What is the NSA actually doing in China? – Tech Monitor

The breach was deft, even artful. It began, according to Chinas National Computer Virus Emergency Response Centre (NCVERC), with a man-in-the-middle attack earlier this year on the networks of Northwestern Polytechnical University (NWPU) in Xian. A type of breach that allows hackers to intercept electronic communications mid-transit, the attackers then used a total of 40 zero-day exploits and viruses to strengthen and advance their position within the institutions network. By the time they were discovered, the groups access to the universitys systems was near-total and even extended to a national telecommunications firm.

This attack was one of five that NCVERC has attributed in recent months to the US National Security Agency (NSA). I want to stress that what the US has done has seriously jeopardized the security of Chinas critical infrastructure, and institutional and personal information, said Mao Ning, a spokesperson from the countrys foreign ministry, who went on to urge the relevant US authorities to stop organising such breaches. Even so, its the kind of conduct that the Chinese government has publicly stated it has come to expect from the worlds leading superpower, with another government spokesperson excoriating the US as truly the hacking empire of the world.

Such highly charged accusations made against the US are nothing new and, indeed, there is a rich seam of claims dating back to the Snowden revelations of the NSA making a mockery of Chinese cybersecurity by hacking civilian computers while maintaining a sophisticated network of informants. There is also, admittedly, a whiff of plausibility in some of the new claims: NWPU has, in the past, been described by the US Justice Department as an institution thats heavily involved in military research and works closely with the Peoples Liberation Army. Even so, the new reports have been viewed with suspicion by cybersecurity experts. Indeed, a common thread between all of these reports is the use of threat intelligence and technical details designed to mimic the ways in which Western cybersecurity companies produce evidence and attribution of state-sponsored cyberattacks.

In April for example, another spokesperson for Chinas Foreign Affairs Ministry responded to a question from Global Times a state-funded media outlet about a report from NCVERC on alleged US cyberattacks on allied countries. The report points out that if existing international internet backbone network(s) and critical information infrastructure contain software or hardware provided by US companies, it is highly likely that various types of backdoor(s) could be installed, making them targets of US government cyberattacks, said Wang Wenbin.

His statement was strikingly similar to the way in which the US has previously warned about the risks in allowing Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei to work on critical national infrastructure around the world. Theres likely a cynical motive behind such attributions, argues Robert Spalding, CEO of Sempre and a former US Air Force Brigadier General. The CCP wants to lay the foundation for saying that the US is guilty of what they blame China for, he says.

The timing of these reports release is also crucial to understanding Chinas intentions, argues Chih-yun Huang, a cyber threat intelligence analyst at Team T5, a Taiwanese cybersecurity firm. On 30 August, the American cybersecurity company Proofpoint released a study on recent cyberattacks on the Australian government and wind turbine fleets in the South China Sea, with the trail leading to a group called TA423/Red Ladon. According to Proofpoint researchers and the US Department of Justice, the group is a China-based, espionage-motivated threat actor targeting a variety of organisations in response to political events in the Asia-Pacific region, with a focus on the South China Sea.

Several weeks later, Global Times published an exclusive detailing how the NSA allegedly conducted its cyberattack on NWPU, which aimed at infiltrating and controlling core equipment in Chinas infrastructure and stealing private data of Chinese people with sensitive identities. Huang believes the timing of the story is suspicious, and likely a tit-for-tat accusation.Indeed, other industry experts have pointed out a pattern where Chinese cybersecurity companies publish reports on US cyberattacks, followed by exclusive stories run by Global Times, indicating a coordinated campaign between the state, private sector and the media.

Other cybersecurity experts have also argued that these reports are a patchwork effort at best, mentioning malware that has existed in the public domain for over five years. For her part, Huang notes that many of the reports issued by NCVERC omit crucial information like IP addresses and other indicators of compromise. In that sense, these reports are not credible because we cant confirm whether its true or not, she says.

However, focusing on the technical credibility of these reports misses the broader point about Chinas efforts to push out detailed threat intelligence on alleged American offensive hacking operations. The interesting thing is that you wont be able to find an English version of these reports, says Huang. Its probably part of wider anti-US propaganda efforts intended to stir the emotions of the domestic population of China, or even the wider Chinese diaspora.

But Huang also believes that what she has seen in the last few months is just the beginning, and that propaganda efforts to portray Chinese cybersecurity as vulnerable to attack from Western powers will likely become more sophisticated in the future as US-China relations continue to deteriorate. They will find new ways to make it more persuasive, she says the best lies, after all, contain elements of truth. China might find ways to make these reports more legitimate by providing more technical details, for example.

While publishing cyber threat intelligence reports about American hacking adventures represents a new front in US-China relations, such methods fall squarely within the long-held tradition of accusing the West of double standards.

There have been multiple times when the US accuses China of human rights violations of Uyghurs and you would see China retaliating with the USs poor human rights record, for example, says Huang. As long as the Western cybersecurity industry continues to keep a close eye on Chinas activities, I think China will continue to fight back through propaganda whenever they feel attacked.

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NSA’s National Cryptologic University will host a reaffirmation of accreditation site visi – National Security Agency

FORT MEADE, Md. The National Security Agencys (NSA) National Cryptologic University will host a reaffirmation of accreditation site visit for the Council on Occupational Education (COE) 12-13 October 2022. National Cryptologic University received its initial accreditation with COE in 1990, and has undergone subsequent site visits and rigorous self-studies in order to maintain this recognition. Affirmation of accreditation occurs every six years to determine compliance with the standards and criteria for accreditation.To maintain COE accredited status, National Cryptologic University must abide by educational standards and criteria established by COE. Accreditation requirements and standards for National Cryptologic University are in accordance with DoDM 3115:11 DoD Intelligence and Security Training Standards, March 24, 2015.Persons wishing to make comments should send comments directly to the commission by 12 October 2022. To submit a comment, write to the Executive Director of the Commission, Council on Occupational Education, 7840 Roswell Road, Bldg. 300, Suite 325, Atlanta, GA 30350. Persons making comments must provide their names and mailing addresses.

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NSA Affiliates Donate More Than 86 Tons of Food To Help Fight Hunger – HS Today – HSToday

National Security Agency (NSA) affiliates across the Enterprise banded together to donate more than 172,700 pounds of food thats 86+ tons to theFeds Feed Families (FFF)campaign this year.

The 2022 Feds Feed Families campaign ran from June through August. The theme this year was Fighting hunger. Giving hope.

The contributions we are able to make individually and together will give hope to so many who are less fortunate, said GEN Paul M. Nakasone, Commander, USCYBERCOM, Director, NSA/Chief, CSS.

This years FFF goal was to collect 140,000 pounds a little more than 10% increase from the previous year.

Donations started off slow, but NSA affiliates rose to the occasion and surpassed last years donations by nearly 36%, FFF Program Manager Ciera Barnes said.

The Cryptologic Centerswere instrumental in helping the Agency reach its goal, collecting over 138,000 pounds.

NSA/CSS Georgia came out on top with more than 82,900 pounds, of which 78,600 pounds were converted from online donations. The Department of Agriculture uses a standard conversion formula for all participating agencies that every $1 donated equates to five pounds.

NSA/CSS Utah collected 19,465 pounds, with an astounding 19,000 pounds received from online donations.

NSA/CSS Colorado (NSAC) collected 14,340 pounds, of which 3,650 pounds were non-perishable donations. NSACs goal this campaign was to reintroduce in-kind donations to the workforce following restrictions in 2021.

NSA/CSS Texas increased its online donations by 10,500 pounds and brought in a total of 13,931 pounds when combined with non-perishable donations. Similar to NSAC, the focus this campaign was to reintroduce in-kind donations to the workforce following restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

NSA/CSS Hawaii also increased its online donations to over 5,625 pounds this year. The Cryptologic Centers total donations received was 6,729 pounds. Sugar Grove Research Stations 1,550 pounds of donations in 2022 was almost triple the donations received last year.

Overall, when combined with current Combined Federal Campaign pledges, NSA collected more than 1.07 million pounds of food in this years campaign, an overall 2.35% increase from 2021.

NSA/CSS Washington (NSAW) donated more than 33,800 pounds of food and toiletry items to the Maryland Food Bank, a Combined Federal Campaign charity located in Baltimore. The Maryland SPCA received nearly 740 pounds of pet food, treats, and toys collected during the Community Dog Walk, second annual Family Bike Ride, and various Stuff the Truck events around NSAW.

I am once again impressed and touched by the generosity of the NSA family, said Barry Boseman, chief of the State and Local Affairs office.

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NSA offers opportunities to young sheep farmers – Agriland.co.uk – Agriland.co.uk

The National Sheep Association (NSA) has opened applications for young sheep farmers to apply to be a part of the Sheep Breeders Round Table (SBRT) that takes place from November 11-13.

The farmers will have the opportunity to join key names and other representatives from the UK sheep industry at the biennial event.

The cross-industry three-day event conference is a technical event involving sheep farmers, breeders, researchers and vets from across the UK and beyond.

To show its support for the future of the industry, the NSA Next Generation programme is offering to fund one young sheep farmer's attendance at the conference which, the NSA said, would lead to "expanding their knowledge and appetite for the latest thinking on sheep genetics".

NSA South East and NSA South West regions are also offering to fund 50% of two places each at the conference giving two more young farmers the chance to attend.

NSA communications manager, Katie James, said: "Attendance at SBRT can provide young farmers who have an interest in developing their sheep flock or career as a shepherd with the perfect opportunity to hear from some of the country's leading experts on a range of research topics."

"It is also an excellent networking event with chance to speak informally with some well-known names from the world for sheep breeding research and fellow pedigree enthusiasts."

Both the fully-funded and part-funded places offered include the full three days at the conference as well as accommodation and meals.

The event is held from Friday, November 11, to Sunday, November 13, at the Raddison Blu hotel, Pegasus Business Park, East Midlands Airport.

"This event is well suited to young sheep producers with a keen interest in pedigree breeding and research," James said.

"We look forward to receiving applications from sheep farmers aged 18 to 35 who believe attendance at the conference could truly benefit them at this time."

Young sheep farmers who wish to apply for the opportunity to attend the conference should visit the NSA website.

Applications close for this opportunity on Friday, October 21, at 5pm.

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Dating in a world of NSA: ‘I want someone to love me for me’ – SBS

Like a lot of twenty-somethings Dane Noonan wants to find love, but he is tired of online dating.

The experiences that I've had! A lot of the menthat I noticed on some of the apps are either in open relationships, (and I'm completely monogamous), or they're looking for NSA (no strings attached)".

While continuing to scroll diligently through Scruff and Grindr;, the 26-year-old has decided to absorb the exhaustion of dating to focus on his work as an actor and model; going to therapy and self-care.

I've been on all the apps! I'm sort of taking the time for myself and working on myself. If that man comes along, so be it, he said.

I just want it to happen naturally, at the end of the day so as far as dating, that's where I'm at, he concedes.

Noonan admits finding love in a disposable online dating culture that privileges hook-ups and unrealistic body ideals can be emotionally draining.

Society today, I feel like it paints this perfect picture of what a person is supposed to look like. There's a standard as well, you've got to be over six foot tall with, a masculine build which is not me, it's never going to be me.

Noonan who has MPS type 6, says this is compounded by ableism and discrimination he has experienced when online dating, which at times sees him the recipient of some cutting messages.

"I think from looking at me, they think I'm a child, I can't speak for myself or do they have to look after me?" Noonan says.

I have fully accepted myself as a person with a disability and a gay man so I don't really have any issues around that.

(But) when I go on a date it's, it's almost like the person, they don't know how to interact with me or how to take me, if that makes sense. They obviously see a four-foot-tall person (and) they dont how to interact, and the thing is I'm quite confident. I am quite extroverted.

Noonans dream man is respectful, kind-hearted and treats him and his loved ones well.

I love going to drag shows. (I want) someone that's quite fun, likes to dance and loves to travel. I also like the small things like going on a picnic, walking my pups, going to the theatre or going for a walk."

