===
Commentary on Obama's prize deal! An overreaction? You decide.
Where is snake oil Schumer in all of this?
Obama may be naive, he may be incompetent and he may be a lousy negotiator but too many things he wants occur so I believe , for whatever deep seated reason, much, if not all, he does is purposeful.
Congress has also assisted by abdicating their authority because of fear of being painted racists. Our racist president painted them in the corner and has The Supremes backing him. (See 1, 1a and 1b below.)
===
I came back from the beach because of our speaker, James Van de Linde's presentation on cyber space and am returning to the beach once I take him to the airport. He was informative andf excellent and one of my fellow SIRC Board Members will write it up and I will post his review. (See 2 below.)
Today at 3PM, I am listening to a presentation by Israel's Consul General, Amb. Ophir Aviram, and will report on what I learn upon my return.
===
Dick
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)
How Technology Will Help Enforce the Iran Deal…And Cheat On It
By Patrick Tucker
July 14, 2015
The time of wailing and rejoicing has passed, for now. The Iran deal has been announced and, if the votes come through, IAEA monitors will set up shop in Iran to ensure Tehran has relinquished its efforts to build a nuclear bomb. The fact that the Obama administration, its partners, and others have such confidence in the inspections process is why there’s a deal at all. The technology for enforcement has advanced considerably over the last decade, but cheats are just a few hacks away.
Inspections Technology: One Step Forward
“Better technology really has helped the inspection process,” said David Kay, a former United Nations chief weapons inspector who ran the Iraq Survey Group, the inspections body that unveiled serious flaws in the intelligence that led to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “In the old days, inspectors had to put paper seals” onto containers or facilities that were off limits or undergoing investigation, Kay said “You had to go physically look [at them] to see if they had been broken. New seals can digitally transmit in real time back to Vienna. In the old days, digital cameras recorded either to a disk, or, the more modern ones, to [memory] cards. But you had to go pull out the cards and physically send them.” Now, he says, live camera feeds at a wide variety of inspection sites can “lessen the inspection burden tremendously and raise your confidence” as an inspector.
Portable sensing devices have advanced well beyond that old Geiger counter your high school physics teacher gave you on lab day. Mass spectronomy equipment, which measures the mass-to-charge ratio of gaseous ions, can track not only radiation levels but the types of particles in the air or on surfaces. They’ve gotten much smaller and more capable in the last decade. “Say you do an environmental swipe, a sampling of a wall, and you want to know what you’ve detected,” said Kay. “A mass spec will very quickly tell you whether it’s iron, cadmium, lead, or uranium or plutonium, and what is the isotopic composition. Is it an uranium isotope that you have to worry about? Is it one that will fission? Or is it one that’s a by-product of enrichment separation?”
Beyond mass spectrometers, IAEA inspectors have a variety of portable devices such as multi-channel analyzers, which, unlike low-tech radiation detectors, “can be used to search for and locate an unknown source of radiation, determine the relative dose rate, and isotopically identify the source,” according to this IAEA document. Inspectors also have alloy detectors to discover if objects have come into contact with various materials.
Cheating Technology: Two Steps Back
Despite the new gear, monitoring Iran’s nuclear activity will be incredibly challenging, Kay said. For one thing, the agreement allows Iran scientists to continue some nuclear research — just not bomb-building. The Iranians will be allowed to keep several centrifuges and uranium hexafluoride. The Arak heavy-water reactor will be modified to reduce plutonium enrichment but will still have fuel cores.
They enriched uranium to a high level. Well, environmental sampling from now for eons will detect that.
David Kay, former United Nations chief weapons inspector
All this radioactive residue will make it far more difficult to figure out what’s new and what’s old. “They enriched uranium to a high level. Well, environmental sampling from now for eons will detect that,” Kay said. “The Iranians have an easy out, having acknowledged that they did it in the past. They can say, ‘That’s from the old program’…It’s one thing inspecting in a place like Iraq after the first Gulf War where everything was prohibited. The background was supposed to be null.”
Even the promise of real-time camera feed monitoring will likely become a matter of dispute and argument. “Modern equipment has outages. The Internet goes down,” Kay said. “Every time an anomaly occurs, it will require another inspection effort to verify it was a genuine anomaly and not an intentional one.” Inspectors, in short, will be asked to look for signs of nuclear activity in a place where the signatures of such activity abound.
