RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/bidens_disgraceful_retreat.html

By abandoning Afghanistan, the U.S. has given Islamic radicals a base to train, plan, and project terrorism.

For more than a decade, I hunted terrorists as a supervisory special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, and I believe the United States’ abandonment of Afghanistan is a disgraceful, immoral, and short-sighted foreign-policy disaster. 

On September 11, 2001, I was one of the first rescuers to reach the World Trade Center after it collapsed. I stood in the rubble and swore an oath to seek vengeance against the Islamists who targeted the U.S. I pushed my agency to investigate narco-terrorism and spent the next 14 years pursing terrorists across the globe. I helped open DEA’s office in Kabul, wrestled a suicide bomber, fought Taliban in combat, and chased terrorists across five continents. I achieved the first precedent-setting narco-terrorism arrest and convicted the world’s most prolific heroin trafficker.  

For days, I’ve been receiving frantic messages from Afghan allies who are trapped in Afghanistan or have families still in grave danger. The U.S. has a moral obligation to protect Afghan citizens who fought side-by-side with Americans against the Taliban, Islamic State, al-Qaeda, Haqqani Network, and other terror groups. Right now, Islamists are going house-to-house raping and murdering American allies. The rapid abandonment of the Afghan military and our other allies is unconscionable, but there is still time to expand the beachhead at Kabul International Airport and evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans who will be murdered for believing in democracy and human rights.

Despite problems with reconstruction, the war in Afghanistan has been successful. The purpose of the invasion was to depose the Taliban regime that provided a haven for al-Qaeda, and to combat terrorism. The U.S. achieved those goals by pushing the Taliban into Pakistan and denying the country to terrorists for almost twenty years. Southwest Asia has the highest concentration of terror groups in the world, and it is the epicenter of radical Islamic terrorism. A strong military presence in Afghanistan has facilitated intelligence, law enforcement, and military operations against Islamists who want to destroy the West. The advantage of maintaining a military presence in Afghanistan has been obvious.

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/09/01/how-china-and-russia-spy-on-us/#slide-1

With differing capabilities and tactics, both infiltrate American institutions

Do China and Russia share a common set of opponents in world affairs? One might immediately think, yes, they do: the United States, the United King­dom, and their allies.

But an even more persistent danger for the world’s great authoritarians is the free flow of ideas. In their ambition to seize the territories of unwilling neighbors formerly governed without harsh restrictions on information, and in their gradual but relentless drive to control expression and religion, Beijing and Moscow show that they have little tolerance for criticism and no room to allow uncontrolled debate. These are the threats to state power that most trouble Zhongnanhai and the Kremlin.

Beijing and Moscow depend on controlling their own domestic narratives to maintain what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) calls “harmony.” This is why China’s Propaganda Department disciplines print media and why its National Radio and Television Administration controls broadcast outlets. With news on the Chinese mainland under strict control, Hong Kong is the penultimate frontier (the last major one being Taiwan) in Beijing’s drive to exert dominance over Chinese minds.

In Hong Kong, a territory once known for its free press, the CCP wages a continuing campaign against independent voices, such as the now-defunct Apple Daily. Its next targets may be the establishmentarian but stubbornly independent South China Morning Post and the scrappy Hong Kong Free Press — read them while you can.

Contrast this depressing picture with Russia’s. Vladimir Putin exerts direct and personal control over newspapers and broadcasters, as he “appoints editors and general directors, either officially or unofficially,” as the journalist Nataliya Rostova put it in 2015.

Both Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin enjoy a measure of approval (the former more than the latter) but lean on the crutch of media control to present a one-sided picture to their domestic audiences, pursuing different means to the same end: maximum control of ideas in society. This variance is reflected in how they conceive and execute interference and influence operations abroad.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/07/woke-military-failed-miserably-wargame-taiwan-daniel-greenfield/

As the David Horowitz Freedom Center has extensively chronicled in Disloyal Military Leaders, the military leadership has descended into racist virtue signaling and woke antics even while its core warfighting capability continues to be degraded.

This ought to be another wakeup call for a military leadership that is pursuing political correctness at the expense of competence with potentially deadly results for our personnel and for our national security.

