techniques in Captured Records of al-Qa'ida in Iraq" »
Given how markets are responding thus far, Osama Bin Laden's death is likely to have a modestly positive and buoyant effect on equity markets. Business abhors uncertainty. With Bin Laden gone, one major source of uncertainty is removed, along, one hopes, with his hallmark of...
Read all of "How Might Bin Laden's Demise Affect Business?" »
Months before his death, Osama bin Laden -- with the help of corporate America's national security infrastructure, screwed up my driver's license. If you live outside California you probably haven't heard this tale of fail. It's unfolded in slow motion over months, resulting in massive...
Read all of "How Osama bin Laden screwed up my driver's license" »
The death of Osama Bin Laden at the hands of U.S. forces raises the possibility that his followers will try to strike back at the United States. Since attacks such as 9/11 take years to plan, some speculate that they may attempt to launch a...
Read all of "Could Bin Laden's Death Prompt a Cyber Attack?" »
The western press always inflates stories of electromagnetic pulse rays and bombs. They are the fabulous weapons that are always coming -- almost twenty years now -- but never quite arriving. This is in accordance with the rule of law....
Read all of "Cult of EMP Crazy in the Koreas plus a few notes on weapons and China" »
The mythology of Stuxnet is indefatigable. Too many businesses are directly interested in the lasting perception that cyberwar can accomplish anything....
Read all of "Friday's Mixed Nuts: Stuxnet and an amusing WikiLeaks web review" »
The e-mail dump from HBGary Federal, carried out by the Anonymous hacking group, has most famously exposed corporate plots to attack and discredit WikiLeaks, Glenn Greenwald and ThinkProgress. Perhaps less publicized was Ars Technica's story on the corporate development of malware for the US government....
Read all of "Eat Feces & Die: US uses jihad docs on poisons as vector for malware" »
The National Research Council's report today on the science of the FBI's Amerithrax investigation upheld the value of rigorous work. It stopped well short of condemning any of the FBI's work on the case and did not particularly lend itself to cries for the exoneration...
Read all of "Rigor and prudence shown in NRC report on Amerithrax science" »
The United States has spent a lot of time digging its own hole. Handy charts on the total abandonment of domestic manufacturing for non-military goods while arms manufacturing has surged are astonishing....
Read all of "Economic Treason: Abandonment of manufacturing except for weapons" »
Again proving they're not really up on current things in the wastelands of Yemen, news that al Qaeda was threatening Wall Street recently gained no traction. It's next to impossible to frighten the native population when you're alleged targets are already despised throughout the land....
Read all of "Senile al Qaeda Men Threaten Wall St. - No One Cares" »
It's impossible to defend a process in which a 61-year old man with a urostomy is poked and felt for PETN-underwear explosive until his urine bag comes loose and soaks him. No amount of explanation about how al Qaeda likes to use PETN, or apologies...
Loathing of the TSA couldn't be higher and this is a very good thing. But it didn't just happen. Total disgust with security screening has been here for awhile. It just took Tyner's "don't touch my junk" video to light the already short fuse attached...
Read all of "Screwing Over the Public For Fun & Profit in the War on Terror" »
The "don't touch my junk" story furnishes a catalyst to focus public loathing for big parts of the national security apparatus. And, of course, its buzzing devices and technicians, people often afflicted with normal human bad judgment. Rude treatments and callousness embedded as professional good...
Read all of "Big Win for Terrorists and US National Security Business" »
Predatory behavior in US agribusiness now seems so commonplace one can but laugh when the latest notice of tainted egg recall comes through the pipe. And we can titter even more over body X-rays, pat downs and shoe inspections ad nauseam but failed states inhabited...
Explosives the size of toner cartridges that don't go boom don't comprise an existential threat to the country. Another day, another tortured and failed al Qaeda plot. However, it gives us a moment to reflect on the actual social and humanitarian worth of UPS business...
Read all of "When a UPS Pack Means a New Failed Attack, That's Logistics" »
The October 11, 2010 issue of Time "Locked and Loaded: The Secret World of Extreme Militias," took a controversial look at the world of private militias. What the article never mentioned is the not-so-secret world of militias out there called State Defense Forces (SDFs). These SDFs...
Read all of "Documenting the Ranks of Neighborhood Heroes" »
What to do if you're in the business of counter-terrorism in, say, a place like Pennsylvania? And there just aren't enough jihadists around to fill a decent report for the state government client. Answer: Reclassify democratic activity as trouble. Problem solved! While perhaps effective for...
Read all of "Mission Creep: How not to reclassify civilian activities as potentials for terrorism" »
Ricin is a poison found in castor seeds. Since 9/11, the now turned parasitic US bioterror defense industry, always sucking on taxpayer dollars, has worked hard to convince that it's a horrible threat in the hands of terrorists. It's not. And while nuts from the...
