National Strategy for Counterterrorism http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/counterterrorism_strategy.pdf
Tagged: Strategy RSS Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
mazsa
-
mazsa
“The U.S. International Strategy for Cyberspace outlines our vision for the future of cyberspace, and sets an agenda for partnering with other nations and peoples to realize it.” http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/International_Strategy_Cyberspace_Factsheet.pdf
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/international_strategy_for_cyberspace.pdf
-
mazsa
US says South-Stream&Nabucco could merge http://www.euractiv.com/en/energy/us-says-south-stream-and-nabucco-could-merge-news-501107
-
mazsa
Separating Terror from Terrorism: “Nineteenth-century anarchists promoted what they called the “propaganda of the deed,” that is, the use of violence as a symbolic action to make a larger point, such as inspiring the masses to undertake revolutionary action. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, modern terrorist organizations began to conduct operations designed to serve as terrorist theater, an undertaking greatly aided by the advent and spread of broadcast media. Examples of attacks designed to grab international media attention are the September 1972 kidnapping and murder of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics and the December 1975 raid on OPEC headquarters in Vienna. Aircraft hijackings followed suit, changing from relatively brief endeavors to long, drawn-out and dramatic media events often spanning multiple continents.
Today, the proliferation of 24-hour television news networks and the Internet have allowed the media to broadcast such attacks live and in their entirety. This development allowed vast numbers of people to watch live as the World Trade Center towers collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, and as teams of gunmen ran amok in Mumbai in November 2008.
This exposure not only allows people to be informed about unfolding events, it also permits them to become secondary victims of the violence they have watched unfold before them. As the word indicates, the intent of “terrorism” is to create terror in a targeted audience, and the media allow that audience to become far larger than just those in the immediate vicinity of a terrorist attack. I am not a psychologist, but even I can understand that on 9/11, watching the second aircraft strike the South Tower, seeing people leap to their deaths from the windows of the World Trade Center Towers in order to escape the ensuing fire and then watching the towers collapse live on television had a profound impact on many people. A large portion of the United State was, in effect, victimized, as were a large number of people living abroad, judging from the statements of foreign citizens and leaders in the wake of 9/11 that “We are all Americans.” ” http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20101229-separating-terror-terrorism(via Scneier)
-
mazsa
10 recommendations shortly before Obama is expected to release his National Security Space Strategy
The recommendations of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), shortly before Obama is expected to release his National Security Space Strategy, which will define U.S. strategic goals for national security aspects of space:
“1. Elaborate on the administration’s National Space Policy and publicly articulate its approach and goals, both to provide clear high-level guidance for U.S. policy makers— military and nonmilitary alike—and to clarify U.S. intentions for the international community.
The approach and goals should:
• Emphasize international cooperation rather than
unilateral actions.
• Reaffirm that all countries have the same rights to
the peaceful use of space.
• Take a more balanced view of commercial, civil,
and military uses of space.
• Support and reinforce long-held norms against station-
ing weapons in space and against disabling or destroying
satellites.2. Declare that the United States will not intentionally
damage or disable any satellites operating in accordance with the Outer Space Treaty, and pledge that the United States will not be the first to station dedicated weapons in space. Strongly urge the other space powers to make parallel pronouncements.3. Declare that the United States will not develop or deploy space-based missile defense interceptors. Pledge not to use any element of the U.S. land-, sea-, or air-based missile defense systems to attack or destroy a satellite. And review plans to sell systems with this capability to other countries in order to ensure that any missile interceptors sold by the United States will not be used as anti-satellite weapons.
4. Vigorously pursue a capability-preserving strategy and make satellites less attractive targets by reducing their vulnerabilities; building in redundancies; improving the capacity to rapidly reconstitute key functions; and devel- oping air-, space-, or ground-based backup systems.
5. Modify U.S. export-control and related regulations to reduce unnecessary barriers to commercial and civil space cooperation.
6. Begin discussions with the international community to identify the most productive venue and agenda for nego- tiations on space security and sustainability. Play a leading role in setting up these discussions.
