NSA Chief General Kieth Alexander and "The Secret War"

-Laelth

Cheers!

-Laelth

Wired publishes some awfully good stuff.

k&r

Wired is excellent if you want the insider, techie stuff like this.

Thanks for the k&r.

-Laelth

Important quote from the article:



Emphasis mine.

-Laelth

Here's some pure speculation on my part:

Either Petraeus fell out of favor and Alexander neutralized him, or, one of Alexander's enemies took down Petraeus in order to weaken Alexander.

Plus this (also speculative):

Alexander announced his intention to retire in 2014. Perhaps that gave someone the ability to launch a national discussion on this issue without fear of reprisal from Alexander. Or, perhaps, Alexander launched this national discussion in the hopes of reigning in his successor (whomever that may be) because Alexander rightly fears tyranny if the power he has at his disposal were to fall into less benign hands.

And this comment following the article:



Nifty (if also horrifying) stuff.

-Laelth


Edit:Laelth--better presentation, visually.

Great article!

-Laelth

(emphasis added)

Devastatingly scary.

-Laelth

And anything you (or others) can do to keep this kicked would be most appreciated. I think this info. needs much wider dissemination.

-Laelth

I'm still not finished, but what I've read is really disturbing. See my other response below.

This is not some video game antics we're talking about here. These operations, and the retaliations, have the very real capability to kill. This isn't your daddy's war anymore.

And the whole world is in the cyber cross-hairs. Thinking about, and I'm not trying to be hyperbolic, but this cyber warfare could be more dangerous than nuclear arms. I say this because we, as humans, can see the tangible threat by launching a nuke. Not so with the abstract cyber warfare. We are not as privy to the nature of the danger we are unleashing. It's not as tangible. There are no "mushroom clouds" but the danger, I think, is worse. Could literally cripple the world, and end us as a species.

I need to read some more and then sleep on it, but I do not deny that all the horrors you imagine could be possible.

-Laelth

It's clear we have attacked them. It is also clear they have attacked our allies. We are (whether the American people know it or not) at war with Iran.

Honestly, until I read that article, I did not know this.

Still absorbing the impact of this article.

-Laelth

And it is escalating, as the article points out, Iran is developing their version of cyber defense (offense). No doubt, every other nation is doing the same.

I have a bad feeling about this.

That's why President Clinton joined McCain in calling for American intervention there.

When I saw the report saying that Clinton suggested Obama would look like a "wuss" if he didn't get involved, and soon, I was shocked. That's bad Presidential etiquette. A former President is not supposed to do that, but, when seen in the context of war with Iran, it makes a lot more sense. Etiquette goes out the window when we're talking about national security.

-Laelth

Besides which, I am sorry to say, Iran has proven that it is a real threat--at the very least, to our allies.

-Laelth

Here: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/06/general-keith-alexander-cyberwar/all/

-Laelth

We did attack them first.

But we're in big trouble if the Saudi Arabian oil supply is disrupted, and Iran showed us that they could shut off the spigot for a time, at least. We're rightfully concerned, and Saudi Arabia's confidence in us (to protect them) has been weakened.

Again ... delicate times.

-Laelth

This article is a real eye-opener.

Scary times, indeed.

Then there's Pakistan and India, an already volatile situation, who would like nothing but to work this cyber warfare in their respective favor.

I hate to sound dramatic, but I'm thinking we may be looking into the abyss with this stuff.

It appears we are going to get involved in the Syrian conflict.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023010923

Sigh.

-Laelth

I actually thought about this thread when it came on!

I think I need a vacation.

-Laelth

I've got the casting down of the major characters at the other thread!

-Laelth

This article is fascinating, though really scary.



Ironic that we refer to a potential "cyber Pearl Harbor" on our systems, while we had already effectively done the same. Would we not expect a response? These people are playing with fire and our lives!

Another thought that occurred to me was the fact the US government's zeal with going after Manning, Drake and Snowden. If anyone had access to sensitive network blueprints not unlike what we had for Iran with our Stuxnet offensive, they could reveal that information to Iranian operatives, and really do unspeakable damage to our infrastructure and economy.

This cat is out of the bag. Cyber attack will beget cyber attack. Retaliation could very possibly leave the whole world figuratively blind (if not literally).

It's the zero-day exploits we need to protect.



We have spent billions finding weakness in all kinds of computer programs that can be exploited. Because we have not exploited those weaknesses yet, the developers who produced that software have not yet patched the programs. They remain vulnerable, and the NSA is just waiting (keeping that software vulnerable) so that we can attack our enemies when (and if) we need to. Snowden (or another leaker) might be able to give away all the holes we spent years discovering. That would severely curtail our cyberwarfare capabilities and would represent a waste of billions of dollars.

This, I assume, is why we punish whistleblowers and leakers so heinously these days.

-Laelth

I'm thinking that secret operatives knowing our vulnerabilities are even more sacred than those that knew about our nuclear vulnerabilities.

Welcome to the Brave New World.

-Laelth

How the hell can this be curtailed?

The essay shows that, whether the American people know it or not, we are at war with Iran. We have attacked them, and they have attacked our allies. I don't think there's any way that our legislators will risk weakening our capabilities while we are at war. No way. No how.

-Laelth

To be able to maintain the edge against our enemies while also eliminating the inexcusable invasion of privacy of every citizen in this country.

Now, I am not so sure.

-Laelth

but I can't help but believe that we'll win out over all this Orwellian bullshit.

