Category Archives: defense policy

Who Checks the Checkers?

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Senator Rob Portman (R, OH), in his capacity as Ranking Member of the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, released a report detailing a decade-long effort by the People’s Republic of China to infiltrate the Federal Reserve system. The report concluded, in part, that

the Fed failed to mount an adequate response. The report’s findings show “a sustained effort by China, over more than a decade, to gain influence over the Federal Reserve and a failure by the Federal Reserve to combat this threat effectively.”

Of course, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell demurred from that report.

“Because we understand that some actors aim to exploit any vulnerabilities, our processes, controls, and technology are robust and updated regularly. We respectfully reject any suggestions to the contrary,” he wrote in a letter to Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, the committee’s top Republican.
Mr Powell detailed the central bank’s information security and background screening protocols, including reviews of foreign travel and personal contacts for staff who have access to restricted information. “We take seriously any violations of these robust information security policies[.]”

Of course. However, any procedure, no matter how robust or frequently updated, is only as good as the people executing the procedure. I have to ask: who does that vetting for the Fed? Who follows up on those travel reviews and contacts? What’s the Fed’s IG role in these procedures? How closely is the DoJ’s FBI involved?

That last, given the FBI’s demonstrated bias and too-often outright dishonesty, is especially important.

Our Secure Southern Border

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Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas insists that our southern border is secure. President Joe Biden (D) echoes him with his own silence on Mayorkas’ claim. Here’s some of what Texas’ police and National Guard are intercepting at that border under Governor Greg Abbott’s (R) Operation Lone Star, which has the Texas National Guard also working the border, according to Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt Marc Couch:

  • more than 225,000 migrant apprehensions
  • more than 13,000 criminal arrests,
  • more than 3,500 weapons seized
  • 289 million deadly fentanyl doses

That’s since Operation Lone Star began. Just since last October, there also have been 500,000+ known “gotaways,” illegal aliens who were spotted crossing our border illegally but who evaded capture.

This is what Biden and his DHS Secretary, neither of whom are willing actually to visit our southern border, are letting through with their version of “secure.” Since that’s what they’re calling it, I have to conclude they’re deliberately letting this sewage in.

Imagine the intercepts and the increased safety of our nation if the Federal government were really interested in security.

Idiocy

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Or outright dishonesty.

Ukraine is asking the US for long-range, armed drones to give the Ukrainian forces improved chances against the barbarian invader.

President Joe Biden (D) and his administration won’t send them.

More than two months ago, Ukrainian officials requested four MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones, US officials said. The Biden administration was reluctant to approve the request, the officials said, citing a number of concerns, ranging from the potential loss of advanced technology from the battlefield to the need to train Ukrainians to operate the drones.

The need to train Ukrainians? They’d be trained up by now if the request had been honored those two months ago.

The American technology would be given over to the barbarian via battlefield losses? The enemy always gets its adversary’s technology from battlefield losses. The only way to prevent that is to not go onto the battlefield at all. And then surrender the technology, anyway, when the adversary is peacefully conquered due to its decision not to fight.

…highly-sensitive technology could wind up in Russian hands if Ukrainian forces are overwhelmed.

This is a cynical, if not deliberately dishonest, sham rationale, creating, as it does, the vicious circle: the Ukrainians might lose a battle and give up the tech, so we won’t supply the tech, thereby vastly increasing the likelihood that the Ukrainians not only lose a battle, but lose the entire war.

All because the Biden administration is so…risk averse…that they refuse the risks involved in actively helping a sovereign nation, and a potential ally if not friend, defeat a barbarian’s invasion and drive the barbarian back out.

It’s disgusting, and Ukraine might not survive until January 2025, and even if it does, vastly more Ukrainian women and children will be butchered between now and then, all for the convenience of Biden’s risk aversion.

Damping the Benefits of Globalization

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In one of the few sensible pushes members of the Biden administration is making, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, in her meetings in Seoul, Republic of Korea, pushed for the US and our friends and allies to shift away from dependency on the People’s Republic of China for supplies and instead to friend-shore the supply chain: get the supply components and raw materials either domestically or through trade with friends and allies.

Friend-shoring is about deepening relationships and diversifying our supply chains with a greater number of trusted trading partners. The purpose is to lower risks for our economy and theirs[.]

There are, of course, criticizers of such a change in emphasis.

…some economists have cautioned that such a shift could damp the benefits of globalization and lead to higher prices.

But this is to misunderstand, or to ignore, the real risks to globalization: dependency on our enemies for Critical Items in our supply chain. The PRC, for instance, already has attempted to corner the market on rare earths, and it already has attempted to use that monopoly to coerce Japan by embargoing rare earth sales and shipments to them. Russia is already restricting supplies of natural gas to Europe.

Walking away from the PRC, and Russia, and our other enemies on supply chain matters may or may not lead to higher prices; most likely, higher prices will be limited to the period of transition away from our enemies.

The higher cost, though, from continuing dependency on enemy nations is to our national security and to the uncertainty premium resulting from those enemies engaging in restricting or outright embargoing critical supply items in order to coerce.

Maybe Time to Start Holding them Liable

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The heads of the FBI and of Great Britain’s MI5 have a warning for American and British businesses regarding

the threats posed by Chinese espionage, especially spying aimed at stealing Western technology companies’ intellectual property.
In a rare joint appearance on Wednesday at the headquarters of MI5, Christopher Wray, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Ken McCallum, Director-General of MI5, urged executives not to underestimate the scale and sophistication of Beijing’s campaign.
“The Chinese government is set on stealing your technology—whatever it is that makes your industry tick—and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market,” Mr Wray told the audience of business people. “They’re set on using every tool at their disposal to do it.”

Too much of that information aggregates to national security levels, and the lackadaisical protection of it threatens our security indirectly via the degradation of our two nations’ economic capabilities relative to the People’s Republic of China and directly through exposing our defense information to theft. That means business laxness—outright laziness in too many cases—cannot be excused with the companies involved being left simply to take their lumps.

Wray emphasized the matter as it concerns the US.

We want to send the clearest signal we can on a massive shared challenge—China…if we are to protect our economies, our institutions, and our democratic values.

To do that, business executives—particularly CEOs, CFOs, and CIOs, and their deputies—need to do their part and start taking seriously their own obligations to protect company secrets and other proprietary information, along with information of a national security kind.

It may be, then, that business executives need to start being held personally liable, civilly and criminally, for security breaches that allow hackers to steal their companies’ information. The businesses that employ them may need, as legal persons, to be held similarly liable for such breaches.