Despite the frustrations Noonan has not lost hope he will find Mr. Right soon, either online or the old fashioned one through social connections.

"I think everyone wants to feel loved," he said.

"I don't ask for much just someone to share memories with, my life with, and to love me for me, all of me.

Watch season four of the Swiping Game on SBS airing in January.

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National Security Agency – Wikipedia

U.S. signals intelligence organization

Seal of the National Security Agency

Flag of the National Security Agency

The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for foreign and domestic intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, specializing in a discipline known as signals intelligence (SIGINT). The NSA is also tasked with the protection of U.S. communications networks and information systems.[8][9] The NSA relies on a variety of measures to accomplish its mission, the majority of which are clandestine.[10] The existence of the NSA was not revealed until 1975. The NSA has roughly 32,000 employees.[11]

Originating as a unit to decipher coded communications in World War II, it was officially formed as the NSA by President Harry S. Truman in 1952. Between then and the end of the Cold War, it became the largest of the U.S. intelligence organizations in terms of personnel and budget, but information available as of 2013 indicates that the CIA pulled ahead in this regard, with a budget of $14.7 billion.[6][12] The NSA currently conducts worldwide mass data collection and has been known to physically bug electronic systems as one method to this end.[13] The NSA is also alleged to have been behind such attack software as Stuxnet, which severely damaged Iran's nuclear program.[14][15] The NSA, alongside the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), maintains a physical presence in many countries across the globe; the CIA/NSA joint Special Collection Service (a highly classified intelligence team) inserts eavesdropping devices in high value targets (such as presidential palaces or embassies). SCS collection tactics allegedly encompass "close surveillance, burglary, wiretapping, [and] breaking and entering".[16][17]

Unlike the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), both of which specialize primarily in foreign human espionage, the NSA does not publicly conduct human-source intelligence gathering. The NSA is entrusted with providing assistance to, and the coordination of, SIGINT elements for other government organizations which are prevented by law from engaging in such activities on their own.[18] As part of these responsibilities, the agency has a co-located organization called the Central Security Service (CSS), which facilitates cooperation between the NSA and other U.S. defense cryptanalysis components. To further ensure streamlined communication between the signals intelligence community divisions, the NSA Director simultaneously serves as the Commander of the United States Cyber Command and as Chief of the Central Security Service.

The NSA's actions have been a matter of political controversy on several occasions, including its spying on antiVietnam War leaders and the agency's participation in economic espionage. In 2013, the NSA had many of its secret surveillance programs revealed to the public by Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor. According to the leaked documents, the NSA intercepts and stores the communications of over a billion people worldwide, including United States citizens. The documents also revealed the NSA tracks hundreds of millions of people's movements using cellphones' metadata. Internationally, research has pointed to the NSA's ability to surveil the domestic Internet traffic of foreign countries through "boomerang routing".[19]

The origins of the National Security Agency can be traced back to April 28, 1917, three weeks after the U.S. Congress declared war on Germany in World War I. A code and cipher decryption unit was established as the Cable and Telegraph Section which was also known as the Cipher Bureau.[20] It was headquartered in Washington, D.C. and was part of the war effort under the executive branch without direct Congressional authorization. During the course of the war, it was relocated in the army's organizational chart several times. On July 5, 1917, Herbert O. Yardley was assigned to head the unit. At that point, the unit consisted of Yardley and two civilian clerks. It absorbed the Navy's cryptanalysis functions in July 1918. World War I ended on November 11, 1918, and the army cryptographic section of Military Intelligence (MI-8) moved to New York City on May 20, 1919, where it continued intelligence activities as the Code Compilation Company under the direction of Yardley.[21][22]

After the disbandment of the U.S. Army cryptographic section of military intelligence known as MI-8, the U.S. government created the Cipher Bureau, also known as Black Chamber, in 1919. The Black Chamber was the United States' first peacetime cryptanalytic organization.[23] Jointly funded by the Army and the State Department, the Cipher Bureau was disguised as a New York City commercial code company; it actually produced and sold such codes for business use. Its true mission, however, was to break the communications (chiefly diplomatic) of other nations. At the Washington Naval Conference, it aided American negotiators by providing them with the decrypted traffic of many of the conference delegations, including the Japanese. The Black Chamber successfully persuaded Western Union, the largest U.S. telegram company at the time, as well as several other communications companies to illegally give the Black Chamber access to cable traffic of foreign embassies and consulates.[24] Soon, these companies publicly discontinued their collaboration.

Despite the Chamber's initial successes, it was shut down in 1929 by U.S. Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, who defended his decision by stating, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail."[25]

During World War II, the Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) was created to intercept and decipher the communications of the Axis powers.[26] When the war ended, the SIS was reorganized as the Army Security Agency (ASA), and it was placed under the leadership of the Director of Military Intelligence.[26]

On May 20, 1949, all cryptologic activities were centralized under a national organization called the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA).[26] This organization was originally established within the U.S. Department of Defense under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.[27] The AFSA was tasked to direct Department of Defense communications and electronic intelligence activities, except those of U.S. military intelligence units.[27] However, the AFSA was unable to centralize communications intelligence and failed to coordinate with civilian agencies that shared its interests such as the Department of State, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).[27] In December 1951, President Harry S. Truman ordered a panel to investigate how AFSA had failed to achieve its goals. The results of the investigation led to improvements and its redesignation as the National Security Agency.[28]

The National Security Council issued a memorandum of October 24, 1952, that revised National Security Council Intelligence Directive (NSCID) 9. On the same day, Truman issued a second memorandum that called for the establishment of the NSA.[29] The actual establishment of the NSA was done by a November 4 memo by Robert A. Lovett, the Secretary of Defense, changing the name of the AFSA to the NSA, and making the new agency responsible for all communications intelligence.[30] Since President Truman's memo was a classified document,[29] the existence of the NSA was not known to the public at that time. Due to its ultra-secrecy the U.S. intelligence community referred to the NSA as "No Such Agency".[31]

In the 1960s, the NSA played a key role in expanding U.S. commitment to the Vietnam War by providing evidence of a North Vietnamese attack on the American destroyer USSMaddox during the Gulf of Tonkin incident.[32]

A secret operation, code-named "MINARET", was set up by the NSA to monitor the phone communications of Senators Frank Church and Howard Baker, as well as key leaders of the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr., and prominent U.S. journalists and athletes who criticized the Vietnam War.[33] However, the project turned out to be controversial, and an internal review by the NSA concluded that its Minaret program was "disreputable if not outright illegal".[33]

The NSA mounted a major effort to secure tactical communications among U.S. forces during the war with mixed success. The NESTOR family of compatible secure voice systems it developed was widely deployed during the Vietnam War, with about 30,000 NESTOR sets produced. However, a variety of technical and operational problems limited their use, allowing the North Vietnamese to exploit and intercept U.S. communications.[34]:Vol I,p.79

In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, a congressional hearing in 1975 led by Senator Frank Church[35] revealed that the NSA, in collaboration with Britain's SIGINT intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), had routinely intercepted the international communications of prominent anti-Vietnam war leaders such as Jane Fonda and Dr. Benjamin Spock.[36] The NSA tracked these individuals in a secret filing system that was destroyed in 1974.[37] Following the resignation of President Richard Nixon, there were several investigations of suspected misuse of FBI, CIA and NSA facilities.[38] Senator Frank Church uncovered previously unknown activity,[38] such as a CIA plot (ordered by the administration of President John F. Kennedy) to assassinate Fidel Castro.[39] The investigation also uncovered NSA's wiretaps on targeted U.S. citizens.[40]

After the Church Committee hearings, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 was passed. This was designed to limit the practice of mass surveillance in the United States.[38]

In 1986, the NSA intercepted the communications of the Libyan government during the immediate aftermath of the Berlin discotheque bombing. The White House asserted that the NSA interception had provided "irrefutable" evidence that Libya was behind the bombing, which U.S. President Ronald Reagan cited as a justification for the 1986 United States bombing of Libya.[41][42]

In 1999, a multi-year investigation by the European Parliament highlighted the NSA's role in economic espionage in a report entitled 'Development of Surveillance Technology and Risk of Abuse of Economic Information'.[43] That year, the NSA founded the NSA Hall of Honor, a memorial at the National Cryptologic Museum in Fort Meade, Maryland.[44] The memorial is a, "tribute to the pioneers and heroes who have made significant and long-lasting contributions to American cryptology".[44] NSA employees must be retired for more than fifteen years to qualify for the memorial.[44]

NSA's infrastructure deteriorated in the 1990s as defense budget cuts resulted in maintenance deferrals. On January 24, 2000, NSA headquarters suffered a total network outage for three days caused by an overloaded network. Incoming traffic was successfully stored on agency servers, but it could not be directed and processed. The agency carried out emergency repairs at a cost of $3million to get the system running again. (Some incoming traffic was also directed instead to Britain's GCHQ for the time being.) Director Michael Hayden called the outage a "wake-up call" for the need to invest in the agency's infrastructure.[45]

In the 1990s the defensive arm of the NSAthe Information Assurance Directorate (IAD)started working more openly; the first public technical talk by an NSA scientist at a major cryptography conference was J. Solinas' presentation on efficient Elliptic Curve Cryptography algorithms at Crypto 1997.[46] The IAD's cooperative approach to academia and industry culminated in its support for a transparent process for replacing the outdated Data Encryption Standard (DES) by an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Cybersecurity policy expert Susan Landau attributes the NSA's harmonious collaboration with industry and academia in the selection of the AES in 2000and the Agency's support for the choice of a strong encryption algorithm designed by Europeans rather than by Americansto Brian Snow, who was the Technical Director of IAD and represented the NSA as cochairman of the Technical Working Group for the AES competition, and Michael Jacobs, who headed IAD at the time.[47]:75

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the NSA believed that it had public support for a dramatic expansion of its surveillance activities.[48] According to Neal Koblitz and Alfred Menezes, the period when the NSA was a trusted partner with academia and industry in the development of cryptographic standards started to come to an end when, as part of the change in the NSA in the post-September 11 era, Snow was replaced as Technical Director, Jacobs retired, and IAD could no longer effectively oppose proposed actions by the offensive arm of the NSA.[49]

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the NSA created new IT systems to deal with the flood of information from new technologies like the Internet and cellphones. ThinThread contained advanced data mining capabilities. It also had a "privacy mechanism"; surveillance was stored encrypted; decryption required a warrant. The research done under this program may have contributed to the technology used in later systems. ThinThread was cancelled when Michael Hayden chose Trailblazer, which did not include ThinThread's privacy system.[50]

Trailblazer Project ramped up in 2002 and was worked on by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Boeing, Computer Sciences Corporation, IBM, and Litton Industries. Some NSA whistleblowers complained internally about major problems surrounding Trailblazer. This led to investigations by Congress and the NSA and DoD Inspectors General. The project was cancelled in early 2004.

Turbulence started in 2005. It was developed in small, inexpensive "test" pieces, rather than one grand plan like Trailblazer. It also included offensive cyber-warfare capabilities, like injecting malware into remote computers. Congress criticized Turbulence in 2007 for having similar bureaucratic problems as Trailblazer.[51] It was to be a realization of information processing at higher speeds in cyberspace.[52]

The massive extent of the NSA's spying, both foreign and domestic, was revealed to the public in a series of detailed disclosures of internal NSA documents beginning in June 2013. Most of the disclosures were leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. On 4 September 2020, the NSA's surveillance program was ruled unlawful by the US Court of Appeals. The court also added that the US intelligence leaders, who publicly defended it, were not telling the truth.[53]

NSA's eavesdropping mission includes radio broadcasting, both from various organizations and individuals, the Internet, telephone calls, and other intercepted forms of communication. Its secure communications mission includes military, diplomatic, and all other sensitive, confidential or secret government communications.[54]

According to a 2010 article in The Washington Post, "[e]very day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 separate databases."[55]

Because of its listening task, NSA/CSS has been heavily involved in cryptanalytic research, continuing the work of predecessor agencies which had broken many World War II codes and ciphers (see, for instance, Purple, Venona project, and JN-25).

