Peritz, senior national security adviser to the Third Way think tank, and Rosenbach, deputy assistant secretary of defense, draw on their work with the CIA and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence respectively, for this behind-the-scenes look at the evolution of counterterrorism tactics since 9/11. They begin by noting that America lacked a strategy to “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda” in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Moreover, a comprehensive strategy—combining counterinsurgency operations (COIN) and “targeted counterterrorism operations…to find, fix, and finish” al-Qaeda leaders—emerged fitfully in “painful, halting steps” over the decade following the attack. Focusing on counterterrorism operations, the authors note that the program initially sought to finish al-Qaeda leaders by taking them alive.

But, when that led the U.S. into moral traps—rendition, enhanced interrogation techniques—the Bush, and later Obama, administrations shifted to a strategy of killing them via drone strikes. However, Peritz and Rosenbach are ultimately equivocal about the “targeted killing program,” acknowledging its success in “wearing away al-Qaeda’s effectiveness” while dismissing it as a short-term “whack-a-mole” measure. Despite their status as former insiders, the book is short on revelations and long on ambiguity. Agent: Matthew Carnicelli, Carnicelli Literary Management. (Mar.)

The Pakistani military remains an opaque entity, both inside and outside of the country.  Few publicly available reports exist for those seeking a basic understanding of its leaders, functions, or allegiances.  An Introduction to Pakistan’s Military is the first of two Belfer Center reports examining the Pakistani military.  To assemble this report, the authors interviewed over two-dozen retired Pakistani military officers, principally in Islamabad and Karachi.  The authors also conducted nearly forty additional interviews with Pakistani politicians, civil society actors, journalists, and military experts, as well as with US and European military, diplomatic, and intelligence officers and analysts.

The first report examines Pakistan’s:

• Overall strategic security and threat environment;
• Military history since 1947;
• Conventional military capabilities;
• Nuclear strategy and security posture; and
• Current counterinsurgency (COIN) efforts (briefly).

The second report will:

• Explore in more detail Pakistan’s current counterinsurgency efforts;
• Evaluate threats to internal cohesion and fears of Islamist infiltration into the Pakistani military;
• Assess the traits of current and future Pakistani military leaders; and
• Examine the relationship between the Pakistani military and the civilian government.

Read the whole report.

Does the United States really need an Office of the Director of National Intelligence to protect itself?

After all, Gen. David Petraeus, the most-lauded U.S. general in two generations, was confirmed by the Senate as CIA director June 30, and Leon Panetta — widely regarded as one of the most effective managers-who-is-also-a-Democrat — was sworn in as defense secretary July 1. The U.S. now has the national security dream team overseeing the vast majority of its intelligence community.

Better yet, there’s now a military man at the CIA and an intelligence guy at the Defense Department — so Petraeus and Panetta have a deep understanding of the other’s organization. Do they really need James Clapper, the current director of national intelligence, telling them how to “get along”? The answer, clearly, is no. The ODNI was a bad idea that hasn’t improved with age.

This isn’t meant as an attack on Clapper, a career intelligence officer who has succeeded in multiple government capacities. But between the twin Beltway behemoths of Petraeus and Panetta, Clapper — theoretically in charge of the U.S. intelligence bureaucracy — stands little chance of making his voice heard.

In just about any future high-stakes institutional knife fight between the ODNI and the Pentagon or the CIA, Clapper, armed with only a glut of midlevel bureaucrats and ever-expanding stacks of memoranda, is likely to get cut to ribbons.

It also remains unclear whether the ODNI has overcome the problems that have plagued it since the beginning. In 2009 (long before Clapper took over), the organization’s inspector general released a fiery report, noting that the new office had failed to live up to its mission. Among the damning conclusions was that “the majority of the ODNI and [intelligence community] employees [including many senior officials] … were unable to articulate a clear understanding of the ODNI’s mission, roles and responsibilities.”

