The conflict between secrecy and marketing within defense/security contractors has led to some entertaining gaffs in the U.S. The Spy Who Billed Me has followed up on some of the organisations openly monitoring the blog and made some interesting findings. Security contractors have to advertise their wares whilst attempting not to give away too much about the work they already do. The Spy Who Billed Me has decoded the marketing on one contractor’s web site (referred to as ‘Heckle and Jeckle’), using only publicly available contextual knowledge to reach the following conclusions:

…Heckle and Jeckle teams stand ready, custom-designed high-tech gadgets in hand, for clandestine missions in enemy territory to covertly and remotely intercept foreign communications or penetrate information systems.  This can be done independently or in conjunction with SEAL or Delta or other secret squirrel teams on behalf of SOCOM and the CIA.

In other words, they set up black sites albeit a different type than has been in the news lately.  To put it into context, such black sites such as covert listening posts in hostile territories and even in friendlier ones where discovery could create international tensions count among the Intelligence Community’s blackest secrets.  And now, thanks to the About page on Heckle and Jeckle’s website, we know that the CIA is outsourcing this to Heckle and Jeckle, whose identity would make it somewhat easier to uncover the black collection sites.

…

Heckle and Jeckle also brag about a micro-electromechanical facility which becomes particularly interesting in conjunction with their job openings announcements.  Reviewing the skill sets they’re looking for, it quickly becomes apparent that they design and program their own computer chips, so they’re clearly creating proprietary cutting-edge gadgets.  It’s notable how frequently they’re searching for engineers with experience in one of the most miserable operating systems for mobile devices:  Windows mobile.  They’re also regularly seeking programmers versed in another mobile device language:  Symbian.  Now this information taken in conjunction with their specialty and their prior claims of micro-electromechanical facilities suggests they’re designing and creating a lot of mobile, hand held covert communications devices.

And here I’d venture a pure guess that these are probably designed to look like standard run-of-the-mill Treos and other smart phones, blending their “intelligent phones” into the mobile world.  The largest consumer of such gizmos is, of course, the CIA’s DS&T, adding to suspicions that Heckle and Jeckle is a major DS&T contractor.  The primary use of such covert communications gear is for communications with nonofficial cover officers (NOCs) and agents.  So the information on Heckle and Jeckle’s site suggests that they are likely designing and creating the latest must-have accessories for NOCs and agents, a far cry from the clunky COVCOM gear of yesteryear.   (And from the Agency’s point of view, knowledge of this would be a serious security breech.  Keep in mind the CIA does not even allow contractors to acknowledge their affiliation with the Agency, let alone divulge the programs they are working on, particularly such sensitivities ones.)

…

Not only have CIA programs been compromised, so have SOCOMs.  Judging from the job postings for positions in Florida, Heckle and Jeckle are doing data mining and analytical work for SOCOM.  Among other things that can be deduced, they search for relational patterns of terrorist activity and affiliations, looking at a wide array of seemingly innocuous relationships using open source and clandestinely gathered data, particularly focusing upon financial transactional data.  I’m betting they have a very sophisticated quantitative model that they’re constantly tweaking that underlies this process.

Again, Heckle and Jeckle job postings give us hints to other SOCOM programs.  It appears that Heckle and Jeckle are involved in tracking SOCOM assets worldwide.  Moving beyond Heckle and Jeckle’s own website to other open sources, it’s possible to learn some of the specs of related handhelds including whose low-earth orbiting satellites they use.  Digging a little deeper, it’s also possible to discover the code name of Heckle and Jeckle’s RF geolocation program…

[The Spy Who Billed Me]

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Putin’s Russia is continuing to breath life into old Cold War figures. In the space of a few weeks Russian submarines have planted flags under the north pole, claiming the territory as their own; soviet bombers have resumed Cold War face-offs with their old adversaries; the leader’s image has become an aggressive propaganda device; and the BBC news has been silenced.

Russia has staked an ownership claim on much of the North Pole - seizing the opportunity presented by global warming to access the mineral reserves that were inaccessible beneath the Arctic ice. Sergei Balyasnikov, of the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Institute, told the news agency, Ria-Novosti, that the mission was ‘risky and heroic’ and was ‘like putting a flag on the moon’ [Ria-Novosti via the BBC].

The propaganda effect of the mission was rather undermined when a Finnish teenager spotted that footage from the film, Titanic, was used by a Russian state TV station, Rossiya, to illustrate the Russian submarines under the North Pole [from The Guardian].