Moreover, they’ll be working under the gaze of Iranian internal security. The regime’s cyber espionage forces, which include the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security and the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber Defense Command, have shut down popular uprising attempts for years through domestic counterintelligence efforts that rival China’s. A few inspectors calling home on BlackBerry phones won’t pose an intelligence-gathering challenge.
Kay said any inspector working in Iran should assume constant phone and email hacking attempts. “You can’t believe how hard it is on inspectors when you know every conversation is going to be overheard, that there’s probably video monitoring in your hotel room,” he said. “The sense of privacy disappears. For the IAEA, maintaining the integrity of the inspection process is going to be a constant concern.” It will be a concern that will last for years.
Finally, the challenge of building a nuclear weapon has evolved from the days of Los Alamos. A lot of equipment that engineers might use to build conventional arms can also be used in nuclear weapons research. This presents a variety of cheating opportunities, says Kay.
“If I had to place a bet on the first violation, it would be in the procurement of potentially nuclear-related —in other words, dual-use equipment. The Iranians have the best clandestine procurement at work that I’ve ever seen … With dual-use equipment, you’re often able to gin up a permitted use,” he said. “It’s going to be very hard for inspectors to determine whether they are inside or outside the agreement.”
From an inspector's point of view, the worst thing that can happen is that you find stuff that is suspicious and your political masters simply aren’t prepared to take the difficult steps to resolve it.
David Kay, former United Nations chief weapons inspector
For instance, some machine tools used to produce centrifuges are “perfectly usable” in various conventional-weapons programs: “making your missiles fly better, straighter, producing with numerically controlled machine tools, all sorts of stuff like that,” he said.
Computer equipment and software is also dual-use. Simulation and modeling, for instance, allows nuclear research in a virtual environment away from the sniffers and sensors. “You’re talking about computers, software programs, codes that allow you to calculate how neutrons interact with other materials,” he said. “Some of it might be related to a nuclear weapons device, some might be related to a nuclear physics program,” he says. That presents an incredible challenge to inspectors, Kay said. “You can’t sit full-time and watch ones and zeros run across a screen and try to figure out what a code is doing. So much of modern physics is simulation.”
Does all this make it certain that Iran will cheat? Is the deal rotten to the core? Not at all, says Kay. He calls the deal “workable." It can succeed, he says, but only on one condition: that political powers in the United States support the inspectors when they try to ring alarm bells. “From an inspector's point of view, the worst thing that can happen is that you find stuff that is suspicious and your political masters simply aren’t prepared to take the difficult steps to resolve it.”
He should know.
By Patrick Tucker // Patrick Tucker is technology editor for Defense One. He’s also the author of The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move? (Current, 2014). Previously, Tucker was deputy editor for The Futurist for nine years. Tucker has written about emerging technology in Slate, The Sun, MIT Technology Review,Wilson Quarterly, The American Legion Magazine, BBC News Magazine, Utne Reader, and elsewhere.
July 14, 2015
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/07/how-technology-will-help-enforce-iran-dealand-cheat-it/117769/
1a) Obama's Deal: $150 Billion to Iran to Destroy Israel with Conventional Arms
One of the most alarming and catastrophic elements being overlooked in yesterday's give-away deal to the mullahs is that Iran will soon receive $150 billion dollars. With that money they can immediately go after Israel with tens of billions in horrific conventional weapons, missiles, bombers... way before any nuclear bomb is fully functional. Israel will be overwhelmed as never before, and America will be more vulnerable to Iranian plots financed, bizarrely, by Mr. Obama's giveaways. The mullahs can now echo Lenin: "The West will supply us the rope to hang them.
There is no reason for President Obama to give Iran that amount of money, which will be used tomorrow to try to destroy Israel, hire tens of thousands of ISIS, Hamas, and Hezb’allah terrorists, and finance terrorism against America and other countries. It will put at risk our Navy in the Persian Gulf, with Obama probably ordering some type of American retreat when challenged by the Iranians so as not to jeopardize our "partnership" with them as well as the hopes he has placed in the mullahs and his sympathy for other Iranian goals. This so-called treaty has been a hoax from the beginning, a ruse and cover-up for Mr. Obama's plan to resurrect Iran and financially fortify the mullahs and Iran.
