From the Washington Post: Retired Gen. James Mattis is confirmed as defense secretary, breaking with decades of precedent

I'm a bit late on this post, but here's a look at out new Defense Secretary.

- Click here for the article.

Retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattis was confirmed and sworn in as President Trump’s defense secretary Friday, breaking with decades of precedent as a recently retired general became the Pentagon’s top civilian leader.

Mattis, 66, was approved with a 98-1 vote after the presidential inauguration and then sworn in by Vice President Pence. The new Pentagon chief released a statement to U.S. troops afterward that credited not only them, but intelligence personnel as “sentinels and guardians of our nation” — rhetoric that is in line with Mattis’s past statements, but stands in contrast to the way Trump has criticized the value of U.S. intelligence in recent weeks.

. . . Many lawmakers and long-time foreign policy observers hope Mattis can be a moderating voice of experience in an administration that has notably few senior officials with national security experience in Washington. He will lead the Defense Department’s 1.9 million active-duty service members and reservists and oversee a budget of more than $580 billion as Trump prepares to expand the military.

Mattis becomes the first senior military officer to serve as defense secretary since President Truman nominated Army Gen. George C. Marshall for the job in 1950, as the U.S. military struggled in the Korean War. Mattis retired in spring 2013 as the chief of U.S. Central Command after a career in which he became one of the most influential officers of his generation and commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For more on the defense department:

- Wikipedia: Department of Defense.

From the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services: A hearing on "Foreign Cyber Threats to the United States"

Here's a link for more information related to the hearing below.

Aside for general information related to the specific question about possible Russian hacking during the 2016 election, it also offers 2305 students a look at one of the central functions of a congressional committee - the holding of hearing related to issues within the jurisdiction of the committee.

- Click here for the page dedicated to the hearing.

The witnesses provide an indication of what types of executive officials engage in activities within the jurisdiction of the committee. These positions are:

1 - The Director of National Intelligence.
2 - The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence.
3 - United States Cyber Command.
4 - National Security Agency.
5 - Central Security Service.

Here is information about the witnesses:

1 - James R. Clapper.
2 - Marcel J. Lettre.
3 - Michael S. Rogers.

These of course are people affiliated with the Obama Administration, In a later post I'll highlight the people Donald Trump has appointed to replace them.

Lawfare published an assessment of the hearing. The author points out how cordial and respectful members of the committee were towards the witnesses, and the intelligence community in general. This is in sharp contrast to comments by Trump.

- Click here for What Yesterday’s Senate Armed Services Committee Portends.

While John McCain, the committee chairman, was unspairing in his criticism of the Obama administration for not developing a cyber deterrence strategy, his demeanor towards the DNI was one of profound respect and cordiality. Others too made a point of thanking Clapper for his long service in various intelligence capacities and across administrations.

The message here was not merely one of fondness for the man himself, though that was evident at times; it was a way of conveying admiration and respect for the intellingence community that he and NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers were there representing. Sometimes, this linkage was explicit. At one point, Clapper was asked to describe his career and its apolitical nature and was asked pointedly whether it was representative of others in the community. He was asked, more than once, for his opinion of Julian Assange and about how Assange is regarded within the community. (Needless to say, Clapper’s not a fan.) Nor was the love fest purely emanating from the Democratic side. The hearing, pretty much wall to wall, showcased the committee’s confidence in the intelligence community as a set of institutions with integrity. At a time when that integrity is under fire from the President-elect, it was a powerful statement.

Indeed, no defense of Trump’s position emerged in any significant way from any member of the committee. To be sure, Sen. Tom Cotton raised the question of whether Trump will be worse for Russia than Hillary Clinton would have been, given his commitment to increased defense spending. And he asked questions that aimed to clarify the relatively narrow scope of the IC’s findings with respect to Russia. Sen. Thom Tillis, doing his best imitation of Noam Chomsky, declared that “there is research done by a professor up at Carnegie Mellon that is estimating that the United States has been involved one way or another in 81 different elections Since World War II. That is not including the coups or regime changes. And Russa has done it 36 times.” But Tillis's Chomskyism was fainthearted and short-lived, and no Republican on the committee stood up for the proposition that the hack may not have been a Russian effort to influence the election. Mostly, Republican senators who weren’t leading the charge contented themselves instead with asking the witnessess about other foreign cybersecurity concerns.
And some GOP senators were really on fire. Sen. McCain set the tone when he opened the hearing by declaring that “there’s no escaping the fact that this committee meets today for the first time in this new Congress in the aftermath of an unprecedented attack on our democracy.”