It looks like the approach to British airspace by Soviet bombers in June was an early example of the Soviet-style bomber patrols Russia has restarted [from the BBC].

Russian generals claimed that bombers approaching the American military base in Guam ‘exchanged smiles’ with American pilots [The Guardian]. The re-activation of flights by Russia’s ageing nuclear bomber forces has increased concerns that nuclear accidents are made far more likely as a result of the exercises.

Putin’s personal propaganda machine has moved up a few gears in recent weeks too. Photos of Putin on a fishing trip with Prince Albert II of Monaco have been circulating amongst the world’s media:

Meanwhile, The Telegraph has reported that the Russian state has revived yet another old Soviet spectre, the forced psychiatric treatment of dissidents.

BBC Radio has been forced of FM bands in Russia this week.

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A ghost from the cold war, in the form of a fighter-bomber dance just beyond the edge of the state, briefly appeared over the North Sea on Tuesday:

It was confirmed by the Ministry of Defence today that RAF jets were scrambled on Tuesday after two Russian aircraft were spotted heading towards British airspace.

“Two unidentified aircraft came towards British airspace. They turned round before there was an interception and before they entered British airspace,” an MoD spokesman said.

He confirmed that the two aircraft involved in Tuesday’s incident had been Russian, and said there was “nothing to suggest this was linked to any other issues”.[The Guardian]

According to the Telegraph:

As Moscow hesitated in its response to Britain’s expulsion of four Russian diplomats, two Tornado fighters raced to meet the Tu95 “Bear” bombers that had been dispatched from their base near the northern port city of Murmansk in the Arctic Circle. The planes turned back before they reached British airspace. [The Telegraph]

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The Guardian have reported on a decision by the Russian parliament to allow strategically important energy corporations to amass private armies:

Russia’s parliament voted yesterday to allow the country’s two biggest energy monopolies, Gazprom and the state oil pipeline company Transneft, to employ and arm private security units. Under the deal, Russia’s interior ministry will supply Gazprom with guns from its own armoury.

Supporters of the plan say that Russia’s oil and gas installations - which are key to the country’s boom and burgeoning economic revival - have to be protected from terrorist attack at all cost.

“A couple of terrorist acts and an ensuing ecological catastrophe would be enough to immediately declare Russia an unreliable partner and supplier of energy reserves,” said Alexander Gurov, one of 341 MPs who backed the new law in the country’s 450-seat Duma. [The Guardian]

The Russian government has wielded energy supplies as strategic weapons against its post-soviet neighbours in recent years, leading to nervousness in European governments about the long term stability of their energy supplies. The Guardian article conjures the spectacle of a corporate state in which Putin’s possible move from President to head of Gazprom would be a promotion:

Many observers regard the state-owned energy giant as a state within a state and also the Kremlin’s most brutally effective geopolitical weapon, as well as a tool for bludgeoning the neighbours.

Gazprom has a watertight grip on gas exports: it temporarily severed energy supplies to Belarus in January and to Ukraine last year following a row over prices.

The company has impeccable connections with Russia’s ruling elite, from which it is virtually indistinguishable. The chairman of the board is Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s diminutive first deputy prime minister. There are rumours that Vladimir Putin may take over as head of Gazprom next year when he steps down as president. [The Guardian]

According to Reuters the relaxation in laws refers solely to the oil-pipeline monopoly, Transneft and energy giant Gazprom, which “has 430,000 employees, controls some of Russia’s biggest media outlets, has a firm grip on gas exports and owns the country’s third largest bank” [Reuters]. Putin already has ‘friends’ in Gazprom:

The chief executive of the pipeline consortium is Matthias Warnig, a German who heads Dresdner Bank’s arm in Russia and is a longtime friend of Putin’s. The Wall Street Journal reported this year that Warnig was an officer in the Stasi, the East German secret police, and met Putin during the late 1980s when the Russian president was based in East Germany as a Soviet KGB officer. [Washington Post]

The Washington Post article also reports on the appointment of the former German chancellor, Gerhardt Schroeder as board chairman at Gazprom.

Russian corporate culture (although it seem a little quaint to qualify the phrase with the name of a nation-state) is following an increasing popular corporate path towards militarisation. Walmart’s recent ascendency to the military-retail complex is only amongst the most recent examples of American corporate militarisation.