In addition, other intelligence agencies complained that the ODNI “sends duplicative taskings and conflicting messages, … thereby undermining the ODNI’s credibility and fueling assertions that the ODNI is just an ‘additional layer of bureaucracy.’”

Perhaps Clapper has stanched the rapidly expanding bureaucratic hemorrhage the report revealed. But even the casual reader could see that the problems are largely systemic — not something that a change at the top can easily fix.

Congress should revisit the legislation that created the ODNI and re-evalutate its official mission to “forge an intelligence community that delivers the most insightful intelligence possible.”

It isn’t working that way now — and never has.

One reason is its hasty, ill-considered conception. In the rush to answer the 9/11 Commission’s recommendations, Congress made a serious mistake — the committees responsible for the final language of the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act did not have jurisdiction over the intelligence communities, did not know how the intelligence budgets worked and were under tremendous pressure to deliver legislation that would pass the president’s desk.

As a result, a number of politically expedient but unworkable solutions became real, complicating and permanently hamstringing the ODNI.

I disagree with Eugene Robinson’s characterization that President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan last week was “disheartening” [“A far-too-slow drawdown,” op-ed, June 24].

By focusing on troop numbers, most pundits missed the speech’s larger, deeper point: The president was advancing a strong centrist policy that articulated how America should make international policy decisions. Mr. Obama sidestepped the false choices of neoconservative military adventures and stultifying isolationist tendencies. Furthermore, the president fundamentally linked strength in the international area to strength at home: A strong home front means a nation able to fulfill its obligations abroad.

If this real-time formation of an emerging foreign policy doctrine isn’t heartening, I’m not sure what is.

As US lawmakers continue to debate whether to continue to fund Pakistan to the tune of $3 billion a year, many Americans are seriously reevaluating whether Pakistan is indeed a trustworthy partner. CIA Director Leon Panetta recently told US lawmakers Pakistani authorities are either “involved or incompetent” suggesting the country’s ability to maintain a coherent national security strategy that benefits American interests is questionable at best. Still, cutting the country off ultimately will have worse outcomes for the US since suspending aid will force Islamabad to rely even more on militant proxies and China to serve its baseline security requirements.

Why would Pakistan’s leaders pursue such a risky strategy? Simple: Pakistan cannot compete militarily with its greatest adversary, India, and thus requires unconventional abilities — nuclear weapons and non-state actors — to keep its rival off-balance. After all, Pakistan’s military is half the size of India’s, and core population centers and critical highways are within striking distance of Indian ground forces. By most projections, Pakistan would not survive a conventional war with its neighbor for more than a few weeks without international intervention.

Still, Americans are often surprised when they discover Pakistan maintains relationships with militant groups. Since Pakistan’s founding, however, its leaders have consistently supported violent non-state actors to meeting the country’s security needs. As early as 1947, Pakistan’s first Prime Minister covertlyauthorized irregular forces called lashkars to invade the disputed Kashmir region. Pakistan again exploited irregular forces in its 1965 war, inserting them into Kashmir under an ill-fated plan called Operation Gibraltar. More recently, Pakistani intelligence services also provided long-term support for various Kashmir-focused militant groups — including many on the US State Department’s Foreign Terrorist Organization list — as well as nurtured the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, Pakistan has few consistently reliable diplomatic relationships to achieve its national security goals. The most telling example is Pakistan’s relationship with the US. As any cursory glance at a history book would indicate, Washington’s friendship with Islamabad ebbs and flows, depending on the crisis of the month. The US used Pakistan to fight proxy wars against the Soviets, but also imposed punishing military sanctions via the Pressler Amendment on the country due to the “discovery” of the widely-documented-but-officially-clandestine nuclear weapons program. After the 1997 nuclear tests, the US imposed further sanctions on Pakistan. These sanctions were of course lifted after the 9/11 attacks because the US again required Pakistani support in the conflict against al Qaeda.

