Tag Archives: Medill National Security Journalism Initiative

The first US women in combat will find US women already in combat

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On January 1, the US military will open all of its positions to women — including combat duty — unless the individual services prove they should be exempt from the edict. Many consider this a groundbreaking moment for female troops, but women have already served with elite combat units. The upcoming deadline has become, in some sense, more about acknowledging reality than imposing change.

In 2011, all-female Cultural Support Teams (CSTs) were deployed to Afghanistan as “enablers” who kept women and children safe during nightly raids, and served as important resources for gathering intelligence. But these female soldiers were not just communication facilitators — they were part of a team embedded with the military’s elite Special Operations Command (USSOCOM).

Women have been officially banned from serving in combat roles since the 1994 Direct Ground Combat Definition and Assignment Rule, but a 2013 announcement that required all positions to be fully inclusionary by 2016 effectively repealed the ban.

As the integration deadline nears, two women have advanced to the final phase in the Army’s Ranger School. Parachuting into the swamps of Florida and slogging their way out is now the last challenge standing between them and graduation from the elite school, which would make them the first women to succeed in the rigorous program.

“Even if only one woman were to pass, it would negate all those arguments that they’re incapable of keeping up,” Katherine Kidder, Bacevich Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told VICE News.

As of now, these women would earn the prestigious Ranger Tab — a qualification earned by just 3 percent of the Army — yet even after graduating from Ranger School they will still not be allowed to join the 75th Ranger Regiment, which performs Special Operations missions, since that would violate the 1994 ban on assigning women to combat positions. Apparently that’s an entirely different thing than assigning women to positions that may entail combat.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told VICE News the January 1 deadline “would be a big barrier broken” that could erase the last barrier that prevents women from serving in the elite Ranger Regiment.

This not the first time female soldiers in the US have been in a position to demonstrate their mettle. While the combat ban was in place, nearly 200 female troops died while deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, including two who were killed while serving on CSTs.

The war in Afghanistan highlighted the important role women could play in fighting insurgents and operating within other cultures. Male troops couldn’t talk to Afghan women, roughly half of the country’s population, because of cultural and religious norms. By excluding women from missions, the US faced immense losses in intelligence gathering, and it took longer to find insurgents as a result.

The situation created a demand for female soldiers who could interact freely with locals. Women assigned to the CSTs were tasked with engaging with and talking to the female population, earning their trust, and finding out where insurgents were hiding. “Those teams were created because Rangers needed women to help them get the job done,” Lemmon said.

In an odd twist, the Taliban, known for its oppressive treatment of women, actually forced the male-dominated US defense establishment to do what many have been advocating for years: Allow women to be assigned to combat roles. “There’s a true irony in the system,” Kidder told VICE News. “The Taliban, who are repressing women on the one hand, in this strange way have opened the door for American women.”

The role of the CSTs hasn’t escaped the notice of senior Pentagon leadership in the broader debate about assigning women to combat roles. Admiral Eric Olson, then-commander of USSOCOM, appeared before Congress in 2011 and called the CST program “effective and long overdue,” and urged all services “to recognize the capabilities of CSTs as essential military skills.”

In addition to bridging cultural gaps on the battlefield, CSTs may have played a similar role within the Department of Defense (DOD). In January 2013, then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey made the historic announcement that women will be able to fight in combat positions. In a letter to Panetta, Dempsey wrote that for this initiative to be successful, the service branches “will need time to get it right.”

The 2013 announcement was important in that it opened up avenues for training and qualification that were previously unavailable, as the services sought to get qualified female troops fully trained and ready to step into their roles before the 2016 deadline.

At the Special Operations Forces Training Facility in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, CST recruits had to go through the Rangers’ infamous “100 hours of hell,” a physically and mentally intense Special Ops selection process.

In her book Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield, Lemmon tells the story of CSTs in Afghanistan — and makes clear that they were capable of not only keeping up, but fighting with a unit of elite Special Operations soldiers. “Sarah, like all the CSTs, understood that contact could come at any time on any night, on any mission — they were never safe, and they accepted that,” she wrote about one of one female soldier.

Another program blazed a trail for the CSTs years before they deployed to Afghanistan. In 2006, the Army created the gender-neutral Human Terrain Teams (HTTs), composed of groups of American social scientists that helped the military understand the foreign cultures and customs they were dealing with overseas.

But much as US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan had difficulty navigating local religious and cultural norms, the social scientists of the HTTs faced culture clashes while embedded with the US military.