A brutal loss in a wargaming exercise last October convinced the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. John Hyten to scrap the joint warfighting concept that had guided U.S. military operations for decades. 

“Without overstating the issue, it failed miserably. An aggressive red team that had been studying the United States for the last 20 years just ran rings around us. They knew exactly what we’re going to do before we did it,” Hyten told an audience Monday at the launch of the Emerging Technologies Institute, an effort by the National Defense Industrial Association industry group to speed military modernization.   

The Pentagon would not provide the name of the wargame, which was classified, but a defense official said one of the scenarios revolved around a battle for Taiwan. One key lesson: gathering ships, aircraft, and other forces to concentrate and reinforce each other’s combat power also made them sitting ducks. 

That’s not exactly surprising. 

The strategies of a variety of opponents, from China to Iran, has been based around deploying mobile and flexible forces against concentrations of American forces. The Taliban in Afghanistan pursued a variation on that same course of action. Being the biggest kid on the block means that the smaller kids will look to their strengths, rather than try to match us blow for blow.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-the-pentagon-take-china-seriously-11625503914?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

U.S. defense leaders have a problem: What they say doesn’t line up with what they do. The mismatch is apparent in the latest Pentagon budget, and a “say-do” gap undermines the trust of Congress and the American people.

Military leaders identify China as our No. 1 challenge, often calling Beijing “an increasingly capable strategic competitor,” as Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley has warned, or a “pacing” threat. Yet the budget request reduces the ability of the Navy and the Air Force—the services that would have outsize roles in any conflict in the Western Pacific—to respond to threats in that region. Meanwhile, the budget promises undeveloped weapons that may take decades to enter the fleet, funded by a “divest to invest” strategy.

The Navy wants to retire 15 ships, including seven guided-missile cruisers and four littoral combat ships, while procuring only two surface combatant ships and two submarines. (Congress’ budget draft would buy another destroyer and limit the retirements.) Naval aviation procurement dropped 15.6% over 2021 even as the Navy speeds up F/A-18 retirements. The USS Ronald Reagan, based in Japan to counter a threat from China, is overseeing the Afghanistan withdrawal in the Middle East because no other aircraft carrier is available. Meanwhile, China is building warships at an astonishing rate. In 2010 the U.S. Navy had 68 more ships than the Chinese navy. Today, it has 63 fewer, a swing of 131 ships in 10 years.

The Air Force is also following the Pentagon’s “divest to invest” lead. Combat aircraft procurement is down 22% from 2021. The force wants to retire 137 aircraft, more than double the number it plans to buy. After the retirement of 17 B-1s last year, the Air Force’s bomber inventory is at a level top officers have called the bare minimum. Ammunition procurement is down more than 40%. China in recent years has focused on procuring advanced aircraft and has the world’s third-largest air force. In addition, China has an extensive ground-based conventional missile force, including the DF-26, known as the “carrier killer” which is capable of striking Guam.

https://www.reuters.com/technology/hackers-demand-70-million-liberate-data-held-by-companies-hit-mass-cyberattack-2021-07-05/

Between 800 and 1,500 businesses around the world have been affected by a ransomware attack centered on U.S. information technology firm Kaseya, its chief executive said on Monday.

Fred Voccola, the Florida-based company’s CEO, said in an interview that it was hard to estimate the precise impact of Friday’s attack because those hit were mainly customers of Kaseya’s customers.

Kaseya is a company which provides software tools to IT outsourcing shops: companies that typically handle back-office work for companies too small or modestly resourced to have their own tech departments.

One of those tools was subverted on Friday, allowing the hackers to paralyze hundreds of businesses on all five continents. Although most of those affected have been small concerns – like dentists’ offices or accountants – the disruption has been felt more keenly in Sweden, where hundreds of supermarkets had to close because their cash registers were inoperative, or New Zealand, where schools and kindergartens were knocked offline.

The hackers who claimed responsibility for the breach have demanded $70 million to restore all the affected businesses’ data, although they have indicated a willingness to temper their demands in private conversations with a cybersecurity expert and with Reuters.

“We are always ready to negotiate,” a representative of the hackers told Reuters earlier Monday. The representative, who spoke via a chat interface on the hackers’ website, didn’t provide their name.