In 2004, NSA Central Security Service and the National Cyber Security Division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agreed to expand the NSA Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education Program.[56]

As part of the National Security Presidential Directive 54/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 23 (NSPD 54), signed on January 8, 2008, by President Bush, the NSA became the lead agency to monitor and protect all of the federal government's computer networks from cyber-terrorism.[9]

A part of NSA's mission is to serve as a combat support agency for the Department of Defense.[57]

Operations by the National Security Agency can be divided into three types:

"Echelon" was created in the incubator of the Cold War.[58] Today it is a legacy system, and several NSA stations are closing.[59]

NSA/CSS, in combination with the equivalent agencies in the United Kingdom (Government Communications Headquarters), Canada (Communications Security Establishment), Australia (Australian Signals Directorate), and New Zealand (Government Communications Security Bureau), otherwise known as the UKUSA group,[60] was reported to be in command of the operation of the so-called ECHELON system. Its capabilities were suspected to include the ability to monitor a large proportion of the world's transmitted civilian telephone, fax and data traffic.[61]

During the early 1970s, the first of what became more than eight large satellite communications dishes were installed at Menwith Hill.[62] Investigative journalist Duncan Campbell reported in 1988 on the "ECHELON" surveillance program, an extension of the UKUSA Agreement on global signals intelligence SIGINT, and detailed how the eavesdropping operations worked.[63] On November 3, 1999, the BBC reported that they had confirmation from the Australian Government of the existence of a powerful "global spying network" code-named Echelon, that could "eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet" with Britain and the United States as the chief protagonists. They confirmed that Menwith Hill was "linked directly to the headquarters of the US National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade in Maryland".[64]

NSA's United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18 (USSID 18) strictly prohibited the interception or collection of information about "... U.S. persons, entities, corporations or organizations...." without explicit written legal permission from the United States Attorney General when the subject is located abroad, or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court when within U.S. borders. Alleged Echelon-related activities, including its use for motives other than national security, including political and industrial espionage, received criticism from countries outside the UKUSA alliance.[65]

The NSA was also involved in planning to blackmail people with "SEXINT", intelligence gained about a potential target's sexual activity and preferences. Those targeted had not committed any apparent crime nor were they charged with one.[66]

In order to support its facial recognition program, the NSA is intercepting "millions of images per day".[67]

The Real Time Regional Gateway is a data collection program introduced in 2005 in Iraq by NSA during the Iraq War that consisted of gathering all electronic communication, storing it, then searching and otherwise analyzing it. It was effective in providing information about Iraqi insurgents who had eluded less comprehensive techniques.[68] This "collect it all" strategy introduced by NSA director, Keith B. Alexander, is believed by Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian to be the model for the comprehensive worldwide mass archiving of communications which NSA is engaged in as of 2013.[69]

A dedicated unit of the NSA locates targets for the CIA for extrajudicial assassination in the Middle East.[70] The NSA has also spied extensively on the European Union, the United Nations and numerous governments including allies and trading partners in Europe, South America and Asia.[71][72]

In June 2015, WikiLeaks published documents showing that NSA spied on French companies.[73]

In July 2015, WikiLeaks published documents showing that NSA spied on federal German ministries since the 1990s.[74][75] Even Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphones and phones of her predecessors had been intercepted.[76]

Edward Snowden revealed in June 2013 that between February 8 and March 8, 2013, the NSA collected about 124.8billion telephone data items and 97.1billion computer data items throughout the world, as was displayed in charts from an internal NSA tool codenamed Boundless Informant. Initially, it was reported that some of these data reflected eavesdropping on citizens in countries like Germany, Spain and France,[77] but later on, it became clear that those data were collected by European agencies during military missions abroad and were subsequently shared with NSA.

In 2013, reporters uncovered a secret memo that claims the NSA created and pushed for the adoption of the Dual EC DRBG encryption standard that contained built-in vulnerabilities in 2006 to the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the International Organization for Standardization (aka ISO).[78][79] This memo appears to give credence to previous speculation by cryptographers at Microsoft Research.[80] Edward Snowden claims that the NSA often bypasses encryption altogether by lifting information before it is encrypted or after it is decrypted.[79]

XKeyscore rules (as specified in a file xkeyscorerules100.txt, sourced by German TV stations NDR and WDR, who claim to have excerpts from its source code) reveal that the NSA tracks users of privacy-enhancing software tools, including Tor; an anonymous email service provided by the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and readers of the Linux Journal.[81][82]

Linus Torvalds, the founder of Linux kernel, joked during a LinuxCon keynote on September 18, 2013, that the NSA, who are the founder of SELinux, wanted a backdoor in the kernel.[83] However, later, Linus' father, a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), revealed that the NSA actually did this.[84]

When my oldest son was asked the same question: "Has he been approached by the NSA about backdoors?" he said "No", but at the same time he nodded. Then he was sort of in the legal free. He had given the right answer, everybody understood that the NSA had approached him.

IBM Notes was the first widely adopted software product to use public key cryptography for clientserver and serverserver authentication and for encryption of data. Until US laws regulating encryption were changed in 2000, IBM and Lotus were prohibited from exporting versions of Notes that supported symmetric encryption keys that were longer than 40 bits. In 1997, Lotus negotiated an agreement with the NSA that allowed the export of a version that supported stronger keys with 64 bits, but 24 of the bits were encrypted with a special key and included in the message to provide a "workload reduction factor" for the NSA. This strengthened the protection for users of Notes outside the US against private-sector industrial espionage, but not against spying by the US government.[86][87]

While it is assumed that foreign transmissions terminating in the U.S. (such as a non-U.S. citizen accessing a U.S. website) subject non-U.S. citizens to NSA surveillance, recent research into boomerang routing has raised new concerns about the NSA's ability to surveil the domestic Internet traffic of foreign countries.[19] Boomerang routing occurs when an Internet transmission that originates and terminates in a single country transits another. Research at the University of Toronto has suggested that approximately 25% of Canadian domestic traffic may be subject to NSA surveillance activities as a result of the boomerang routing of Canadian Internet service providers.[19]

Intercepted packages are opened carefully by NSA employees

A "load station" implanting a beacon

A document included in NSA files released with Glenn Greenwald's book No Place to Hide details how the agency's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) and other NSA units gain access to hardware. They intercept routers, servers and other network hardware being shipped to organizations targeted for surveillance and install covert implant firmware onto them before they are delivered. This was described by an NSA manager as "some of the most productive operations in TAO because they preposition access points into hard target networks around the world."[88]

Computers seized by the NSA due to interdiction are often modified with a physical device known as Cottonmouth.[89] Cottonmouth is a device that can be inserted in the USB port of a computer in order to establish remote access to the targeted machine. According to NSA's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group implant catalog, after implanting Cottonmouth, the NSA can establish a network bridge "that allows the NSA to load exploit software onto modified computers as well as allowing the NSA to relay commands and data between hardware and software implants."[90]

NSA's mission, as set forth in Executive Order 12333 in 1981, is to collect information that constitutes "foreign intelligence or counterintelligence" while not "acquiring information concerning the domestic activities of United States persons". NSA has declared that it relies on the FBI to collect information on foreign intelligence activities within the borders of the United States, while confining its own activities within the United States to the embassies and missions of foreign nations.[91]

The appearance of a 'Domestic Surveillance Directorate' of the NSA was soon exposed as a hoax in 2013.[92][93]

NSA's domestic surveillance activities are limited by the requirements imposed by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for example held in October 2011, citing multiple Supreme Court precedents, that the Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures apply to the contents of all communications, whatever the means, because "a person's private communications are akin to personal papers."[94] However, these protections do not apply to non-U.S. persons located outside of U.S. borders, so the NSA's foreign surveillance efforts are subject to far fewer limitations under U.S. law.[95] The specific requirements for domestic surveillance operations are contained in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA), which does not extend protection to non-U.S. citizens located outside of U.S. territory.[95]

George W. Bush, president during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, approved the Patriot Act shortly after the attacks to take anti-terrorist security measures. Title 1, 2, and 9 specifically authorized measures that would be taken by the NSA. These titles granted enhanced domestic security against terrorism, surveillance procedures, and improved intelligence, respectively. On March 10, 2004, there was a debate between President Bush and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and Acting Attorney General James Comey. The Attorneys General were unsure if the NSA's programs could be considered constitutional. They threatened to resign over the matter, but ultimately the NSA's programs continued.[96] On March 11, 2004, President Bush signed a new authorization for mass surveillance of Internet records, in addition to the surveillance of phone records. This allowed the president to be able to override laws such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which protected civilians from mass surveillance. In addition to this, President Bush also signed that the measures of mass surveillance were also retroactively in place.[97][98]

One such surveillance program, authorized by the U.S. Signals Intelligence Directive 18 of President George Bush, was the Highlander Project undertaken for the National Security Agency by the U.S. Army 513th Military Intelligence Brigade. NSA relayed telephone (including cell phone) conversations obtained from ground, airborne, and satellite monitoring stations to various U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Officers, including the 201st Military Intelligence Battalion. Conversations of citizens of the U.S. were intercepted, along with those of other nations.[99]

Proponents of the surveillance program claim that the President has executive authority to order such action[citation needed], arguing that laws such as FISA are overridden by the President's Constitutional powers. In addition, some argued that FISA was implicitly overridden by a subsequent statute, the Authorization for Use of Military Force, although the Supreme Court's ruling in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld deprecates this view.[100]

Under the PRISM program, which started in 2007,[101][102] NSA gathers Internet communications from foreign targets from nine major U.S. Internet-based communication service providers: Microsoft,[103] Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple. Data gathered include email, videos, photos, VoIP chats such as Skype, and file transfers.

Former NSA director General Keith Alexander claimed that in September 2009 the NSA prevented Najibullah Zazi and his friends from carrying out a terrorist attack.[104] However, this claim has been debunked and no evidence has been presented demonstrating that the NSA has ever been instrumental in preventing a terrorist attack.[105][106][107][108]

Besides the more traditional ways of eavesdropping in order to collect signals intelligence, NSA is also engaged in hacking computers, smartphones and their networks. A division which conducts such operations is the Tailored Access Operations (TAO) division, which has been active since at least circa 1998.[109]

According to the Foreign Policy magazine, "... the Office of Tailored Access Operations, or TAO, has successfully penetrated Chinese computer and telecommunications systems for almost 15 years, generating some of the best and most reliable intelligence information about what is going on inside the People's Republic of China."[110][111]

In an interview with Wired magazine, Edward Snowden said the Tailored Access Operations division accidentally caused Syria's internet blackout in 2012.[112]

The NSA is led by the Director of the National Security Agency (DIRNSA), who also serves as Chief of the Central Security Service (CHCSS) and Commander of the United States Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM) and is the highest-ranking military official of these organizations. He is assisted by a Deputy Director, who is the highest-ranking civilian within the NSA/CSS.

NSA also has an Inspector General, head of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG), a General Counsel, head of the Office of the General Counsel (OGC) and a Director of Compliance, who is head of the Office of the Director of Compliance (ODOC).[113]

Unlike other intelligence organizations such as the CIA or DIA, NSA has always been particularly reticent concerning its internal organizational structure.