While the HTTs were deployed to “win the hearts and minds” of the foreigners, they were not intended to gather intelligence, according to Cynthia Hogle, who was part of an HTT embedded with the Army in Afghanistan in 2012. But that mission and fighting a war were tough to combine. Then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates defended the Human Terrain Teams in a speech in 2008, but by June 2015, the DOD officially announced the end of the program.

Hogle recalls how hard it was for her to gain the respect and trust of male soldiers. “The military as a whole is narrow-minded, not just when it comes to women,” she told VICE News. “But I think all these programs are going to have a ripple effect.”

Kidder believes that allowing women in combat positions is about something more important to the military than whether women are as capable as men. “It’s not necessarily a conversation about equality, but about how do we make our force as effective as possible — regardless of gender,” she said.



 


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Data collection brings more benefits than loss, experts say



				

				
WASHINGTON – You’re probably one of the 91 percent of American adults who think they’ve lost control over how their personal information is collected and used by companies (according to a Pew Research study in early 2015). But big data collection brings benefits that outweigh the potential downsides, contended Ben Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in a panel discussion at the Capital Visitor Center last Thursday.


Consumers’ concern about online privacy are at all-time high due to the emerging technologies – for instance, e-commerce and mobile devices– which collects a big chunk of consumer data, the Pew Research study says.


However, people who worry about “privacy eroding into the river and being gone forever,” added Wittes, ignore how those benefits actually increase privacy.


The rise of online sales has meant you can mail-order products that might be too embarrassing to buy in person, Wittes added. “Without looking at somebody in the eye, without confessing the interest in this subject, you get what you want.”


Because all e-books look the same on an e-reader, for instance, you can read Fifty Shades of Grey on your Kindle without shame—which may explain why the e-version of this book has outsold its printed version.


The value of the privacy of those purchases, Wittes argued, outweighs the value of the data given for them—like email, credit card numbers, browsing history, personal preferences, and location-based information.


Wittes suggested changing vocabulary that consumers use to describe the benefits they get with giving up some personal information. It’s not only “convenience,” he said, “it’s also privacy benefits.”


Joshua New, policy analyst at the Information Technology Innovation Foundation, said data collection also brings economic benefits to consumers.


He cited car insurance as an example. Instead of deciding your insurance premium based on broad factors – for instance, age, gender, neighborhood, drivers could use data to prove that they are cautious and don’t brake rapidly to get lower premiums even they are in the “high-risk section” based on traditional measurements, New said.


People who strive for online privacy should be aware that there is a cost to it. Adam Thierer, a senior research fellow at George Mason University, said it’s not impossible for people to protect their privacy if they don’t mind losing the benefits of giving up their data.


“Companies can offer paid options where user information won’t be collected,’ Thierer said. “But at the moment, I don’t think many people will pay for their privacy.”


A balance between consumer privacy and technology innovation is what the Federal Trade Commission is pursuing. Totally prohibiting data collection, which will create barriers for breakthrough innovations, is definitely not the solution.


“We should definitely limit the use of data,” said Federal Trade Commission member Maureen Ohlhausen, “but not limit the collection of data.”






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Obama promotes deal as the best alternative to war



				

				


President Barack Obama defended the Iran Deal at American University in Washington, D.C. Wednesday. “Now, we have before us a solution that prevents Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon without resorting to war,” he said.

				
							

		
			

					
									
													

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Crossfit event remembers fallen troops with ’31 Heroes W.O.D’



				

				


Former Marine P.J. Kellogg is bringing together Crossfit athletes to remember 31 U.S. service members who lost their lives in 2011 when their Chinook helicopter was shot down in Afghanistan.


Kellogg is the general manager of Crossfit MetroCenter in Washington and organized the “31 Hero W.O.D” on Aug. 1 for Uprise Fitness’ three Crossfit gyms. He was inspired to bring the commemorative workout to his own gym after realizing the event honored a mission in which his friend had been killed.


“After losing a friend in the actual happening of the 31 Heroes, I had no idea that there was actually a workout that other gyms and affiliates completed and raised donations for,” Kellogg said. “It means a lot to me because I understand it on a personal level.”


The Boeing CH-47 helicopter was transporting a group of quick-reaction troops, including members of the Navy SEALS, Naval Special Operations personnel, Air Force Special Tactics airmen, National Guard and Army Reserve, when it was shot down. Everyone on board was killed.


“They knew what they were doing when they did it, and they’re heroes for doing it,” Kellogg said. “They didn’t want any recognition. They would probably hate how much they’re missed today because they feel like what they did, even though they lost their lives, was something that’s meaningful to them.”