With that $150 billion, Iran will be purchasing high-ticket military items, the most expensive machines in the world. Thanks to Mr. Obama, Iran will very quickly become one of the globe's most sought-after markets, an epicenter. Those seeking to sell Iran these mega-dollar items will, no doubt, be required by Iran to agree to some form of boycott of buying and selling to Israel. This BDS will be cleverly worded to let the collaborators claim they aren't officially involved in any official BDS. The European countries can't wait to sell Iran these items and that's why they're agreeing to a deal that many, such as the French, know is disastrous and unsafe for the West. But, they fear that if they drop out, Barack Obama will go ahead with the deal anyway and Iran's mullahs will retaliate by not providing contracts to the unwilling signers. If Europeans are willing to imperil their own safety for lucrative contracts with Iran, they certainly will not balk later when Iran demands a mere BDS against Israel.
With the $150 billion, Iran will be able to purchase the best anti-missile and anti-aircraft and radar systems in the world, systems and armaments that would render impossible any attack Israel were to make against the nuclear installations. Iran will be able to support their proxies in Latin and South America with weapons and terrorist beachheads aimed at inflicting us harm, and finance an enlarged underground railroad of jihadists entering America. They will be able to hire the best nuclear scientists, the top cyber hackers, the brightest minds to thwart Israel and, indeed, attack her and other western outlets.
This "deal" is Plan A for the annihilation of Israel, annihilation through active offense and by making Israel's defense impossible. If I can see this, so can Mr. Obama... as well as his supporters, including his Jewish supporters who have abandoned Israel and those Jews living in Israel, doing so under cover of the phoniest excuses possible... delivered with self-righteous purported moral platitudes.
In life, we make compromises to those we hold in high esteem, to those who hold a place in our hearts, to those we feel merit concessions from us. To Iran, Mr. Obama has made the most earth-shattering compromises in the annals of history. Even Chamberlain did not provide Hitler with a $150 billion to arm-up.
Mr. Obama compromised, worse, gave in, totally; surrendering on issues that will assuredly put the world in ultimate danger and enable Iran to forever manipulate, bite, and poison the world. He, evidently, feels an affinity for who they are and what they believe: their Shiite goals. He seems to love calling Mr. Khamenei what he would love being called: The Supreme Leader.
In contrast, when dealing with Israel he has been unwilling to compromise on even one tiny, new Jewish apartment in Jerusalem. He and his delegates screamed at Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu, so the world could hear, for permitting some innocuous, harmless room which was added to a Jewish building in a Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem. No compromise for Israel, not the slightest; yet total capitulation to Iranian Shiite Islam. Obama's heart is worn upon on his sleeve, and it can be seen to whom he defers as opposed to whom he constantly scolds.
This whole deal would go nowhere, be DOA, if the most powerful Democrat right now in the Senate would announce it as Dead on Arrival. That man is Sen. Chuck Schumer. Where is he? No one knows what he will do. Why should we be guessing? He should be out there, right now, saying No to this accord. Why keep us guessing? Why not some plain, unequivocal talk from him?
If he let it be known that he has 20 Democrats prepared to vote against it, and be veto proof, the "negotiations" would be severely discredited and stalled. Why do we have to second-guess where he will be when he should be out there right now doing the principled thing? Why should the Israelis have to live another moment in fear and anxiety? Where is his compassion? Schumer should stifle the accord now.
Why does Schumer allow Netanyahu to dangle all alone in the world when he, Schumer, has the leverage to squelch this and begin a momentum to unravel this horror? Perhaps he doesn't have the guts to do now what he knows he will not do later. Perhaps he will not go against his party's President now for fear of hurting his own political ascendancy, which means Schumer won't do it later. Why not do now what you intend to do... if you intend to do it? Where's the "Shomer"?
Rabbi Aryeh Spero is author of Push Back as well as Why Israel Matters to You and is president of Caucus for America.
1b)
Israeli ambassador: The four major problems with the Iran deal
Ron Dermer is Israel’s ambassador to the United States.
Israel has long been concerned that the “P5+1” powers would negotiate a bad deal with Iran. But the deal announced today in Vienna is breathtaking in its concessions to an Iranian regime that is the foremost sponsor of terror in the world, is on a march of conquest in the Middle East, is responsible for the murder and maiming of thousands of U.S. soldiers, and vows and works to annihilate the one and only Jewish state.
