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MIT has become my go-to publication for understanding how new models of conflicts are emerging. I highly recommend their latest article on events last year in Libya.
Motivated individuals were able to lend support and comfort to the rebels in Libya during the conflict. From giving instructions on first aid, to providing bandwidth and archiving services for the rebels messaging and other things, ‘civilians’ from Europe and elsewhere were able to support the rebels.
The phrase I find most interesting in the article is that the conflict was “fought with global brains, NATO brawn, and Libyan blood.” On this side of the pond, a lot of ink has been spilled for how the approach utilized by the Allies is a new model for conflict intervention. While I see that as certainly being a possibility, the conflict model for Libya writ large (encompassing much more than just NATO’s role in Libya) is much more likely to become the archetype for contemporary conflicts.
There are a lot of implications for civilians being able to personally intervene in conflicts:
- Are such motivated (could we term them super-empowered?) individuals still considered non-combatants in a conflict if they give support or aid to a side in a conflict?
- Does a civilian’s actions towards supporting a side in a conflict make them a legitimate military target by the opposing side?
- What is the threshold to where a nation is no longer neutral in a conflict because their citizens are directly supporting a side in a conflict?
Lastly, there is an increasing sense that the Westphalian notion of nation-states is being challenged by the ability for individuals to act globally. Generally, this has been characterized in economic terms. However, it now seems that nations are additionally losing their exclusivity on conflict intervention. New organizational paradigms seem to be emerging, where definition by citizenship is at best the penultimate criteria used by an individual for self identification.
Posted by YN2(SW) H. Lucien Gauthier III in Uncategorized | read comments (5)Every Saturday morning at Annapolis, Plebes and select upperclassmen participate in six hours worth of midshipman-led professional training. These evolutions vary by company and season, including such activities as running through the obstacle course, discussions with combat veterans, and, most recently, a trip to Gettysburg National Battlefield.
Midshipman 2/c Hobart Kistler, a native of Central, PA, has led tours of that most Hallowed Ground for the past eight years, and, needless to say, knows the place inside-out. Under Kistler’s supervision, 40 midshipmen (I among them) from the Academy’s distinguished 13th Company made the trip two weekends ago, departing Annapolis at 0530- early even by a midshipman’s standard for a Saturday.
Having visited numerous Civil War battlefields growing up in Virginia, I assumed Kistler would give the standard tour with our bus driving us between points of interest. I was quite surprised to hear that we would march, run, and charge over the entire field, just as Confederate and Union soldiers did 149 years ago!
Heavy dew still covered the grass as we stepped off the bus at just after 0700 on that chilly morning. Apart from the specter of a few silent cannons visible in the early morning haze, the terrain looked much like any other section of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country. Kistler began our tour at the site of the first day’s fighting- July 1st, 1863. Marching in columns of four, we entered Herbst’s Woods, where a rebel sniper shot Major General John Reynolds as he desperately deployed his men to stem the Confederate attacks. Next came a sharp rush into the Railroad Cut, where hundreds of North Carolinians squared off with the Union’s elite Iron Brigade. We wrapped things up with a mile-long run up to the Eternal Peace Memorial, dedicated by FDR on the battle’s 75th anniversary, in 1938. There, Kistler told us the story of John Burns, an elderly Gettysburg resident and War of 1812 veteran who donned his faded uniform and flintlock and was wounded five times that day while fighting to keep the Secessionists from overrunning the homestead he had risked his life to defend almost a half-century earlier.
A short time later, we reassembled on Cemetery Ridge, where the Pennsylvania Monument lists the names of all members of the Keystone State to have defended their Commonwealth at Gettysburg. The Peach Orchard, Wheatfield, and Slaughter Pen followed in quick succession as we followed the course of Lieutenant General James Longstreeet’s attack on the Union left on Day Two, struggling to keep an orderly formation through dense, stony woods. The highlight of the morning for many was our charge up Little Round Top, the hill famously defended by Colonel Joshua Chamberlain’s 20th Maine against repeated Confederate assaults. The 13th Company guide-on was borne during the charge by Midshipman 4/c Brian Wasdin, a descendant of a Confederate soldier from Georgia. The spectacular view from the summit helped many to understand the hill’s strategic importance; indeed, the entire battlefield spreads out to the north and west, as a board game seen from above. When we reached the top, we realized that a group of West Point cadets had been at the top the entire time watching us ascend (I can’t help noting the irony). Descending the rear of the hill, via the route taken by Chamberlain’s men as they made their gallant bayonet charge, we finished our review of Day Two at Devil’s Den, where we explored the numerous sniping positions used by the Confederates to shot at the Union troops atop Little Round Top.