Athletes who completed the workout remembered these troops, as well as loved ones who had served, to keep them motivated through the 31-minute workout. Kellogg plans to continue hosting the event annually.


“As someone who has been in that field and seen guys selflessly risk their lives for complete strangers is just awe-inspiring,” Kellogg said. “I never will have an excuse not to try my best to participate in these workouts and try to get as many people involved as well.”




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Gitmo detainees cannot be charged with conspiracy, federal appeals court says



				

				
WASHINGTON – On July 27, the U.S. military appealed a federal appeals court’s decision to toss out a conspiracy conviction against Osama bin Laden’s personal secretary and detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying the ruling could jeopardize key terrorism prosecutions that are currently underway.


In a 2-to-1 decision this June, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia dismissed the judgment against Ali al-Bahlul, who was convicted in a military commission proceeding of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism. The court found that offenses like conspiracy, which are not recognized as international war crimes, must be tried in domestic courts, where evidentiary standards are higher and proceedings are public.


This goes against the Military Commissions Acts of 2006 and 2009, signed by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, respectively.


The court found that “it was beyond Congress’ power,” Chief Prosecutor Brig. Gen. Mark Martins said at a media briefing, “to make conspiracy, inchoate conspiracy, triable by a military commission.”


Martins was in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba earlier this month for another detainee’s pretrial hearings.


When the military appealed last month, it asked the full court, as opposed to a three-judge panel, to rehear the case.


The military argued in its appellate brief that the court should hear the appeal, in part, because its decision overrode the authority and judgment of two presidents and two Congresses.


The ruling dismissed relevant Supreme Court concurring opinions, including Justice Kennedy’s note in Hamdan I that Congress, not the court, is in a better position to determine the “validity of the conspiracy charge.”


The military also pointed out that those who conspired to kill President Abraham Lincoln and the World War II Nazi saboteurs, for example, were convicted in military commissions.


In this case, the accused published various recruiting materials, including a video celebrating the bombing of the USS Cole and transcriptions of the 9/11 pilots’ “martyr wills,” which are propaganda statements released by terrorists before a suicide mission.


Bahlul’s only regret — not being a key player in the 9/11 attacks — stated explicitly in the military’s appellate brief, was not disputed.


In 2008, the military commission sentenced him to life in prison. The U.S. Court of Military Commission Review affirmed the finding in 2011 before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned it in June.


“There is a pretty strong principle that we don’t litigate stuff ahead of the judge,” Brig. Gen. Martins said, confirming that the Court’s decision would be an issue in upcoming military hearings, though he would not give any specifics.


In 2014, Martins charged Abd al Hadi al Iraqi with conspiracy to commit acts of terror. Hadi is considered a high-value detainee, and is accused of planning and ordering attacks that killed at least eight U.S. service members in Afghanistan.


Hadi’s pre-trial hearings are scheduled to resume in August but a trial date has not been set. Martins said he did not know whether or not Navy Capt. J.K. Waits, the judge presiding over Hadi’s case, would wait to apply the Bahlul finding until after the appeals process is final.


While both Bahlul and Hadi are being held in Guantanamo, President Obama is reportedly in the final stages of closing it down, as he promised to do in his campaign for president back in 2007.


 


 


 

				
							

		
			

					
									
													

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Seeking better government cybersecurity, before and after the OPM data breach



				

				
WASHINGTON – After personnel data held by the Office of Personnel Management was compromised by hackers, the dispute over the improvement and possible reform of federal government’s cybersecurity system has become heated.


The OPM data breach resulted from a compromise of a highly privileged user’s credential, which also gave them access to the data center of the Department of Interior. Although no data was stolen from within DOI’s system, it triggered a large concern about the department’s computer network protection system.


According to the Federal Information Security Management Act, each deferral agency should develop, document and implement an agency-wide program to provide information security. But in reality, many federal agencies are using information protection services provided by other departments, such as DOI. The reason behind it is for economy purposes, according to Sylvia Burns, chief information officer of DOI. “You can gain economy from the scale. So it’s less expensive and more efficient for a customer to consume services from a provider like that.”


In 2005, OPM first became a customer of DOI’s data hosting service. DOI offers its IT infrastructure and host information, ensures the connection between DOI and OPM, and encrypts the connection between the two agencies.