As of the mid-1990s, the National Security Agency was organized into five Directorates:

Each of these directorates consisted of several groups or elements, designated by a letter. There were for example the A Group, which was responsible for all SIGINT operations against the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and G Group, which was responsible for SIGINT related to all non-communist countries. These groups were divided into units designated by an additional number, like unit A5 for breaking Soviet codes, and G6, being the office for the Middle East, North Africa, Cuba, Central and South America.[115][116]

As of 2013[update], NSA has about a dozen directorates, which are designated by a letter, although not all of them are publicly known.[117]

In the year 2000, a leadership team was formed consisting of the director, the deputy director and the directors of the Signals Intelligence (SID), the Information Assurance (IAD) and the Technical Directorate (TD). The chiefs of other main NSA divisions became associate directors of the senior leadership team.[118]

After president George W. Bush initiated the President's Surveillance Program (PSP) in 2001, the NSA created a 24-hour Metadata Analysis Center (MAC), followed in 2004 by the Advanced Analysis Division (AAD), with the mission of analyzing content, Internet metadata and telephone metadata. Both units were part of the Signals Intelligence Directorate.[119]

A 2016 proposal would combine the Signals Intelligence Directorate with Information Assurance Directorate into Directorate of Operations.[120]

NSANet stands for National Security Agency Network and is the official NSA intranet.[121] It is a classified network,[122] for information up to the level of TS/SCI[123] to support the use and sharing of intelligence data between NSA and the signals intelligence agencies of the four other nations of the Five Eyes partnership. The management of NSANet has been delegated to the Central Security Service Texas (CSSTEXAS).[124]

NSANet is a highly secured computer network consisting of fiber-optic and satellite communication channels which are almost completely separated from the public Internet. The network allows NSA personnel and civilian and military intelligence analysts anywhere in the world to have access to the agency's systems and databases. This access is tightly controlled and monitored. For example, every keystroke is logged, activities are audited at random and downloading and printing of documents from NSANet are recorded.[125]

In 1998, NSANet, along with NIPRNET and SIPRNET, had "significant problems with poor search capabilities, unorganized data and old information".[126] In 2004, the network was reported to have used over twenty commercial off-the-shelf operating systems.[127] Some universities that do highly sensitive research are allowed to connect to it.[128]

The thousands of Top Secret internal NSA documents that were taken by Edward Snowden in 2013 were stored in "a file-sharing location on the NSA's intranet site"; so, they could easily be read online by NSA personnel. Everyone with a TS/SCI-clearance had access to these documents. As a system administrator, Snowden was responsible for moving accidentally misplaced highly sensitive documents to safer storage locations.[129]

The NSA maintains at least two watch centers:

The NSA has its own police force, known as NSA Police (and formerly as NSA Security Protective Force) which provides law enforcement services, emergency response and physical security to the NSA's people and property.[131]

NSA Police are armed federal officers. NSA Police have use of a K9 division, which generally conducts explosive detection screening of mail, vehicles and cargo entering NSA grounds.[132]

NSA Police use marked vehicles to carry out patrols.[133]

The number of NSA employees is officially classified[4] but there are several sources providing estimates.In 1961, NSA had 59,000 military and civilian employees, which grew to 93,067 in 1969, of which 19,300 worked at the headquarters at Fort Meade. In the early 1980s, NSA had roughly 50,000 military and civilian personnel. By 1989 this number had grown again to 75,000, of which 25,000 worked at the NSA headquarters. Between 1990 and 1995 the NSA's budget and workforce were cut by one third, which led to a substantial loss of experience.[134]

In 2012, the NSA said more than 30,000 employees worked at Fort Meade and other facilities.[2] In 2012, John C. Inglis, the deputy director, said that the total number of NSA employees is "somewhere between 37,000 and one billion" as a joke,[4] and stated that the agency is "probably the biggest employer of introverts."[4] In 2013 Der Spiegel stated that the NSA had 40,000 employees.[5] More widely, it has been described as the world's largest single employer of mathematicians.[135] Some NSA employees form part of the workforce of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the agency that provides the NSA with satellite signals intelligence.

As of 2013 about 1,000 system administrators work for the NSA.[136]

The NSA received criticism early on in 1960 after two agents had defected to the Soviet Union. Investigations by the House Un-American Activities Committee and a special subcommittee of the United States House Committee on Armed Services revealed severe cases of ignorance in personnel security regulations, prompting the former personnel director and the director of security to step down and leading to the adoption of stricter security practices.[137] Nonetheless, security breaches reoccurred only a year later when in an issue of Izvestia of July 23, 1963, a former NSA employee published several cryptologic secrets.

The very same day, an NSA clerk-messenger committed suicide as ongoing investigations disclosed that he had sold secret information to the Soviets on a regular basis. The reluctance of Congressional houses to look into these affairs had prompted a journalist to write, "If a similar series of tragic blunders occurred in any ordinary agency of Government an aroused public would insist that those responsible be officially censured, demoted, or fired." David Kahn criticized the NSA's tactics of concealing its doings as smug and the Congress' blind faith in the agency's right-doing as shortsighted, and pointed out the necessity of surveillance by the Congress to prevent abuse of power.[137]

Edward Snowden's leaking of the existence of PRISM in 2013 caused the NSA to institute a "two-man rule", where two system administrators are required to be present when one accesses certain sensitive information.[136] Snowden claims he suggested such a rule in 2009.[138]

The NSA conducts polygraph tests of employees. For new employees, the tests are meant to discover enemy spies who are applying to the NSA and to uncover any information that could make an applicant pliant to coercion.[139] As part of the latter, historically EPQs or "embarrassing personal questions" about sexual behavior had been included in the NSA polygraph.[139] The NSA also conducts five-year periodic reinvestigation polygraphs of employees, focusing on counterintelligence programs. In addition the NSA conducts periodic polygraph investigations in order to find spies and leakers; those who refuse to take them may receive "termination of employment", according to a 1982 memorandum from the director of the NSA.[140]

There are also "special access examination" polygraphs for employees who wish to work in highly sensitive areas, and those polygraphs cover counterintelligence questions and some questions about behavior.[140] NSA's brochure states that the average test length is between two and four hours.[141] A 1983 report of the Office of Technology Assessment stated that "It appears that the NSA [National Security Agency] (and possibly CIA) use the polygraph not to determine deception or truthfulness per se, but as a technique of interrogation to encourage admissions."[142] Sometimes applicants in the polygraph process confess to committing felonies such as murder, rape, and selling of illegal drugs. Between 1974 and 1979, of the 20,511 job applicants who took polygraph tests, 695 (3.4%) confessed to previous felony crimes; almost all of those crimes had been undetected.[139]

In 2010 the NSA produced a video explaining its polygraph process.[143] The video, ten minutes long, is titled "The Truth About the Polygraph" and was posted to the Web site of the Defense Security Service. Jeff Stein of The Washington Post said that the video portrays "various applicants, or actors playing themit's not cleardescribing everything bad they had heard about the test, the implication being that none of it is true."[144] AntiPolygraph.org argues that the NSA-produced video omits some information about the polygraph process; it produced a video responding to the NSA video.[143][145] George Maschke, the founder of the Web site, accused the NSA polygraph video of being "Orwellian".[144]

A 2013 article indicated that after Edward Snowden revealed his identity in 2013, the NSA began requiring polygraphing of employees once per quarter.[146]

The number of exemptions from legal requirements has been criticized. When in 1964 Congress was hearing a bill giving the director of the NSA the power to fire at will any employee, The Washington Post wrote: "This is the very definition of arbitrariness. It means that an employee could be discharged and disgraced on the basis of anonymous allegations without the slightest opportunity to defend himself." Yet, the bill was accepted by an overwhelming majority.[137] Also, every person hired to a job in the US after 2007, at any private organization, state or federal government agency, must be reported to the New Hire Registry, ostensibly to look for child support evaders, except that employees of an intelligence agency may be excluded from reporting if the director deems it necessary for national security reasons.[147]

When the agency was first established, its headquarters and cryptographic center were in the Naval Security Station in Washington, D.C. The COMINT functions were located in Arlington Hall in Northern Virginia, which served as the headquarters of the U.S. Army's cryptographic operations.[148] Because the Soviet Union had detonated a nuclear bomb and because the facilities were crowded, the federal government wanted to move several agencies, including the AFSA/NSA. A planning committee considered Fort Knox, but Fort Meade, Maryland, was ultimately chosen as NSA headquarters because it was far enough away from Washington, D.C. in case of a nuclear strike and was close enough so its employees would not have to move their families.[149]

Construction of additional buildings began after the agency occupied buildings at Fort Meade in the late 1950s, which they soon outgrew.[149] In 1963 the new headquarters building, nine stories tall, opened. NSA workers referred to the building as the "Headquarters Building" and since the NSA management occupied the top floor, workers used "Ninth Floor" to refer to their leaders.[150] COMSEC remained in Washington, D.C., until its new building was completed in 1968.[149] In September 1986, the Operations 2A and 2B buildings, both copper-shielded to prevent eavesdropping, opened with a dedication by President Ronald Reagan.[151] The four NSA buildings became known as the "Big Four."[151] The NSA director moved to 2B when it opened.[151]

Headquarters for the National Security Agency is located at 39632N 764617W / 39.10889N 76.77139W / 39.10889; -76.77139 in Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, although it is separate from other compounds and agencies that are based within this same military installation. Fort Meade is about 20mi (32km) southwest of Baltimore,[152] and 25mi (40km) northeast of Washington, D.C.[153] The NSA has two dedicated exits off BaltimoreWashington Parkway. The Eastbound exit from the Parkway (heading toward Baltimore) is open to the public and provides employee access to its main campus and public access to the National Cryptology Museum. The Westbound side exit, (heading toward Washington) is labeled "NSA Employees Only".[154][155] The exit may only be used by people with the proper clearances, and security vehicles parked along the road guard the entrance.[156]

NSA is the largest employer in the state of Maryland, and two-thirds of its personnel work at Fort Meade.[157] Built on 350 acres (140ha; 0.55sqmi)[158] of Fort Meade's 5,000 acres (2,000ha; 7.8sqmi),[159] the site has 1,300 buildings and an estimated 18,000 parking spaces.[153][160]

The main NSA headquarters and operations building is what James Bamford, author of Body of Secrets, describes as "a modern boxy structure" that appears similar to "any stylish office building."[161] The building is covered with one-way dark glass, which is lined with copper shielding in order to prevent espionage by trapping in signals and sounds.[161] It contains 3,000,000 square feet (280,000m2), or more than 68 acres (28ha), of floor space; Bamford said that the U.S. Capitol "could easily fit inside it four times over."[161]

The facility has over 100 watchposts,[162] one of them being the visitor control center, a two-story area that serves as the entrance.[161] At the entrance, a white pentagonal structure,[163] visitor badges are issued to visitors and security clearances of employees are checked.[164] The visitor center includes a painting of the NSA seal.[163]

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Defence analyst Pravin Sawhneys new book begins with an imagined cyberattack on India by China – Scroll.in

Prime Ministers Office, New Delhi, 22 February 2024

...Whats the problem? the prime minister rasps.

Sir, this looks like a formidable cyberattack. Even our secure network has been breached, the NSA says. We are unable to contact anyone.

The prime minister of Indias office has turned into an island.

In a few minutes it becomes clear that the PMO is not the only one to fall off the internet highway. The ministries of defence, home, finance, as well as the service headquarters of the armed forces have all gone offline. The Government of India has been thrown backwards by more than three decades. Even the phone lines are not working.

A sense of foreboding descends on the room. The prime minister walks back to his office, followed by the NSA. The principal secretary is tasked with physically summoning the members of the Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), the chief of defence staff (CDS), and the three service chiefs for an immediate meeting.

Unlikely, replies the NSA. Beads of perspiration appear on his forehead.

China?

Thats most likely.

China had been issuing warnings to India since the previous year when the prime minister had visited Bum La in Arunachal Pradesh and addressed the troops in Tawang. China had termed this a grave provocation. Consequently, it increased military activity in its Western Theatre Command (WTC) close to the border with India. According to the intelligence reports that the NSA has been receiving over the last few months, the activity appeared to be more than the regular exercises that the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) regularly conducts.

Convoys of all kinds of trucks are frequently spotted moving stores, ammunition, and fuel on the multiple tar roads heading towards Lhasa (the headquarters of Tibet Military Command), and sometimes on the arterial roads linking up to the LAC1. Since 2020, the PLA has built robust and technologically advanced underground facilities (UGFs) to protect all aspects of its military forces, including command and control, logistics, ammunition, and missile systems.

