Archive for 2018
February 1, 2018
THE NEXT WAR: Russia Steadily Cultivating Electronic Warfare While U.S., NATO Lag Behind.
The nearly two-decade American-led campaign against insurgent groups that use relatively unsophisticated weaponry has forced the United States to deprioritize investment in this realm. Defense officials eyeing Russian offensives in Ukraine and Syria are now concerned that the U.S. military has lost its edge in countering and waging electronic warfare against near-peer adversaries.
“[NATO does] not exercise to put forces into an EMS-contested battle space, the Russians do, and they feel they’re making advances in this area that gives them an injection of confidence,” Roger McDermott, a senior research fellow in war studies at King’s College London, said Monday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
The Kremlin most recently demonstrated its electronic warfare capabilities earlier this month when Russian military hackers used cyberware to take out several armed drones that attacked two of its military bases in western Syria.
In Ukraine, Russia has deployed an array of hybrid tools to deny Kiev the use of information space, including advanced jamming technologies to shutdown government communications and cyber attacks against critical infrastructure.
We should be better at this stuff, so I can’t help but wonder how quickly we could catch up with bounties paid to US-based hacker groups.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, DIVERSITY PROBLEM EDITION: Dems took 100% of donations from Williams College in 2017: Not a single employee of Williams College donated to a Republican in 2017, though $25,000 was donated to Democrats.
and LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Rosenstein Wanted Trump to Help Him ‘Fight’ Congressional Oversight and Much, Much More.
THE FIX WAS IN: FBI Officials Knew of New Clinton Emails Weeks Before Alerting Congress. “Andrew McCabe learned of thousands of emails found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop at least a month before alerting lawmakers.”
Top FBI officials were aware for at least a month before alerting Congress that emails potentially related to an investigation of Hillary Clinton had emerged during a key stretch of the 2016 presidential campaign, according to text messages reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe had learned about the thousands of emails by Sept. 28, 2016, and Director James Comey informed Congress about them on Oct. 28, 11 days before the presidential election, the messages show. Mr. Comey later said nothing in the new emails had changed the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s decision that Mrs. Clinton had committed no prosecutable offenses.
In the text messages reviewed by the Journal, FBI agent Peter Strzok, who led the probe into Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server, told FBI lawyer Lisa Page on Sept. 28 that he had just been summoned to speak to Mr. McCabe about the newly discovered emails.
Agents in New York had found them on a laptop belonging to Anthony Weiner, a former congressman and husband of Huma Abedin, one of Mrs. Clinton’s closest advisers. The FBI was investigating Mr. Weiner for sexting a 15-year-old girl; he would later plead guilty to transferring obscene material to a minor and was sentenced to 21 months in prison.
“Got called up to Andy’s earlier,” Mr. Strzok wrote in a Sept. 28 text. He continued: “hundreds of thousands of emails turned over by Weiner’s atty to sdny, includes a ton of material from spouse. Sending team up tomorrow to review … this will never end ….” SDNY refers to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which was investigating Mr. Weiner.
Republicans and critics of the FBI have suggested the bureau may have sat on the emails to avoid hurting Mrs. Clinton before the Nov. 8 election.
Ya think?
EUROPE: Exploring France’s anti-Semitic attack problem.
The attack on Monday against a Jewish schoolboy indicates France’s growing problem with anti-Semitism. In the latest incident, an 8-year-old boy was walking to an evening class just outside Paris when he was set upon by two teenagers.
It’s far from an exceptional case. Earlier this month, a Jewish store in Paris was targeted by arsonists and a 15-year-old Jewish girl had her face slashed around the same neighborhood as where this boy has now been attacked. In another incident last September, a Jewish family was held hostage as a gang ransacked their home looking for hidden jewelry and money (a typical anti-Semitic trope is that Jews horde expensive items).
More brutal attacks have also occurred. In 2012, three children and a teacher were killed in an attack on a Jewish school in southern France. Four innocent people were also murdered in January 2015, when a terrorist stormed a Kosher supermarket.
All of this has led French Jews to take special precautions to protect themselves. They travel in groups for added security and sometimes conceal the testaments of their heritage; avoiding wearing kippahs or Stars of David. In some areas, Jewish community activists have organized self-defense groups to protect their friends and family.
This speaks to something. While we talk much about no-go zones in France, the real problem is not no-go zones, but rather no-man’s-land zones: areas free to travel but fraught with perceivable risk. The challenge here is not so much a threat to life, but a perishing of the French right to the pursuit of happiness.