“Shared service is a concept of creating a more robust, centralized point of service around specific activities,” Burns said, explaining the origin of this concept. According to Burns, a 2001 data breach in DOI resulted in disconnecting five DOI bureaus from the Internet for about six and half years. For the fear of being disconnected again, all the bureaus and offices in the department created separate protections for themselves. In that state, cooperation became hard because they were trying to protect themselves from being associated with trust data. In 2008, DOI reconnected those organizations back to Internet, and it turned out that they had difficulty just doing day-to-day work because of the security controls. That’s when the department began to create the segmented system.


Although this time’s data breach was not a result of technical failure, DOI hasn’t seriously treated the 3,000 critical vulnerabilities in its hundreds of publicly accessible computers that were identified by the Office of Inspector General. But viewing this issue from a broader perspective, OPM fell into a trap of an outdated model of cybersecurity system, which we call “line of sight governance.” This is a belief that I can walk down a corridor to where everybody is working and then I have the control of the security surrounding them. In the era of Internet when everyone is connected with the outside world, it’s just impossible to ensure their security by believing that internal system is absolutely secure.


The new model, called the BeyondCorp initiative, assumes that the internal network is as dangerous as the Internet. Using authentication, authorization and encryption, trust is moved from the network level to the device level. For example, Google staff are required to use a security key when connecting their computers to the Internet. When the security key is plugged into the USB portal, it automatically generates a one-time password. With this one-time password and the staff’s own username and password, the Internet is accessible.


“It’s relatively easy to get online in the company, but it can be very hard to access to the internal system when you are at home because a VPN is needed. And not everyone can get it unless you are at certain rank,” said Jiasong Sun, a Google employee. Some companies including Coca-Cola Co., Verizon Communications Inc. and Mazda Motor Corp. are taking a similar approach.


Several questions about DOI’s role in the breach remain unanswered, including whether or not other agencies may have been compromised, how many breaches took place at DOI and whether or not the attackers are still in the system. But this two factor authentication system is a possible solution that the DOI is considering to take after the data breach.


Rep. Will Hurd (R—TX) urges federal agencies and their CIOs to review past IG reports and address the vulnerabilities that have been identified. “We know what needs to be done, we just need to do it,” Hurd said.

				
							

		
			

					
									
													

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The Debrief: Guantanamo Edition // OPSEC 101



				

				


In the third installment of “The Debrief: Guantanamo Edition,” Medill NSJI reporters Taylor Hall and Ezra Kaplan give you a crash course in OPSEC, or operations security, as it pertains to reporting from Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.  Learn what OPSEC and how to navigate it in the course of your Guantanamo coverage.

				
							

		
			

					
									
													

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Congress pushes for rules on explosive fertilizer



				

				
Corrections and clarifications: A prior version of this story incorrectly reported domestic ammonium nitrate production tonnage as domestic farm consumption totals. This story has also been updated throughout to clarify that Rep. Bennie Thompson is pushing for revisions to the proposed rules, not publication of the current draft.


WASHINGTON — Congress is pressing the Department of Homeland Security to take action on its mandate to make sure that ammonium nitrate, the key ingredient in the 1995 Oklahoma City bomb, stays out of the hands of terrorists, but new rules may still be a long way off.


“The misappropriation of ammonium nitrate remains a homeland security threat – however in the eight years since Congress directed the Department of Homeland Security to regulate its sale, the marketplace has changed considerably,” said Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee and author of the original bill mandating ammonium nitrate regulation. Despite the delay, Thompson is urging the department to rewrite its proposed rules for the chemical widely used in fertilizer.


“I urge DHS to work with stakeholders to update its proposed ammonium nitrate regulations to take this change in marketplace into account. This will help ensure that the program that DHS stands up will be effective.”


In 2007, lawmakers worried about criminal or terrorist use of the chemical passed legislation instructing the Department of Homeland Security to set up a program to regulate the purchase ammonium nitrate. Four years later the department created the Ammonium Nitrate Security Program.


“Certain purchasers and sellers of ammonium nitrate would be required to apply to DHS for an Ammonium Nitrate Registered User Number, and the department would screen each applicant against the Terrorist Screening Database,” said DHS spokesman S.Y. Lee in explaining the program. “Following the screening process, approved individuals would be issued an AN Registered User Number, which would allow them to engage in the sale, purchase, or transfer of ammonium nitrate.”


The department spent months collecting comments from the public and stakeholders regarding how the program could affect different industries, ending on Dec. 1, 2011.


According to DHS, those public comments are still being reviewed. The next step would be issuing final regulations, but Thompson says the time lapse means more input from the marketplace is needed.