There are four major problems with this deal. First, it leaves Iran with a vast nuclear infrastructure. This is not the hoped for “dismantle for dismantle” deal, in which the sanctions regime would be dismantled in exchange for the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear-weapons making capability. Rather, this deal leaves Iran’s nuclear capabilities essentially intact (the conversion of the Arak heavy-water facility being the notable exception). In fact, this deal allows Iran to improve those capabilities by conducting research and development on advanced centrifuges and building intercontinental ballistic missiles, whose sole purpose is to carry nuclear warheads.
To keep Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions in check over the next decade, the P5+1 countries — the five U.N. Security Council members plus Germany — are relying on intelligence and inspectors. Here, the historical record does not bode well. The United States and Israel have two of the finest intelligence agencies in the world. But it was years before either knew that Iran had secret facilities at Natanz and Fordow .
As for inspections, Iran has been deceiving the International Atomic Energy Agency for years and has consistently refused to come clean about the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program — a commitment that Iran has once again been permitted to dodge before signing this agreement.
Given this history of deception, it is particularly disturbing that the promised “anytime, anywhere” inspections regime has degenerated into what has been aptly described as “sometime, somewhere” inspections.
The second problem with this deal is that the restrictions being placed on Iran’s nuclear program are only temporary, with the most important restrictions expiring in 10 years.
There is no linkage whatsoever between the removal of these restrictions and Iran’s behavior. In 10 years, Iran could be even more aggressive toward its neighbors, sponsor even more terrorism around the globe and work even harder to destroy Israel, and the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program would still be automatically removed.
A much more dangerous Iran would then legally be allowed to build a massive uranium enrichment program that would place it just weeks away from having the fissile material for an entire nuclear arsenal. As President Obama himself has admitted, the breakout time would then be “almost down to zero.”
That is why this deal does not block Iran’s path to a nuclear bomb. It paves it. By agreeing to temporary restrictions on its nuclear program today, Iran has cleared its path to many nuclear bombs tomorrow. Iran won’t have to sneak into or break into the nuclear club. Under this deal, it could simply decide to walk in.
That leads to the third problem with the deal. Because states throughout our region know that the deal paves Iran’s path to the bomb, a number of them will race to get nuclear weapons of their own. The most dangerous region on earth would get infinitely more dangerous. Nuclear terrorism and nuclear war would become far more likely. In fact, if someone wanted to eviscerate the global nuclear nonproliferation regime, this deal is definitely a great place to start.
Finally, the deal transfers to the Iranian regime’s coffers $150 billion that is now frozen in foreign bank accounts. Iran has a $300 billion to $400 billion economy. A $150 billion cash bonanza for the regime is the equivalent of $8 trillion flowing into the U.S. treasury.
Those funds are unlikely to be spent on new cancer research centers in Tehran or on funding a GI bill for returning members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Instead, tens of billions are likely to flow to the Shiite militias in Iraq, the Assad regime in Syria, the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Palestinian terror groups in Gaza and other Iranian terror proxies in the region.
Billions more will go to strengthening Iran’s global terror network, which it has used to perpetrate terror attacks on five continents in more than 30 cities, from Buenos Aires to Burgas, Bulgaria, to Bangkok.
Rather than force Iran to face the hard choice of guns or butter, this deal will enable it to have more dangerous guns, more lethal rockets, more sophisticated drones and more destructive cybercapabilities. Removing the arms embargo on Iran magnifies this problem by orders of magnitude.
Any one of these problems would be sufficient to make this a bad deal. But all four make this deal a disaster of historic proportions.