Why does France, a modern democratic society, have such a problem here? A few reasons. First off, France has a distinct problem with the integration of its Muslim youths. The blending of France’s generous welfare state and the relative disinterest of the French social establishment in Muslim social mobility has led young French Muslims to feel detached from their own society. They keep to themselves in homogeneous communities; often poor, run down, gang-controlled tenements, basking in a narrative of victimhood and anger.
In contrast, the relative social success and successful integration of French Jews makes them a target for Muslim youths. The same underlying element of anti-Semitism is at play here: jealousy.
Well, that’s some of it.
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s Oil Power Vanishing, Hard Default Fears Rising.
The country has over $1 billion in overdue interest payments, which is more than 10% of the country’s central bank reserves at this point.
There has been no official communication from the government on any other coupon payments and lengthy delays are now prompting review on whether the oil firm has entered into permanent default. If so, bond holders will accelerate and request principal payment. Of course, they will not get their principal payments, at least not immediately.
“The markets will recognize declining probability of payment each day that passes without receipt of funds or notification from the intermediaries,” says Siobhan Morden, a managing director at Nomura in New York.
Defaults stress erodes the margin of flexibility for Maduro and exposes a worse phase of cashflow woes for the bills the country owes in dollars.
Unexpectedly.
THE MORE THEY TIGHTEN THEIR GRIP, THE MORE USERS WILL SLIP THROUGH THEIR FINGERS: Facebook Really Wants You to Come Back. “The social network is getting aggressive with people who don’t log in often, working to keep up its engagement numbers.”
BRANDON WEICHERT: Democrats Should Revise Their Hopes for 2018.
There are good reasons for them to expect some gains, but their understanding about what will drive those gains, if there are some, is skewed perfectly to suit their prejudices.
Watching tonight’s speech, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Left had totally checked out of reality and focused solely on their echo chamber. Did they really think that marginally Democrat voters would be impressed with their performance? The majority of elected Congressional Democrats were caught on camera tonight sneering at the concept of average American workers keeping more of their pay, bettering their lives, and overcoming stifling government regulations. They were caught in stone cold silence at the concept of honoring the flag and the ideas it represents.
The Democrats are banking on President Trump’s alleged unpopularity to carry them forward in their 2018 campaigns. However, that is a born-to-lose proposition going forward. Tonight’s speech proved that while the Democrats snigger and sneer at the Right, the Republicans—led by Trump—are actually doing things to demonstrate their sympathy with the American people and producing results that people can applaud. The Democrats are not “woke” if they fail to recognize this fact.
Trump reached across the aisle several times in his address, trusting that the Democrats would play to their worst instincts. His faith was not misplaced.
MY USA TODAY COLUMN: We’re actually living in a Golden Age, you know.
#HERTOO: Nashville Mayor Megan Barry admits to extramarital relationship with top police security officer. Why are Democrats so prone to sexual exploitation of subordinates?
WHY DO SO MANY LEFTY DO-GOODERS TURN OUT TO BE SEXUAL PREDATORS? Female Employees Allege Culture of Sexual Harassment at Humane Society. “We’ve seen the slaughterhouse videos. You join this movement and you just want to do anything for it. You believe these guys are the heroes. You believe they’re going to be compassionate because they’re speaking up for animals and you trust them.”
Actually, the more conspicuous the virtue-signalling, the less virtuous the signaller.
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Men Are More Attractive When Desired By Other Women, Study Finds.
ROGER KIMBALL: I wanted Ted Cruz to be President, but Donald Trump is working. Yeah, I was a Cruz fan, and before that a Walker and Paul fan, but I strongly doubt any of them would have done as well in their first year as Trump has done. And, you know, the press would have called them Hitler, too.
NOW THEY’RE JUST MAKING THINGS UP: Rare, Mohawk-Wearing Fish Discovered ‘Walking’ on Seafloor.
IT’S STILL A MYSTERY: American tourists suffered same strange symptoms as diplomats after visiting Cuba.
I WOULD THINK IT DEPENDS ON THE BREAKFAST CEREAL: Nutritionist claims pizza is a healthier breakfast than cereal.
THE DEATH OF EUROPE, NOW PLAYING: Paris gets its first — incredibly creepy — sex doll brothel.
SO THAT WAS THE FIRST MISTAKE: Berkeley Student Detained by ICE Should Never Have Been Enrolled.