7. Assemble a negotiating team and begin building the diplomatic, technical, legal, and other kinds of expertise needed to support negotiations. Encourage other coun- tries to do so as well.
8. Appoint a high-level expert panel to review and prioritize space situational awareness missions and to recommend corresponding improvements to U.S. space surveillance capabilities.
9. Create a standing program to assess and improve options for verifying compliance with potential space security agreements.
10. Develop and implement transparency measures aimed at improving safety and predictability in space.”
-
mazsa
Energy 2020 – European strategy
Energy 2020 is a plan to cut consumption, boost market competitiveness, secure supplies, meet the EU’s climate change goals and coordinate negotiations with suppliers.
-
admin
India: Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance
“After three years of continuous running battles, India’s Department of Information Technology has finalized the National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance. This incorporates many of the key points submitted by Red Hat. Over the last three years, we worked with our friends in government, academic, civil society and the media to push the Indian government in favor of a policy that mandates a single, royalty-free standard. The final policy and the comments that Red Hat had submitted are attached.” http://osindia.blogspot.com/2010/11/indian-open-standards-policy-finalized.html
Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance: http://egovstandards.gov.in/approved-standards/egscontent.2010-11-12.9124322046
-
mazsa
Nine years after 9/11, let’s stop playing into bin Laden’s hands: “The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, succeeded far beyond anything Osama bin Laden could possibly have envisioned. This is not just because they resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths, nor only because they struck at the heart of American financial and military power. Those outcomes were only the bait; it would remain for the United States to spring the trap.
The goal of any organized terrorist attack is to goad a vastly more powerful enemy into an excessive response. And over the past nine years, the United States has blundered into the 9/11 snare with one overreaction after another. Bin Laden deserves to be the object of our hostility, national anguish and contempt, and he deserves to be taken seriously as a canny tactician. But much of what he has achieved we have done, and continue to do, to ourselves. Bin Laden does not deserve that we, even inadvertently, fulfill so many of his unimagined dreams. [...]
If bin Laden did not foresee all this, then he quickly came to understand it. In a 2004 video message, he boasted about leading America on the path to self-destruction. “All we have to do is send two mujaheddin . . . to raise a small piece of cloth on which is written ‘al-Qaeda’ in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses.”
Through the initial spending of a few hundred thousand dollars, training and then sacrificing 19 of his foot soldiers, bin Laden has watched his relatively tiny and all but anonymous organization of a few hundred zealots turn into the most recognized international franchise since McDonald’s. Could any enemy of the United States have achieved more with less?
Could bin Laden, in his wildest imaginings, have hoped to provoke greater chaos? It is past time to reflect on what our enemy sought, and still seeks, to accomplish — and how we have accommodated him.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/09/AR2010090904735.html
-
mazsa
Should Obama Control the Internet? – A new bill would give the President emergency authority to halt web traffic and access private data. http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/04/should-obama-control-internet
Cf.
“Netsukuku is the name of an experimental peer-to-peer routing system, developed by the FreakNet MediaLab (Italian), born to build up a distributed network, anonymous and censorship-free, fully independent but not necessarily separated from Internet, without the support of any server, ISP and no central authority. It does not rely on a backbone router, or on any routing equipment other than normal network interface cards.”
-
mazsa
Inter-Group Conflict and Intra-Group Punishment: “In many areas of social life different parties interact under conditions of rivalry, striving for something that not all can obtain. Examples of such rivalries in the economic and political realms are R&D competition, promotion tournaments in internal labor markets, lobbying for government favors and electoral competition between political parties. As a result of such rivalries considerable resources are spent on activities that have no direct productive value. For example, […] previous to the adoption of auctions by the FCC, the real resources spent on filing applications for cell phone license lotteries (with an estimated market value of one billion dollars at that time) was about 400 million dollars. Extreme instances of rivalry are military conflicts and socio- political conflicts, like those that arise between parts of a country, when one of them is fighting for a different political status or independence, and those between ethnic groups. Actual conflicts of this type are often very costly, both in human lives and in material losses. […]
“In [many] rent-seeking experiments […] it is individuals who compete for a prize. In many naturally occurring situations, however, players are groups, since political parties, social movements, and associations like trade unions, lobbyists, terrorist groups etc. are invariably composed of more than one individual. Rent-seeking competition between groups rather than single players introduces an additional layer of complexity to the strategic characteristics of the interaction. Although groups clearly have the potential to be more powerful competitors than individual agents, they face internal coordination problems that may severely undermine their efficacy.