Midshipmen atop Little Round Top
The fighting on July 3rdcentered on Pickett’s Charge, the most infamous assault in American military history. In an effort to recreate the reality of the High Tide of the Confederacy, Kistler instructed all midshipmen to
- Midshipmen struggle to maintain alignment while scaling a fence during Pickett’s Charge
remove their boots- by 1863, most Confederate soldiers were barefoot. Forming up rank and file in the same woods where Pickett’s men slept, we proceeded into the mile-wide field separating the woods from the famous Copse of Trees for which the soldiers aimed. Marching at first, and then double-timing, we arrived at the Emmittsburg Road, where Union canister began decimating Pickett’s men. By then the warm noonday sun had us sweating, but we scaled the double fences and broke into a full sprint. All 40 midshipmen let out the Rebel Yell as we charged for the stone wall that marked the Union lines. Arriving breathless, Kistler reminded us that at this point, Confederate soldiers would have just begun the hand-to-hand fighting that in 20 minutes left 10,000 men (twice our killed in Iraq and Afghanistan) on the field.
I’m glad the Naval Academy provides us with opportunities to tour local battlefields. 13th Company’s visit to Gettysburg, while brief, was an excellent reminder to all participants of the hardships endured by our antecedents in service. As we midshipmen prepare to enter the Fleet as ensigns and 2nd lieutenants, we will undoubtedly face challenges of our own; yet recognizing the not-so-remote heritage of valor, suffering, and triumph made evident through our tour of Gettysburg will provide reinforcement in moments of trial.
Many thanks to Midn Hobart Kistler for helping with this article.
Lots of traffic over at Salamander’s Place, and at POGO, regarding continued problems with the Littoral Combat Ship program. I have commented on this struggling and costly program several times, and will refrain from doing so here, with the exception of a paraphrase of a comment that Sid made at Sal’s:
The Littoral Combat Ship is not built to survive combat in the littorals.
LCS was constructed to house weapons “modules” that do not exist, and in fact, consist largely of the theoretical.
Speed was going to be the capability which allowed LCS to avoid trouble. And now that single capability is negated by the fragility of the design that was required to reach those speeds.
Summed up thus:
IT (IS A) COMBAT SEAFRAME THAT CANNOT PERFORM ITS MISSION IN COMBAT THAT IT CANNOT BE EMPLOYED IN while RELYING ON SPEED THAT IT CANNOT MAKE, (THAT) WILL COMPRISE THE MAJORITY OF THE SURFACE COMBATANT FLEET OF THE US NAVY…
Someone, ANYONE, with a wide stripe on a sleeve tell us that he is wrong. And WHY he is wrong.
In testimony before the House Armed Services Committee yesterday, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta left little doubt as to whether the People’s Republic of China was assisting North Korea with their ballistic missile program. From the Reuters article:
“I’m sure there’s been some help coming from China. I don’t know, you know, the exact extent of that,” Panetta told members of the House Armed Services Committee when asked whether China had been supporting North Korea’s missile program through “trade and technology exchanges.”
While understandably unable to delve into details due to “sensitivity”, Secretary Panetta gave voice to the deep suspicions many have had since the beginning of China’s rise twenty years ago. It should be clear for all to see that China gains advantage by having a belligerent and nuclear-capable North Korea as a major thorn in the side of the United States in precisely the region that is the future focus of US Defense strategy, the Western Pacific.
The People’s Republic of China has consistently thwarted the efforts of the US and her allies to bring the DPRK under control China refused to condemn North Korea for the sinking of the ROK frigate Cheonan, which killed 46 ROK sailors. Nor did China offer any meaningful criticism for the shelling of Yeongpyong Island, which resulted in the deaths of two ROK Marines, other than an admonition not to “escalate”. When taken with the Chinese watering-down of UNSC sanctions against North Korea, continued military assistance, collaboration with DPRK in cyber attack efforts, ambivalence toward DPRK weapons and technology proliferation into the Middle East, and a blind eye to provocative border and SOF incursions into South Korea, these actions are indicators of China’s tacit approval of North Korea’s actions and posture.