These latest steps in corporate evolution are an interesting contrast to to the growing privatisation of military functions and the attendant creep of military law. American legislators have, for some time, been concerned about the U.S. government’s deployment of private security contractors in military operations since there is less public accountability for the private organisations. These concerns were raised about the deployment of private contractors in Central America serving the U.S.’ “War on Drugs” and more recently we have seen these same concerns echoed in Iraq. Hasty legislation has been drafted to bring the operations of private security contractors under the uniform code of military justice [Wikipedia]. Some observers regard this legislation to have been so loosely drafted that it brings embedded journalists and other largely civilian functions under military jurisdiction, in which disobeying an order or disrespecting an officer become punishable offences.

The old cold war adversaries present us with an intriguing pincer movement on civil law. On the one hand the creep of military law into civil arenas where states remain strong, and on the other the creep of corporate law into military arenas where the state is weak.

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We are never surprised to discover that the arms trade uses the tactics of the military intelligence communities. Their interests are often linked and there is large scale traffic of employees from one to the other. Anger (or admiration depending on your political persuasion) might be a typical response to the discovery that BAE was spying on anti-arms trade groups [the Guardian] but not surprise. However, something seems utterly wrong with retail multi-nationals creating military intelligence units - despite their balance sheets operating on the scales of nation states. Wal-Mart seem to be creating a military intelligence unit, recruiting staff from the intelligence services with the intention of using their military contacts as part of their work.

[Business Week via Global Guerillas]

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Of course any military has to plan for contigencies. The Taiwanese military have been conducting war games simulating an attack on a Chinese aircraft carrier in 2012 which follows a Chinese attack on Taiwan:

Taiwan is performing a computerised military exercise which for the first time focuses on attacking a Chinese aircraft carrier, it was reported Monday. The scenario of a five-day drill — part of military manoeuvres codenamed “Han Kuang 23″ — is that in 2012 the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launch a blitz on the island after they acquire their first aircraft carrier, the Taipei-based China Times reported.

[via Sino Daily]

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The former Indian diplomat, M K Bhadrakumar, has written an interesting article for The Asia Times on the recent escalating tensions between the US/Europe and the Russian Federation entitled, “In the trenches of the new cold war”¹. In it he attempts to disentagle the strategies emerging in post cold war europe, paricularly in the light of the US announcement of new anti-ballistic missile systems close to russian borders.

Ostensibly, the new “missile shield” is there to provide defense against ICBMs originating in rogue states. Iran and North Korea are often mentioned in this regard, and, clearly, China is pursuing massive military development. The U.S. published a “Fact-sheet” about the systems in order, partly to calm Russian fears. Seven “facts” are highlighted:

(a) the European missile shield is meant to counter possible attacks from Iran or North Korea; (b) the US is puzzled by Russia’s anxiety, since the rockets to be deployed in Central Europe are no match for Russia’s arsenal; (c) Russia itself should be worried about the missile threat from “rogue states”; (d) the US is prepared to cooperate with Russia on missile defense; (e) the US is open to the idea of merging the missile shield with the Russian system; (f) Washington would like Moscow to take part in research and development, though it is unlikely the Russians will consider such cooperation; and (g) the US has endeavored to be “transparent” and is prepared to hold consultations with Russia to explain its case for the deployments in Central Europe. [Asia Times]

However, as Bhadrakumar points out, the Russians are deeply suspicious about the strategic capabilities of the new deployments. After all, the oft-mentioned rogue states are very far from strategically deployable ICBMs (even if the west is very far from an effective missile shield technology). General Yury Baluyevsky, chief of the Russian General Staff was quoted as saying:

The real goal [of the US deployment] is to protect [the US] from Russian and Chinese nuclear-missile potential and to create exclusive conditions for the invulnerability of the United States. [Asia Times]

There has been mounting concern in Europe as the Russian government have demonstrated an increasing willingness to use energy supplies as strategic weapons. Many European countries are now very nervously dependent on Russian natural gas. In the UK concerns are mounting about Gazprom’s desire to move into the energy supply markets. The UK currently has one of the smallest proportions of domestic gas supplies coming from Russian fields. Indeed, one flashpoint of the new cold war seems to be Kazakhstan’s role in the

US$6 billion gas-pipeline project that is an extension of the South Caucasus pipeline, linking Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, and which is expected to run from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. The 3,400-kilometer pipeline across the Caspian bypassing Russia, which is to be built from early next year so as to go on stream in 2011, will have a capacity of 30 billion cubic meters and promises to be a rival to Russian Gazprom’s Blue Stream-2 (scheduled to be commissioned in 2012). [Asia Times]

One part of the european strategy for evading what seems like increasingly belligerent Russian energy strategy is to deepen economic cooperation with the US. Der Speigel has reported that a “confidential draft” of a new EU-US economic treaty has already been produced. Signatures are expected on the treaty next week. However, it would be wise to see this treaty as largely focused on the increasing economic significance of Asian states - Russia is increasingly looking like a potentially destrucive distraction in a bigger game.

