Showing posts with label DARPA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DARPA. Show all posts

June 26, 2018

Super Cool Military Wheels



The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has come up with a Reconfigurable Wheel Track (RWT). 

The tires can switch shape from round tires for flat terrain to triangular tracks for soft or rugged terrain in just 2-seconds!

You can see in the screenshot the rear wheels in tire formation and the front wheels changed to tracks. 

The agility of this technology makes for better maneuverability and survivability for our troops and their transports and combat vehicles. 

I wonder if someday soon, they will commercialize this technology so rather than all season/year tires or snow tires on our cars, we have these gorgeous ruggedized military grade babies.

I for one would gladly pay extra! ;-)

(Source Screenshot: Andy Blumenthal from here)
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September 29, 2016

USA Surrendering The Internet

So here we go again, we cut off the hand (and arm) despite the face.

We are recklessly giving up control of the Internet, specifically of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which oversees the Domain Names Servers (including all the DNS root zones like .com, .net, .gov, etc.) that handle all the addressing of our Internet traffic.

Despite repeated cautions from many in industry, academia, and government not to do this, we are moving ahead anyway with tomorrow being the transition date!

Why would we give away anything, let alone control over the awesome technological power of the Internet that we depend on in some way for virtually every activity we do these days?

Aside from non-explanations of "fulfilling historic promises" to cede control (i.e surrender the Internet out of fear that other countries will challenge us and set up their own alternate DNS's) and nonsensical talk of "protecting Internet freedom" by giving it away to authoritarian regimes and despots--there seems to be no REAL reason to do this drastic action that weakens our country and puts our technology, commerce, critical infrastructure, and national security at risk!

Rather than defend the Internet that the USA invented (specifically DARPA), here we go again in fear and weakness going in the wrong direction--surrendering and giving up control of the web.

If you love the Internet and recognize how important this asset is to us, then like an FCC Commissioner said this week, you should be worried about what the h*ck we are doing to the freedom (vice censorship) of the Internet and to ourselves . ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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December 19, 2014

Amazing Advances In Prosthetics


Watch this video...

Where a man who lost both arms over 40 years ago is fitted with these amazing dual prosthetics that he is able to control with his mind and muscle movements. 

Made with financing from the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA).

John Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab shows the possibilities for the future for helping everyone from Wounded Warriors to those disabled from accidents and disease. 

G-d creates and we imitate and together we make an incredible flourishing world. ;-)

(Note: My gratitude to Rebecca Blumenthal for sharing this video with me.)
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June 2, 2014

Information Where We Look


I like this short video on advances in Augmented Reality by Applied Research Associates (ARA).

ARA supports DARPA's Urban Leader Tactical Response Awareness and Visualization (ULTRA-Vis) program--to develop Augmented Reality (AR) for our soldiers. 

Augmented Reality is "Virtual icons, avatars, and messages overlaid accurately on the real world."

The purpose is to know"where you are and where objects are around you" and to "access information simply by looking at them."

The interface is a heads-up wearable display, rather than an smartphone or tablet. 

The AR integrates GPS, terrain information, commercial data, and sensors.

Further, you and others using this technology will be able to tag and share data in what I would call Social Reality (a mixture of social computing and augmented reality). 

Here your world of information is augmented by other's AR views shared with you.

AR offers an enormous opportunity to make our world far richer with information everywhere we look, rather than just when we look it up. 

For it to be ultimately successful, the display will need to be worked in as an embed or overlay on our actual eyes (like a contact lens), rather than worn like Google Glass.

For the non-soldier, not every open field needs augmented reality--in fact, it would sort of spoil the natural beauty of it--but it sure won't hurt to be able to turn it on, at will, to see which flowers are blooming and perhaps, whether there just might be a snake out there too.  ;-)
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February 3, 2013

A Seeing Eye


This video from NOVA is an amazing display of the surveillance capabilities we have at our disposal.

ARGUS-IS Stands for Automated Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System.

Like a "Persistent Stare," ARGUS provides continuous monitoring and tracking over a entire city, but also it has the ability to simply click on an area (or multilple areas--up to 65 at a time) to zoom in and see cars, people, and even in detail what individuals are wearing or see them even waving their arms!

Created by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), ARGUS uses 368 imaging chips and provides a streaming video of 1.8 gigapixels (that is 1.8 billion pixels) of resolution and attaches to the belly of a unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) drone. 

ARGUS captures 1 million terabytes of a data a day, which is 5,000 hours of high-definition footage that can be stored and returned to as needed for searching events or people. 