Voccola refused to say whether he was ready to take the hackers up on the offer.

“I can’t comment ‘yes,’ ‘no,’ or ‘maybe’,” he said when asked whether his company would talk to or pay the hackers. “No comment on anything to do with negotiating with terrorists in any way.”

The topic of ransom payments has become increasingly fraught as ransomware attacks become increasingly disruptive – and lucrative.

Voccola said he had spoken to officials at the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Homeland Security about the breach but declined to say what they had told him about paying or negotiating.

https://cybersecurity.att.com/blogs/security-essentials/a-mid-year-update-for-cybers

It is nearing the mid-year point of 2021, and already it can be characterized as” the year of the breach.” Many companies and institutions saw their security perimeters pierced by hackers including the mega-breaches of Solar Winds and the Colonial Pipeline.  The scale of penetration and exfiltration of data by hackers and the implications are emblematic of the urgency for stronger cybersecurity.  Although there are a variety of trends emerging in the first six months, below are four that stand out as barometers of what lies ahead.  

1. Ransomware attacks are taking center stage as Cyber-threats

There is ample evidence that ransomware has become a preferred method of cyber-attack choice by hackers in 2021. As of May 2021, there has been a 102% surge in ransomware attacks compared to the beginning of 2020, according to a report from Check Point Research.

Hackers have found ransomware ideal for exploiting the COVID-19 expanded digital landscape. The transformation of so many companies operating is a digital mode has created many more targets for extortion. One office with 4,000 employees has become 4,000 offices. In addition to an expanding attack surface, hackers are more active than before because they can get paid easier for their extortion via cryptocurrencies that are more difficult for law enforcement to trace. Criminal hacker groups are becoming more sophisticated in their phishing exploits by using machine learning tools. They are also more coordinated among each other sharing on the dark web and dark web forums.

In 2020, according to the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, ransomware gangs attached more than 100 federal, state, and municipal agencies, upwards of 500 health care centers, 1,680 educational institutions and untold thousands of businesses. As a result of the Colonial Pipeline Ransomware attack and others, the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI have prioritized investigating and prosecuting hackers who deploy ransomware.

The impact for the rest of 2021 will be more ransomware attacks against institutions and corporations who are less cyber secure, especially to targets that cannot afford to have operations impeded such as health care, state & local governments, educational institutions, and small and medium sized businesses.

See: The New Ransomware Threat: Triple Extortion – Check Point Software

Why Ransomware is So Dangerous and Difficult to Prevent | Manufacturing.net

2. Cyber-attacks are a real threat to commerce and economic prosperity

So far this year, cyber-attacks have grown in number and sophistication, repeating a trend of the last several years. The recent cycle of major industry and governmental cyber breaches is emblematic of growing risk. The attacks are also becoming more lethal and costly to industry. A new NIST report was released on the economic impact to the U.S. economy by breaches, and it is alarming. The report suggests that the U.S. Loses hundreds of billions to cybercrime, possibly as much as 1 % to 4 % of GDP annually. The beach stats are part of a bigger global trend. The firm Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that global cybercrime damages will reach $6 trillion annually by this end of this year. The firm’s damage cost estimation is based on historical cybercrime figures including recent year-over-year growth, a dramatic increase in hostile nation-state sponsored and organized crime gang hacking activities, and a cyberattack surface.

In both the public and private sectors, there is a growing understanding of the seriousness and sophistication of the threats.  The list of adversarial actors is a large one that include states, organized crime, terrorists, and loosely affiliated hackers. To protect economic prosperity, there has been a movement for more threat information sharing and technical coordination between industry and government to filed tools and procedures that can better protect the crown jewels of critical infrastructure.

See:  Evidence suggests that the U.S. Loses Hundreds of Billions to Cybercrime, Possibly as much as 1 % to 4 % of GDP Annually | NIST

Global Cybercrime Damages Predicted to Reach $6 Trillion Annually By 2021 (cybersecurityventures.com)

3. Emerging technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence are impacting the digital ecosystem

https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/21/democrats-are-turning-homeland-security-into-a-political-weapon/

When a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence says directly into a camera that fighting terror may now mean arresting members of Congress, the blood sport of politics has been taken to a new and more dangerous level.