-Laelth

I mean...if we let this continue...then we suck. And we deserve what we get.

There's this.
http://cheezburger.com/7565073408

Seems that some folks are taking this in stride.

-Laelth

There's a lot of great porn that I can't remember where to track down.

-Laelth

-Laelth

Okay, NSA helped CIA and Israel delay Iran's ability to enrich uranium. I suppose that's their job, given the depressing state of US policy in the region. Okay, NSA also has the ability to track, hack and infect every digital device connected to the Internet in the world:



Okay, atop its nuclear weapons, the US has the ability to destroy the real and virtual worlds many times over. But, why do I get the feeling that there should be more to show for all that money to all those contractors?

I suspect that's why the Chinese President blew off Obama's complaints about the Chinese hacking our systems. They know we've been hacking them for years. Now that their hackers are getting some skill, we cry and ask them to stop? That's laughable.

btw, if you're wondering why Congress is going to grant so many H1-B Visas for the tech industry, I have a theory. It's not because we don't have good coders here. It's because we want all the world's good coders. We are in the midst of a global, cyber-cold-war. By letting all the talented coders come to the U.S., we are denying them to China, Iran, and North Korea.

Ah, it feels like a good number of puzzle pieces are coming together.

-Laelth

As for H-1Bs, a lot of the ones from China have interesting resumes that show a 6-8 year span where they worked for NGOs but no military service. Believe me, they don't get security clearances, and it's a lot damned harder to get a PRC H-1B than it used to be when they were being hired by the droves to work in network engineering positions for the same telcos that acquire most of PRISM's data off the network backbone switches - so brain drain from China is probably not as big problem as it once was. War is Peace.

Get all of the spooks before the Soviets could.

-Laelth

Explosion in LA...

Yup, I know, it's shiny.

But that plant *is* connected to the Internet.

Damn, we are in a new Cold War...thanks guys.

It has been a weird few days.

-Laelth

when one wonders, why the hell bother?

Turn key tyranny, and people are going over how much I hate the President, or you for that matter.

I guess we just got to see behind the curtain of the Empire.

What I can say in response to your temporary feeling of hopelessness (which I sometimes share) is that every Republic in the history of the planet has been an oligarchy. As a liberal, I am a supporter of both oligarchy and capitalism, but what I want is a sane, well-regulated capitalism that shares its benefits broadly across all segments of our society. Oligarchy is not necessarily evil. We have to convince our oligarchs to share the wealth (because, as we know, it's in their own best interests to do so).

Just in case you wanted to do some light reading:

The Roman Republic
The Republic of Venice (the longest-lasting republic in the planet's history)
The Republic of Ragusa (a very cool little republic that lasted for over 500 years and was an early ally of the fledgling United States)

These are all oligarchies. Take a look at this picture and tell me we're not looking at a good number of our nation's early oligarchs:



We may not like oligarchy, in principle, but we may be fooling ourselves if we believe that the U.S. hasn't always been one. And every oligarchy, it seems, wants an empire.



-Laelth

Beautifully said.

And I have no idea what actual benefit it even purports to provide.

Moving 1s and 0s around in a very nearly arbitrarily defined "territory"...

You know what? I think they've kind of lost it.

But the threat of cyber-attack is quite real. From the essay:



Perhaps they have lost it, as you say, but the cyber-cold-war appears to be quite real and, worse, a growing threat. I find it unlikely that Congress will limit the powers of the machine of state surveillance under these circumstances.

-Laelth

From his article:

Inside the government, the general is regarded with a mixture of respect and fear, not unlike J. Edgar Hoover, another security figure whose tenure spanned multiple presidencies. “We jokingly referred to him as Emperor Alexander—with good cause, because whatever Keith wants, Keith gets,” says one former senior CIA official who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. “We would sit back literally in awe of what he was able to get from Congress, from the White House, and at the expense of everybody else.”

He did a Reddit AMA today on the subject. It can be found here: http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1g9gz0/i_am_james_bamford_one_of_the_journalists/

-Laelth

James Bamford, from Reddit AMA:

I think it's mysterious, this cooperation between the NSA and ISPs, and the only thing I can compare it to is the deal with AT&T - where all data flows into their computers filled with software that does deep-pocket inspection, looking for target information and target names and so forth. Whether the NSA created some sort of lock box or portal in cyber space where they can do this, I don't know. But what you have is the NSA saying they have direct access to their servers. And what the tech giants are saying is that they don't give them direct access to their services. What we have then is something in between - is it semantics or truth or both? But eventually it will come out through investigative reporting or congressional hearings or something. I think Snowden is very courageous. He's doing something other people wouldn't do. He's not making any money on it, and he's facing serious repercussions. Last year, in my WIRED cover story on the NSA data-center in Utah, I interviewed a number of former senior officials, including Bill Binney, and they told me very similar things about getting data records from everyone at Verizon and so forth. But the NSA was able to largely brush off those accusations, and the mainstream media just believed them because General Alexander said it. This might have been one of the reasons why Snowden felt this information could only be taken seriously if the public actually got to see the documents. This way, there is no way to brush it under the rug, say these people are lying or exaggerating. A number of whistleblowers have said very similar things. The media and the public only believe it's real, despite the denials, when confronted with actual documents.

-Laelth

Maybe it's the cyber warfare that he believes the American people should be able to consider Not just the domestic snooping, but the whole shebang.

Thanks, Laelth. Interesting and informative post.