Where, then, would Pakistan turn for international support if America indeed withdraws its helping hand? The answer is likely Pakistan’s “all weather friend,” the People’s Republic of China. Since Pakistan was the first non-Communist country to recognize Mao’s government in Beijing, China has maintained close diplomatic relations and has repaid this early debt many times over by assisting Pakistan develop economically and militarily. For instance, China helped construct the Pakistani Army’s engineering complex at Taxila; develop military shipyards in Karachi; and recently greenlighted the purchase of advanced fighter aircraft.

China also assisted Pakistan in their greatest challenge — the quest to build nuclear weapons. As early as the mid-1970s, China provided Pakistan with critical nuclear precursors, triggering mechanisms, and training which the Pakistanis used to develop nuclear weapons. The US knew this: a declassified 1983 State Department cable concluded that China helped “develop [Pakistan's] nuclear weapons capability…[for] fissile material production and possibly also [a] nuclear device design.” The Washington Post also reported that US intelligence officials even broke into Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan’s luggage in the early 1980′s, discovering blueprints for a China-designed nuclear weapon.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, China leaves Pakistan to its own devices. Unlike Washington, Beijing does not press Islamabad on any major political issue, whether it is internal reform, human rights, or support for Kashmiri groups. China provides Pakistan friendship with few strings attached.

In turn, China would enjoy a warmer Pakistani embrace because Beijing views Pakistan as a valuable hedge against India. As China continues to flex its military and economic muscles across the southern rim of Asia and engages in the global competition for raw materials, Beijing sees its strong alliance with Islamabad as advantageous. In any case, China was the only country to give India a military thrashing — decisively defeating the Indians in 1962 — providing a future template in the event a regional power struggle between the two nations again turned hot.

Hence, it is not in America’s interests to drive Pakistan further into a corner. As Steven Coll wryly noted, Pakistan may be the too-big-to-fail “A.I.G. of nation-states” — and to degrade Pakistan would be counterproductive to America’s needs in fighting terrorism and maintaining a strong position in South Asia. By reducing or eliminating financial and military assistance, the US will diminish whatever precarious, brittle leverage it has inside the extremely volatile but critical nation. Therefore, America should keep its friends close, but keep its frenemies closer — and financially bound.

"no computers here"

The websites for the CIA and the hosting site WordPress were knocked off-line this month by a “massive distributed denial of service” attack. Was this, as some feared, the work of al-Qaeda?

The concern seemed at least plausible, especially after Undersecretary of Defense William Lynn, in late February, painted a frightening picture of a toxic malware that the terrorist organization might develop. The mind reels to think that America’s No. 1 enemy could create a weapon as dangerous as Stuxnet, the virus deployed against Iran’s nuclear program. However, it’s doubtful that Osama bin Laden could pull it off.

First, al-Qaeda does not engage in subtle attacks. Stuxnet silently wound its way to its singular, designated target: the Iranian nuclear centrifuge system, raising alarms long after it had struck. Al-Qaeda is not known for the restraint and focus shown by the Stuxnet perpetrators. The terror group’s calling card is the spectacular, multiexplosion, mass-casualty strike.

A larger question is whether al-Qaeda could launch a sophisticated cyberattack. Lynn noted that “a couple dozen talented programmers wearing flip-flops and drinking Red Bull can do a lot of damage,” but so far al-Qaeda hasn’t publicly expressed interest in cyberterror.

To pull off such an attack, al-Qaeda would have to first assemble a team of competent computer designers and give them a well-networked space away from relentless U.S. surveillance. But there are few decently wired places where a group of al-Qaeda hackers could meet and test ideas without some level of detection. It’s hard to build a complicated cyberweapon while being hunted by the world’s superpower.

Stuxnet was expensive to build and technologically difficult to deploy. According to news reports, the virus was built by creating a replica of the Iranian project within Israel – a complicated, financially taxing venture.