Started around 2012, the UGF building programme in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) had been upgraded and expanded. The deeply buried UGFs were traditionally meant to protect military assets from the effects of penetrating conventional munitions and nuclear strikes.

According to intelligence reports, after the 2020 Ladakh face-off, the PLA deployed electronic and cyber warfare units in TAR. Dual-use airports were upgraded for combat jet and drone flights. Huge communication towers had been set up. Blast pens or hardened shelters for combat aircraft had been built. Numerous air defence and missile sites had been dug. But India had been ignoring these provocations.

Despite all the threats, the prime minister and the NSA were convinced that China would not enter all-out war with India and imperil its own economic growth. This view was also supported by the military establishment led by the CDS. Even in 2024, the Indian military held the view it had formulated back in 2009 that China would not want to wage a war with India because a stalemate on ground would be viewed as defeat.

And stalemate it would be, they believed, because the Indian military of 2024 was not the same as 1962. It was prepared to fight and was battle hardened by decades of fighting terrorism on the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan. The Indian Air Force, with some 250-300 combat aircraft from all bases located at much lower altitudes, had many advantages over the PLA Air Force (PLAAF). It would make sure that it sent back thousands of body bags of PLA soldiers, thereby destroying Chinas reputation as a world power.

But was the Chinese military of 2024 the same as the one in 1962? This was an uncomfortable question with an unsavoury answer. Since the prime minister was not in the habit of listening to unpleasant answers, nobody raised this question. Perhaps nobody knew that this was a question that needed to be asked.

Despite ongoing studies on China, the Indian military, even in 2024, was oblivious of the war China had been preparing for. Traditionally, the Indian military believed that China was at least a decade ahead of Indian capabilities. Sanguine in this assessment, it was clueless about the rapid transformation that had been taking place in the neighbourhood.

But if China does not intend to go to war with India, why would it mount such a formidable cyberattack on the seat of the government?

Looking through his notes based on a recent intelligence report, the NSA runs the prime minister through what he knows about the PLAs presence in TAR. The combat support forces (Rocket Force, Strategic Support Force, and Joint Logistics Support Force) in the WTC have been conducting training with combat units to deploy and manoeuvre with them. The reported PLA convoys into TAR include large numbers of unmanned vehicles combat as well as reconnaissance. One report mentions sighting thousands of humanoid robots in military buses and trains to Lhasa.

Humanoid robots?

They are likely to be used for combat support like maintenance, readying of ammunition, supplies, fuel and so on, the NSA says in a slightly dismissive tone.

Difficult to say. But its unlikely that a phishing attack would disrupt our networks. This seems to be something else.

By this time, the CCS has assembled in the conference room. Breaking protocol, the chief of air staff (CAS) blurts out, This is not an ordinary cyberattack. The malware that has attacked us is extremely sophisticated. It has breached all our firewalls. Our entire communication network has collapsed. We have been rendered blind and deaf.

A cold frisson runs through the conference room. The army and the navy chiefs have similar reports to share. The navy chief is particularly worried. The navy has lost contact with the INS Vikrant carrier battle group that includes two destroyers, four frigates, three submarines, fifteen fighters, eight helicopters, two long-range maritime patrol aircraft, and a number of smaller vessels.

Seeing the prime ministers quizzical look, the NSA explains stoically, Sir, if we have lost contact with them, it means they have also lost contact with ground control. This can lead to accidents.

The CAS interrupts. Its a very serious situation. We have deployed six aircraft for this exercise. All communications with them have snapped.

Glancing at the NSA, he adds, In Ladakh, the PLA has also deployed a large number of unmanned and autonomous systems, including combat systems. If they get up to some mischief using machines, we wont get to know. Of course, our troops are trained and prepared for all eventualities. But communication with headquarters is critical.

Despite the apparent calm in the room, the panic was palpable. The COASs remark was foreboding, but it also held a clue to the motive for the cyberattack. The principal secretary was told to summon the director of National Critical Information Infrastructures Protection Centre (NCIIPC) that works under the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), the head of the Defence Cyber Agency under the Integrated Defence Headquarters, and the National Cyber Security Coordinator who works directly under the PMO.

The reports are worse than expected.

Sir, it doesnt look like a mere cyberattack. The internet in peninsular India has stopped working. Most DRDO laboratories, ISRO, and the DPSUs have no internet. We dont know yet how much of the infrastructure has been affected, the NSA says, running his hand over his forehead.

Its a major cyberattack, the prime minister says.

After a moments silence, the NSA adds, It looks like some of our submarine cables that connect us to the global internet have been tampered with. Maybe they have been cut.

But thats an act of war, the prime minister says to the now silent room.

The conference room turns into an impromptu war room.

I need updates every half hour, the prime minister declares and storms out.

Excerpted with permission from The Last War: How AI Will Shape Indias Final Showdown with China, Pravin Sawhney, Aleph Book Company.

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NSA, Cyber Command tap new election security leaders – The Record by Recorded Future

NASHVILLE U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency have named the newest leaders of a joint election security task force that will play a central role in keeping the 2022 midterm elections free of foreign interference.

The task force, originally dubbed the Russia Small Group, was established in 2018 by Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, who helms both Cyber Command and the NSA, to protect the 2018 midterms from meddling by Moscow.

It was rechristened the Election Security Group (ESG) ahead of the 2020 presidential election, and its mandate was tweaked to include threats from countries including China, North Korea, and Iran, as well as non-state actors.

The band is already back together, Nakasone said Wednesday at Vanderbilt Universitys Summit on Modern Conflict and Emerging Threats, noting the groups scope had been changed because we have broader issues than just one nation.

Were less than 200 days before our nation goes to vote for our midterm elections, Nakasone added. And I assure you that we are ready, we will be ready, going forward.

The latest incarnation of the team, which began work in late 2021, is headed by NSA Senior Executive Anna Horrigan and Brig. Gen. Victor Macias, the deputy chief of the Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF), an ESG spokesperson told The Record.

The groups ultimate goal is to detect, defend against, deter, and disrupt foreign interference and foreign malign influence to ensure safe and secure the upcoming election, the spokesperson added.

In the past, the group has served as a farm team for top national security officials in the federal government.

In 2018, for example, the team was led by Anne Neuberger and then-Maj. Gen. Timothy Haugh of the Air Force. Nakasone selected Neuberger to be the first chief of the NSAs Cyber Directorate; she is currently President Joe Bidens deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology. Haugh went on to receive his third star and command the Sixteenth Air Force (Air Forces Cyber), and last week he was nominated to be Nakasones new deputy.

Maj. Gen. William Hartman, who took over the CNMF after Haugh and served as Cyber Commands co-lead in 2020, said Russia continues to engage in election-related influence operations.

The Russians have remained motivated to attempt to execute influence operations, he told reporters during a roundtable discussion at the Vanderbilt summit.

He predicted Moscows influence efforts would increase due to the Kremlins invasion of Ukraine, because there will be a fair amount of domestically generated information that the Russians will freely amplify.

Hartman said the upcoming midterms also would differ from 2020 because its not a presidential election year. A U.S. intelligence community examination found that Russia tried again that year to help former President Donald Trump win the White House.

Its not that foreign adversaries wont attempt to potentially influence or interfere with the congressional election. But it was easier in 2020 because there were clear signals of nation-states, Hartman explained, adding that China has the capacity to become more aggressive from an influence standpoint.(Last month Nakasone testified that he had created another joint team, dubbed the China Outcomes Group, under Cyber Command and NSA leadership to ensure proper focus, resourcing, planning, and operations to meet this challenge.)

Hartman said officials have already noticed that the Internet Research Agency an entity notorious for trying to sow discord among Americans that Cyber Command knocked offline in the days around the 2018 midterms is active in different places right now.

Moscow aims to create doubt in our democratic process. Ultimately, thats what I think the Russians will be focused on, Hartman told reporters.

He stressed there were no indications in 2020, or during the current election cycle, that Russia launched a digital strike directly at the countrys voting systems.

I do expect that the U.S. would consider that some type of red line, Hartman said.

Martin is a senior cybersecurity reporter for The Record. He spent the last five years at Politico, where he covered Congress, the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community and was a driving force behind the publication's cybersecurity newsletter.

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This TikTok User Who Finds the Games Playing in TV Shows Needs to Be Working for the NSA – Barstool Sports

I've seen this man come up on my TikTok feed a handful of times now and how he isn't already solving cyber crimes for the government is beyond me. He can find anything.

I've seen plenty of his videos that were very impressive, but nothing like the one above. This man really found a 1992 Louisville Redbirds-Buffalo Bisons game from one blurry shot of a mound meeting. There's no telling how many minor league teams he had to go through to even find the Louisville Redbirds, who have rebranded twice since they were known by that nickname.

If he doesn't get scooped up by the CIA or NSA, I'd bet this guy could make a pretty penny doing some investigative work for girlfriends around the county. If your man has made even the slightest inkling of a fuck-up, @noproblemgambler will find out in no time.

I'm going to watch these videos for the rest of the day. I am mesmerized.

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Graduation Week 2022: Cybersecurity grad prepares to protect the world – Jagwire Augusta

During her senior year at Grovetown High School, Lauren Wheeler made a decision that changed her life. She received an internship with the National Security Agency at Fort Gordon that opened her mind to a future career in cybersecurity.

My dad worked at Fort Gordon, so I was born and raised here, Wheeler said. And I always liked computers, but initially I thought I was more artsy. So, back in high school, I was interested in graphic design and worked on the yearbook staff. But then my dad said, Well, you know, theres an internship that the NSA offers.

Wheeler didnt know much about the internship, but there were two aspects of the program that appealed to her.

First, I thought, I can get out of school with this internship, Wheeler said, laughing. And then, I thought, It will also look good on my resume. So, I applied and received the NSA internship. That decision put me on my career path in cybersecurity, instead of graphic design.

Wheeler, now 22, is graduating from Augusta University with a bachelors degree in cybersecurity and was recently named the 2022 Top Cybersecurity Student for the School of Computer and Cyber Sciences at AU.

While attending Augusta University, Wheeler has also been working full-time for almost four years as an access control specialist, contracting for the Department of Defense. In that role, she monitors closed-circuit television systems and intrusion detection systems and maintains a top secret/sensitive compartmented information clearance. In addition, Wheeler was also awarded the Department of Defense Cyber Scholarship during her senior year at Augusta University.

With my dad working at Fort Gordon, I already grew up with security stuff in the house, so I was familiar with that part of cyber. And my internship in high school made me want to go to Augusta University because a few of the cyber professors come from the NSA, Wheeler said. So, even when I was in high school, I thought, Cyber would be a good choice. Then, when I got to AU, I knew it was the right choice.

With her cybersecurity degree, Wheeler says her career opportunities are endless and she is proud to say she already has a job waiting for her the minute she walks across the stage and receives her diploma.

A few weeks right after graduation, Ill start my job with Army Cyber at Fort Gordon, Wheeler said. Its exciting because, of course, youll hear some people talk about how, with their degree, its hard to find a job. Well, thats not the case with cyber.

She loves the fact that her cybersecurity degree will allow her to either stay in Augusta, which has become an international cybersecurity hub, or travel around the world.

I know I want to stay within the government, but I also want to travel, so once this year is done, maybe I will start looking toward other locations, Wheeler said. For example, I have family up in Washington state and I think that would be a fun place to live. My parents also just moved to Hawaii. Personally, I think it would be cool to live in another country, which the government offers tons of opportunities for jobs overseas, so Im excited about the possibilities.

One of the main aspects of cybersecurity Wheeler finds most appealing is the empowerment that she now has over computer hackers, she said.

I like the idea that I can protect myself, Wheeler said. Cybersecurity lets me be able to know what strategies I need and gives me the knowledge to protect myself. But I also have the ability to pass that knowledge on to others.

Both in high school and college, Wheeler gave speeches and presentations about the importance of cybersecurity and she was pleased with the response she received from audience members.