The Atlantic (1 February 2013) points out how using this over an American city could on one hand, be an amazing law enforcement tool for catching criminals, but on the other hand raise serious privacy concerns like when used by government to collect data on individuals or by corporations to market and sell to consumers. 

What is amazing to me is not just the bird's eye view that this technology provides from the skies above, but that like little ants, we are all part of the mosaic of life on Earth.  We all play a part in the theater of the loving, the funny, the witty, and sometimes the insane. 

My Oma used to say in German that G-d see everything, but now people are seeing virtually everything...our actions for good or for shame are visible, archived, and searchable. ;-)

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February 2, 2013

This Tape Will Self Destruct In Five Seconds


Ever since the 1960's airing of Mission Impossible, where each episode started with the instructions for a dangerous mission on a tape recording, which ended with "This tape will self-destruct in five seconds," have we all recognized the need for self-destructing devices to safeguard information. 

This message has been honed over the last three decades with compromising security incidents:

1979: Iranian demonstrators stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and according to UMBC "the incinerator broke" as personnel tried to destroy sensitive documents and they had to revert to shredding. 

2001: A Chinese J-8 fighter aircraft collided with a EP-3 U.S. Intel aircraft which according to CNN was "likely equipped with highly sensitive equipment" and landed on the Chinese island of Hainan providing China the opportunity to board, disassemble, and study the equipment before it was returned three months later. 

2011: Iran captured an RQ-170 Sentinel Drone and USA Todayreported on Iran's claims that "all files and boards of the drone were copied and used to improve Iran's unmanned aircraft." Also in 2011 in the assault on Osama Bin Laden, a secret stealth helicopter that took a hard-landing had to be destroyed before special forces pulled out--however according to the New York Times, "a surviving tail section reveal modifications to muffle noise and reduce the chances of detection by radar" was left behind providing others the opportunity to learn about our sensitive technologies.

Additionally, as ever more advanced technology continues to enter the battlefield the threat of its capture and exploitation becomes increasingly concerning. 
In this context, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced the start up of a new program on 28 January 2013 called Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR).

VAPR is intent on developing technologies for "transient electronics...capable of dissolving into the environment around them."

The goal is that "once triggered to dissolve, the electronics would be useless to any enemy that comes across them."

According to Armed Forces International, along with the destruction of the electronics would be "taking classified data with it." Thereby preventing the enemy from using captured information to develop countermeasures or reverse engineer their finds. 

Transient electronics are intended to be rugged on the battlefield but able to be destroyed on command, perhaps by biomedical implants that release "a few droplets of [a self-destruct] liquid" or other means. 

Whether self-destructing in five seconds or slightly more, the need to preserve our sensitive battlefield technologies and the intelligence they contain has never been more vital. ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Mike Licht)

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January 27, 2013

Ready, Aim, Phaser


LASER stands for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation and their use in the military is advancing fast. 

I am not just talking about things like laser sights mounted on assault rifles, but actual portable high energy laser weapons for taking out ships, planes, drones, rockets, mortars, and surface to air missiles. 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense Systems (HELLADS) is looking for smaller and lighter 150 kilowatt laser systems "enabling integration onto tactical aircraft to defend against and defeat ground threats" and is powerful enough to destroy aircraft!

Just about all science fiction weaponry relies on lasers to fight and defeat the future enemy whether the phasers and disrupters from Star Trek, turbolasers and laser cannons on Star Wars, and laser torpedeos and blaster turrets in Battlestar Galactica. 

According to Mashable (27 January 2013) "this year liquid-cooled, solid-state laser weapons will be installed on fighter planes" for testing.

Fast Company (8 March 2012) points out the challenges with laser tracking and killing including clouds, haze, and dust that weaken the laser.  However, these challenges no longer seem insurmountable. 

All the talk on gun control is so 20th century, the real conversation for the new era will be on laser weapons and whether phasers should be set on stun or kill. ;-)

(Source Photo: here with attribution to UK Ministry of Defence)

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January 23, 2013

Repair Robots In Space


This is a cool video by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on project Phoenix--which is a robot that can repair satellites in space and re-use components from retired satellites around it. 

Phoenix can intercept, scavenge, and rebuild satellites in space--while orbiting above the Earth at 22,000 miles!

In the corner of the video, you can see progress being made in the lab, and in the main video frame you can see an animated version of how this would actually be put to use. 

Machines working on, building, and repairing machines!