There have been many who have sounded the warning klaxon. The issue has been addressed here, and the December 2011 Proceedings “Now Hear This” article by Defense analyst Joseph Bosco.
While China’s role in keeping the North Korean regime in power—and in the WMD business—is indisputable, analysts have offered unconvincing explanations of Chinese motives. U.S. experts have assured us that China shares our nuclear concerns but fears instability on the Korean peninsula. They accept China’s argument that even threatening to cut economic aid would collapse Kim Jong Il’s regime and trigger a refugee flow into China. But it has been clear for 60 years that the sole cause of instability between the Koreas has been Pyongyang’s own bizarre and dangerous behavior, despite substantial aid and concessions from accommodating South Korean governments. Yet China stands by its ally.
Indeed. Despite the consistent platitudes from Chinese diplomats and military officials of their willingness to be of assistance in “managing” North Korea, the reality is that China has very successfully played power politics in developing and maintaining North Korea’s military capabilities and belligerent posture. Chinese assistance to North Korea in developing a ballistic missile capability to carry a nuclear warhead well beyond the Korean peninsula is not a shocking aberration, but another in a long and consistent series of actions that cannot point reasonably to any other conclusion. North Korea will try again with the missile launch. And with Chinese assistance, they will eventually succeed.
The assertions to the contrary grow equally foolish-sounding, and detached from reality. One, in a rebuttal to the Bosco article, was that “The prospect of a better outcome lies not in blaming China but in working imaginatively with China and others to transform North Korea under new leadership”. Don’t you believe it. China has proven for decades they are more than willing to live with their recalcitrant southern neighbors, and the only “transformation” that Chinese leadership is interested in is making North Korea a more potent threat to the United States and its Western Pacific allies.
As has been said before, the time has long since come to recognize at the highest military and civilian levels of leadership in the United States that China is very far from being a benevolent ally, and even farther from sharing any kind of common interests or vision of either Asia and the Pacific Rim, or any other geographic region where they perceive their interests to lie. And this includes China’s subsidizing of the brutal, aggressive, repressive regime in North Korea.
***********************************************
As if on cue, DPRK ratchets up the rhetoric. And this telling summation from MSNBC:
In Beijing, North Korea’s biggest ally, China’s top foreign policy official met Sunday with a North Korean delegation and expressed confidence in the country’s new young leader, Kim Jong Un.
**********************************************
Seems the nuclear DPRK is no longer a hypothetical, if US estimates are correct. Which magnifies every last occurrence of Red China’s assistance to the Hermit Kingdom.
While below some comments express abhorrence of the spectre of a nuclear exchange, it is highly useful to remember that the People’s Republic of China and by proxy, her ally North Korea, do not necessarily share that view. I would caution the use of the term “well-reasoned” when framing the Korean peninsula in terms of American values and viewpoints. Which brings the argument back to that of being strong and capable enough with our conventional and nuclear arsenal to deter both countries from precisely the bellicosity that one has repeatedly threatened and the other has excused and minimized.
An amazing story. One of which I knew nothing. But I do now.
Reckless. Fifty-one trips. A more appropriate name you’ll never find for this wonderful little mare.
h/t Jay
Posted by UltimaRatioReg in Alexander Martin, History, Marine Corps, Naval Institute, Uncategorized | read comments (3)On the eve of the centennial of the Titanic disaster, Proceedings Managing Editor Fred Schultz caught up with Hollywood director and deep-sea explorer James Cameron. They talked about the history and current exploration of the deep ocean, modern construction of deep-submersibles, and the importance of Navy (and Naval Institute) involvement in all of it. He made it clear from the start that he was speaking to a Navy “forum.”
In many ways, for critics of LCS this evolution was as inevitable as it was self-evident. As more hulls were pier-side speaking truth than PPT illuminating briefing rooms, expectations would have to change to stay inside the lines of credibility.