“[…] thus far it is poorly understood how human decision makers actually behave in simple collective rent-seeking contests. Consider a setting where all group members reap the benefits of success, while the likelihood of success depends on the efforts of individual group members. If formal enforcement measures are absent, the conflict parties effectively compete on the basis of voluntary contributions although informal sanctions against defectors, like social ostracism or mobbing, may help to overcome the inherent free-riding incentives. To date we have no systematic empirical evidence on how inter-group conflict is likely to evolve in such a setting.
“In the work we present here we use laboratory methods to study how conflict in contest games is influenced by parties being groups instead of individuals and by the existence of the possibility of punishment between members of a party. […] One can see this as a representation of a situation where the prize has a public good flavor for the successful party as is the case in some political confrontations in which all members of the winning party benefit from the outcome.
“Our results for the case without punishment show that expenditure levels in contests between groups are much higher than in contests between individuals, and both exceed equilibrium levels. On average, we observe that teams spend on conflict more than four times as much as predicted and about twice as much as single players. We also find that individual parties fighting against group parties invest similar levels to individual parties fighting against other individual parties. Group parties fighting against individual parties invest like group parties fighting against other groups.
In contests with punishment opportunities expenditure levels are in turn much higher than in any of the treatments without punishment. In the final rounds of the experiment, investments in conflict are more than twice as high with punishment as without. The consequence is a large waste of resources: more than three quarters of the prize parties are fighting over are dissipated by direct conflict expenditures. However, to determine the true efficiency loss the costs imposed by punishment and the costs borne to punish others need to be added. These costs included, material losses are now 869 percent of the equilibrium level and rent dissipation is in excess of 100 percent. These results strongly contrast with those from those public goods experiments where punishment tends to enhance efficiency.”
-
mazsa
“The idea behind Icelandic Modern Media Initiative is simple but it’s ambitious: bring together some of the most progressive media laws from many different countries to create one holistic law that will position Iceland at the forefront of the battle to protect journalists, whistleblowers and their sources from oppressive liability laws.” (via http://immi.is )
-
mazsa
“Synthetic biologists try to engineer useful biological systems that do not exist in nature. One of their goals is to design an orthogonal chromosome different from DNA and RNA, termed XNA for xeno nucleic acids. XNA exhibits a variety of structural chemical changes relative to its natural counterparts. These changes make this novel information-storing biopolymer invisible to natural biological systems. The lack of cognition to the natural world, however, is seen as an opportunity to implement a genetic firewall that impedes exchange of genetic information with the natural world, which means it could be the ultimate biosafety tool. Here I discuss, why it is necessary to go ahead designing xenobiological systems like XNA and its XNA binding proteins; what the biosafety specifications should look like for this genetic enclave; which steps should be carried out to boot up the first XNA life form; and what it means for the society at large. [...]
“When discussing societal aspects of xenobiology today we need to take the following aspects into account:
- Biosafety: what is the actual probability that XNA life fails on any of the 10 specifications mentioned above? What are the consequences?
- Biosecurity: is there any way XNA could be misused by someone with criminal or malicious intentions? How could it be prevented?
- Intellectual property rights: will the XNA world be owned and controlled by someone, or should it be freely available so anybody could use this safety device? Will some XNAs (e.g., TNA) be patented and some (e.g., PNA) free?
- Governance: which new rules, guidelines or international treaties need to be established to make sure XNA systems remain as useful as possible? For example, is it necessary to prohibit any activities that actively try to undermine the specifications mentioned above, i.e., similar to prohibiting R&D that aims at designing new offensive bioweapons?