Like the fulfillment of a Terminator-like society, where machines can function with autonomy, eventually learning, self-healing, and even propagating.

I would imagine that these machines can help not only repurpose and recycle material in space to good use and fix things, but also they can clean up the space junk in orbit--similar to street sweeper trucks in Manhattan!

Eventually, these robots will travel to distance worlds--first Mars--to build human colonies and maintain them in inhospitable environments. 

In mythology, Phoenix is a bird that regenerates and is reborn--in this case, this may be the beginning of the rebirth of human civilization throughout the galaxy. ;-)
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January 20, 2013

Under The Beautiful Sea

The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) is looking for a place to stash some new military capabilities.

In a DARPA news release (11 January 2013) it states they are looking to support the navy by placing hibernated deep-sea capsules with payloads at under water locations and at the seafloor strategically around the globe--"almost half of the world's oceans are more than four kilometers deep" providing "cheap stealth".

The capsules with carry non-lethal payloads for "operational support and situational awareness"--such as command, control, communication, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR). 

Examples of pre-deployed payloads could be unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and probably, unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). The release specifically states that this is "not a weapons program," but you could imagine future evolutions of this.

The initial capabilities sought are for "situational awareness, disruption, deception, networking, rescue, or any mission that benefits from being pre-distributed and hidden." 

The deep-sea capsules will need to survive under extreme pressure and be able to communicate at vast ocean depths to be remotely awoken and recalled when needed. 

Having capabilities available when and where needed--from the bottom of the sea to forward deployment--potentially mitigating some use of costly and non-stealth land bases.

I think this is an exciting idea especially since China was able to demonstrate its anti-satellite missiles in January 2007 in shooting down its own satellite, and I would think that these new underwater pods being sought may be able to provide some alternatives for sensing and communicating in conflicts where satellites are destroyed or disabled and/or other military muscle in not readily available. 

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Rakel SdPC)

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December 19, 2012

Federal Leadership Is A Journey


There were three news articles in Federal Times this week (17 December 2012) that highlighted some disappointments for the time being, but that offer hope for the future:

-   Conflicts of Interest at DARPA: The previous director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is investigated by the Defense Department Inspector General for conflicts of interest related to the award of “hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts to a company she co-founded and partially owned.” The hope for the future—the new DARPA director has “sent a full list of her financial assets to all of the agency’s employees.”

-   Missed opportunity for use of mobile devices, BYOD in the Federal workforce: The CIO Council’s report on “Government Use of Mobile Technology: Barriers, Opportunities, and Gap Analysis” was required by the Federal Digital Strategy (May 2012); however, while there is clarity of the need for greater mobility in the workforce, instead of a clear architecture forward, the report calls for more guidance from the administration on “how to handle the tricky legal, privacy, and financial implications.” The hope—the report looks toward  a government-wide or agency policy and guidance to support more flexible use of mobile devices and a cross-functional team to evaluate Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) for the future.

-   NASA doubts commitment of getting to an asteroid: NASA, which has been criticized by some for not having a clear direction, has been charged with “sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025,” yet there is not consensus that this is “the next step on the way to Mars.” The hope—NASA can restructure, engage in cost-sharing partnerships, or otherwise increase budget or decrease scope to right-align and achieve clear focus on the next great goals for outer space.

Lesson learned: leadership does not have all the answers nor do they always do everything right, but leadership is a journey. So while today, we may not always be making the best acquisitions for advanced research, achieving clarity of a mobile strategy, or landing people on Mars—we are on the way—through one small step for leadership, one giant leap for the rest of us.

(Source Photo: here with attribution to NASA) 

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October 27, 2012

Robots: More Than A Technical Challenge


This is the DARPA Pet-Proto Robot (a predecessor to the Atlas model) showing some pretty cool initial operating capabilities for navigating around obstacles.

- Climbing over a wall
- Straddling a pit
- Going up a staircase
- Walking a plank

These things may seem simple to you and I, but for these robots, we are talking about their autonomously sensing what's around them, identifying and evaluating alternatives to overcome them, deciding on what to actually do, and then successfully executing on it.

Not bad for a machine (even if we are spoiled by the the great science fiction writers and special effects of Hollywood)!

We will be seeing a lot more progress in this area in the 27 months in response to the DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC), where robots are being looked to "execute complex tasks" for "humanitarian, disaster relief, and related activities" in potentially "dangerous and degraded, and human-engineered" environments.

I'd say only another 15-20 more years and the robots will walking among us--but are we prepared for the significant shift about to occur. 