While al-Qaeda retains a robust network of financiers, it might prove difficult to hire people with the requisite computer skills. Competent cybercriminals already make a handsome living. Few would risk their livelihoods, their lives, and America’s eternal wrath by helping al-Qaeda. Protecting the bottom line may be one of the reasons that in more than 20 years, global criminal groups have yet to work with al-Qaeda.

Finally, given bin Laden’s reluctance to use electronic communications, it seems doubtful he would be willing to invest in a plot with such a high chance of failure. Al-Qaeda leaders have become wary of the Internet beyond exploiting it for propaganda and limited recruiting. An unsophisticated suicide attack against a Western public transit system or crowded area – al-Qaeda’s recent efforts – remains the group’s focus.

Even in this brave new world of cyber-intrigue, there are limits to accomplishable mayhem. The barriers to a successful al-Qaeda cyberattack that would rival 9/11 are rather high. Even Stuxnet reveals certain limits: The virus seems to have only slowed the Iranian uranium-enrichment program, not derailed it. Further, it did not slake Tehran’s political thirst for nuclear arms, nor did it wipe away the mental competencies and education of the Iranian scientists working on the project.

So, relax. Al-Qaeda does not have anything as sophisticated as the state-produced, state-tested Stuxnet. As the ersatz Mark Zuckerberg tells the Winklevoss twins in The Social Network, “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook.” If al-Qaeda had the capability to launch a major cyberattack, it would have tried by now.

Top men tell us that dark forces — China, Russia, criminal elements, spies, terrorists, and hackers — are burrowing deep into America’s digital infrastructure, looking to exploit weaknesses, wreck security and cause mayhem. Last month, CIA Director Leon Panetta testified to Congress that “the potential for the next Pearl Harbor could very well be a cyber-attack,” adding to a list of terrifying analogies used to describe the cyber peril, “Cyber 9/11” and “Cyber Armageddon” among them. And the future looks bleak. As former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Michael McConnell wrote a year ago, “The United States is fighting a cyber-war today, and we are losing. It’s that simple.”

These are smart individuals with weighty responsibilities, but with respect to the threat from cyberspace, they are also crummy rhetoricians. Comparisons to traumatic national events by identified enemies focus on the binary us-vs-them distorting the way to tackle this complex problem. As Stuxnet, WikiLeaks, and subsequent hacker initiatives indicate, the fight is indeed on for control of the global cybercommons. However, as top DHS officers recently noted, cyberspace is “not a war zone.” Scripting a cinematic showdown, where a digital Wyatt Earp loads his pistol with ones and zeroes and blows away the bad guys at the Cyber OK Corral, is terribly misleading.

Abusing analogies in the service of advocacy understates the impact of real life-or-death situations. During the 9/11 and Pearl Harbor attacks, thousands of Americans were killed, millions of dollars of property was damaged, and the national pride was hurt. In response to both situations, the US significantly reorganized its defenses and lashed out violently against its enemies. In contrast, the April 2010 rerouting of US government and business computer IP addresses to China for several minutes made few headlines. Few if any Americans have perished as a direct result of a cyberattack and the US government has yet to reorient itself to address these challenges in a systematic, comprehensive manner.

Why will it only take a mass-casualty event within the US to create this complete change in attitude? In recent Congressional testimony, current DNI General James Clapper provided one answer, if indirectly: cyberthreats do not yet compromise core national security interests. He assessed the threats from cyberspace fell into three major subjects: Criminal Acts; Infrastructure Vulnerabilities; and Foreign Espionage. Let’s quickly examine each issue:

Criminal Acts: General Clapper noted that the use of malicious software (‘malware’) is rapidly rising, costing global businesses almost $1 trillion in 2008. These numbers are terrifying, but they include ill-defined international intellectual property theft violations and data loss. That number rises through some measure of industry slight-of-hand, where buying a pirated $1 CD in Bangkok is deemed equivalent to stealing $15 from a US-based record company. As Harvard Business School professor Fritz Foley told the US International Trade Commission in July 2010, “Be careful about using information the multinational [companies] provide you. I would imagine they have an incentive to make the losses seem very, very large.”

