Category Archives: defense policy

Why is this even a Question?

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Republicans officially petitioned the administration Thursday to deny Hillary Clinton access to secret information as Democrats’ presidential nominee, and some GOP lawmakers said if the intelligence community won’t do it, they’ll pass a bill to do it themselves.

Oh, wait—it’s a question because

The White House has said it won’t deny Mrs Clinton access….

On the excuse of tradition, don’t you know.

Never mind the tradition, and the requirement in most serious security régimes—like in a government—of revoking existing security clearances and denying further access to those who’ve committed security violations as egregious as even FBI Director James Comey has documented Clinton having done.

Some rules, some traditions, just don’t apply.  Not when they’re inconvenient.

The PRC is Back in the East China Sea

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Over the last month, the PRC has become more aggressive against Japan, especially in the region of Japan’s Senkaku Island group.  More provocatively, the PRC may be beginning to coordinate its aggression with Russia in the region.

In mid-June, PRC fighters threatened Japanese fighters in the airspace around the Senkakus, and a PRC deep sea combat ship sailed directly at the islands while a Russian destroyer approached from a different direction as though the one was going to stage a landing while the other provided cover for the maneuver.

This sort of behavior has been going on for the last couple of years in the South China Sea, now it’s resuming in the East China Sea, and it comes at the backdrop of President Barack Obama’s (D) so-called pivot to Asia, which is proving more and more to be all hat and no cattle.

The PRC is not any friend of Japan.  Nor is it any friend of ours.  These behaviors are purely acquisitive.  We need to get quite a bit firmer, in actual deed, not just chit-chat, or our friends and allies be forced to make their own accommodations with their, and our, enemy.

That’s Our Client State

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Leave them alone.  That’s the People’s Republic of China’s reaction to the US/Republic of Korea agreement to station an anti-missile defense system in the RoK, a setup explicitly designed for defense and deployed in response to northern Korea’s missile and nuclear warhead buildup.

PRC’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang:

We demand the US and South Korea change their attitude.  By agreeing with the US side to deploy this system, South Korea has gotten itself involved in a situation that damages the current balance on the peninsula.

Yeah—the balance the PRC and their client were trying to develop, from which the better to intimidate the RoK and other regional nations.  Because defensive systems are threats, but PRC/northern Korea offensive systems cannot be.

Lu also refused to rule out economic retaliatory measures against the impertinent RoK.  Roughly 25% of the RoK’s exports go to the PRC.  This comes, also, with the PRC’s history of economic retaliation, as it did against Japan when the Japanese successfully disputed the PRC’s attempt to seize Japan’s Senkaku Island group.

Tony Blair Misunderstands

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Great Britain’s Ex-Prime Minister Tony Blair has sensed danger from the Brits’ vote to leave the European Union.

Blair said in a Friday column in The Daily Telegraph that the future of the United Kingdom is at stake as the country faces negotiations on the terms of leaving the European Union.

Of course there’s danger—there always is when a change as large as this is embarked on.  But Great Britain didn’t get to be as great as it was and still is by being timid.  This move is a great opportunity for the nation, much more so than it is a risk, however real that risk is.

Blair also worried:

Britain is dangerously divided, with “profound dismay” felt by many of the 48 percent who wanted to remain in the EU.

He’s missing the other question, though: would Great Britain be any less divided had they voted to Remain?  Not a bit.

Look forward, not backward.

Criminal Negligence

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Further to the matter of Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s unsecured email server and her State Department’s handling of them.

…revelations from new court-released documents in a lawsuit by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch. They show the State Department temporarily turned off security features in 2010 so that emails from then-Secretary of State Clinton’s personal server would stop going to the department’s spam folders.

That’s not just dumb (or, in the words of Colonel with whom I once worked, the dumbest thing I ever heard), it’s got to be criminally negligent.

It’s too easy—and a very routine thing to do—to fish (as opposed to phish) out of those spam folders Clinton’s emails, both those from her and those to her.  It’s too easy—and another very routine thing to do—to adjust the spam filters to pass acceptable emails.

And: it’s too easy—and yet another very routine thing to do—to block access, any access, from an unsecured server of any purpose to State’s official business network, much less its classified network.

As Bob Gourley, former Chief Technology Officer for DIA, put it,

You’re putting not just the Clinton server at risk but the entire Department of State emails at risk.  When you turn off your defensive mechanisms, and you’re connected to the Internet, you’re almost laying out the welcome mat for anyone to intrude and attack and steal your secrets.

Of course Clinton’s State Department IT staff knew this.

Of course Clinton, who was the ultimate State Department classifying authority for this sort of thing as well as for all matters related to security, knew this.

Elections have consequences.