Think about it--these robots will be able to do a lot more of the physical work (construction, manufacturing, service, care-taking, even warfighting, and more), and while we will benefit from the help, jobs are going to continue to get a lot tougher to find if you are not in fields such as engineering, science, technology, design, and so on.

This is going to lead to continued, significant social, educational, and economic disruptions.

What is now a robotics challenge to meet certain performance benchmarks, may in the future become a human challenge to shift from a human-dominated world to one which is instead shared or commingled with machines. 

This means that we need to define the boundaries between man and machine--will we be working and playing side-by-side, how about loving or fighting each other, and is there the possibility that the machine will some day transcend the inventor altogether. 

I believe that we need significant more study and research into how robotics are going to transform the way we live, work, and interact, and how humanity will adapt and survive this new monumental opportunity, but also looming threat.

What is just an obstacle to overcome in a simulation chamber may one day become an urban battlefield where humans are not necessarily the clear winners.

While I love robotics and where it can take us, this cannot be a field limited to the study of hardware and software alone.

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June 1, 2012

Cyberwar, You're On

There was significant news this week about the U.S. and Israel making major inroads with cyberwar capabilities

First, the New York Times today (1 June 2011) writes about alleged Bush and Obama administrations' "increasingly sophisticated [cyber] attacks on the computer systems that run Iran's main nuclear enrichment facilities"--sabotaging as many as a 1000 centrifuges, delaying their deadly program by as much as 2 years, as well as conducting cyber espionage to strengthen our negotiating hand. 

The cyber offensive program code-named Olympic Games allegedly involved cyber weapons codeveloped by the United States' National Security Agency and Israel's advanced cyber corps, Unit 8200.

The malware included such programs such as Stuxnet, Duqu, and The Flame and according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek (30 May 2012) may date as far back to 2007.

These cyber attacks have been viewed as the best hope of slowing the Iranian's sinister nuclear program while economic sanctions have a chance to bite. 

Additionally cyber attacks were viewed preferentially over using traditional kinetic military options and potentially causing a regional war in the Middle-east. 

At the same time, the use of cyber weapons is a double-edged sword--if we use it on others, this may encourage cyber proliferation and it's eventual use on us--and as the NYT writes, "no country's infrastructure is more dependent on computer systems and thus, more vulnerable to attack than the United States."

Therefore, it was good to see in The Washington Post yesterday (30 May 2012) that the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is pursuing Plan X--"ambitious efforts to develop technologies to improve its cyberwarfare capabilities, launch effective attacks, and withstand likely retaliation."

"If they achieve it, they're talking about being able to dominate the digital battlefield just like they do the traditional battlefield."
The "five-year $110 million research program" is seeking to accomplish three major goals in arming U.S. Cyber Command at Fort Meade for cyber war:

1) Mapping Cyberspace--create realtime mapping of the entire cyberspace and all its devices for commanders to use in identifying targets and disabling them and seeing enemy attacks. 

2) Building A Survivable O/S--Just like DARPA invented the Internet as a survivable messaging and communication system, so too, they want to develop a battle-ready operating system for our computers (like a tank) "capable of launching attacks and surviving counterattacks."

3) Develop (Semi-)Autonomous Cyber Weapons--so cyber commanders can engage in "speed-of-light attacks and counterattacks using preplanned scenarios that do not involve human operators manually typing in code."

Just to be clear, with cyber warfare, we are not just talking about computers taking out other computers--and end there, but rather this is where computers take out computers that are controlling critical infrastructure such as the power grid, transportation systems, financial systems, supply chain, command, control, and communications, weapons systems, and more.

"Cyberwar could be more humane than pulverizing [targets]...with bombs," but I doubt it will be. 

Imagine, everything you know coming to a complete halt--utter disruption and pandemonium--as well as the physical effects of that which would ensue--that's what cyber war is all about--and it is already on the way. 

So as, Richard M. George, a former NSA cyberdefense official stated: "Other countries are preparing for a cyberwar. If we're not pushing the envelope in cyber, somebody else will."

It is good to see us getting out in front of this cyber security monster--let's hope, pray, and do everything we can to stay on top as the cyberspace superpower. 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal taken of mural at National Defense University, Washington D.C.)


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April 27, 2012

Securing The Internet: A Historical Perspective

This week, I had the opportunity take a great class in Cyber Security / Information Assurance.

As part of the class, we had to do a team project and my part was to present a brief history of the Internet and how this best positions the Federal Government to take the lead in securing the Internet.