“In contrast to these rather tangible aspects, we might also be confronted with rather intangible implications. The history of science shows several changes to our worldviews, altering our folk-based narratives to more scientifically inspired (semi-)rational approaches. In this context, science has inflicted a series of disappointments and disillusions to our folk-based beliefs, such as: the earth is not the center of the Universe, men and apes share the same ancestors, or that emotions and thinking is correlated to a neurological substrate. The promoters of these ideas were often attacked by those trying to keep the intellectual status quo. Xenobiology could easily trigger the next paradigm change in the way we understand nature and life. Just as the Earth lost its place as the center of the universe, or men lost its unique status in the animal world, our natural world could lose its unique status as being synonymous with ‘‘life.’’ But as with all other paradigm changes, concepts that better explain the world around us cannot be ignored for long.” Schmidt,2010: Xenobiology: A new form of life as the ultimate biosafety tool http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/123315991/PDFSTART
-
mazsa
Obama defends his new space strategy: “[...] let me start by being extremely clear: I am 100 percent committed to the mission of NASA and its future. [...] So NASA, from the start, several months ago when I issued my budget, was one of the areas where we didn’t just maintain a freeze but we actually increased funding by $6 billion.
[...] we will work with a growing array of private companies competing to make getting to space easier and more affordable. Now, I recognize that some have said it is unfeasible or unwise to work with the private sector in this way. I disagree. The truth is, NASA has always relied on private industry to help design and build the vehicles that carry astronauts to space [...] By buying the services of space transportation — rather than the vehicles themselves — we can continue to ensure rigorous safety standards are met. But we will also accelerate the pace of innovations as companies — from young startups to established leaders — compete to design and build and launch new means of carrying people and materials out of our atmosphere.
[...] after decades of neglect, we will increase investment — right away — in other groundbreaking technologies that will allow astronauts to reach space sooner and more often, to travel farther and faster for less cost, and to live and work in space for longer periods of time more safely. That means tackling major scientific and technological challenges. How do we shield astronauts from radiation on longer missions? How do we harness resources on distant worlds? How do we supply spacecraft with energy needed for these far-reaching journeys? These are questions that we can answer and will answer. And these are the questions whose answers no doubt will reap untold benefits right here on Earth. [...]
The bottom line is nobody is more committed to manned space flight, to human exploration of space than I am. (Applause.) But we’ve got to do it in a smart way, and we can’t just keep on doing the same old things that we’ve been doing and thinking that somehow is going to get us to where we want to go. [...]
Early in the next decade, a set of crewed flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low Earth orbit. (Applause.) And by 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space. (Applause.) So we’ll start — we’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. (Applause.) By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it. (Applause.)
But I want to repeat — I want to repeat this: Critical to deep space exploration will be the development of breakthrough propulsion systems and other advanced technologies. [...]
Now, I understand that some believe that we should attempt a return to the surface of the Moon first, as previously planned. But I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before. Buzz has been there. There’s a lot more of space to explore, and a lot more to learn when we do. So I believe it’s more important to ramp up our capabilities to reach — and operate at — a series of increasingly demanding targets, while advancing our technological capabilities with each step forward. And that’s what this strategy does. And that’s how we will ensure that our leadership in space is even stronger in this new century than it was in the last.”
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-space-exploration-21st-century
-
admin
-
-
mazsa
Evolved institutions are not superior: “The French Revolution of 1789 [...] violently toppled the established regime and started a complex process, involving both the infamous French Terror and also radical institutional changes, including the abolition of the remnants of feudalism in agriculture, the reduction of the power of the nobility and the clergy, the abolition of guilds and internal tariffs, and the declaration of equality before the law for all citizens. More importantly for the focus of this paper, the French Revolutionary armies, and later Napoleon, invaded and controlled Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, parts of Germany. In all of these places, the Revolution undertook essentially the same radical political, legal, and economic reforms as in France. However, invasion by the French Revolutionary armies (and later by Napoleon) also came with chaos and the exploitation of the occupied territories.