People were really receptive to what I was telling them because I was showing them how some social media posts and oversharing certain aspects of your life can be cyber risks, Wheeler said. For example, if youre sharing that you are on vacation, youre basically telling people youre not at home. Or, like those Instagram challenges where they ask, What do you prefer? Or, Do you like this? With those kinds of challenges, youre basically telling people the answers to your security questions. Those are the little things that people dont think about.

Another aspect of cybersecurity that Wheeler enjoys is programming, she said.

I always thought being a code hacker sounded cool, like Mr. Robot, Wheeler said, referring to the former USA Network show that featured a cybersecurity engineer who is recruited to join a group of hacktivists that aims to destroy all debt records by encrypting the financial data of one of the largest companies in the world. I thought that programming would be cool and it would be awesome to be a girl doing it, too. There arent a lot of girls in this field.

In fact, one of her favorite courses that she took at Augusta University was a class about programming taught by Steven Weldon, director of the Cyber Institute.

I just knew programming would be exciting and Steven Weldon broke it down where it was a lot of fun, Wheeler said. He made it engaging, which not all people can do, and the two hours in the lab would just fly by.

I also liked Dr. Jason Williams classes because he stimulates a lot of conversation in the classroom, she added. That was nice because sometimes with this major and if you are a student like me who doesnt live on campus we dont get to talk to a lot of the other students. But, in his class, he encourages discussions and that helps you get to know your peers. And now I really know the people who Im graduating with this spring.

After four years at Augusta University, Wheeler cant believe she will receive her diploma this week.

Everything just went by so fast. Its crazy to me that its already time to graduate. My brain is still on 2020 sometimes, Wheeler said, laughing. But my parents are super proud, especially my dad. When I decided to go into cybersecurity, I almost didnt want to tell him. I didnt want people to think, Oh, she went into cybersecurity because her dad is in computer science. I just like to figure things out myself.

But Im so glad that I went into cybersecurity and my parents are thrilled with my decision and cant wait for me to graduate.

Augusta Universitys Spring 2022 Commencement ceremonies will be held Thursday, May 12 and Friday, May 13. Thursdays ceremony will honor graduate students, and Fridays ceremonies will honor undergraduate students. Watch the events via livestream.

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Amazon Is Busting Unions. Biden Is Giving Them Huge Federal Contracts Anyway. – Jacobin magazine

The Biden administration has reawarded a massive $10 billion federal contract to Amazon, even as the president is facing mounting pressure to fulfill his promise to halt such contracts to companies that refuse to remain neutral in union elections. The contract decision came as Amazon responded to its workers first successful union drive by busting the organizing drive that followed.

At issue is Joe Bidens 2020 promise to ensure federal contracts only go to employers who sign neutrality agreements committing not to run anti-union campaigns.

Amid revelations of Amazonsaggressiveefforts to shut down a union drive among its workers, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) last month sent a letter to Biden asking him to fulfill that promise . . . to make sure that federal dollars do not flow into the hands of unscrupulous employers who engage in union-busting, participate in wage theft, or violate labor law.

A day later,Nextgovreported that Bidens National Security Agency (NSA) ratified a $10 billion cloud computing contract for Amazon, which hired the brother of Bidens top aide as a lobbyistdays after the 2020 presidential election. The contract for the companys web services division is code-named Wild and Stormy, and is distinct from another massive Pentagon cloudcontracton which Amazon is also currently bidding.

A few days after Amazonreceived the NSA contract, the Amazon Labor Union lost its second union election bid by a two to one margin at another Staten Island warehouse, after Amazon mounted a furious campaignto halt the organizing drive.

In effect, while Amazon was doubling down on its union busting, the Biden administration was delivering a massive federal contract to the company, signaling to Amazon executives that he is so far not interested in fulfilling his pledge to use the governments purchasing power to be the most pro-union president.

Meanwhile in Congress, lawmakers are advancinglegislationthat could give Amazon new tax breaks and give $10 billion to company founder Jeff Bezoss space company. Most Democratic senators also voted Wednesday toreject a measure from Sanders demanding that tech companies that receive government subsidies remain neutral in union elections.

Amazon first received the NSA contract from the Biden administrationlast summer, months after Biden pledged to make such deals contingent on union neutrality. But the contract was soon challenged by Microsoft, which allegedthat its own competing proposal had not been properly evaluated.

In the interim, Biden could have signed an executive order to rescind such contracts for employers that do not remain neutral in union elections but he has declined to do so.

Now, his administration has gone a step further, ratifying the lucrative contract even as Amazon has been making international headlines trying to stop union drives at the company, as well as fieldingallegationsthat it has been violating labor law in the process.

The details of Amazons contract and the dispute will remain classified, due to anexemptionin public records laws for national security.

Bidens contract pledge underscored how much power federal, state, and local governments have in creating fair conditions for union elections. Major corporations rely on those governments for contracts and subsidies, giving public officials the power to make that money contingent on companies treating workers fairly.

The Amazon Web Services deal is a case in point. That division, which oversees its government contracting, fuels the companys overall profits. Indeed, the companyreceived double the amount of operating income from the division $18.53 billion of the rest of its sprawling North American operations. If Biden and state governments predicate their contracts on Amazon remaining neutral in union elections, it would force the company to choose between union busting and massive profits.

That was the core of Bidens 2020 campaign pledge.

Today, I am renewing my request to President Biden to fulfill that promise, Sanders said Thursday at aSenate hearing. In my view, however, the time for talk is over. The time for action is now. Taxpayer dollars should not go to companies like Amazon who repeatedly break the law. No government not the federal government, not the state government, and not the city government should be handing out corporate welfare to union busters and labor law violators.

Also on Thursday, Amazon Labor Union president, Chris Smalls, reportedthat during a White House visit, Biden had told him that Smalls had gotten [Biden] in trouble.

Biden was likely referring to his statement in April to a union group where he said Amazon, here we come a statement that Press Secretary Jen Psakiwalkedback almost immediately.

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Amazon Is Busting Unions. Biden Is Giving Them Huge Federal Contracts Anyway. - Jacobin magazine

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Modi@20: Balakot blew away the myth of Pakistans nuclear blackmail, writes NSA Ajit Doval – The Tribune India

Tribune News Service

Sandeep Dikshit

NEW DELHI, MAY 11

One of the Prime Minster Narendra Modis greatest successes was in handling cross-border terrorism and the finesse with which the Balakot aerial strike was conceived and implemented which blew away the myth of Pakistans nuclear blackmail, writes National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, who was in the operational cockpit during both the surgical land strikes of 2016 and the Balakot aerial strikes 2019.

Doval went on to warn that while the first two counter strikes were land-based and aerial, tomorrow, it may be different from both if the adversary again causes disproportionate casualties. Domain and level will not be inhibiting factors, writes Doval in the chapter, Tackling adversaries through strong and effective national security policies in the book Modi@20 unveiled on Wednesday.

The lack of response to the numerous incidents of bombings in Indian cities during the UPA era had agitated Modi ever since he was Gujarat chief minister. The decision not to retaliate for the Mumbai attacks had earned India the infamous nomenclature of being a soft state. The first-of-its-kind operations after Uri enhanced Indias global prestige. It caused panic in the adversarys mind and momentarily disrupted terror training and planning of more attacks, he said.

Revealing more details, Doval recalled that it was a simultaneous operation by multiple strike teams at four disparate locations. The novel planning for the strike generated chaos, panic and confusion by creating the enemy is everywhere syndrome. The then Pakistan Army leadership castigated its ground formations for failing to block even one strike team, despite having a large number of forward deployed troops. More importantly, it was a political call by the Prime Minister, which meant that he was taking responsibility, not only for success, but also failure. This exhibited risk-taking at the highest levela quality shown by very few.

The PMs striking characteristic has been his ability to approach national security matters from a long-term strategic perspective. He has an uncanny futuristic sense, and observes risks and opportunities that are often missed even by experts, affirms the NSA.

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Modi@20: Balakot blew away the myth of Pakistans nuclear blackmail, writes NSA Ajit Doval - The Tribune India

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Jesus, endless war and the irresistible rise of American fascism – Salon

The Democratic Party which had 50 years to writeRoe v. Wadeinto law with Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in full control of the White House and Congress at the inception of their presidencies is banking its electoral strategy around the expected Supreme Court decision to lift the judicial prohibition on the ability of states to enact laws restricting or banning abortions.

I doubt it will work.

The Democratic Party's hypocrisy and duplicity is the fertilizer for Christian fascism. Its exclusive focus on the culture wars and identity politics at the expense of economic, political and social justice fueled a right-wing backlash and stoked the bigotry, racism and sexism it sought to curtail. Its opting for image over substance, including its repeated failure to secure the right to abortion, left the Democrats distrusted and reviled.

The Biden administration invited Amazon Labor Union president Christian Smalls and union workers from Starbucks and other organizations to the White House at the same time it re-awarded a $10 billion contract to the union-busting Amazon and the National Security Agency (NSA) for cloud computing. The NSA contract is one of 26 federal cloud computing contracts Amazon has with the U.S. Army and Air Force, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Interior, and the Census Bureau. Withholding the federal contracts until Amazon permitted free and open union organizing would be a powerful stand on behalf of workers, still waiting for the $15 minimum wage Joe Biden promised as a candidate. But behind the walls of the Democratic Party's Potemkin village stands the billionaire class. Democrats have failed to address the structural injustices that turned America into an oligarchic state, where the obscenely rich squabble like children in a sandbox over multibillion-dollar toys. The longer this game of political theater continues, the worse things will get.

RELATED:Democracy vs. fascism: What do those words mean and do they describe this moment?

The Christian fascists have coalesced in cult-like fashion around Donald Trump. They are bankrolled by the most retrograde forces of capitalism. The capitalists permit the stupidities of the Christian fascists and their self-destructive social and cultural wars. In exchange, the billionaire class gets corporate monopolies, union-busting, privatized state and municipal services, including public education, revoked government regulations, especially environmental regulation, and are free to engage in a virtual tax boycott.

The war industry loves the Christian fascists who turn every conflict from Iraq to Ukraine into a holy crusade to crush the latest iteration of Satan. The Christian fascists believe military power, and the "manly" virtues that come with it, are blessed by God, Jesus and the Virgin Mary. No military budget is too big. No war waged by America is evil.

The Democrats' hypocrisy and stupidity are the fertilizer for Christian fascism, which is bankrolled by the most retrograde forces of capitalism in exchange for the destruction of the welfare state.

These Christian fascists make up perhaps 30% of the electorate, roughly equivalent to the percentage of Americans who believe abortion is murder. They are organized, committed to a vision, however perverse, and awash in money. John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, mediocre jurists and Federalist Society ideologues who carry the banner of Christian fascism, control the Supreme Court.

Establishment Republicans and Democrats, like George Armstrong Custer on Last Stand Hill, have circled the wagons around the Democratic Party in a desperate bid to prevent Trump, or a Trump mini-me, from returning to the White House. They and their allies in Silicon Valley are using algorithms and overt de-platforming to censor critics from the left and the right, foolishly turning figures like Trump, Alex Jones and Marjorie Taylor Greene into martyrs. This is not a battle over democracy, but the spoils of power waged by billionaires against billionaires. No one intends to dismantle the corporate state.

The ruling class in both parties told lies about NAFTA, trade deals, "reforming" welfare, abolishing financial regulations, austerity, the Iraq war and neoliberalism that did far more damage to the American public than any lie told by Trump. The reptilian slime oozes out of every pore of these politicians, from Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to Biden, who backed the 1976 Hyde Amendment banning federal funding of abortions and in 1982 voted to support a constitutional amendment that would allow states to overturnRoe v. Wade. Their hypocrisy is not lost on the public, even with their armies of consultants, pollsters, courtiers in the press, public relations teams and advertising agencies.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is clueless and unhinged. She claims Hillary Clinton was involved in a child mutilation and a pedophilia ring and several high-profile school shootings were staged. But weaponized, like Trump, she is a political cruise missile aimed straight at the heart of the discredited centers of traditional power.

