Category Archives: defense policy

Weakness

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Russia is continuing to withhold a free flow of natural gas to the EU, holding the flow down in order to elevate prices inflicted on the EU’s citizenry and to restrain Europe’s industrial capacity.

Gas prices have soared in Europe in recent months due to low inventories and a recovery in demand as the economy rebounds from the pandemic. The price surge has taken a toll on energy-intensive industrial activity while consumers face a steep rise in energy bills as the winter heating season begins.

Those prices are five times the level of just a year ago—before Biden surrendered to Putin on the Russia-sponsored hacker shutdown of Colonial Pipeline by unblocking the finishing of Russia’s Nordstream 2, which unblock also was in furtherance of Merkel’s demand for Russian natural gas via that cross-Baltic Sea pipeline.

Officials and analysts say that Moscow is using Europe’s energy crunch to gain geopolitical leverage.

Well, of course Putin is. He’s not an idiot.

And

In another sign that Russia isn’t about to significantly boost supplies to Europe, Ukraine’s gas transmission system said Sunday that it hasn’t received any additional requests from Gazprom and the gas transit remained below capacity.

This is the outcome of outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s and newly arrived American President Joe Biden’s (D) enthusiastically pursued energy policies coupled with Biden’s overt timidity in front of Putin. First, demonstrate Europe’s weakness. Only after that, exploit that weakness.

It stretches credulity beyond breaking to believe two such heavily intelligent people didn’t anticipate this.

Bipartisanship

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Joe Lieberman wants some, particularly regarding any nuclear weapons agreement with Iran.

The only way to assure that [bipartisan unity] is for President Biden to submit an agreement with Iran to the Senate as a treaty, needing 67 votes to be ratified. That would require support from members of both political parties. It would bring Washington, for a moment, back to bipartisanship in foreign policy.

And

Achieving an agreement with Iran that could get 67 votes in the Senate wouldn’t be easy, but it is worth the effort. It would restore the longtime bipartisan consensus in Washington about Iran….

What is it that Lieberman wants here–bipartisanship, which is a worthy step to a lasting worthy agreement?

Or a permissive path for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, which it then will use to destroy Israel, to sell to terrorists for attacks on Europe and the US, and to use itself around the world?b

An agreement that facilitates Iran getting nuclear weapons is not a worthy one.

What Does This Say

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…about Federal bureaucrats and their…managers? And no, I’m

not talking about a Deep State or an Administrative State.

The Biden administration on Wednesday issued a sweeping new order mandating that nearly all federal agencies patch hundreds of cybersecurity vulnerabilities that are considered major risks for damaging intrusions into government computer systems.

And

The new requirement is one of the most wide-reaching cybersecurity mandates ever imposed on the federal government. It covers about 200 known security flaws identified by cybersecurity professionals between 2017 and 2020 and an additional 90 discovered in 2021 alone that have generally been observed being used by malicious hackers. Those flaws were listed in a new federal catalog as carrying “significant risk to the federal enterprise.”

What does this say about the proactivity, the willingness to act on their own recognizance, of the bureaucrats running these agencies and of the bureaucrats responsible for IT in these agencies?

It gets worse.

A significant majority of the flaws being published on the DHS catalog are ones that weren’t covered under previous orders, a senior official said.

Where’s the initiative? The lack is as appalling as it is unacceptable. Waiting—needing—to be told what to do? Really?

These are people who Know Better and passive-aggressively obstruct actions and orders with which they personally disagree. They’re in the way and need to be terminated.

These are other people who are unable to make the office cultural change necessary. They’re also in the way and need to be terminated, albeit with more favorable rationales than that first category.

These are yet other people who’ve simply had their weak performance tolerated out of misguided efforts at being nice. They’re also in the way and need to be retrained—and terminated if the training doesn’t lead to improved performance.

But most of all, those office managers and IT honchos shouldn’t have had to be told to do this critical part of their jobs. They need to be replaced, and their replacements better vetted.

If cybersecurity officials at a certain agency fail to comply with a directive, DHS [for instance] can notify the agency’s senior leaders, who are then responsible for resolving the noncompliance.

This is entirely too slow. Those failing to perform need to be corrected promptly, and if necessary, terminated promptly.

Cybersecurity isn’t just a matter of national security. It’s a matter of national survival.

Success or Failure?

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In a Just the News piece concerning how the People’s Republic of China is stealing our (and Japan’s, Republic of Korea’s, and European Union’s) technology and using it to build a military establishment that can defeat us and from that compel us to do PRC bidding, FBI Director Christopher Wray was quoted as testifying before the House Committee on Homeland Security September a year ago,

I think I publicly acknowledged that the FBI now has over 2,000 counter-intelligence investigations related to China, by far the biggest chunk of our counter-intelligence portfolio, and we are opening a new Chinese counterintelligence investigation about every 10 hours.

2,000 investigations, with a new one begun every 10 hours. Wray was touting that as the level of effort the FBI is putting into the matter.

What it really looks like is the extent of the PRC espionage effort, especially since those cases and case-openings only represent what the FBI has detected. Those data seem, more accurately, to indicate the degree of success the PRC is having at stealing our data, and the lack of success we’re having in defending ourselves.

That failure is not all on the Federal government, either, for all the centrality of their role in our nation’s security. It’s also, in very significant part, on the managers of our private enterprises and their lack of effort—empirically demonstrated by how often and how easily they’re entered (72 new FBI cases every month, not all of which concern government penetrations)—in protecting their own data.

Wray’s claim does not describe any form of success at all. He describes failure, perhaps even lack of seriousness regarding the matter.

Wasting Money

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Or continuing the failed, but durable, Progressive-Democrat policy of paying governments in Mexico and nations south to pretend to curb their citizens from heading north to enter our nation illegally. Which is a waste of our taxpayer money, also.

The Biden-Harris administration is shipping another $20 million to Mexico and Central America

in aid for the hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees in the region—including money for healthcare, shelter, and legal aid.

But to whom is all that money going, really? It isn’t Brandon. And it isn’t any of those migrants and refugees—who aren’t all migrants or refugees, anyway, those not having left their nations. (Only those in Mexico might—might—fit either of those categories. Two things about that, though. The Mexican government doesn’t have to let them into Mexico, and to the extent Mexico has not granted permission, they’re not migrants or refugees there, either. They’re illegal aliens in Mexico.)

No, the money is going to the crooked officials of those governments. It’s going to them because the money is paid, for the most part, to those governments rather than directly to actual aid groups or to the “migrants” or “refugees.” The men and women of those governments then siphon off most of the money, whether as the middle man’s cut or as outright graft. Even money going directly to those aid groups gets siphoned off by those government persons as the vig, in various forms, those groups must pay in order to be allowed to exist.

If our government is going to spend those millions, they should be committed in large part to resealing our southern border: finishing the wall, reinvigorating our ICE and CBP agencies and immigration judges, reinstating our Remain in Mexico and related policies (not just yapping about them), reaccelerating our illegal alien deportation policies and mechanisms.

The rest of those dollars should be spent on legal immigration procedures: making it easier to enter our nation legally, making the process of getting permission to enter (or being denied permission) much faster, improving our vetting processes so those other two can be achieved safely.