Israel has the most to gain if the Iranian nuclear issue is peacefully resolved. But this deal does not resolve the issue. It makes things much worse, increasing the chances of conventional war with Iran and its terror proxies today and dramatically increasing the chances of a nuclear-armed Iran and a nuclearized Middle East tomorrow.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2) TRUE PERSPECTIVES SEMINAR on Cyber Security
Cyber Security Threats – July 14 James Van de Velde, Ph.D., Adjunct Lecturer, Georgetown University, gave a grim portrayal of cyber tactics used by ISIS to create home-grown terrorists worldwide. His perspective comes in large part from his consulting on strategy and intelligence issues to U.S. Cyber Command (dealing with this fifth form of warfare after land, sea, air and space). Russia, China and ISIS In That Order He rated our adversaries in this arena, starting with Russia as the most formidable, followed by China and now ISIS (the Islamic State terrorist group based in Iraq and Syria). While Russia and China can do us more existential damage from colossal breakdowns in key services, he chose to focus his talk on ISIS because of their recent and unique approach to cyber warfare. ISIS Thrives Via the Internet What is unique about ISIS is that the threat is enabled primarily because of the existence of the worldwide web - the Internet. He also contrasted their tactics with those of their predecessor al Qaida (AQ). Combating al Qaida AQ operated as a terrorist group with a Sunni Muslim origin as a planning and execution operation. From Afghanistan they plotted to damage traditional Western symbols to reinforce their intent to replace Western culture and return to fundamentalist Muslim beliefs. They relied on a command structure to recruit operatives to carry out well-planned attacks. They initially succeeded via the well known 9/11 attacks in 2001 on U.S. symbols - the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Led by Osama bin Laden holed up in Afghanistan, they stealthfully planned a coordinated attack using dozens of dedicated believers who were willing to sacrifice their lives for the big moment. Of course, after 9/11 the awakened U.S. began a systematic campaign to try to prevent such an event from recurring. Special Forces invaded Afghanistan to deny AQ their safe haven planning base and overthrew their willing enablers - the Taliban. We also continued to identify their leaders and, via drone strikes, take out known leaders so that their influence and mode of operation was severely disrupted. ISIS Differs From al Qaida In stark contrast are the goals and methods of ISIS. In addition to creating a Caliphate on the ground in Iraq and Syria, ISIS is recruiting home grown terrorists to do lone wolf attacks abroad. These new recruits are to use their own individual ideas - inspired by ISIS videos and articles sent to them via the Internet. E-magazine articles describe how to make bombs and how to select targets to carry out homicides. Social media also is effective in recruiting fighters in Syria and Iraq, but the ISIS goals are far beyond the Middle East. The ultimate goal is a worldwide Caliphate and return to Sixth Century primitive religious beliefs based on the Koran. Their current recruiting message is simple. Using barbaric images such as beheadings, they hope to inspire malcontents everywhere to join their movement signified by brutality and horror. “Jihadi cool” is the term used by young recruits who, with no grounding in morality, want to join this new, seemingly successful, counter to Western civilization. Terrorism is “performance art” for these jihadists and the Internet is a form of “gateway” drug for ill-informed, malleable youth to become exposed to jihadist ideology and join ISIS. Thus ISIS relies on news organizations to do their handy work by publicizing the latest ISIS accomplishments. ISIS ironically uses modern technology to accomplish this. In essence they couldn’t really thrive, or perhaps even exist, without the Internet! They use it for for all their fundamentals: Recruiting, Planning, Organization and Information Sharing. How to Combat These Tactics So far the FBI has been mainly successful in tracking down these lone wolf and small group attackers in the U.S. (the Boston Marathon explosions being a prominent exception). To do this the FBI (along with NSA and the CIA) needs massive access to phone and electronic records to pick up the culprits before they attack. One approach might be to shut down vast areas of the Internet in Syria, where the videos are being produced, but the current Administration is reluctant to do that. The Next Big Risk Of greater concern is whether these ISIS tactics can move to the next level - where Russia and China have the capability. The first escalation could be denials of services to regular commercial enterprises via flooding websites and deforming them. After that would be active Cyber-weapons to take down infrastructure such as dams, reservoirs and power plants. To do that, they would need to recruit very sophisticated scientists (such as are functioning in Russia and China). The latter, being nation states, are not sympathetic to ISIS tactics as they might be next on the agenda to transform their societies to Sharia Law. The U.S. can and should monitor the set of sophisticated scientists who might potentially be “turned” to the Dark Side by ISIS propaganda. Some critics of surveillance, worried about our government spying on civilians, need to evaluate the relative risks involved and ensure themselves that civil rights are protected. But civilization as we know it also needs to be protected, if the wrong people get access to the wrong weapons.