The Americans seem to have decided that they need to put the mutually-assured destruction arrangement with Russia behind them in order to focus on a more important game. The only way to achieve this is to put the reciprocal stability of the cold war behind them and move to a position of strategic dominance. Bhadrakumar points out that this, at least, is how the Russians perceive the US strategy. Sergei Rogov of the USA and Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences has proposed cost-effective ways the Russian military can counter the ongoing extensions to the US-European military capacity without getting involved in an economically damaging arms race.

Commentators on post-Soviet affairs are pointing to events in the Ukraine and Georgia as the hot spots of the new cold war. With Europe and the US attempting to undermine Russian influence in these strategically important states, Russia has no choice but to try to maintain its influence there by whatever means it can.

Tensions are increasing in the Baltic states where ethnic Russians are often sizeable minorities and are increasingly seen as vehicles for the continuation of Russia influence after the withdrawal of the Soviet state. Estonia is currently experiencing large scale rioting in the aftermath of the removal of a statue commemorating a soviet soldier’s involvement in the defeat of Nazism (BBC news item here). Estonians often regard such monuments as symbols of their occupation by the Soviets. Many commentators are claiming that the Russian state is participating in the escalation of Russian nationalist sentiment in this situation.

1. Bhadrakumar, M.K. (2007) “In the Trenches of the New Cold War”. Asia Times 28 April 2007 [Online] Internet: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/ID28Ag01.html (Accessed 28 April 2007)

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The Guardian has reported on a strategic planning document produced by Rear Admiral Chris Parry’s department of the MOD, the Development, Concepts & Doctrine Centre. Aside from the usual weapons tech the Guardian quotes from the document’s speculation about unrest amongst the middle classes in the developed world:

Marxism

“The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx,” says the report. The thesis is based on a growing gap between the middle classes and the super-rich on one hand and an urban under-class threatening social order: “The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest”. Marxism could also be revived, it says, because of global inequality. An increased trend towards moral relativism and pragmatic values will encourage people to seek the “sanctuary provided by more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism”.

Pressures leading to social unrest

By 2010 more than 50% of the world’s population will be living in urban rather than rural environments, leading to social deprivation and “new instability risks”, and the growth of shanty towns. By 2035, that figure will rise to 60%. Migration will increase. Globalisation may lead to levels of international integration that effectively bring inter-state warfare to an end. But it may lead to “inter-communal conflict” - communities with shared interests transcending national boundaries and resorting to the use of violence.

[The Guardian]

Perhaps when the MOD finishes reading Ballard it will start thinking a little less conservatively about the capacity for popularism and tribalism in the middle classes.

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Space News have reported that the six months of jamming suffered by a Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications satellite in 2006 was engineered by the Libyan government in an attempt to prevent cigarette smugglers’ use of satellite phones.

Thuraya Satellite Telecommunications are a United Arab Emirates company based in Abu Dhabi. The Libyan government is one of their major share holders. Apparently the jamming was only intended to disrupt the communications of smugglers working in Libyan waters.

The jamming incident was not the first in the commercial sector, but does appear to be one of the most systematic:

In perhaps one of the most persistent jamming events ever recorded in the commercial satellite sector, Libyan nationals operating from three widely separated locations inside Libya—at least one of them a restricted military site—compromised the L-band communications signals from Thuraya for more than six months in 2006, officials said. [Space News]

Diplomatic efforts on the part of the United Arab Emirates government eventually persuaded the Libyan government to stop the jamming.

The Space News article also mentions some of the preceeding cases involving jamming of commercial satellites:

In Asia, both APT Satellite Holdings Ltd. and AsiaSat of Hong Kong have suffered the occasional TV-signal hijacking by groups believed to be in support of the Falun Gong dissident group in China.

In France, operators of the French Syracuse military telecommunications system say their satellites’ signals in the Middle East have been subject to attempted jamming. [Space News]

[from Space News]

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2006 saw the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) cutting back its funding of fundamental science in favour of product-based research of tactical and strategic significance for the US. University researchers have found themselves starved of funding for basic science and having to conform to war-footing security procedures for smaller scale projects. The focus on deliverables has led to funding being directed towards corporate and covert research programmes. The cumulative effect of IP legislation in the US has further eroded the openness of traditional academic methods.