Hate is the fuel of American politics. No one votes for who they want. They vote against those they hate. Black and brown marginal communities have suffered worse assaults than the white working class, but they have been defanged politically with militarized police that function as internal armies of occupation. The erosion of due process, the world's largest prison system and the stripping away of all rights, often including voting rights because of felony convictions, as well as a loss of access to most social services and jobs, have reduced many Black and brown people to subsistence level on the lowest rung of America's caste system. They are also the primary targets of Republican-sponsored voter suppression and redistricting.

The glue holding this Christianized fascism together is not prayer, although we will get a lot of that, but war. War is the raison d'tre of all systems of totalitarianism. War justifies a constant search for internal enemies. It is used to revoke basic civil liberties and impose censorship. War demonizes those in the Middle East, Russia or China who are blamed for the economic and social debacles that inevitably get worse. War diverts the rage engendered by a dysfunctional state towards immigrants, people of color, feminists, liberals, artists, anyone who does not identify as a heterosexual, the press, antifa, Jews, Muslims, Russians or Asians. Take your pick. It is a bigot's smorgasbord. Every item on the menu is fair game.

I spent two years with the Christian right reporting and researching my book "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America." These Christian fascists have never hidden their agenda or their desire to create a "Christian" nation, any more than Adolf Hitler hid his demented vision for Germany in "Mein Kampf." They prey, like all fascists, on the despair of their followers. They paint gruesome portraits of the end times. when the longed-for obliteration of nonbelievers presages the glorious return of Jesus Christ. The battle at Armageddon, they believe, will be launched from the Antichrist's worldwide headquarters in Babylon once the Jews again have control of Israel. The closer we get to Armageddon, the giddier they become.

These people believe this stuff, as they believe in QAnon or the election fraud that supposedly put Biden in office. They are convinced that a demonic, secular-humanist ideology propagated by the media, the United Nations, elite universities, the ACLU, the NAACP, NOW, Planned Parenthood and the Trilateral Commission, along with the U.S. State Department and major foundations, is seeking to destroy them.

The Christian fascists do not fear nuclear war. They welcome it. The marriage of the forever-war industry with the Christian fascists who yearn for apocalypse is terrifying.

Violence is embraced as a cleansing agent, a key component of any fascist movement. The Christian fascists do not fear nuclear war. They welcome it. The insane provocations of Russia by the Biden administration, including the decision to provide $33 billion in assistance to Ukraine, target 10 Russian generals for assassination and pass on to Ukraine the intelligence to sink the Moskva, the guided missile cruiser that was the flagship of the Russian Black Sea fleet, supercharges the ideology of the Christian right. The marriage of the war industry, determined to make war forever, with the Christian fascists yearning for the apocalypse is terrifying. Biden is sleepwalking us into a war with Russia and perhaps with China. The Christian fascists will accelerate the bloodlust.

The political deformities we have spawned are not unique. They are the product of a society and government that no longer functions on behalf of the citizenry, one that has been seized by a tiny cabal, in our case corporate, to serve its exclusive interests. The airy promises politicians make, including the announcement by candidate Barack Obama that the first thing he would do in office was sign theFreedom of Choice Act, which during his eight years as president he never got around to doing, are worthless. The scheduled vote next week in the Senate on a bill asserting that abortions are legal in the United States, which is expected to be blocked by the Republicans' use of the filibuster, a Senate procedural rule that requires 60 votes to advance most legislation in the 100-member chamber, is another empty gesture.

We saw the consequences of this dysfunction in Weimar Germany and Yugoslavia, a conflict I covered for the New York Times. Political stagnation and economic misery breeds rage, despair and cynicism. It gives rise to demagogues, charlatans and con artists. Hatred drives political discourse. Violence is the primary form of communication. Vengeance is the highest good. War is the chief occupation of the state. It is the vulnerable and weak who pay.

Read more from Chris Hedges on war, peace and the global crisis of democracy:

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Jesus, endless war and the irresistible rise of American fascism - Salon

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Meet Three Bay Area Artists Working to Amplify the Voices of People Who Stutter – KQED

Grossman said there are many myths surrounding stuttering. "One is that nervousness causes stuttering," she said. "Another is that if you would just breathe, or just slow down, or just relax, it would go away."

The stigma attached to stuttering can cause people to live lives of isolation and silence.

"Having this overall feeling that you have to be fluent to be a voice that's worth hearing, thats not a good feeling, and it's not a good thing," said NSA board chair Kristine Short. "So the more voices that we hear that stutter, the more that we make place for disfluent voices, the more inclusive our community will be."

Nina G is one of several local artists who stutter working toward that goal. A group of them, including podcaster Maya Chupkov, appeared on the steps of City Hall recently to help present San Franciscos Stuttering Awareness Week.

Chupkov, who said she began stuttering around the age of 4 or 5, has a background in local politics. She led the charge in getting the local version of Stuttering Awareness Week on the Board of Supervisors' radar.

"I want to thank you, Supervisor Dean Preston, for introducing this resolution that will help spread more awareness about stuttering so we feel more safe to be openly ourselves," said Chupkov, referring to the supervisor responsible for championing her proposal with the board.

For years, Chupkov said, she didn't see herself as capable of doing something as scary as speaking in public.

"When I was growing up, I didn't know anyone else who stuttered," she said. "It was just very lonely, and I just felt that no one understood me, and I was just constantly hiding a big part of myself."

Then, last fall, the 29-year-old San Francisco resident was inspired by a suggestion from her fianc to launch a podcast for and about the stuttering community.

"As soon as he said it, a light bulb just went off in my head," Chupkov said. "I realized that I needed to do this because there are so many people who stutter out there, especially young people that don't know anyone else that stutters. Having a show that they can listen to on a consistent basis I think will really do wonders in helping people who stutter feel less alone and feel more confident."

Chupkov launched her series, "Proud Stutter," on October 22, 2021 International Stuttering Awareness Day. She originally co-hosted the project with her friend Cynthia Chin, a nonstuttering ally, but now hosts solo. The first season, which included an interview with Nina G, has already racked up more than 11,000 downloads. Chupkov said shes gearing up to produce a second season.

Chupkov said making the podcast has made her more self-confident. In addition to doing things like public speaking in front of city officials, she's also hosting several events as part of San Francisco's Stuttering Awareness Week.

"Before I started the podcast, I didn't really consider myself as a creative person. And then I realized I just wasn't nurturing that part of myself," said Chupkov. "As soon as I started the podcast and I was tapping into my creative side more, that's when I was introduced to this completely new Maya that had this creative side that I just never nurtured before."

Chupkov said it makes sense for San Francisco to be at the forefront of activism around stuttering today, because of the city's long history of advocating for this issue. The NSA was founded as the National Stuttering Project in San Francisco in 1977. Its members were instrumental in establishing National Stuttering Awareness Week in 1988. "There is a big community of people who stutter here," she said.

The podcaster is hoping the passing of the Stuttering Awareness Week resolution in San Francisco will inspire other cities around the country to do the same, and has even produced a digital toolkit to help legislators and advocates in this effort.

Thirty-seven-year-old Gina Chin-Davis is a filmmaker and writer in Richmond. She said she started stuttering at the age of 4, and worked to hide her stutter for many years. These days, Chin-Davis identifies as a "mostly covert stutterer."

"This means that I can kind of pass, and a lot of people are surprised when they hear or I tell them that I stutter, but I do," Chin-Davis said.

She said trying to tamp down her stutter was exhausting.

"I felt like I had to put on this performance for people and convince them that I'm a person who doesn't stutter," she said.

Chin-Davis said she leaned away from situations that would force her to reveal her true self. Things changed when she started "avoidance reduction therapy," a form of therapy that asks the patient to confront and lean into their discomfort. She said her learning was put to the test when, in 2018, she decided to direct her first feature-length film, "I Can't Sleep."

"Being put into this kind of leadership role as a director, I had to use my voice more," she said. "It definitely brought up my stuff around it."

Chin-Davis said her micro-budget, self-financed movie proved to be a life-changing experience for her.

"Everything that I said, I would always ask myself, 'Is it worth saying? Should I say this?' And yet it was like, 'I am directing it and I wrote it, and so I need to say it.' I really put it on myself to say what I was thinking," said Chin-Davis of the directing process for "I Can't Sleep." "That wasn't always easy. And sometimes you get pushback."

Things were tough on the film set. Chin-Davis said she had to replace her crew after they acted disrespectfully. But she found a new crew and completed the production process. Her movie came out in 2020.

"I remember feeling very nervous and scared. People were yelling at me. And yet I just said what I had to say, stutter or not," Chin-Davis said. "I felt good about the decision afterwards. I was proud of myself that I did speak up and I did put my foot down verbally and I guess metaphorically."

Although Chin-Davis's first film didn't include any stuttering characters, she said it does have parallels to her own life, in that it tells the story of a young woman battling supernatural forces while trying to get a creative project finished.

"She is going through this process of feeling insecure about her ability to connect with people and have a message that resonates with them," Chin-Davis said. "But she does feel compelled to share it anyway."

Chin-Davis tackled the subject of stuttering head-on in a humorous video she made with longtime friend Nina G. It pokes fun at the way ignorant fluent people love to dispense advice to people who stutter. The two-minute piece, which has garnered almost 50,000 views on YouTube, toggles between the two artists as they say things like, "I used to stutter, too. But then I grew out of it. Thank God," and "Have you ever considered eating a live canary?"

Chin-Davis says she likes using her art to challenge people's assumptions. "It's kind of our job as artists who stutter to really put our voices out there and define things ourselves," she said.

Chin-Davis said people who stutter are still underrepresented in movies and TV, though she thinks Leonardo DiCaprio did a decent job playing a character with an occasional stutter in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

She particularly likes the fact that Quentin Tarantinos 2019 film didnt make a big deal of the characters stutter.

"I want characters who stutter just to be there, just to be on the screen," she said. "It's not about the fact that they stutter. In fact, maybe nobody mentions it, even. It's just an accepted thing."

San Francisco's first-ever Stuttering Awareness Week runs through May 14, 2022.

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Nation-state Cyber Attackers aiming at the US Defense Industrial Base – Security Boulevard

Pres. Biden calls for strengthening cyber defenses with Zero Trust architecture

President Bidens recent statement on our nations cybersecurity highlighted intelligence indicating that the Russian Government is exploring options for potential cyberattacks on US targets. While this most recent threat is seen as potential retaliation for the economic sanctions the United States and its allies have imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, the threat of Russian-backed cyberattacks is nothing new. Indeed, as Bidens statement put it, cyberattacks are part of Russias playbook.In early 2020, for example, hackers connected to the Russian foreign intelligence service, the SVR, were identified as perpetrators of the massive SolarWinds cyberattack. The Russians were able to penetrate several US federal agencies, including the Treasury, Justice and Energy departments, the Pentagon, and even the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Experts estimated that the hackers had been roaming undetected in these networksas well as those of several large private US companiesfor at least nine months. The SVR was gathering intelligence or laying the groundwork for future attacks, or both.We know that Russias ability to disrupt US networks and steal sensitive data is only getting more powerful. If your organization does work for the Department of Defense (DoD), theres no question that the Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) youre responsible for is a target too. Thats as true for prime contractors as it is for smaller suppliers far down the supply chain. In fact, DoD officials have noted that supply chain vulnerabilities are most prevalent six or seven levels down from prime contractors. Simply put, cybercriminals know that prime defense contractors are well protected, and save themselves time and effort by going after their subcontractors.Moreover, Russia isnt the only state actor conducting sophisticated cyberattacks against US targets. China, Iran, North Korea and others are in the arena too.

It comes as no surprise that the Biden administration is focused on strengthening US cyber defenses. In a May 2021 Executive Order, Improving our Nations Cybersecurity, President Biden called for the Federal Government to implement security best practices and to quickly lay out specific plans toward adopting Zero Trust architecture.The National Security Agency (NSA) describes Zero Trust as a security model that eliminates trust in any one element, node, or service and assumes that a breach is inevitable or likely has already occurred, so it constantly limits access to only what is needed and looks for anomalous or malicious activity.