Dreams of stopping the run and pivot to building a better platform reached the equal-time-point an election cycle ago. We will have LCS, and it will inside a little more than a decade form a larger percentage of our Fleet. The question remains – what will we actually be able to do with it given its known limitations, unknown tactical utility, and completely undeveloped mission modules that are the only thing that prevent it from being a +$600 million mobile 57mm gun with a flight deck?
Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. at AOLDefense has a nice review of the CNO’s speech at the National Press Club breakfast 12 APR that touched on LCS. Let’s do a little light fisking this Friday morning, shall we?
“These are not large surface combatants that are going to sail into the South China Sea and challenge the Chinese military; that’s not what they’re made for,” Greenert said of the LCS class.
OK. A warship that is 1.5′ longer than a Fletcher Class DD is not a large warship … but she is not small. South China Sea?
The South China Sea is a marginal sea that is part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from the Singapore and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan of around 3,500,000 square kilometres (1,400,000 sq mi). The area’s importance largely results from one-third of the world’s shipping transiting through its waters, and that it is believed to hold huge oil and gas reserves beneath its seabed.
…
The South China Sea contains over 250 small islands, atolls, cays, shoals, reefs, and sandbars, most of which have no indigenous people, many of which are naturally under water at high tide, and some of which are permanently submerged. The features are grouped into three archipelagos (listed by area size), Macclesfield Bank and Scarborough Shoal:
So, we have a warship that has both “Littoral” and “Combat” in its name that we do not intend to challenge a regional navy with in an area full of littoral waters? Do we really mean that – or are we trying to tell the Chinese that even though we are putting Marines in northern Australia and warships in Singapore; we are only there to have quick access to nice liberty ports? Either way – that isn’t impressive.
As Undersecretary of the Navy Bob Work likes to tell us, the United States Navy does not need frigates. Think back to how we have used our frigates since the Vietnam War, and then square this statement;
“Littoral Combat Ships will tend to displace amphibious ships and destroyers in Africa and South America. That will free up surface combatants, more high-end ships … “
That is what your classic multi-mission FF/FFG has been doing for decades – a much more useful ship than a low endurance uni-mission LCS. Just saying.
The next fisk is sad.
I intend to go in harm’s way.
- John Paul Jones
That is what we said once as a Navy. What do we say now?
“I don’t worry per se about its survivability where I would intend to send it,” Greenert said of the LCS. “You won’t send it into an anti-access area.”
Back that up a bit. Littoral is near land. Any land mass is, by its nature, going to be an anti-access area in a non-permissive environment. Are we really going to have a foundation Class of warship in our navy that we will not put in harm’s way?
That is just silly – of course we will. When it is the only ship around and you need things done, either you don’t do it or you ask LCS to. Also – why does it have weapons if you don’t need them against someone who can shoot back? We did build a Fletcher Class sized warship as “Level I” for a nation that is casualty adverse – so I guess that reality is sinking in.
This final bit of reimagining is actually a re-invention.
On that crisis, the CNO tried to strike a delicate balance between confrontation and conciliation. The US and its Asian partners must stand ready to “confront” the Chinese when they trespass on international norms, Greenert said, but the real solution is to prevent a crisis in the first place through quiet confidence-building — including the kind of low-profile partnership and presence missions for which the Littoral Combat Ship is suited.
That describes something the Chinese are very familiar with – the gunboat. I think he is humming CAPT Henry J. Hendrix, Jr’s tune, but others may hear it differently.
The thing is – in the 20th century, we didn’t plan to have such a large portion of our Fleet be gunboats. Most of the low-level missions described above were handled by destroyers and cruisers for most of the century, joined by frigates in the later part … which did a good job in peace, and when it came time for war – were of actual use to the Fleet commander. LCS?
On balance – all the snarky fisking aside – this was a very good admission by the CNO. Though we won’t know for sure until an actual FMC mission module makes an appearance later this decade (we think) – at least we are as an institution starting to talk clearly about the sub-optimal nature of LCS and its limited utility.
Why is that good? It is good because when you send under-armed, under-manned, fragile warships in harm’s way – Sailors die wholesale. It is better to admit that in peace, than to learn it in war.
