Daily Archives: 29 September 2021

Naivete

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JCS Chairman Mark Milley wants to deepen the level of military-military communications between the US and Russia.

Army General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the US and Russian militaries need to expand and deepen their communication and stressed that dialogue between the two adversaries could help de-escalate a future crisis.

Milley went on, paraphrased by The Wall Street Journal:

[A]dding to existing communication channels already in effect would help each side understand the other’s plans and moves.

He wants the same with the People’s Republic of China, also.

The problem with this tension-defusion concept is that it depends on the participants, in particular our DoD’s Russian and PRC counterparts, being truthful with each other. Why, though, should we believe that a military buildup opposite the Balkans or the Republic of China, is just a training exercise, just because the relevant Russian or PRC generals say so? Or why should they believe that about us?

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer really only works if the enemies aren’t armed to the teeth.

Ransomware Shame

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Corporate executives openly confess that they would aid and abet ransomware criminals by paying them for their crimes.

  • 78% of C-suite executives claim that they would be willing to pay a ransom
  • 56% would be willing to pay over $100,000 to resume operations

That’s deliberately hanging a target on their enterprises.

And this…

  • 74% of executives with hybrid work environments believe their in-house IT and security teams lack the capability to defend against ransomware
  • 60% of executives believe their employees could not identify a cyberattack

…indicates that those executives aren’t even trying seriously to train their IT and security teams or their employees, or to enforce security measures by their work-from-home employees.

Worse than that, they actively cover up their crime enabling:

well over half (61%) of business owners admitted to concealing a breach

This willingness to reward hackers for their hacking not only endangers their own companies, it endangers other companies, as well, by making the crimes routinely lucrative—which these executives are smart enough to know.

That willingness to pay the fee-for-hacking-services aggregates into a threat to our nation’s weal and security. After all, where are the hackers so willingly rewarded located? In our nation’s enemies: 82% of the attacks come from within Russia and the People’s Republic of China, split evenly between the two.