Note: The Van de Velde complete slide presentation is available on SIRC’s website: skidawayrepublicanclub.com T
2) TRUE PERSPECTIVES SEMINAR on Cyber Security
Cyber Security Threats – July 14 James Van de Velde, Ph.D., Adjunct Lecturer, Georgetown University, gave a grim portrayal of cyber tactics used by ISIS to create home-grown terrorists worldwide. His perspective comes in large part from his consulting on strategy and intelligence issues to U.S. Cyber Command (dealing with this fifth form of warfare after land, sea, air and space). Russia, China and ISIS In That Order He rated our adversaries in this arena, starting with Russia as the most formidable, followed by China and now ISIS (the Islamic State terrorist group based in Iraq and Syria). While Russia and China can do us more existential damage from colossal breakdowns in key services, he chose to focus his talk on ISIS because of their recent and unique approach to cyber warfare. ISIS Thrives Via the Internet What is unique about ISIS is that the threat is enabled primarily because of the existence of the worldwide web - the Internet. He also contrasted their tactics with those of their predecessor al Qaida (AQ). Combating al Qaida AQ operated as a terrorist group with a Sunni Muslim origin as a planning and execution operation. From Afghanistan they plotted to damage traditional Western symbols to reinforce their intent to replace Western culture and return to fundamentalist Muslim beliefs. They relied on a command structure to recruit operatives to carry out well-planned attacks. They initially succeeded via the well known 9/11 attacks in 2001 on U.S. symbols - the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Led by Osama bin Laden holed up in Afghanistan, they stealthfully planned a coordinated attack using dozens of dedicated believers who were willing to sacrifice their lives for the big moment. Of course, after 9/11 the awakened U.S. began a systematic campaign to try to prevent such an event from recurring. Special Forces invaded Afghanistan to deny AQ their safe haven planning base and overthrew their willing enablers - the Taliban. We also continued to identify their leaders and, via drone strikes, take out known leaders so that their influence and mode of operation was severely disrupted. ISIS Differs From al Qaida In stark contrast are the goals and methods of ISIS. In addition to creating a Caliphate on the ground in Iraq and Syria, ISIS is recruiting home grown terrorists to do lone wolf attacks abroad. These new recruits are to use their own individual ideas - inspired by ISIS videos and articles sent to them via the Internet. E-magazine articles describe how to make bombs and how to select targets to carry out homicides. Social media also is effective in recruiting fighters in Syria and Iraq, but the ISIS goals are far beyond the Middle East. The ultimate goal is a worldwide Caliphate and return to Sixth Century primitive religious beliefs based on the Koran. Their current recruiting message is simple. Using barbaric images such as beheadings, they hope to inspire malcontents everywhere to join their movement signified by brutality and horror. “Jihadi cool” is the term used by young recruits who, with no grounding in morality, want to join this new, seemingly successful, counter to Western civilization. Terrorism is “performance art” for these jihadists and the Internet is a form of “gateway” drug for ill-informed, malleable youth to become exposed to jihadist ideology and join ISIS. Thus ISIS relies on news organizations to do their handy work by publicizing the latest ISIS accomplishments. ISIS ironically uses modern technology to accomplish this. In essence they couldn’t really thrive, or perhaps even exist, without the Internet! They use it for for all their fundamentals: Recruiting, Planning, Organization and Information Sharing. How to Combat These Tactics So far the FBI has been mainly successful in tracking down these lone wolf and small group attackers in the U.S. (the Boston Marathon explosions being a prominent exception). To do this the FBI (along with NSA and the CIA) needs massive access to phone and electronic records to pick up the culprits before they attack. One approach might be to shut down vast areas of the Internet in Syria, where the videos are being produced, but the current Administration is reluctant to do that. The Next Big Risk Of greater concern is whether these ISIS tactics can move to the next level - where Russia and China have the capability. The first escalation could be denials of services to regular commercial enterprises via flooding websites and deforming them. After that would be active Cyber-weapons to take down infrastructure such as dams, reservoirs and power plants. To do that, they would need to recruit very sophisticated scientists (such as are functioning in Russia and China). The latter, being nation states, are not sympathetic to ISIS tactics as they might be next on the agenda to transform their societies to Sharia Law. The U.S. can and should monitor the set of sophisticated scientists who might potentially be “turned” to the Dark Side by ISIS propaganda. Some critics of surveillance, worried about our government spying on civilians, need to evaluate the relative risks involved and ensure themselves that civil rights are protected. But civilization as we know it also needs to be protected, if the wrong people get access to the wrong weapons.
Note: The Van de Velde complete slide presentation is available on SIRC’s website: skidawayrepublicanclub.com T
No comments:
Post a Comment