As the US military faces an “austere budget environment” in the coming years, senior officers have been quick to trot out the Winston Churchill’s quote “Gentlemen, we have run out of money, now we have to think.” It appears to be a line appropriate to today’s challenges. However, the fact that senior leadership has latched on to this quote is disturbing, primarily because it begs the question: “what exactly have we been doing for the past twenty five years?”
Military affairs, and the conduct of war, are a thinking man’s profession. Brute force, attrition strategies, and the reality of death and destruction is, and will always be, a central part of the military profession. But to use another Winston Churchill quote, “Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.” Thinking does and always has mattered in the conduct of war.
This past week Lieutenant Ben Kohlmann, an F/A-18 driver from the West Coast, wrote an article entitled “The Military Needs More Disruptive Thinkers” for Small Wars Journal that has garnered attention. MAJ Peter Munson and the beloved Superhero-of-Sanity Doctrine Man, and the comment sections in a number of blogs, have added to the debate. The discussion of “disruptive thinkers” and the apparent embrace of “thinking” by today’s senior leaders appears to be a natural combination. But that’s not necessarily the case.
There are places and people that have a long tradition of creative thinking, problem solving, and innovation. A great deal of military innovation throughout history has come from junior and mid-grade officers. LCDR Claude Berube has documented the Naval Institute’s history of junior officer innovation and the rise of the Institute from a small group of officers on shore duty to a pre-eminent thought center. There is a movement within USNI that is growing to bring JO’s and mid-grade Officers back to the pages of Proceedings with their innovative thoughts. This is important, but not enough by itself.
Ben Kohlmann brings up some very interesting points in his essay on “disruptive thinking.” I wholeheartedly agree with the overarching thesis of his piece: that the military services need to be more open to new ideas and need to figure out how to educate officers in critical thinking and innovation. However, there are a few areas where I differ with his details. Personally, I think the U.S. Navy’s focus on providing our officers graduate education in the field of business (MBA’s) and engineering rather than subjects like history, political science, and other social science fields is a net negative for our service. Most MBA curricula don’t really focus on innovation and new ideas, instead they teach number crunching and bureaucratic organization. Steve Jobs, used by Ben as an example in his essay, was a great innovator…he dropped out of college, never mind getting a graduate degree from any of the schools Ben suggests. Alfred Thayer Mahan warned us to “avoid the administrative mindset” and I don’t know that a Navy filled with people who have mastered business administration really makes us better or more innovative warfighters. Ben is 100% right, however, when he points out that we should be encouraging interaction between our officer corps and thought leaders from other fields, I just don’t believe the business field is the one we should be focusing on.
I also think that Ben is catching some flak for his use of the term “disruptive.” I think we all know why. We’ve had them in our ready rooms or wardrooms, that “disruptive JO” who constantly mouths off about what he or she hates but never has a constructive idea to attempt to solve the problem. Disruptive behavior doesn’t exactly sound military, and by itself it doesn’t give us innovation or solutions.
Disruptive thinking is, however, the starting point. We need critical thinking that starts with new ideas and we need to develop those into innovative solutions that are researched and workable. Just pointing out problems doesn’t get us anywhere. John Boyd, another great example from Ben’s essay, always did his homework and knew exactly what the staff-pukes were going to ask at the end of his briefs. Their questions were usually intended to try and derail him or embarrass him. But, he used his research to set traps for them, using their own questions and lack of homework against them to help push his ideas through the Pentagon bureaucracy. He wasn’t just disruptive, he had the research done in advance and the solutions ready which made him unstoppable.
So where do we go from here, whether we’re talking about disruptive thinking or contrarian ideas? First, we need to know what we’re getting ourselves into. John Boyd never commanded a fighter squadron, he made too many enemies to survive a selection board. Then again, ADM James Stavridis has had a career which has taken him to the pinnacle of the naval profession. If you’re going to be disruptive or you’re going to put your ideas out there, you have to do it aware of the risks and possible feedback. But, if you’re already that kind of person then you probably agree with Mahan that “failure to dare is often to run the greatest of risks.”