Here is my part of the presentation:

Good morning. I am Andy Blumenthal, and I am here to talk with you today about the wealth of historical experience that the U.S. Federal Government has with managing the Internet and why we are best positioned to govern the security of it in partnership with the private sector and international community.

As you’ll see on the timeline, the U.S. Government has played a major role in virtually every development with the Internet from inventing it, to building it, and to governing it, and it is therefore, best prepared to lead in securing it.

It all started with the invention of the Internet by the government.

Starting in 1957 with the Sputnik Crisis, where the Soviets leaped ahead of us in putting the first satellite in Earth’s orbit—this caused great fear in this country and ultimately led to a space and technology race between us and the Soviet Union.

As a result of this, in 1958, the U.S. Government established the Advanced Research Projects Agency (or ARPA) to advance our technology superiority and prevent any future technology surprises.

In 1962, ARPA created the Information Process Techniques Office (IPTO) for enhancing telecommunications for sharing ideas and computing resources.

Finally in 1964, the concept of the Internet was founded with the publication by RAND (on contract with the Air Force) of “On Distributed Communications,” which essentially invented the idea of a distributed computing network (i.e. the Internet) with packet switching and no single point of failure.  This was seen as critical in order to strengthen the U.S. telecomm infrastructure for survivability in the event of nuclear attack by the Soviets.

The Internet era was born!

The U.S. government then set out to build this great Internet.

In 1968, ARPA contracted for first 4 nodes of this network (for $563,000).

Then in 1982, after 8 years of antitrust litigation, the U.S. government oversaw the breakup of AT&T into the Baby Bells in order to ensure competition, value, and innovation for the consumer.

In 1983, ARPANET split off MILNET, but continued to be linked to it through TCP/IP.

In 1987, the National Science Foundation (NSF) built a T1 “Internet Backbone” for NSFNET hooking up the nation’s five supercomputers for high-speed and high capacity transmission.

And in 1991, the National Research and Education Network (NREN, a specialized ISP) was funded for a five-year contract with $2 billion by Congress to upgrade the Internet backbone.

At this point, the Internet was well on its way!

But the U.S. government’s involvement did not end there, after inventing it and building it, we went on to effectively govern it. 

In 2005, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) issued the Internet Policy Statement (related to Net Neutrality) with principles to govern an open Internet—where consumers are entitled to choice of content, apps, devices, and service providers.

And now, most recently, in 2012, we have a proposed bill for the Cybersecurity Act to ensure that companies share cyber security information through government exchanges and that they meet critical infrastructure protection standards.

You see, the government understands the Internet, it’s architecture, it’s vulnerabilities, and has a long history with the Internet from its invention, to its building, and its governance.

It only makes sense for the government to take the lead in the security of the Internet and to balance this effectively with the principles for an open Internet.   

Only the government can ensure that the private sector and our international partners have the incentives and disincentives to do what needs to be done to secure the Internet and thereby our critical infrastructure protection.

Thank you for your undivided attention, and now I will now turn it over to my colleague who will talk to you about the legal precedents for this. 

(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)

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March 31, 2012

Which Big Brother

About a decade ago, after the events of 9/11, there was a program called Total Information Awareness (TIA) run out the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

The intent was develop and use technology to capture data (lots of it), decipher it, link it, mine it, and present and use it effectively to protect us from terrorists and other national security threats. 

Due to concerns about privacy--i.e. people's fear of "Big Brother"--the program was officially moth-balled, but the projects went forward under other names.  

This month Wired (April 2012) reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) has almost achieved the TIA dream--"a massive surveillance center" capable of analyzing yottabytes (10 to the 24th bytes) of data that is being completed in the Utah desert. 

According to the article, the new $2 billion Utah Data (Spy) Center is being built by 10,000 construction workers and is expected to be operational in a little over a year (September 2013), and will capture phone calls, emails, and web posts and process them by a "supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes."

While DOD is most interested in "deepnet"--"data beyond the reach of the public" such as password protected data, governmental communications, and other "high value" information, the article goes on to describe "electronic monitoring rooms in major US telecom facilities" to collect information at the switch level, monitor phone calls, and conduct deep packet inspection of Internet traffic using systems (like Narus).

Despite accusations of massive domestic surveillance at this center, Fox News (28 March 2012) this week reported that those allegations have been dismissed by NSA. The NSA Director himself, General Keith Alexander provided such assurances at congressional hearings the prior week that the center was not for domestic surveillance purposes, but rather "to protect the nation's cyber security," a topic that he is deeply passionate about. 

