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In the Face of the Fascist Threat, an Epic US Intelligence Failure

Insurrectionists invaded the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. 2021. (LOEB/AFP via Getty Images) The failed coup of January 6, writes journalist Joe Conason, “illuminated the national landscape like a flash of lightning. It is now clear even to those who have pretended otherwise that Trump himself represents a grave danger to national security.” And yet as this danger gathered, U.S. domestic intelligence agencies--namely  the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI --failed to take action, despite ample warning. As the threat gathered, policymakers were blinded by unconscious racism and a defunct definition of "national security." In a flash, we see how and why American democracy was left undefended. As Foreign Affairs,  the house organ of the American policy establishment, notes: Law enforcement, which uses a heavy hand against Black Lives Matter protesters and prepares carefully to stop possible al Qaeda attacks, was apparently unprepared for the mix of white supremacists, anti-government extremists, conspiracy theorists, and other pro-Trump supporters who openly organized to “burn DC to the ground” to overturn an election at the behest of the president. Although it’s too early to point fingers, the Capitol Police and other security forces clearly have some explaining to do. "Other security forces" is right, if too kind in its vagueness.  Read the full article

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Can U.S. Spy Agencies Stop White Power Violence? 

In the aftermath of the failed  Jan. 6 coup,  people are calling for the creation of a domestic intelligence agency. Jeff Stein at SpyTalk surveys leading US officials from a variety of agencies for theirreaction. I think the nays have it. The US doesn't need new laws or new organizations to combat white nationalists. It needs the political will to enforce laws on the books. “The U.S. government doesn't have a real good track record of standing up a department without instantaneously creating a bureaucracy,” former senior Secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow, now a CNN law enforcement analyst, tells SpyTalk. Clapper thinks it’s a bad idea, too,  “Such a change should only be considered after some careful deliberation via a 9/11-type, blue-ribbon, bipartisan commission, and not rush to judgment in the heat of the current charged moment.” So does Ali Soufan, the former top FBI expert on Islamic radicalization and terrorism,  Soufan pursued Al Qaeda operatives for years before 9/11, the real challenge is not bureaucratic, it’s “the lack of real political will to acknowledge the threat.” It’s a failure writ large by the refusal of several Republican Party leaders to denounce baseless conspiracy theories that the 2020 presidential election was stolen—even after the Capitol was sacked. Last week he urged outgoing Vice President Pence to speak out, even at this late date. Read the full article

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How the Insurrectionists Breached the Capitol

  Newsy and Bellingat on the Insurrectionists' Theft of Classified Information Read the full article

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Former U.S. Defense Secretaries Warn Against a Military Coup  

The statement, published in the Washington Post, is a symptom of America's imperiled democracy. Ten former Secretaries of Defense, including Dick Cheney, vizier of the George Bush's presidency, are denouncing President Trump's efforts to overturn his electoral defeat. Although they don't use the phrase, they say the danger is a military coup, As senior Defense Department leaders have noted, “there’s no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of a U.S. election.” Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory. Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic. Source: Opinion | 10 former defense secretaries: Involving military in election disputes would be dangerous, unlawful - The Washington Post Read the full article

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Time for Rethinking: U.S. National Security in an Age of Insurrection 

Jon Bateman, assistant to Gen. Joseph Dunford, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says the US intelligence must rethink the idea of "national security," in the wake of the failed January 6 coup. "Many national security challenges are simply not as pressing as our dire need for domestic renewal," Bateman writes. The U.S  focus on  foreign threats must change, he argues. The danger to the American people is not a great power rival, like Russia or China. It is not "terrorism,"  meaning lightly armed transnational jihadist networks. The danger is insurrection at home. The U.S. national security stance, Bateman says, is part of the problem National security agencies suffer from the sins of gluttony (in devouring scarce resources) and pride (in making costly blunders). To help their country repair itself, these institutions need a little less swagger and a bit more candid reflection on the larger American project.To begin with, we must acknowledge that many national security challenges are simply not as pressing as our dire need for domestic renewal. China will spend decades pursuing global parity with the United States, yet U.S. democracy could plausibly collapse in one or two election cycles. National security institutions and their supporters have so far failed to make this comparison. Read the full article

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How the Insurrectionists Breached the Capitol

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Will U.S. See a Rural Insurgency?

In a smart piece for Just Security, Vasabjit Banerjee looks at how rural insurgencies have emerged in countries around the world. The United States could be next, he says, especially if Donald Trump is turned out of office. The militias are dispersed, and  lack regional organizations but they have a strong socio-cultural base in rural America. By comparing insurgent groups in South and Southeast Asia, Professor Paul Staniland’s book The Networks of Rebellion reveals that militia organizations also need leaders who are both internally united and embedded within pre-conflict social networks in order to successfully challenge the national government in multi-year confrontations. Despite ideological similarities, militia groups in the United States lack cohesive regional and national-level organizations. Rather, disparate groups communicate and coordinate via social media sites like Facebook. Thus, while such fragmentation may prevent a civil war that seeks to topple the federal government, loosely tied groups of small organizations may be sufficiently powerful to prevent state and federal authorities from controlling rural areas. A phenomenon that has occurred in parts of India, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Source: Is the United States Heading for a Rural Insurgency? - Just Security Read the full article

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'Eyes in the Sky': The Scary Realities of Wide Area Surveillance

