How many times has it happened? You’re on your computer, searching for a particular article, a hard-to-find fact, or a story you vaguely remember, and just when you seem to have discovered the exact right thing, a paywall descends. “$1 for Six Months.” “Save 40% on Year 1.” “Here’s Your Premium Digital Offer.” “Already a subscriber?” Hmm, no.
Now you’re faced with that old dilemma: to pay or not to pay. (Yes, you may face this very dilemma reading this story in The Atlantic.) And it’s not even that simple. It’s a monthly or yearly subscription—”Cancel at any time.” Is this article or story or fact important enough for you to pay?
Or do you tell yourself—as the overwhelming number of people do—that you’ll just keep searching and see if you can find it somewhere else for free?
National Security
There are 65 posts filed in National Security (this is page 1 of 7).
Russian soldiers who quit Putin’s war get no hero’s welcome abroad as asylum claims surge
ASTANA, Kazakhstan (AP) — If the choice was death or a bullet to the leg, Yevgeny would take the bullet. A decorated hero of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Yevgeny told his friend and fellow soldier to please aim carefully and avoid bone. The tourniquets were ready.
The pain that followed was the price Yevgeny paid for a new chance at life. Like thousands of other Russian soldiers, he deserted the army.
“I joke that I gave birth to myself,” he said. “When a woman gives birth to a child, she experiences very intense pain and gives new life. I gave myself life after going through very intense pain.”
Yevgeny made it out of the trenches. But the new life he found is not what he had hoped for.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-putin-deserter-asylum-5c7642cd14431d9af65076df2df4b861
‘This Seems to Be a Major Strategic Error on the Part of Iran’ – POLITICO
Yes, so much of the last 48 hours has been many of us just head-scratching over this. Why would Iran do what it did? I like to quote Napoleon’s dictum: When your enemies are making a big, big mistake, don’t interrupt them. Iran interrupted a situation when Israel was increasingly isolated and on the defensive, both internationally and in its relationship with the U.S., which had reached something of a nadir. At the United Nations, too, the narrative was working in Iran’s favor. Iran had so many other ways to respond effectively — perhaps using Hezbollah to militarize the West Bank or to do things elsewhere in the region. That has been the essence of Iranian national security policy for decades. So this seems to be a major strategic error on the part of Iran.
Source: ‘This Seems to Be a Major Strategic Error on the Part of Iran’ – POLITICO
On the Internet nobody knows you’re a spook
OZ Division, USS ELLIOT DD-967, fall 1991.
Had a dust-up on social media the other day and, frankly, I am still mystified how it all took place.
I tend to follow online and amplify veterans who lean left because the perception of the military consisting of only right-wingers needs to change. A tweet from one of the more popular veterans I follow attracted several good comments. I liked one from a particular veteran (we’ll call her Karen), checked her profile, and followed her when I saw we had something in common: our Navy occupations were in cryptography.
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The SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus takes over the world
SARS-CoV-2
Life as we know it has changed in an astonishingly quick moment. Last week it was fairly normal when it looked like China might be able to contain the virus but then panic set in across the country. Sports leagues like the NBA, NCAA, ACC, and NHL canceled their games. Raleigh’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade was called off. Then Wake County Public Schools decided last Friday to not count absences before turning around on Saturday and closing schools. A week ago I worked my first day at home and have not been back to the office except for a brief time Saturday to retrieve the plants off my desk.
We are doing what is termed “social distancing,” where we interact with as few people as possible. The kids are at home, Kelly and I are at home and we have largely given up any trips outside of the house except for dire emergencies. It is frightening and surreal. In an instant life has changed drastically.
It has been day three of our all being at home. Our home is big enough that we can find our own corners and not disturb each other. When we’re sharing our home office, Kelly has complained about how loudly I chew gum (narrator: it’s not that loud). Spirits are high now but the realization is setting in that this will not be over any time soon. We may have to shelter in place like this for months.
The saving grace is that we are not strictly confined to our homes. At least, not yet. We can go for drives, walks, bike rides, dog walks. Whatever. We are just encouraged to maintain that six-foot distance experts suggest will keep us safe from getting the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
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Iran believed to have deliberately missed U.S. forces in Iraq strikes, Western sources say – Iran – Haaretz.com
Called this yesterday, too. Iran was fully capable of killing many Americans here but chose not to. They may be saner than Trump.
Iran is believed to have deliberately sought to avoid U.S. military casualties in missile strikes on bases housing American troops in Iraq launched in retaliation for the U.S. killing of an Iranian general, according to U.S. and European government sources familiar with intelligence assessments.
The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday the Iranians were thought to have targeted the attacks to miss U.S. forces to prevent the crisis from escalating out of control while still sending a message of Iranian resolve. A source in Washington said overnight that early indications were of no U.S. casualties, while other U.S. officials declined comment.
Iranian Missile Accidentally Brought Down Ukrainian Jet, Officials Say – The New York Times
Called this yesterday. Loss of a single engine won’t down a plane and Iranian officials declared it a mechanical problem before the fires were even out. Condolences to the victims.
