Intro: "US reliance on private contractors is seeing a sinister focus on surveillance of citizens instead of defence against cyber attack."
US Navy X-47B Unmanned Stealth Bomber, 03/07/11. (photo: US Navy)
The Military-Industrial Complex 2.0
09 October 11
A virtual secret state: the military-industrial complex 2.0. US reliance on private contractors is seeing a sinister focus on surveillance of citizens instead of defense against cyber attack.
n Friday, Wired revealed that a virus of unknown origin has been consistently tracking the remote piloting of US military drones down to each keystroke, and that attempts to remove the intrusion have failed. Although the origin and intent of this virus remain unknown, with military analysts positing that it may be typical malware rather than a successful espionage bid, the incident provides the media with a practical opportunity to finally start examining the processes that determine our republic's ability to protect itself from foreign cyber threats. That examination needs to focus on a particular system of the sort that is most dangerous to any republic - a system that grows ever more consequential while remaining largely invisible even to those who are charged with overseeing it.
Even most members of Congress are unaware of the extent to which both the military and intelligence community have come to depend on private contractors to provide the software and ingenuity necessary for both conventional and information warfare in the 21st century. In 2005, experts estimated that 30% of the US intelligence budget was being outsourced, and this intelligence contracting industry has grown markedly since.
On the surface, this practice makes sense; the modern military tends not to attract sufficient technical talent for its needs, and in a few notable cases, the once-legendary hackers who run crucial firms have felony convictions that would prevent them from doing equivalent work from inside the state. Meanwhile, competition for projects promotes the incubation of new and more powerful capabilities from within the industry, and the bidding system ensures that the US gets the best of these for the least money - at least, in theory.
But as evidenced by the drone virus affair and other, more serious incidents, the overall contracting process is deeply flawed. The "free market" competition for contracts that would otherwise bring gains is corrupted by the industry's thorough overlap with its state customers. Former Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff joined the board of directors of contractor BAE Systems ahead of that firm being awarded a $270 million contract last week, followed by another US Army contract for $67 million; before bringing on the well-connected ex-secretary, the firm was becoming notorious for losing such crucial business.
A glance at the boards and executive listings of similar firms, replete with former military officers and government officials, reveals the revolving door that connects potential clients with a state customer for which money is no object, such money being taxed from an electorate too distracted by other offenses to notice. Of course, America's penchant for overspending on defense would be more defensible if it received what it paid for. The revelations regarding the failure of Halliburton, Mantech and other state-intertwined contractors to provide invoiced services to troops have been so endless as almost to be discounted, rather than add to the popular outrage.
This familiar tendency on the part of the US government to spend money it doesn't have on things it doesn't get is now directed at developing procedures it shouldn't use. The intelligence contracting industry, which includes firms that provide security applications to the entire US government and military, has been encouraged lately to direct more of its collective time and capabilities to the task of monitoring, misinforming and sometimes outright attacking American citizens and others abroad - and benefit from the protection of the state and the incompetence of the media in order to make such attacks with impunity.
The Team Themis affair, which united three such firms to go after journalists, activists and WikiLeaks was revealed by Anonymous earlier this year thanks to the seizure of 70,000 emails from coordinating firm HBGary Federal. The little-known and sinister persona management capability - a state-sponsored "sockpuppet" propaganda program - has been found in widespread development; the National Security Agency-linked Endgame Systems has been revealed to offer comprehensive offensive cyber capabilities, with targets in place, to customers other than the US government; a few months ago, I released a report on a worrying surveillance apparatus known as Romas/COIN.
The shift from infrastructure defense to surveillance and offensive capability comes in the wake of the Chinese-orchestrated Aurora attacks against US state and corporate targets - an operation that continues to reveal itself as even more damaging than initially thought as additional targets admit theft of crucial data. The problem with the changing priorities of the US's cyber-contractor complex are two-fold: by neglecting government systems' vulnerabilities - and the drone virus provides a perfect instance - the state loses face with adversaries, real or potential, who respect only force; and by treating its own citizenry as the leading threat to its security, it loses the loyalty of those who respect truth and the rule of law.
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Seems to me that the emphasis may be on the wrong foot.
But it seems un-constitutional to me, to have civilian contractors defending American Embassies, instead of US Marines - at a much higher price, by the way, or even civilian contractors managing the "peeling spuds", instead of a "dogface doing KP".
Can you imagine how it must piss-off a regular Army guy to be working next to a civilian, who is doing the same sort of job, for incredibly higher pay.
And this pales in significance when compared with responsibility for whole defense systems being sub-contracted by civilian firms. When did this sort of privitizing of our national defense start? Was it with Dick Cheney?
I know there is somebody out there that has been watching this syndrome, and can give it a name.
Or, perhaps, given all the blood spilled in constant conned into war, war, war for oil, oil, oil, we be more accurate to name it COUP D'GRACE.
Whichever, time for us to take off the blinders and do all it takes to.....
UNDO THE COUP!
There are programs that could be done but it would have to be reprogrammed daily.
that should not be a problem since the Military runs on Paranoia in all parts of the world.
Basically a 4 year old could interface to run the drones on different equation but then, the military could not over spend and suck America Dry.
Do you realize how many companies,. Corporations Banks, Wall Street run under the same big brother hacking attacks every second? Stop feeding us more bs...Military loves spending money.
We do not need private Contractors. Perhaps it is time we Private Contract for Military, see which one wants to work for us for a third what we waste daily
Militarism does MORE harm than good to people.
Close the Pentagon and all military contracts. Save $1.3 trillin per year - is ONLY way to save America.
Typical idiot evasion of the obvious - the GOVERNMENT is hiring private companies to make it easier for the GOVERNMENT to spy on us.
If the answer does not come back (to protect corporate holdings) then you have not yet learned the most important thing in life (survival). BS is the oldest form of conversation known to man, ie; The serpent to Eve in the Garden of Eden.
somebody out there that has been watching this syndrome, and can give it a name--some of us are old enough to remember that President Dwight D. Eisenhauer warned us to control the growth of the Military Industial Complex.
And he was a Republican President/
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