“Half of all US computers” are compromised with malware, perhaps including the one on which you are currently using to reading this article. The question here is, again, a question of intent and scale. Digital thieves and misanthropes are more akin to muggers and corporate saboteurs than the hundreds of fighters, bombers, and torpedo planes in the service of the circa 1941 Imperial Japanese Navy. There is certainly a threat here but the complexities of life in the digital age do not boil down to a simple metaphor.

Infrastructure Vulnerabilities: General Clapper said the US relies on cyberspace for basic infrastructure-related tasks including “power, energy distribution, transportation, [and] manufacturing.” He additionally noted that Americans are moving their personal and professional worlds online.

The difficulty with General Clapper’s assertion isn’t that he is incorrect; rather the issue is that the US needs to upgrade its basic infrastructure regardless of cyber threats. As the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2009 noted, US physical infrastructure is already in overall “poor” condition, and requires over $2 trillion over the next half-decade to raise everything-from dams to roads to the electrical grid — to a “good” condition. What metaphor would fix those?

In a time when many political leaders have called for drastic cuts in nondiscretionary spending, reinvesting in complex, unsexy infrastructure systems and their slightly sexier digital cousins will likely fall by the budgetary wayside. House majority Leader Eric Cantor in January stated, “We’ve got to learn how to prioritize and do more with less in all areas of government.” If physical infrastructure serves as a precedent, even terrible low-casualty accidents like 2007′s lethal collapse of the I-35 bridge in Minneapolis do not spur national action.

Foreign Espionage: Clapper said, “The cyber environment provides unprecedented opportunities for adversaries to target the US due to our reliance on information systems.” They have been compromised in the past, such as when the Pentagon’s unclassified computer system was breached in 2008. According to the ODNI’s counterintelligence outfit, the National Counterintelligence Executive (NCIX), the main threat to US systems however remains the “insider threat” — traitors within the system — and not far-removed cyberspies.

In any case, the US government retains powerful (if untested and classified) weapons that are meant to deter foreign governments from launching a new digital Pearl Harbor. An attack from another nation-state that leads to significant death and destruction will unleash the full fearsome power of the Pentagon, as well as the offensive capabilities of America’s various intelligence agencies. This, however, would be an actual war with actual dead Americans.

Finally, in their Congressional testimony, neither Clapper nor National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter could muster a single incident where terrorists had used the Internet to carry out attacks – the so-called ‘cyberterrorism’ threat. While terrorists indeed use websites and email to disseminate propaganda and recruit followers, countering them all is like fighting a mosquito with a sledgehammer. Furthermore, successful execution of these efforts requires considerable coordination across multiple agencies. Otherwise the US can end up fighting itself — as it did in 2008 when the military forcibly shuttered a jihadist website that was allegedly a joint CIA-Saudi effort to lure extremists in order to gather intelligence, thwart terror plots and make arrests.

Instead of relying upon faulty, alarmist comparisons, policymakers should discard metaphors completely and focus upon seeing cyberspace for what it is — a complicated, interconnected decentralized network of networks over which the US government only has some degree of control. Deploying frequent incendiary analogies about war and death is counterproductive to producing long-term public-private results that will keep America and Americans safer — perhaps not completely safe, but safer out there in the digital badlands.

 

The beets’ can says “4g of sugar” per serving — but there are, evidently, 9 servings per can!  So 9  times 4g = 36g of sugar.

Compared to the ice cream:  27g of sugar per serving…but 4 servings per pint.  So, you can tear through 1/4th of a Ben & Jerry’s pint and still consume less sugar than Safeway’s beets.  And, evidently, get more Vitamin A and Iron in your daily diet!

And I made some 12 servings of soup.   Blech.