From Vox: The new era of great power competition Defense Secretary Ash Carter sees a world of heightened tension and even higher stakes.

The Secretary of Defense tries to make sense of the current geo-political landscape.

- Click here for it.

When Ashton Carter began his career at the Pentagon, in 1993, geopolitics was changing more rapidly than it had at any point since the Second World War. As the Cold War ended, a new world was taking its place, one dominated by American power.

Carter, at the time, expected that America's greatest challenge in that world — and, by extension, the focus of his own career — would be limiting the spread of nuclear weapons, he told me in a recent interview at the Pentagon. And the greatest threat, he thought, would be political instability within nuclear-armed Russia.

"That was the riveting challenge of that time. We look back now, and I remember how fearful that was," he said. "But it worked out extraordinarily well."

Twenty-some years later, Carter now runs the Pentagon as defense secretary. The world, and the challenges it presents for the United States, turned out somewhat differently than he, or anyone else, had expected.

What Carter has seen over the past two decades, and has often overseen, is the long and difficult process whereby the United States has tried, and at times struggled, to navigate those unexpected turns in the grand experiment that is the post–Cold War world.

The challenges of this era have only recently become clear: the failure and collapse of weak states, which can bring terrorism, civil war, and refugee influxes; rogue states that resist the American-led order and proliferate dangerous weapons; and now, according to Carter, a return to "great power competition."

In a lengthy and wide-ranging conversation, Carter expounded at length on those challenges: how they've changed, what the US has learned in its successes and stumbles with them, and what he sees coming. You can read the interview in full here.

Fromw the Washington Post: U.S. spy agencies mounted 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, documents show

I still think this is a bigger story than Syria:

U.S. intelligence services carried out 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, the leading edge of a clandestine campaign that embraces the Internet as a theater of spying, sabotage and war, according to top-secret documents obtained by The Washington Post.
That disclosure, in a classified intelligence budget provided by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, provides new evidence that the Obama administration’s growing ranks of cyberwarriors infiltrate and disrupt foreign computer networks.

Additionally, under an extensive effort code-named GENIE, U.S. computer specialists break into foreign networks so that they can be put under surreptitious U.S. control. Budget documents say the $652 million project has placed “covert implants,” sophisticated malware transmitted from far away, in computers, routers and firewalls on tens of thousands of machines every year, with plans to expand those numbers into the millions.

No word on whether Congress is involved in authorizing these strikes.

Do these attacks fit the meaning of "war?"

Is this the future of warfare?

Hagel's nomination to Defense Secretary to be filibustered

Which would be both unprecedented and a further indication that the partisanship that has calcified the House is doing the same to the Senate. Since we haven't talked this over that much in class, here's background:

- Hagel has rough outing before ex-colleagues.
- Chuck Hagel survives, now faces full Senate.
- Why Republicans are filibustering Chuck Hagel.
- Chuck Hagel blocked: Harry Reid doesn't have the votes.
- Harry Reid sets state for Chuck Hagel showdown.

We've yet to fully wade into the controversies over the filibuster, this helps remedy that.

Obama announces new Defense Secretary and CIA Director

No big surprise. Chuck Hagel for Defense; John Brennan for CIA.

Story in NYT - commentary and background to follow.

From WonkBlog: Defense spending in the U.S., in four charts

Here's useful data for a future look at foreign policy and defense spending.

Worth a preliminary look.

The KH-9 Hexagon Satellite

One of the concerns expressed over cuts to the Defense Department is that it may undermine research and development. One of the by-products of defense spending has been the promotion of technology that first aids defense and then eventually hits the private sector and leads to the development of new products and industries. The list is long - the telegraph, radio, airplanes, jet engines, rocketry, computers, and the internet.

Recently information has been declassified about the KH-9 Hexagon satellite, a cold war era surveillance satellite that took high resolution photographs of the Soviet Union during the 1960s and beyond. While attention was paid to the race to the moon, the real advance in space had less to do with exploration and more to do with the increasingly sophisticated satellites placed in orbit that began performing - and continue to perform - variety of functions.