Second, we need to develop our ideas properly and do our homework. This includes figuring out how to best introduce them. Writing for professional journals is frequently a great way to launch innovative ideas and solutions. Whether we’re talking about traditional journals like Proceedings or new online mediums like Small Wars Journal or USNI Blog, discussion of a new idea can start quickly once you summon the courage to publish it (just look at the debates swirling around Ben’s article on social media sites). In 2008 Proceedings had a pair of articles that help give us some guidance. ADM Stavridis’ article “Dare to Read, Think, Write, and PUBLISH” charts a course for us, or at least gives us a point to begin our own dead reckoning. The process of writing should help us develop our ideas and force the right research to defend them. Captain William Toti followed a few issues later with “Write with Your Eyes Wide Open,” which helps develop our sense of the I&W as we enter the battlefield of ideas.
Third, and finally, we need senior leaders who believe what they are preaching. If we are going to “start thinking” what that really means is that leadership has to “start listening.” General George Patton once said that “If everyone is thinking alike, someone isn’t thinking.” For over two hundred years Sailors have been offering new ideas, whether we’re talking about Sailors figuring out how to repair their systems instead of using contractors at the turn of this century or a young William Sims fighting his superiors to improve gunnery practices at the turn of the last century. Ideas are already out there and leaders need to encourage them to develop, while at the same time growing new thinkers and ideas. The question isn’t whether or not we need to start thinking, the question is whether or not the decision makers are willing to listen, and willing to help. As General Mattis once told a group of officers, “Take the mavericks in your service, the ones that wear rumpled uniforms and look like a bag of mud but whose ideas are so offsetting that they actually upset the people in the bureaucracy. One of your primary jobs is to take the risk and protect these people, because if they are not nurtured in your service, the enemy will bring their contrary ideas to you.”
The opinions and views expressed in this post are those of the author alone and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Department of Defense, the US Navy, or any other agency.
Sixty-one years ago today, April 5th, 1951, Judge Irving Kaufman sentenced Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death by electrocution. They had both been convicted seven days earlier of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union. While there has been some attempts to claim their innocence and attribute the Rosenbergs’ conviction to a post-war “Red Scare” and paranoia of Communism, the evidence was overwhelming in 1951, and has become even more so in the decades since. The opening of Soviet archives in 1992-3, the 1995 release of the decoded VENONA cables, and several books by former Soviet agents point to a far more widespread espionage effort than the United States had heretofore acknowledged, and also removes any doubt as to the guilt of the defendants. The Soviet spy ring which successfully infiltrated the Manhattan Project included both of the Rosenbergs, Ethel’s brother David Greenglass, German scientist Klaus Fuchs, Harry Gold, and others, is estimated to have obtained information that allowed the Soviet Union to develop their own atomic bomb a decade before otherwise possible. The Soviets successfully detonated an atomic device in late-August, 1949. At the sentencing of the Rosenbergs, Judge Kaufman remarked:
I consider your crime worse than murder… In committing the act of murder, the criminal kills only his victim… But in your case, I believe your conduct in putting into the hands of the Russians the A-bomb years before our best scientists predicted Russia would perfect the bomb has already caused, in my opinion, the Communist aggression in Korea, with the resultant casualties exceeding 50,000 and who knows but that millions more of innocent people may pay the price of your treason.
As we enter our second decade of the 21st Century, it is somewhat disconcerting to recognize that the massive efforts which the Soviet Union expended to infiltrate US government and scientific research, the expenditures of millions of dollars, lengthy and risky recruitment of American Communists who were willing to betray their country, NKVD and GRU operatives working from US and Canadian cities, the transmission of stolen secrets via encrypted cables and microfilm, all are largely unnecessary today. In this, the information age, penetrations of computer networks of both Government and industry can obtain results very similar to Soviet efforts regarding “Enormous”, the NKVD code name for the Manhattan Project. Industrial espionage is exceedingly widespread, the vast majority of it from compromised computer networks that hemorrhage proprietary information to rivals businesses and foreign governments, to include those of our enemies and potential enemies.