Certainly new technologies (especially potentially invasive ones) can be scary from the perspective of civil liberties and privacy concerns.

However, with the terrorists agenda very clear, there is no alternative, but to use all legitimate innovation and technology to our advantage when it comes to national security--to understand our enemies, their networks, their methods, their plans, to stop them, and take them down before they do us harm.

While, it is true that the same technologies that can be used against our enemies, can also be turned against us, we must through protective laws and ample layers of oversight ensure that this doesn't happen. 

Adequate checks and balances in government are essential to ensure that "bad apples" don't take root and potentially abuse the system, even if that is the exception and not the rule. 

There is a difference between the big brother who is there to defend his siblings from the schoolyard bully or pulls his wounded brother in arms off the battlefield, and the one who takes advantage of them.

Not every big brother is the Big Brother from George Orwell's "1984" totalitarian state, but if someone is abusing the system, we need to hold them accountable. 

Protecting national security and civil liberties is a dual responsibility that we cannot wish away, but which we must deal with with common sense and vigilance.  

(Source Photo: here)

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March 11, 2012

Taking Down The Internet--Not A Pipe Dream Anymore

We have been taught that the Internet, developed by the Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), was designed to survive as a communications mechanism even in nuclear war--that was its purpose.

Last year, I learned about studies at the University of Minnesota that demonstrated how an attack with just 250,000 botnets could shut down the Internet in only 20 minutes. 

Again last month, New Scientist (11 February 2012) reported: "a new cyberweapon could take down the entire Internet--and there is not much that current defences can do to stop it."

Imagine what your life would be like without Internet connectivity for a day, a week, or how about months to reconstitute!

This attack is called ZMW (after its three creators Zhang, Mao, and Wang) and involves disrupting routers by breaking and reforming links, which would cause them to send out border gateway protocol (BGP) updates to reroute Internet traffic.  After 20 minutes, the extreme load brings the routing capabilities of the Internet down--" the Internet would be so full of holes that communication would become impossible."  

Moreover, an attacking nation could preserve their internal network, by proverbially pulling up their "digital drawbridge" and disconnecting from the Internet, so while everyone else is taken down, they as a nation continue unharmed. 

While The Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which encourages companies and government to share information (i.e. cybersecurity exchanges) and requires that critical infrastructure meet standards set by The Department of Homeland Security and industry are steps in the right direction, I would like to see the new bills go even further with a significant infusion of new resources to securing the Internet.  

An article in Bloomberg Businessweek (12-18 March 2012) states that organizations "would need to increase their cybersecurity almost nine times over...to achieve security that could repel [even] 95% of attacks."

Aside from pure money to invest in new cybersecurity tools and infrastructure, we need to invest in a new cyberwarrior with competitions, scholarships, and schools dedicated to advancing our people capabilities to be the best in the world to fight the cyber fight. We have special schools with highly selective and competitive requirements to become special forces like the Navy SEALS or to work on Wall Street trading securities and doing IPOs--we need the equivalent or better--for the cyberwarrior.

Time is of the essence to get these cyber capabilities to where they should be, must be--and we need to act now. 

(Source Photo of partial Internet in 2005: here, with attribution to Dodek)