Here are two stories related to the program:
- TOP SECRET: Your Briefing on the CIA's Cold-War Spy Satellite, 'Big Bird'

- Declassified US Spy Satellites . . .

The story points out the role the public sector has played in promoting basic research and development, and how this in turn promotes the viability of the commercial republic.

One of the Internet's Inventors Dies

Paul Baran invented packet switching, which is still in use today, as a means of ensuring that communications could surive a nuclear attack. Little surprise that the Defense Department (DARPA) would purchase the technique and use it as the backbone of the Arpanet - later to become the internet.

I've argued in 2302 that the federal government, through the military, has promoted practically every technical development in American history. Here's some proof.

Tension in Obama Administration

General McChrystal had tart words about members of the Obama Administration in a recent interview. He's since backed down, but his comments illustrate the tension common within presidential administrations and among advisers.

Are Institutional Changes Necessary to Solve Economic Crisis?

William Galston, writing for the Brookings Institution, thinks so and outlines some proposals.

He begins by pointing out previous periods in American history where institutional change was needed to solve crises.

1 - The replacement of the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution helped solidify the newly formed nation.

2 - The passage of the Civil War Amendments (the 13th, 14th and 15th) resolved the ambivalent relationship between the national and state governments in favor of the former.

3 - The creation of the Federal Reserve, the Department of Defense and other large agencies allowed the nation to position itself effectively internationally.

He details a variety of institutional changes he considers necessary to handle our current fiscal mess.

Gates Takes on the Military Industrial Complex

From The Atlantic.

Nuclear Posture Review

President Obama released an updated Nuclear Policy Review, which establishes the nation's policy regarding the use of nuclear weapons.

- A link to the report.
- Story in NPR.
- NYT Op-Ed.
- DOD info.

"presidential post-acquittal detention power"

Glenn Grenwald, and a host of other civil libertarians are upset with Obama's maintenance of Bush's detainee policies. Obama even seems ready to expand them, arguing that president's have the power to detain people even after they have been acquitted:

Spencer Ackerman yesterday attended a Senate hearing at which the DOD's General Counsel, Jeh Johnson, testified. As Ackerman highlighted, Johnson actually said that even for those detainees to whom the Obama administration deigns to give a real trial in a real court, the President has the power to continue to imprison them indefinitely even if they are acquitted at their trial. About this assertion of "presidential post-acquittal detention power" -- an Orwellian term (and a Kafka-esque concept) that should send shivers down the spine of anyone who cares at all about the most basic liberties -- Ackerman wrote, with some understatement, that it "moved the Obama administration into new territory from a civil liberties perspective." Law professor Jonathan Turley was more blunt: "The Obama Administration continues its retention and expansion of abusive Bush policies — now clearly Obama policies on indefinite detention."

He goes on to accuse Obama of orchestrating show trials in order to pre-determine convictions of those he wants convicted. In the process he is violating centuries of established rules of due process:

Show trials are exactly what the Obama administration is planning. In its own twisted way, the Bush approach was actually more honest and transparent: they made no secret of their belief that the President could imprison anyone he wanted without any process at all. That's clearly the Obama view as well, but he's creating an elaborate, multi-layered, and purely discretionary "justice system" that accomplishes exactly the same thing while creating the false appearance that there is due process being accorded. And for those who -- to justify what Obama is doing -- make the not unreasonable point that Bush left Obama with a difficult quandary at Guantanamo, how will that excuse apply when these new detention powers are applied not only to existing Guantanamo detainees but to future (i.e., not-yet-abducted) detainees as well?

On a related note: we haven't heard much from Dick Cheney recently. Perhaps he thinks he made his point.

Robert McNamara Dies

The NYT story here.

Who Knows Defense Best?

Congress or the Secretary of Defense?

Gates Releases Defense Budget

And members of Congress are not happy about it. He proposes terminating weapons systems he deems unnecessary. The problem is that some of these systems are made in the districts of powerful members of Congress whose political careers are perhaps dependent on preserving the jobs associated with them:

In unveiling his new priorities for the Pentagon, Gates acknowledged that he would probably face opposition from lawmakers eager to protect jobs in their districts. "My hope is that members of Congress will rise above parochial interests and consider what is in the best interest of the nation as a whole," he said.