The daily newspaper is now always loaded with Dickensian characters. You know, the class of people who hated the last two thirds of A Christmas Carol. Often they have truly negative security implications for the general welfare, a development many don't like to hear about....
Read all of "The Dickensian Character from US Business: A Biosecurity Threat" »
Bob Graham and Jim Talent, a bioterror defense lobbying duo, are the very definition of nuisance astro-turfers. For the last two years, they have regularly bashed the Obama administration with the same story: Bioterror catastrophe of biblical proportion is coming. So heed our advice and...
Read all of "The Graham-Talent lobbying group wants its pie saved" »
Homeland security is a global mission. From securing the border to protecting global supply chains, virtually every aspect of preventing terrorist attacks has an international dimension that requires the United States to work effectively with friends and allies. Only through international cooperation can the United...
Americans are used to helplessness when a corporation goes rogue. But what if you were actually helpless -- inert flesh tied to a table in a business plan run amok? Toay's post takes us to a small firm, one from the heart of the bioterror...
I'm still trying to make sense of the SVR's "illegals" operation that the FBI disrupted with a series of arrests this week. My colleague here at the Naval War College, Tom Nichols, summed up my impressions as well: "Truthfully, I can't figure out what they...
How should the United States counter homegrown jihadist terrorism? With al Qaeda and its jihadist allies extolling the exploits of Major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, and even failed attempts like that of would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shehzad, we...
If you believe that corporations would be willing to make a little less money in order not to put the nation -- their nation -- at risk, you should read Richard Clarke's excellent, just-issued book, Cyber War. As Clarke reports, prior to the 1990s, the...
Richard B. Andres Paul McNiel On February 2nd, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair made cyber security the first item in his Annual Threat Assessment report to the US Senate. Coming on the heels of Chinese cyber attacks on Google, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's...
Read all of "Deterring Chinese Cyber Militias with Freedom Militias" »
In 2007 I joined with several others who spent many years studying nuclear arms to form a mini consensus of the opinion that the greatest threat to our security, that of our allies, and the world, was the combination of terrorists and nukes. To quote,...
The problem isn't the border fence, it's the job hole in the United States and corrupt leaders worldwide supported by Western money. Immigration complicates both these challenges and diminishes national well being. Of course, it was not always so. The Statue of Liberty proclaims, "Send...
The core objective of national strategy is to insure the survival of the nation and the lives of its citizens. For a number of years, Soviet missiles actually threatened our national survival, and this threat obviously had a natural priority - prosperity and the institutions...
Hits at my blog always spike when news of alleged hydrogen peroxide bombing al Qaeda men make the front page. "Terrorism suspect Najibullah Zazi plotted for more than a year to detonate homemade bombs in the United States, had recently bought bomb-making supplies from beauty...
US national strategy is http://sitrep.globalsecurity.org/articles/090202168-strategic-myopia.htm">myopic - short sighted and fragmented. It rests on overall US strategic objectives that are broad and dated. The most authoritative statement is in President George W. Bush's introductory letter to the last National Security Strategy, published in March 2006. He...
America may not be ready for a pandemic like the 1918 Spanish flu, but the US government should be good enough to get through a really bad seasonal flu. That is the conclusion of recent research study by The Heritage Foundation. In a paper called,...
Over the past decade it has become obvious that the world is warming - Arctic and Antarctic ice is shrinking steadily and glaciers are retreating worldwide. Climate models predict a significant increase in global temperature this century, raising concerns that global climate will reach "tipping...
"Only you can prevent terrorism!" -- Cinders the Bear, mascot of the new, improved Department of Homeland Security That's one way to interpret DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano's message on national counter-terror strategy. "Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called on Americans on Wednesday to join a...
Read all of "New Stodge Same as Old Stodge: Napolitano on Counter-Terror" »
"[An electromagnetic pulse attack is] a giant time machine that would move us back in technology a century," opined Congressman Roscoe Bartlett before the House Subcommittee on Emerging Threats, Cybersecurity, and Science and Technology yesterday. It was part of a long meeting convened to discuss...
Read all of "Electromagnetic Pulse Theatre: Man Who Shot Liberty Valance Time" »
Today's cant on cybersecurity is news on 'Einstein,' the security system to be installed on all government computers in order to protect them from cyberspies. "It is supposed to detect known types of cyberattacks and immediately alert the cybersecurity center," reports the Wall Street Journal....