“The evidence suggests that areas that underwent the institutional reforms of the French Revolution experienced more rapid urbanization, especially after 1850. This pattern is fairly robust when we look at cross-country data on urbanization and if anything stronger when we focus on within-Germany variation. [...]
“[...] our findings support recent empirical work emphasizing the centrality of institutional differences for comparative economic development. More importantly, the results are inconsistent with influential theses in social sciences emphasizing the potential negative effects of the French Revolution because it imposed potentially ‘inappropriate,’ ‘designed’ and ‘French’ institutions in a ‘Big Bang’ style—all of these often argued to be inimical to economic progress. On the contrary, the evidence supports our hypothesis that the institutions of the ancien regime impeded prosperity, and that the radical institutional reforms removed these barriers and paved the way for industrialization and economic growth. [...] our findings do suggest that radical institutional reforms can have long-run beneficial consequences, at least in certain historical contexts.” [emphasis mine] Acemoglu-Cantoni-Johnson-Robinson,2009: The Consequences of Radical Reform: The French Revolution [pdf]
Cf.
“[...] the paper [was] to show that “evolved institutions are not inherently superior to those ‘designed,’” the “evolved” institutions that did so much worse have to be, well, evolved. The problem here, however, is that 1790s Prussia, Russia, and Austro-Hungary were far from spontaneous orders—rather, they were quite authoritarian given their technological constraints. [...] The work that Acemoglu, et al, have done does show that French economic institutions were superior to serfdom, at least in the long run. [...] French-occupied territories tended to have better economic development a half-century or so later than those with relatively less French influence. One major exception here is Great Britain [...] But there’s an alternative which I think would have been greatly superior to both setups as they were: what the British and Americans accomplished and what the Polish tried to do: develop government-limiting institutions, free their populaces, and promote liberty and order as opposed to Terror and Napoleon. That would have been significantly better than what did happen.
http://36chambers.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/in-the-papers-the-red-flag-of-revolution/
and:
“In my view, apart from the convincing empirical evidence of the positive long-term impact of the French invasion on the occupied territories, the explanatory power of their analysis is limited in several ways. In view of the fact that their paper is a contribution to a debate on economic policy in today’s developing and emerging economies, I find the drawing of conclusions from the experience of military occupation and the forced implementation of reforms highly problematical. This is not primarily a question of moral considerations. Occupation can be interpreted as the forced import of state capacity. Only its superior state capacity allowed France to accomplish both radical and economic reforms in the occupied territories in a short space of time. Developing countries, however, usually lack the state capacity needed to accomplish an enlarged reform agenda within short periods of time and are thus forced to concentrate on only a few reform areas [...]. Shock therapy versus gradualism, then, is not a matter of choice but of capacity. Also, if the use of force remains outside the scope of the possible means of accomplishing reforms, key political actors necessarily have to deal with the preferences of interest groups and broader strata of society (which does not necessarily exclude the option of a ‘big bang’ strategy).
[...] open access to political competition in the medium to long term is certainly necessary to sustain open access to economic competition. But opening access in both fields presupposes that the state has established a firm monopoly of power. Otherwise it will mainly improve the chances of privileged elite groups to appropriate rents. Prussia is the prime historical example of how liberal reforms were started before a firm monopoly of power was accomplished. Opening access to the Junker class without depriving it of its political privileges allowed them to transform their economic power into political power.” Zweynert,2010: The French Revolution and the Transfer of the Open Access Order to the South-Western German States and Prussia [pdf]
-
mazsa
Advancing the Frontiers of Space Exploration “[...] Better Coordination with Other Federal Agencies Involved in Space The Department of Defense (DOD) invests heavily in space assets to provide troops with weather, communications, navigation, early warning, space surveillance and other information critical to conducting military operations. In fiscal year 2008 alone, DOD expects to spend over $22 billion dollars to develop and procure satellites, launch vehicles, and other space systems. This is more than NASA’s annual budget. The National Reconnaissance Office operates satellites that provide information essential to national security and global stability. In addition, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration operates an array of weather satellites that provide billions of dollars of benefit to the U.S. taxpayer. Barack Obama believes that NASA can work more closely with other federal agencies to take advantage of their expertise and technologies. This includes sharing research and technical information as well as better coordination of acquisition programs. Ensuring an integrated and fully coordinated national space program will be the major responsibility of the re- established National Aeronautics and Space Council. Obama will also work to better integrate NASA in a better coordinated national science policy. Obama will appoint an Assistant to the President for Science and Technology Policy who will report directly to the president, and be deeply involved in establishing research priorities that reflect the nation’s needs based on the best available advice from experts around the country. [...]