Gates demanded unprecedented secrecy when developing the budget over the past six weeks. Senior generals throughout the department were required to sign non-disclosure agreements. In order to prevent leaks, Gates won special permission from the president to withhold his decisions from the White House's Office of Management and Budget until after the budget proposal was formally announced. "We wanted to ensure that the changes were presented in full context," a senior Pentagon official said.

The initial response on Capitol Hill was restrained, reflecting Gates's credibility among Republicans, the president's popularity and the fact that the midterm congressional elections are still 18 months away. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) called the Gates plan "a good-faith effort." But he also asserted Congress's authority over how defense money is spent. "The buck stops with Congress," Skelton said in a statement.

The cuts will undoubtedly be painful for communities such as Marietta, Ga., where about 2,000 Lockheed Martin workers assemble the F-22. The program employs about 25,000 people around the country, said Rep. Tom Price (R), whose Georgia district includes the Lockheed Martin plant. "This decision will not only cost thousands of jobs at a critical time, it is detrimental to the country's national defense capabilities," Price said. "The president's priorities are deeply flawed."

Similarly, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) bemoaned the decision to stop building F-22s. "This would result in the loss of thousands of jobs in Connecticut," he said.

Kaplan Loves James Jones

He argues that the new National Security Adviser will be well suited to ensure that the White House will be able to effectively control foreign policy, that is, to coordinate the State and Defense Departments -- a task often beyond the ability of previous presidents:

...he knows the ins, outs, back alleys, and dark closets of the national-security realm.

His former colleagues use the same words to describe him: very smart, very organized, methodical, deliberate. It may be telling that Obama has been seeking advice lately from two other generals who served as national-security advisers: Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft. Anthony Zinni, a retired Marine general who's known Jones for 30 years and followed a similar career path, told me in an e-mail that he sees Jones as "a Scowcroft type of NSA," elaborating, "He works hard to build consensus and has a lot of patience. He doesn't like to seek confrontation but won't shrink from a fight. … He doesn't seek the limelight but will be the hand behind keeping things on track and focused."
Kaplan goes on to argue why Jones will be an improvement over Condoleeza Rice, Bush's first National Security Adviser:

"On track and focused" is precisely where George W. Bush failed to keep things, especially in his first six years (that is, until Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon). As a result, policies drifted, information was suppressed, dissenting views were circumvented, and, sometimes, decisions made by the National Security Council were simply ignored or surreptitiously overruled. (For one crucial instance, click here; for others, read some of these books.)

Rumsfeld in particular was able to get away with this high-handedness—at one point, to prevent a decision from being made, he simply didn't show up for three consecutive NSC meetings—in part because Condoleezza Rice, Bush's first-term national-security adviser, was a weak manager; Rumsfeld, a veteran infighter, ran circles around her; and Bush, a lackadaisical president in this respect, declined to rein him in.

This sort of manipulation and chaos, it's safe to bet, won't be countenanced by Gen. Jones.

Keeping Robert Gates Secretary of Defense

Fred Kaplan thinks its a good idea, and much has to do with how Gates works within the decision making process in the defense/security apparatus, and not around it as his predecessors had done:

It would be a mistake to regard Gates as merely a holdover from the Bush administration. Literally, of course, he is. But since coming to the Pentagon in December 2006, he has altered the dynamics of decision-making and, as a result, of policy.

Before Gates, the National Security Council was dysfunctional. Rumsfeld would skip meetings and refuse to let his deputies speak on his behalf. His tag-team partner, Vice President Dick Cheney, would block the NSC from forming a consensus on issues that concerned him; instead he would meet alone with President Bush afterward, a practice that compelled the secretary of state—Colin Powell in the first term, Condoleezza Rice in the second—to go around the process as well.

As with other Obama appointees so far, they have enough of an understanding of the process that they don't have to spend a year figuring out what needs doing.

On Citizen Soldiers and Mercenaries

I tend not to be an alarmist, but the following post raises troubling questions regarding the direction our defense apparatus may be headed. It focuses on concerns about the increased political strength of private armies like Blackwater, but reaches into broader concerns.

It fits with the previous topic regarding privatizing prisons, but here the consequences could be much more severe.

For background info, this is a mercenary, this is a citizen-soldier.