While some traditional HUMINT espionage undoubtedly still exists and has its uses, the fact of the matter today is that the great balance of the damaging espionage work done by the Rosenbergs, and Greenglass, and Harry Gold, and Kim Philby, Donald MacLean, Klaus Fuchs, and the others recruited and employed by the Soviet Union, is now performed by for-hire hackers, often called “Black Hats”, working for those rival businesses and governments. Gaining access to sensitive information has become infinitely easier, cheaper, and far less risky than ever before. The days of photographing stolen documents and making “drops” of bundles of information are all but ended. Often these hackers are operating outside the United States, in areas where arrest and prosecution are not options, even if the hackers were caught. With the ability of these skilled “Black Hats” to cover their tracks, and indeed their presence, attribution to the hackers themselves is all but impossible without other corroboration, and the entity or government paying for the hacking can only be surmised.
However, like the Rosenbergs’ treason moved the Soviet Union a decade ahead in its atomic efforts, stolen technology and data from both military and industrial networks have greatly accelerated technological developments in The People’s Republic of China, and in other places where economic and military rivalry with the United States is seen as a reality. The compromise of classified and sensitive information has also allowed hostile entities to have an inside look at vulnerabilities of critical US infrastructure, as well as preparedness efforts and response capabilities to certain threats, information which can be exploited to increase the damage and disruption of an attack on US infrastructure or our populace. Much like the Soviet espionage of the Stalin era, the infiltration and compromise of US industrial and government information systems is likely more widespread than previously acknowledged.
There is another down side to the shift from traditional espionage to network exploitation: It doesn’t lend itself nearly so easily to parody. Maxwell Smart is nowhere near as funny if you put him behind a laptop. No shoe-phone or cone of silence. No Hymie in the mailbox. Same with Boris and Natasha. If they do all their work from Pottsylvania and never come to Frostbite Falls, where’s the humor in that? If “fiendish plan” means stealing the formula for Upsidaisium via computer hacking, it just isn’t the same.
Last week, Sen. McCain delivered a speech to the Brigade of Midshipmen as part of the Forrestal Lecture Series. Like most USNA graduates who return to speak at the Academy, Sen. McCain began his speech by joking about his terrible performance as a midshipman.
Sen. McCain discussed the differences between leadership and management. He believes the nation is producing too many managers and not enough leaders- citing the increased number of MBA graduates as proof of this trend. Being a manager is easy, as the manager must merely maintain the status quo. Leaders must motivate and inspire subordinates to reach new limits.
Lamenting the military’s one strike policy on mistakes, Sen. McCain noted that most great U.S. Navy leaders would not have made it out of the lower ranks had they served in today’s armed forces. This intolerance towards failure of any kind has caused our military to become more risk averse than ever before.
While Sen. McCain criticized changes in military policy, he vehemently stated that America was not on the decline. Supporting his opinion, he remarked that the U.S. political and economic system is still the golden standard. This part of the speech sounded very much like President Obama’s recent State of the Union address. They both chastised and dismissed those skeptical of long term U.S. standing in the world, while conceding that the U.S. will face difficult choices in the years ahead.
Sen. McCain then switched gears and discussed current decisions facing the country. He deplored the fact that people are fighting and dying in Syria for what Americans fought many years ago for and receiving no help from the U.S. Criticizing Obama’s inaction in Syria, he quoted Gen. Mattis that replacing the Assad regime would cripple Iran. He did not mention the possibility that the U.S. aiding the Syrian rebels might cause Russia to counter by escalating their help to Assad.
When asked if he had ever sacrificed his morals for political expediency, he at first said no, then he changed his mind and called himself a “coward” during the 2000 GOP primary in South Carolina. At the time, the hot issue in South Carolina was whether or not the state capital could fly the Confederate flag. He said it should be left up to the states to decide, when he personally felt it was wrong. After the election he went to South Carolina to apologize. I think the entire Brigade was amazed that someone who survived over five years in a Vietnamese POW camp could call himself a coward.
Answering a question about Obamacare or Obama cares (depending on your political leanings), Sen. McCain said he thought mandatory health care was unconstitutional because it violates both the Commerce Clause and the 10th Amendment, which gives all powers not delegated to the federal government to the states. Furthermore, he reminded the audience that President Obama promised medical costs would drop, and they haven’t (though since the act doesn’t take effect until 2014, I don’t think anyone can say for sure how the act will affect health care costs).
In conclusion, the Brigade enjoyed hearing from a legend. Next week, Secretary of State Clinton will speak to the Brigade. The Naval Academy, while an imperfect institution, does do a great job of bringing in interesting speakers.
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