“Expanding Public/Private Partnerships to Advance Leading Edge Technologies The commercial space sector plays an essential role in the lives of normal Americans, contributing more than $100 billion to the global economy. Commercial satellites support direct-to-home television and digital audio services to over 30 million U.S. subscribers, high-speed Internet, traffic and weather monitoring, rapid transfer of financial data, and the imagery essential to natural resource and city planning. Technologies developed to meet the challenges of space exploration have found more than 30,000 commercial uses in products ranging from tennis shoes to medical equipment, bar codes, pacemakers and sunglasses, to technology that makes air travel safer and more efficient. Barack Obama knows that advanced space and aeronautics research can help catalyze economic growth. He will encourage public/private space technology partnerships to spur innovation.
- Enhancing the Role of NASA as a Premier Institution of Innovation: Engineers and scientists at
NASA have developed state-of-the-art innovations across the technological spectrum in areas ranging
from solar cells and imaging to communications and aeronautics. Barack Obama will renew NASA’s
commitment to innovation-driving basic research that the private sector can use to develop new products for American consumers.- Increasing Commercialization Benefits: Obama will promote cost sharing initiatives between government and industry to increase the state of the art in various technical areas, such as micro- electromechanical systems, nanotechnology, and biotechnology. Obama will establish multi-agency programs that focus on rapid maturation of advanced concepts and transfer to industry for commercialization.
- Jumpstarting Consumer Technology: Obama will expand the use of prizes for revolutionary
technical achievements that can benefit society, and funds for joint industry/government rapid-to-the-
consumer technology advances.- Supporting Commercial Access to Space: Obama will stimulate the commercial use of space and private sector utilization of the International Space Station. He will establish new processes and procurement goals to promote the use of government facilities. We must unleash the genius of private enterprise to secure the United States’ leadership in space.
- Revising Regulations for Aerospace Export Control: Some sections of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) have unduly hampered the competitiveness of domestic aerospace industry. Outdated restrictions have cost billions of dollars to American satellite and space hardware manufacturers as customers have decided to purchase equipment from European suppliers. While protecting our national security interests, Barack Obama will direct a review of the ITAR to reevaluate restrictions imposed on American companies, with a special focus on space hardware that is currently restricted from commercial export. He will also direct revisions to the licensing process to ensure that American suppliers are competitive in the international aerospace markets, without jeopardizing American national security.
- Expanding the American Skill Base in Science and Engineering: Barack Obama fully supports efforts to advance new frontiers in technical areas, such as advanced structures, power generation, communication and navigation systems, and biomedical systems. These efforts address the requirements for exploration, but also have high potential for technological benefits in the private sector as well as in training the next generation of scientists and engineers.”
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/policy/Space_Fact_Sheet_FINAL.pdf
Cf.
“President Obama’s plan for America’s space program, according to early reports, represents a fundamental shift for human spaceflight, some experts say.
The reports suggest the Obama administration intends to move toward relying on commercially-built spacecraft, rather than NASA’s own vehicles, to carry humans to low-Earth orbit. The plan would also involve extending the International Space Station’s lifetime and abandoning current plans to send astronauts on moon missions by 2020.
“This is definitely a paradigm shift in the way the country will go about its space program,” said John Logsdon, a space policy expert and professor emeritus at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.”
http://www.space.com/news/obama-nasa-space-plan-reactions-100128.html
-
admin
admin is discussing. 
http://atheistethicist.blogspot.com/2011/05/next-big-space-project.html