According to David Patterson, president of the Association for Computing Machinery, DARPA funding has decreased [for universities] while National Science Foundation funding has been rising, although NSF funding tends to focus on very much smaller scale projects than was conventional for DARPA. It should be noted that the funding numbers referred to by Patterson are ‘excluding classified projects or those where the university functioned as a subcontractor’ ( IEEE Spectrum Online ). The New York Times reported on April 2nd that:

This week, in responding to a query from the staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Darpa officials acknowledged for the first time a shift in focus. They revealed that within a relatively steady budget for computer science research that rose slightly from $546 million in 2001 to $583 million last year, the portion going to university researchers has fallen from $214 million to $123 million. [New York Times]

The Computing Research Association, an association of computer science academics from US universities, produced a report for the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee subcomittee on cybersecurity R&D criticising government policy for the near-sightedness of DARPA’s venture-capital firm approach to easily measurable progress in research; for the increased use of classification to hide research from the academic community; and for the pernicious influence of IP law in preventing open discourse about research.

According to the CRA report, under the stewardship of its director, Anthony Tether, DARPA has been transformed into an organization resembling a ‘high-tech venture capital firm’ focused on projects whose development schedules can be mapped onto 12/18 monthly milestones. Since there can be no guarantees in the development schedules of fundamental science these constraints place the emphasis of funding squarely on those projects having only to overcome implementation problems.

The CRA report also criticises the increased use of classification to render the results of research beyond the scrutiny and peer-review of the academic community. Clearly, research with a focus on deliverables of tactical and strategic importance is going result in classified research. However, where there is a redistribution of resources in favour of such projects there will be a dwindling amount of academic material available to contribute to the broader research community. Starving the academic community of cutting edge developments is hardly a recipe for expanding the pool of researchers and theories out of which future projects will emerge.

The growing proportion of DARPA funding for tactically relevant research brings with it inevitable security concerns. One consequence of this is the increase in classification of research and the associated extension of the state security apparatus to include the assessment of membership qualification for research programmes. The New York Times article reports that academics have discovered DARPA funding can entail tough constraints on the membership of research programmes. One academic, Dr. Kleinrock (UCLA) ‘said that he decided that he was not interested in the project when he learned that the agency was insisting that he employ only graduate assistants with American citizenship’ (New York Times). Needless to say, severing US research from the pool of international talent wanting to study in the US deprives science (and US science) of a tremendously powerful resource.

The third of the CRA’s concerns was with the consequences of US intellectual property law for the dissemination of academic research:

[T]he “anti-circumvention provisions” of the DMCA interfere with many legal, non-infringing uses of digital computing and prevent scientists and technologists from circumventing access technologies to recognize shortcomings in security systems, to defend patents and copyrights, to discover and fix dangerous bugs in code, to analyze and stop malicious code (e.g., viruses), and to conduct forms of desired educational activities. In some instances, the threat of legal action under the DMCA has deterred scientists from publishing scholarly work or even publicly discussing their research, both fundamental tenets of scientific discourse.[CRA Report]

Whether your politics are left- or right-leaning, the issue at this point in history is whether anyone can afford to cut fundamental science in favour of covert military research when the operational constraints on covert research remove the mechanisms science has established to sustain the quality of its work. The place of the university at the heart of science is not metaphysically guaranteed role. Even if research increases the intensity of its migration into corporatate institutions the same principles of openness, peer-review and criticism are still its best guarentors of quality. The danger of the drift in emphasis towards deliverables and security in an age of almost permanent national emergency is that will see increasing political interference in matters of science and we will have removed the protections against a new breed of corporate Lysenkoism.

Ref:

Computing Research Association (2006) Testimony Of The Computing Research Association For The Pitac Cyber Security Subcommittee Town Hall Meeting On Cyber Security Research And Development. (Report) [Online] Internet: http://www.cra.org/ (Accessed 26 Dec 2006)

Kumagai, Jean (2006) “U.S. Defense Dollars for Computer Science Plunge”. IEEE Spectrum. 43 (2) [Online] Internet: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb06/2814 (Accessed: 26 Dec 2006 )

Markoff, John (2006) “Pentagon Redirects its Research Dollars”. The New York Times. 2 April 2006 [Online] Internet: http://www.nytimes.com/ (Accessed: 26 Dec 2006 )

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