WASHINGTON — An Iranian missile accidentally brought down a Ukrainian jetliner over Iran this week, killing everyone aboard, American and allied officials said on Thursday, adding a tragic coda to the escalated military conflict between Washington and Tehran.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada said his country had intelligence that an Iranian surface-to-air missile brought down the jetliner, which was carrying 63 Canadians among its some 176 passengers and crew. Mr. Trudeau said his conclusion was based on a preliminary review of the evidence but called for a full investigation “to be convinced beyond all doubt.”
Source: Iranian Missile Accidentally Brought Down Ukrainian Jet, Officials Say – The New York Times
‘Shattered’: Inside the secret battle to save America’s undercover spies in the digital age
When hackers began slipping into computer systems at the Office of Personnel Management in the spring of 2014, no one inside that federal agency could have predicted the potential scale and magnitude of the damage. Over the next six months, those hackers — later identified as working for the Chinese government — stole data on nearly 22 million former and current American civil servants, including intelligence officials.
The data breach, which included fingerprints, personnel records and security clearance background information, shook the intelligence community to its core. Among the hacked information’s other uses, Beijing had acquired a potential way to identify large numbers of undercover spies working for the U.S. government. The fallout from the hack was intense, with the CIA reportedly pulling its officers out of China. (The director of national intelligence later denied this withdrawal.)Personal data was being weaponized like never before. In one previously unreported incident, around the time of the OPM hack, senior intelligence officials realized that the Kremlin was quickly able to identify new CIA officers in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow — likely based on the differences in pay between diplomats, details on past service in “hardship” posts, speedy promotions and other digital clues, say four former intelligence officials. Those clues, they surmised, could have come from access to the OPM data, possibly shared by the Chinese, or some other way, say former officials.
The OPM hack was a watershed moment, ushering in an era when big data and other digital tools may render methods of traditional human intelligence gathering extinct, say former officials. It is part of an evolution that poses one of the most significant challenges to undercover intelligence work in at least a half century — and probably much longer.The familiar trope of Jason Bourne movies and John le Carré novels where spies open secret safes filled with false passports and interchangeable identities is already a relic, say former officials — swept away by technological changes so profound that they’re forcing the CIA to reconsider everything from how and where it recruits officers to where it trains potential agency personnel. Instead, the spread of new tools like facial recognition at border crossings and airports and widespread internet-connected surveillance cameras in major cities is wiping away in a matter of years carefully honed tradecraft that took intelligence experts decades to perfect.
Source: ‘Shattered’: Inside the secret battle to save America’s undercover spies in the digital age
A Destroyer – By John Steinbeck
USS Elliot (DD-967) in North Arabian Gulf, circa 1998
John Steinbeck spent a few weeks aboard a destroyer in World War II, the USS Knight (DD-663), and wrote this ode to destroyers called “A Destroyer” in 1943. It appeared in a collection of his dispatches published in 1958 in a book called Once There Was a War.
I think it sums up life on a destroyer quite well.
A destroyer is a lovely ship, probably the nicest fighting ship of all. Battleships are a little like steel cities or great factories of destruction. Aircraft carriers are floating flying fields. Even cruisers are big pieces of machinery, but a destroyer is all boat. In the beautiful clean lines of her, in her speed and roughness, in her curious gallantry, she is completely a ship, in the old sense.
For one thing, a destroyer is small enough so that her captain knows his whole crew personally, knows all about each one as a person, his first name and his children and the trouble he has been in and is capable of getting into. There is an ease on a destroyer that is good and a good relationship among the men. Then if she has a good captain you have something really worth serving on.
The battleships are held back for a killing blow, and such a blow sometimes happens only once in a war. The cruisers go in second, but the destroyers work all the time. They are probably the busiest ships of a fleet. In a major engagement, they do the scouting and make the first contact. They convoy, they run to every fight. Wherever there is a mess, the destroyers run first. They are not lordly like the battleships and the men who work them are seamen. In rough weather they are rough, honestly and violently rough.
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The Navy’s journey from racial segregation to equality
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In the spring of 1945, at age 17, I volunteered for the U.S. Navy.
Nazi Germany had surrendered, but World War II was still raging in the Pacific as the Americans closed in on Japan’s home islands. Kamikaze planes were diving into ships, killing sailors by the dozens.
Most of my thoughts and feelings were with those embattled men 5,000 miles away. When I enlisted, I had no idea I was about to participate in a historic experience that in some ways would prove more momentous than the final struggle against the Axis powers.
Orders from the Navy directed me to report to New York’s Pennsylvania Station, where I boarded a train with other new recruits that took us upstate to boot camp at the Sampson Naval Training Station. Soon after we arrived, we were divided into companies and marched to our barracks, as Seneca Lake gleamed in the distance.
A chief boatswain’s mate led me and some 150 other would-be swabbies to our barracks and checked off our names as we hefted seabags and settled into the spartan interior — where everyone got a shock. We were an integrated company — a third black, two-thirds white.
Without announcing it, the Navy was launching a program to upend the prevailing race-relations formula in the United States — separate but (supposedly) equal.
Source: The Navy’s journey from racial segregation to equality