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December 25, 2011

Swarming For Social Order and Disorder

A swarm is a large number of organisms generally in motion. According to Swarm Theory, the collective exhibits superior intelligence or abilities beyond that of any individual.
Swarms are powerful forces that we see in our society today in everything from the worldwide riots of 2011 to crowdsourcing on the Internet--to put it simply as they say, "there is power in numbers."
And swarms and their immense power dates back to the Bible, where the 8th plague sent on Egypt in Deuteronomy 10:14-15 was the plague of locusts:
"And the locusts went up over all the land of Egypt...for they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees..."
This past year, we saw the power of swarms in the riots around the globe--from Tahir Square to Occupy Wall Street. In the case of Egypt, Mubarak was deposed after ruling for 30 years and in the case of Wall Street, the Occupy movement sparked protests around the globe lasting for many months.
Similarly, swarms are being put to the test in multiple military applications from the Army's Future Combat System (since renamed) that envision brigades of manned and unmanned combat vehicles linked via an ultra-fast network creating a highly coordinated and maneuverable fighting force to DARPA's iRobot Swarm Project creating a mesh network of mobile robots with sensors that can coordinate and perform surveillance and reconnaissance gaining dominance over the battlefield.
The power of the swarm is not just a physical phenomenon, but also a virtual one where crowdsourcing is used online to do everything from building incredible sources of knowledge like Wikipedia to soliciting citizens ideas for solving national problems such as on Challenge.gov.
Traditionally, the power behind the swarm (in nature whether bees, ants, or locusts) was the collective behavior of so many to attack an enemy, build a colony, or ravage the landscape. Today however, the swarm is powerful because of its collective intelligence--whether in pooling information, vetting ideas, or just coordinating activities with such sophistication that the group can outwit and outmaneuver its opponents.
Wired Magazine has an article for the new year (January 2012) called "Crowd Control" in which the riots of 2011 are viewed as both "dangerous and magnificent"--they represent a disconnected group getting connected, a mega-underground casting off its invisibility to embody itself, formidably, in physical space."
"Today's protest, revolts, and riots are self-organizing [and] hyper-networked"--and just like a swarm, individuals deindividuate and base their ideas and actions on the shared identify of the group and therein, a social psychology takes hold and with basic communication and social technology today, they can spontaneously form potent flash mobs, "flash robs," or worse.
The age old phenomenon of swarming behavior is intersecting with the 21st century technology such as smartphones and social media to create the ability of individuals to gather, act decisively, disperse into the crowds, and then reconvene elsewhere to act again.
The power of this modern swarm is no longer about "sheer numbers," but about being interconnected through messaging, tweets, videos,and more.
Many today are finding the power of the swarm with both friends and foes. Friends are using swarming to try to accomplish new social and scientific feats. While foes such as Al Qaeda are utilizing swarming for hit and run terrorism--moving agilely between safe havens and targeting their victims with tools of terror such as IEDs, car bombs, and other flash attacks.
Swarming is not just a behavior found in the animal kingdom any longer, today it is a fundamental source for both social order and disorder.
Swarming is now a strategy and a tactic--we need to wise up and gain the edge with social swarming behavior and technology to "outwit, outlast, and outplay" those who want to threaten society, and instead use it to improve and secure it.
(Source Photo: here)

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November 26, 2011

Espionage, Social Media Style

You are being watched!
Good guys and bad guys are tracking your movements, rants and raves, photos, and more online.
For example, The Atlantic reported on 4 November 2011 in an article titled How the CIA Uses Social Media to Track How People Feel that "analysts are tracking millions of tweets, blog posts, and Facebook updates around the world."
Further, in January 2009, "DHS established a Social Networking Monitoring Center (SNMC) to monitor social networking sites for 'items of interest.'"
And even more recently in August 2011, DARPA invited proposals for "memetracking" to identify themes and sentiments online and potentially use this for predictive analysis.
The thinking is that if you can use online information to predict stock market movements as some have attempted, why not criminal and terrorist activity?
Similarly, The Guardian reported on 16 March 2010 FBI using Facebook in fight against crime and cautions that "criminals dumb enough to brag about their exploits on social networking sites have now been warned: the next Facebook 'friend' who contacts you may be an FBI agent."
This is reminescent of the work of private sector, Dateline NBC in using Internet chat rooms to catch sexual predators online by luring them to a house where the predators believed they were going to meet up with a underage girl for a tryst.
While these efforts are notable and even praiseworthy by the good guys--assuming you can get over the privacy implications in favor of the potential to have a safer society to live in--these activities should be carefully safeguarded, so as not to infringe on the rights and freedoms of those who behave legally and ethically.
But the good guys are not the only ones using the tools of the trade for monitoring and analyzing social networking activities--the bad guys too recognize the implicit information treasure trove available and have you in their crosshairs.
For example, in the last years Arab Spring, we have nation states tracking their citizens political activities and using their power over the Internet to shut off access and otherwise surpress democracy and human rights. Further, we have seen their use for cyberspying and testing offensive cyber attack capabilities--only the most recent of which was the alleged infiltration of a SCADA system for a Illinois water plant.
Moreover, this past week, Forbes (21 November 2011) reported in The Spy Who Liked Me that "your social network friends might not be all that friendly."
From corporate espionage to market intelligence, there are those online who "steadfastly follows competitors' executives and employees on Twitter and LinkedIn."
In fact, the notion of online monitoring is so strong now that the article openly states that "if you're not monitoring your competitors activity on social media, you may be missing out on delicious tidbits" and warns that "it's easy to forget that some may not have your best intersts at heart."
Additionally, while you may not think your posts online give that much away, when your information is aggregated with other peoples posts as well as public information, it's possible to put together a pretty good sketch of what organizations and individuals are doing.
Forbes lists the following sites as examples of the "Web Spy Manual" with lots of information to pull from: Slideshare, Glassdoor.com, Quora, iSpionage, Youtube as well as job postings and customer support forums.
When you are on your computer in what you believe to be the privacy of your own home, office, or wherever, do not be deceived, when you are logged on, you are basically as open book for all the world to see--good guys and bad guys alike.
(Source Photo: here)