Speaking on MSNBC recently, Frank Figliuzzi opined to Chuck Todd that: “Arresting low-level operatives is merely a speed bump, not a road block. In order to really tackle terrorism … and this time domestically … you’ve got to attack and dismantle the command-and-control element of the terrorist group, and unfortunately, and I know this is painful to hear … that may mean people sitting in Congress right now, people in and around the former president.”

It is the stuff of banana republics when political opponents are locked up, and this was urged not by a fringe activist on an obscure YouTube channel, but by a former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official on the second-most-watched cable news network, with no gasp from the host. Is this what “homeland security” has become?

Clearly, much has changed since 9/11, when President George W. Bush instituted a new office to “secure the United States from terrorist threats of attacks” that eventually became the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). With a $40 billion budget and more than 240,000 employees, it is now a behemoth eclipsed in size only by the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

Although established with noble purpose, there is growing evidence that its focus has evolved in a direction those voting for its creation never imagined. Those with the secret clearances and shiny badges are increasingly scrutinizing our homeland, not for external attackers, but our own people.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/06/cyberfollies_at_homeland_security.html

Russia, China, and the balance of the world’s bad cyber-actors won’t stop attacking American commercial and infrastructure targets like the Colonial Pipeline and JBS, the world’s largest meat-processing company, until we make them pay an unacceptable price.  Unfortunately, Congress and the federal government accept that grave risk.

America is a sitting duck to cyber-criminals and state actors, who easily harvest our intellectual property, degrade our communications, create false information that influences our politics, and erode our national will from keyboards abroad.

Yes, cyberspace operations are the new nuclear weapons and can be scaled from pinpricks up to attacks that cripple entire countries.  The threat is so serious that it ought to capture the attention of every American.

The tip of the threat is cyber-crime, which costs the world perhaps $6 trillion annually, but more worrisome are state-sponsored cyber-attacks.  After all, cyber is an invisible weapon to impose a cost and consume resources.  No wonder our enemies in Moscow and Beijing host significant offensive cyber-armies and a variety of cyber-proxies that sow discontent and keep America tied down — an effective strategy.

President Joe Biden’s promise to put Russian president Vladimir Putin on notice for harboring cyber-criminals is an empty threat.  Putin knows that America offers easy cyber-targets, such as last month’s ransomware attack, which locked up Colonial Pipeline’s computers, leaving East Coast gas tanks empty for more than a week.

• GovCon Expert Chuck Brooks: Chief Data Officers Growing Importance In Digital Transformation of Government – GovCon Wire
• https://www.govconwire.com/2021/06/chuck-brooks-on-chief-data-officers-role-in-government-digital-transformation/
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• 4 Beckoning Cyber-Threat Challenges
• by Chuck Brooks ⁦‪
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• https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckbrooks/2021/05/09/4-beckoning-cyber-threat-challenges/
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• A Look into Chuck Brooks’s Alarming Cybersecurity Stats
• A Look into Chuck Brooks’s Alarming Cybersecurity Stats – Security Boulevard
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• The Emerging Paths Of Quantum Computing by Chuck Brooks
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• https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckbrooks/2021/03/21/the-emerging-paths-of-quantum-computing/
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• GovCon Expert Chuck Brooks: Strategic Paths of Cybersecurity”
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• https://www.govconwire.com/2021/03/govcon-expert-chuck-brooks-strategic-paths-of-cybersecurity/
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• Technado: Georgetown University’s Chuck Brooks
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• Technado, Ep. 202: Georgetown University’s Chuck Brooks – Bing video
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• Priority of Protecting Digital Critical Infrastructure Will Grow in 2021
• Chuck Brooks, President of Brooks Consulting International
• https://cip-association.org/priority-of-protecting-digital-critical-infrastructure-will-grow-in-
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• 3 Key Cybersecurity Trends To Know For 2021
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckbrooks/2021/04/12/3-key-cybersecurity-trends-to-know-for-2021-and-on-/?sh=232922c14978
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• GLOSERV The Growing Cybersecurity Threats To Services and Retail Industries by Mr. Chuck Brooks

• GLOSERV The Growing Cybersecurity Threats To Services and Retail Industries by Mr. Chuck Brooks – Bing video