From al-Qaida to ISIS, terrorism groups around the world have come to depend on the chemical for the manufacturing of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs. The problem became so severe in Afghanistan that the Pakistani government worked with the U.S. to stem the flow of ammonium nitrate across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.


Some states, impatient with DHS, passed their own ammonium nitrate regulations, but experts are concerned that criminals or terrorists wanting to purchase the substance will just cross state lines to find those states without regulations.


“The administration needs to finalize this rule right away,” said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., who has worked to keep ammonium nitrate out of the hands of insurgents in Afghanistan. “A final rule will make it clear that this is a serious challenge and will lay down rules of the road for stakeholders for handling this material appropriately.”


Lee said the process is moving at its current pace because “we seek to strike a balance that both ensures public safety and minimizes the potential economic impact that can arise from additional regulation.”


Luke Popovich, with the National Mining Association, said that the proposed rules would place unnecessary burden on the mining industry. He wants mining facilities to be exempt from the program since the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives already regulates those facilities.


Meanwhile, the fertilizer industry continues to push for speedy regulation.


“We supported this in Congress when it was initially brought up because we as an industry really felt like it balanced the need for security with the problem we were having with a patchwork of state regulation,” said institute spokeswoman Kathy Mathers.


Ammonium nitrate is not a controlled substance, though it is not prepared for consumer use, explained Mathers. In 2011, 2.8 million tons of ammonium nitrate were produced for the U.S. explosives industry, according to the Institute for the Makers of Explosives; in that same year, the agriculture industry produced about 2.4 million tons, according to the Fertilizer Institute.


“If you wanted to go and purchase it, you would go to a fertilizer dealer and that dealer is a retailer. You could call a farm supply center,” said Mathers. “What they could do, and this is what McVeigh did prior to the Oklahoma City bombing, they posed as farmers and went to a farm supply center with a U-Haul truck and bought ammonium nitrate.”


Since then the Fertilizer Institute and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms have run an awareness program to help retailers identify suspicious activity, said Mathers.


“It is up to the good sense of the seller not an ID process. That is why we support the regulation,” said Mathers. “The potential for human error is always there, versus having a regulation in place that sets a standard.”

				
							

		
			

					
									
													

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The Debrief: Guantanamo Edition // INSIDE ‘TENT CITY’



				

				


In the second installment of “The Debrief: Guantanamo Edition,” Medill National Security Specialization students who recently returned from a reporting trip to Naval Station Guantanamo Bay discuss the so-called “Tent City” where journalists live during their brief stays on post.

				
							

		
			

					
									
													

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Opportunity for tech companies after OPM data breach



				

				
WASHINGTON – In the wake of the huge data breach at the Office of Personnel Management, tech companies are in a competition to provide cheaper, more reliable cybersecurity service to the federal government.


The Defense Leadership Forum, an organization specializing in defense issues, sponsored a summit Tuesday offering details and insights related to landing contracts with the Department of Defense.


Sylvia Burns, chief information officer of the Interior Department, which provides cybersecurity service to OPM and other federal agencies, said that centralizing data protection service – the model in place when the OPM data breach occurred in April – is affordable and efficient, but has a big downside. When the OPM data was compromised, the hacker also had access to the data center at Department of Interior.


As a consequence, the Defense Department wants tech companies, including small businesses, to propose cheaper, yet still reliable ways of protecting the Pentagon’s vast storehouse of sensitive information. The government still needs a competitive environment for cost reduction purposes, said Kenneth Bible, deputy chief information officer of the United States Marine Corps.


Shawn McCarthy, research director of International Data Corp., a company that provides advisory services on information technology, said the Defense Department’s information technology budget has actually decreased by 12 percent since 2006. That budget includes hardware and software development and IT service. But money spend on IT service – data hosting, data encryption and the like – has seen a significant increase, compared to the other two areas, McCarthy said.


The reason behind that is the emergence of the so-called 3rd platform era, which has cloud as its core. In the coming 3rd platform era, hackers may be able to reach trillions of IP-addressable devices, monitors, and sensors of billions of users through new applications. That’s why government is paying more attention to cybercrime.


It is going to be a big business opportunity for tech companies when the Pentagon’s budget on cloud service reaches to $21.1 billion next year. In order to have a win-win relationship with the government, “IT vendors need to keep a close eye on price points while government is becoming increasingly sophisticated when it comes to comparing price and functionality,” McCarthy said.

				
							

		
			

					
									
													

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