The 1998 film Enemy of the State imagined a new surveillance technology that has since become real. Credit: IMBD “Someday most major developed cities in the world will live under the unblinking gaze of some form of wide-area surveillance,” writes Arthur Holland Michel in Eyes in the Sky, a startling, disturbing, and deeply reported account of the powerful new technologies that promise safety and imperil privacy on an unprecedented scale. Imagine an aerial video camera with the power to spot an object six inches wide from an altitude of 25,000 feet in a frame twice the width of Manhattan. Actually, you don’t need to imagine it. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA) developed the ARGUS camera a decade ago with those capabilities. In 2014, ten were deployed in Afghanistan on Reaper drones, in a covert program known as Gorgon Stare. In Greek mythology, the Gorgons were underworld monsters whose rigid, unblinking stare is their most frightening feature. The most-famous Gorgon, the snake-haired Medusa, turned people to stone with just a glance. In real life, “wide area motion imagery,” known as WAMI, can record everything that happens on a battlefield, a conflict zone, or a city neighborhood, as well as zero in on any target it chooses. And it is spreading around the world . Using a compact 100-million-megapixel camera, the Gorgon Stare technology enables the U.S. military, and increasingly police departments, to surveil vast areas from the safety of t Read the full article

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The Five Eyes: The Global Spy Network You Never Heard Of

Radomes at Pine Gap listening station in Alice Springs, Australia. (Credit: Nautlius Institute) The Netflix

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12 Steps to Controlling the U.S. Surveillance State

(Image Credit; Just Security) A team of writers at the Just Security blog, have a 12-step program for reining in the U.S. surveillance system that has expanded relentlessly beyond the control of Congress and the people. Whether President-elect Biden and his national security team will be interested is another question. The Biden intelligence transition team indicates the incoming administration will be dedicated to the status quo, not to rolling back the mission creep of the national security apparatus. Their 12 proposed solutions are specific, technical, and legal. They are intended for Congressional staff and Executive Branch Agency. And they are overdue, say the authors. Over the last two decades, in the name of national security, the U.S. government has engaged in mass surveillance of private communications and data on an unimaginable scale. Although the government conducts this surveillance for “foreign intelligence” purposes, the term is so broadly defined that it gives the government wide latitude to collect international communications – and, in the process, to sweep up the communications of countless people with no nexus to actual foreign intelligence. This surveillance poses grave threats to our constitutional rights to privacy, freedom of expression, and freedom of association. It also disproportionately impacts communities of color, especially Black, Brown, Muslim, and Chinese American communities, who are more likely to be subject to scrutiny by U.S. Read the full article

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12 Steps to Controlling the U.S. Surveillance State

(Image Credit; Just Security) A team of writers at the Just Security blog, have a 12-step program for reining in the U.S. surveillance system that has expanded relentlessly beyond the control of Congress and the people. Whether President-elect Biden and his national security team will be interested is another question. The Biden intelligence transition team indicates the incoming administration will be dedicated to the status quo, not to rolling back the mission creep of the national security apparatus. Their 12 proposed solutions are specific, technical, and legal. They are intended for Congressional staff and Executive Branch Agency. And they are overdue, say the authors. Over the last two decades, in the name of national security, the U.S. government has engaged in mass surveillance of private communications and data on an unimaginable scale. Although the government conducts this surveillance for “foreign intelligence” purposes, the term is so broadly defined that it gives the government wide latitude to collect international communications – and, in the process, to sweep up the communications of countless people with no nexus to actual foreign intelligence. This surveillance poses grave threats to our constitutional rights to privacy, freedom of expression, and freedom of association. It also disproportionately impacts communities of color, especially Black, Brown, Muslim, and Chinese American communities, who are more likely to be subject to scrutiny by U.S. Read the full article

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Cyberwar Pits Coders of MI6 against Huawei

The West's war on Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, continues. The West v. Huawei is a war on two fronts It is a struggle about intelligence war--who will control the flow of information?--and it is an economic war--whose companies will dominate global markets? It's cyber-econo war. President Trump's actions, supported by the U.S. intelligence community, threatens to kill Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant, which is capitalized at $122 billion. In 2017, Huawei led all companies in the world in generating patents, according to the U.N.'s World Intellectual Property Organization.  The British intelligence community, which invested heavily in Huawei technologies, has been torn by the U.S. demands. Here's the latest from the Organization for World Peace (an organization that was previously unknown to me.). They seem well-informed. In 2019, Theresa May, along with the National Security Council, made the contested decision to let Huawei into Britain’s 5G network, against the advice of Sir Richard Dearlove, former SIS chief. “No part of the Communist Chinese state is ultimately able to operate free of the control exercised by its Communist party leadership,” Sir Dearlove warned. “Therefore, we must conclude the engagement of Huawei presents a potential security threat to the U.K.” This warning fell on deaf ears, and Huawei’s subsidiary equipment was connected to the network. Read the full article

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Israel's Secret Nuclear Program: Why CIA Intelligence Failed So Badly

Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and U.S. President Lyndon Johnson (Credit: National Security Archive) From

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Will U.S. See a Rural Insurgency?

In a smart piece for Just Security, Vasabjit Banerjee looks at how rural insurgencies have emerged in

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As Trump Cabal Plots a Coup, Rubio Defends Haspel at CIA

CIA director Gina Haspel (Credit: Politico) This subtext of this POLITICO story is: how does Senator Marco

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12 Steps to Controlling the U.S. Surveillance State

(Image Credit; Just Security) A team of writers at the Just Security blog, have a 12-step program for reining

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In the month before the U.S. presidential election, the Mossad and the entire Israeli intelligence community