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November 5, 2011

Dilbert Shows The Way to User-Centric Government

Scott Adams the talent behind Dilbert comics and numerous books wrote a fascinating column in the Wall Street Journal (5-6 Oct. 2011) called "What if Government Were More Like an iPod."
Adams has some great ideas and here's a few:
1) Leverage Group Intelligence--"group intelligence is more important than individual genius...thanks to the Internet we can summon the collective intelligence of millions." While certainly in government, we are using social media and crowd sourcing to leverage group intelligence by making information available to the public (e.g. Data.gov), engaging the public in innovating new applications (e.g. Apps for Democracy), getting feedback and comments on regulations (e.g. Regulations.gov), soliciting policy ideas and petitions from citizens (e.g. We The People) and more, this is only a start. We can continue to advance engagement with people on everyday issues to come up with solutions for our biggest and toughest challenges. One example for doing this is utilizing more tools like Quora to put out questions to subject matter experts, from every spectrum of our great nation, to come up with the best solutions, rather than just rely on the few, the loud, or the connected.
2) Voting With Understanding--"Voting [the way we currently do] is such a crude tool that half of the time, you can't tell if you're voting against your own interests. Change can take years...and elected officials routinely ignore their own campaign promises." Adams proposes a website to see the "best arguments for and against every issue, with links to support or refute every factual claim. And imagine the professional arbiters would score each argument." I can empathize with what Adams is saying. Think of the healthcare act in 2010 that was over 2,500 pages or the 72,000 page tax code--there is a reason people are overwhelmed, confused, and calling for plain language in government communications such as the Plain Language Act. There is obviously more to be done here using user-centric communications and citizen engagement, so that the average citizen with bills to pay and a family to care for, can still participate, contribute, and vote with understanding unmarred by gobbledygook, "the weight test", and politicking.
3) Campaigning More Virtually--Make it "easy for voters to see video clips, interviews, debates, and useful comparisons of the candidates positions. In the modern era, it does't make sense for a candidate to trek all over the country on a bus." Too much of the political process is the shaking hands and kissing babies--the showmanship of who looks better and talks more sleekly versus focusing on the policy issues. While it is important to present favorably, lead and influence and bring people together, it is also critical to get the policy issues out there clearly and without flip-flopping (which should be reserved for burgers only). The media plays a role in keeping the political candidates on their toes and honest, but the process itself should vet the issues in written commitments by candidates and not reversible sound bites on TV.
4) Quicken The Innovation Cycle--"I'm fairly certain Ben Franklin wouldn't be impressed by our pace of innovation. He invented the post office and showed us electricity and it still took us nearly 200 years to come up with email. We're not good at connecting the dots." This is an interesting point, but it sort of misses the mark. There are lots of good--even great--ideas out there, but from my perspective on organizations, execution is usually the stumbling block. In fact, according to Wikipedia, the Patent Office has a backlog of over 700,000 patent applications as of October 2010, so new ideas are plentiful, but how we work those ideas and make them come to fruition is a project management and human capital challenge. While email seems like just a dot or few dots away from the post office and electricity, there is obviously a lot of groundwork that needs to be laid to send an email from DC to Jerusalem in split seconds.
In short, Adams summarizes his convictions for government change in advocating a form of User-Centric Government (my term). Adams actually proposes a 4th branch of government (I think he really mean a new agency) to manage "user-interface" or what I understand him to mean as citizen engagement. Adams describes this new agency as "smallish and economical, operating independently, with a mission to build and maintain friendly user-interface for citizens to manage their government." Adams would advance the achievement of his ideas and hopes for leveraging group intelligence, voting with understanding, campaigning virtually, and quickening innovation. I believe Adams idea builds on the concept of a Federal agency for innovation that has been proposed previously over the years by The Industry Advisory Council and others to be modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA).
While there are arguments for and against creating another government agency for driving user-centric government, creating more and better user engagement through understanding and participation is fundamental and aligns with our core principles of democracy and as a global competitive advantage.
While Government is not Apple, learning from some of the best and brightest like Steve Jobs on how to reach people intuitively and deeply is a great way to go!
(Source Photo: here)

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