Read all of "Theory of Stupidivity: Your Guarantee of Cybersecurity Failure" »
Unless dramatically reformed, entitlement programs will soon choke out funding for even the most basic and fundamental nation defense capabilities, according a recent report from The Heritage Foundation. The year 1973 saw mandatory government spending (Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare) outpace defense spending for the...
Read all of "How Out of Control Entitlement Spending Is Draining the Defense Budget" »
One of the hottest topics in Washington these days is the debate over where the next major terrorist strike will come from. One avenue of attack cited on several occasions by FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has concerns regarding the Visa Waiver Program (VWP)....
Read all of "Visa Waiver-Vulnerability or Valuable Anti-Terrorist Tool?" »
Immigration remains a significant problem. With some ten million illegal immigrants in the country, it has a major economic impact and troubling security implications. It is difficult to address because there are two basic principles in conflict, well encapsulated by Ruben Navarette's comment of two...
Read all of "Immigration, Globalization and Sustainability" »
It's part of the mythology of the war on terror that jihadists and al Qaeda men are always waiting to strike with ricin. The reality is more dull. The guys who are most interested in ricin have traditionally been American kooks, most frequently from the...
This morning, Steven Aftergood's Secrecy blog at FAS.ORG removed its copy of a .pdf compiled by the US government, a declaration of nuclear sites to the International Atomic Energy Agency. The action appears to be due to increasing pressure caused by mainstream media coverage of...
"President Obama announced a sweeping new initiative to beef up the nation's defenses against attacks on the nation's increasingly important computer networks, including a plan to put a cyber-security chief in the White House," reported USA Today, along with many others. "Cyber-space is real and...
"The Al Qaeda videotape shows a small white dog tied up inside a glass cage," writes famous reporter Peter Bergen for the New Republic. The dog is being killed in a gruesome test. "This experiment almost certainly occurred at the Derunta training camp near the...
Canada has no concerns about US nuclear weapons, even though we have a very large arsenal. Japan, against whom we actually used nuclear weapons, also has no concerns about US nuclear weapons, except for the fact that they help to protect Japan against Russia, China,...
What level of government really commits the most resources to protecting the American homeland? Heritage Foundation Visiting Fellow Matt Mayer looked at the numbers for 111 state and local jurisdictions in "An Analysis of Federal, State, and Local Homeland Security Budgets" and found that from...
Read all of "Homeland Security Grant Tail Wags State Spending Dog" »
The US Navy canceled the deployment of the USS Dubuque after a sailor was diagnosed with the swine flu. How will the military respond if the new A/H1N1 flu reaches pandemic proportions? Flu season is ending in the northern hemisphere. The new flu will...
Is the White House planning on spending more or less on defense? Heritage Foundation analyst Mackenzie Eaglen unpacks all the numbers in "The $64,000 Question: Is President Obama Actually Increasing the Defense Budget?" Here is what she concludes, "President Obama has submitted a budget blueprint...
There is no effective border strategy for dealing with this. If someone crossing the border were affected, they could well show up at the border "asymptomatic" or with symptoms virtually indistinguishable from other flus and colds. There is no way to stop this at the...
Read all of "Responding to Swine Flu; Updates and Implications for Healthcare and Homeland Security" »
According to The Alliance for Science & Technology Research in America one of the greatest challenges the United States faces today is creating the qualified work force we will need for tomorrow. As documented by a report by the National Academies that need is nowhere...
On April 6, 2009 Secretary Robert Gates announced a swath of cuts to defense procurement programs. According to an article in the Financial Times titled Gates takes axe to top weapons projects in US, "Robert Gates, US defence secretary, yesterday unveiled a sweeping overhaul of...
On March 10, a subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee held a hearing on cybersecurity. The report featured testimony from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The GAO identified 12 key areas of improvement identified by a panel of cybersecurity experts (listed in Appendix 1)...
Since 9-11, the federal government has distributed tens-of-billions of dollars in homeland security grants to state and local governments. According to the Congressional Research Service, in FY 2009 Congress appropriated $4.36 billions for these grants. According to the Government Accountability Office, the Department of Homeland...
Catastrophic threats address events which could kill tens of millions of Americans and destroy the nation. Two hundred people a year are killed by asteroid impacts. Actually, that is only a gross average, and it has not happened yet. But the geological record suggests...
U.S. foreign policy is mired in controversies. Iraq is slowly resolving as chaos spreads to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Iran and North Korea both pose nuclear challenges but the nation has little leverage and few options. Nuclear nonproliferation is also strained by the India-Pakistan rivalry; by...
There is an elephant in the middle of the immigration discussions -- a huge presence that is ignored by all. An inconvenient truth that is carefully not addressed: America needs an underclass. Since its earliest days, the American economy has depended on cheap labor. Initially...