Zero Trust is a security model that eliminates trust in any one element, node, or service and assumes that a breach is inevitable or likely has already occurred, so it constantly limits access to only what is needed and looks for anomalous or malicious activity.

This is in contrast to, as the NSA explains: Traditional perimeter-based network defenses with multiple layers of disjointed security technologies [that] have proven themselves to be unable to meet the cybersecurity needs due to the current threat environment.Zero Trusts greatest advantage lies in its integrated, system-wide, security-first approach. When securing your organizations data is paramount, compliance with federal regulations designed to protect CUIincluding DFARS, NIST and CMMCis less complex and far more readily achievable.

The DoD is intent on upgrading cybersecurity throughout the DIB via key regulatory frameworks that your organization needs to abide by. These include NIST SP 800-171, developed by the National Institute of Technology and Standards (NIST) specifically to protect CUI, and the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) framework, among others.While neither NIST nor CMMC mandate a Zero Trust security model, the good news is that properly designed Zero Trust systems meet DoD mandates for securing CUI exceptionally well.In fact the State Department has led the way in incorporating Zero Trust principles into compliance frameworks. Its 2020 revisions to International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) allow contractors to simplify their ITAR compliance by taking advantage of technological advances that implement Zero Trust and enable the secure exchange of defense-related technical data in the cloud. Specifically:

The elegance of the new ITAR regulation lies in the fact that defense contractors have a simple and clear two-point compliance mandate to follow, and the mandates Zero Trust principles deliver some of the highest levels of data security possible. Furthermore, modern cloud based Zero Trust systems are often simpler and less expensive for companies to adopt, and so the ITAR regulation accomplishes key objectives of both security and rapid adoption particularly well.

The ITAR regulation offers a compelling model for significantly greater adoption of Zero Trust. Nearly 80,000 defense contractors that handle CUI vital to national security are currently embarking on significant security upgrades to comply with the DoDs CMMC 2.0 and NIST SP 800-171 requirements. CMMC 2.0 and NIST SP 800-171 are closely alignedboth require contractors to meet the same 110 security controls specified in NIST SP 800-171.Contractors that handle CUI have been required to comply with NIST SP 800-171 as part of their DFARS contract obligations since 2017, and to report those scores to the DoDs Supplier Performance Risk System (SPRS) since 2020. Under CMMC 2.0, they will have to demonstrate compliance via third party audits. Similar to ITAR, the NIST SP 800-171 and CMMC regulations can be particularly well addressed by the use of Zero Trust systems based on end-to-end encryption. That means we have a timely opportunity now to significantly expand adoption of Zero Trust security.PreVeil is an example of a communications platform grounded in Zero Trust architecture. Its end-to-end encryption is FIPS 140-2 validated. And it meets all applicable standards for cloud systems used to handle ITAR or CUI: PreVeil is FedRAMP Baseline Moderate Equivalent, and stores all ITAR and CUI encrypted data on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Gov Cloud, which is assessed at FedRAMP High. Neither PreVeil nor Amazon have access to keys, network access codes, or passwords to decrypt your data, ever.PreVeils Zero Trust platform supports 84 of NIST SP 800-171s 110 security controls. Its easily deployed as an overlay to environments such as Microsoft O365 Commercial Email and One Drive or Google Workspace. Thats done without business disruption or the need to rip and replace existing servers, which makes it affordable. A defense contractor using PreVeil to protect CUI recently achieved a 110/110 NIST SP 800-171 score in a rigorous DoD audit, convincingly demonstrating that Zero Trust security seamlessly leads to achieving compliance. And that, in turn, will help your organization meet Pres. Bidens call to action to defend our nations CUI against the very real threats of nation-state backed cyberattacks.

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*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Blog Archive - PreVeil authored by Orlee Berlove. Read the original post at: https://www.preveil.com/blog/nation-state-cyber-attackers-aiming-at-the-us-defense-industrial-base/

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Opportune moment for indigenous development of 5G NSA & SA by C-DOT: Prakash – United News of India

New Delhi, Sep 4 (UNI) Telecom Secretary Anshu Prakash has said it is a very opportune moment for the indigenous development of 5G NSA & SA by C-DOT, in the overall context of meeting the challenging communications requirements of the nation and realizing the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of 'Atmanirbhar Bharat'.

Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), the premier Telecom R&D Centre of the Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications, observed its 38th Foundation Day celebrations yesterday.

The technical conference was inaugurated by Anshu Prakash, Chairman, Digital Communications Commission & Secretary (Telecom), the Ministry of Communications said in a statement on Saturday.

Speaking at the event, Prakash exhorted the engineers to relentlessly work towards successful Proof of Concept (PoC) of C-DOT 4G LTE Core in BSNL network.

UNI NY SHK1838

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Opportune moment for indigenous development of 5G NSA & SA by C-DOT: Prakash - United News of India

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NSA: We ‘don’t know when or even if’ a quantum computer will ever be able to break today’s public-key encryption – The Register

America's National Security Agency has published an FAQ about quantum cryptography, saying it does not know "when or even if" a quantum computer will ever exist to "exploit" public-key cryptography.

In the document, titled Quantum Computing and Post-Quantum Cryptography, the NSA said it "has to produce requirements today for systems that will be used for many decades in the future." With that in mind, the agency came up with some predictions [PDF] for the near future of quantum computing and their impact on encryption.

Is the NSA worried about the threat posed by a "cryptographically relevant quantum computer" (CRQC)? Apparently not too much.

"NSA does not know when or even if a quantum computer of sufficient size and power to exploit public key cryptography (a CRQC) will exist," it stated, which sounds fairly conclusive though in 2014 the agency splurged $80m looking for a quantum computer that could smash current encryption in a program titled Owning the Net, so the candor of the paper's statements is perhaps open to debate.

What the super-surveillance agency seems to be saying is that it's not a given that a CRQC capable of breaking today's public-key algorithms will ever emerge, though it wouldn't be a bad idea to consider coming up with and using new techniques that could defeat a future CRQC, should one be built.

It's almost like the NSA is dropping a not-so-subtle hint, though why it would is debatable. If it has a CRQC, or is on the path to one, it might want to warn allies, vendors, and citizens to think about using quantum-resistant technologies in case bad people develop a CRQC too. But why would the spies tip their hand so? It's all very curious.

Progress on quantum computers has been steadily made over the past few years, and while they may not ever replace our standard, classical computing, they are very effective at solving certain problems

Eric Trexler, VP of global governments at security shop Forcepoint, told The Register: "Progress on quantum computers has been steadily made over the past few years, and while they may not ever replace our standard, classical computing, they are very effective at solving certain problems. This includes public-key asymmetric cryptography, one of the two different types of cryptosystems in use today."

Public-key cryptography is what the world relies on for strong encryption, such as TLS and SSL that underpin the HTTPS standard used to help protect your browser data from third-party snooping.

In the NSA's summary, a CRQC should one ever exist "would be capable of undermining the widely deployed public key algorithms used for asymmetric key exchanges and digital signatures" and what a relief it is that no one has one of these machines yet. The post-quantum encryption industry has long sought to portray itself as an immediate threat to today's encryption, as El Reg detailed in 2019.

"The current widely used cryptography and hashing algorithms are based on certain mathematical calculations taking an impractical amount of time to solve," explained Martin Lee, a technical lead at Cisco's Talos infosec arm. "With the advent of quantum computers, we risk that these calculations will become easy to perform, and that our cryptographic software will no longer protect systems."

Given that nations and labs are working toward building crypto-busting quantum computers, the NSA said it was working on "quantum-resistant public key" algorithms for private suppliers to the US government to use, having had its Post-Quantum Standardization Effort running since 2016. However, the agency said there are no such algos that commercial vendors should adopt right now, "with the exception of stateful hash signatures for firmware."

Smart cookies will be glad to hear that the NSA considers AES-256 and SHA-384 "safe against attack by a large quantum computer."

Jason Soroko, CTO of Sectigo, a vendor that advertises "quantum safe cryptography" said the NSA report wasn't conclusive proof that current encryption algos were safe from innovation.

"Quantum computers alone do not crack public key cryptography," he said, adding that such a beast would need to execute an implementation of Shors algorithm. That algo was first described in 1994 by an MIT maths professor and allows for the calculation of prime factors of very large numbers; a vital step towards speeding up the decryption of the product of current encryption algorithms.

"Work on quantum resistant cryptographic algorithms is pushing forward based on the risk that Universal quantum computers will eventually have enough stable qubits to eventually implement Shors algorithm," continued Soroko. "I think its important to assume that innovation in both math and engineering will potentially surprise us."

While advances in cryptography are of more than merely academic interest to the infosec world, there is always the point that security (and data) breaches occur because of primarily human factors. Ransomware, currently the largest threat to enterprises, typically spreads because someone's forgotten to patch or decommission a machine on a corporate network or because somebody opens an attachment from a malicious email.

Or there's the old joke about rubber hose cryptanalysis, referring to beating the passwords out of a captured sysadmin.

Talos' Lee concluded: In a world where users will divulge their passwords in return for chocolate or in response to an enticing phishing email, the risk of quantum computers might not be our biggest threat.

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NSA: We 'don't know when or even if' a quantum computer will ever be able to break today's public-key encryption - The Register

Posted in NSA

A Softening Economy Will Be Buffeted By Stimulus Withdrawal And Delta-Variant Surge – Forbes

U.S. Vehicle Sales (millions)

While the story of the week was the big miss in Nonfarm Payrolls, most of the incoming data continue to be much softer than the markets or financial media let on, as they continue to ignore the implications.The chart above shows U.S. vehicle sales beginning in 2015.Note the steady sales levels until the pandemic, the climb out to just above normal, and now a renewed falloff.Sales in August were -11% lower than in July, as they fell to a 13.5 million annual rate.They were nearly 19 million in April.Could it possibly be that the helicopter money pulled demand forward?Lack of semi-conductors, you say!If so, why are used car sales also falling?

NY Fed Weekly Economic Index

Now, look at the chart of the NY Feds Weekly Economic Index.Like autos, note the big rise in April and the tail-off since.From this chart, it appears that the growth all occurred in April, causing Q2s GDP to rise 6.6%.But this index has been falling since, implying that growth has slowed since then, leading us to conclude that Q3s growth will be weaker than Q2s, and Q4s worse yet.

In past blogs, we discussed the potential impact of the Delta-variant.The impacts from it are continuing.Restaurant reservations are falling, hotels are experiencing cancellations and a lower number of room nights, and a significant number of major corporations have delayed a return to the office.The latest employment data show job losses in the retail, hospitality, and restaurant sectors.

Here is a partial list of weakening incoming data:

The Payroll Survey:Fridays Nonfarm Payrolls at +235K (Seasonally Adjusted (SA)) also disappointed the consensus view (+733K), yet another big miss on the part of the business forecasters.There wasnt much impact on the equity markets (September 3: DOW: -74.7, S&P 500: -1.5; Nasdaq NDAQ : +32.3).The Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA) number was +312K.Our view has been, and continues to be, that the pandemic and its nuances (Delta-variant) arent seasonally adjustable.From a strictly statistical point of view, the pandemic data havent been around long enough to display seasonality and using seasonal factors from pre-pandemic data makes no sense because todays data is profoundly influenced by the pandemic (i.e., re-opening, mask mandates, supply-chain issues, government supplemental payments, school re-opening issues ). Nevertheless, the August +312K NSA number appears close enough to the +235K SA one so whats the issue for us?

The people with jobs are the ones that get paid.Over the last two months, BLS has told us that 1.288 million (SA) jobs were created (1.053 million in July (revised) and 235K in August).The NSA numbers (these are the actual job counts) for both months combined was 278K (312K for August and -34K for July).278K new payrolls is a far cry from 1.288 million.Perhaps this is why the August business surveys show employment softness!Noteworthy: the NSA data shows -64K in the retail sector, -74K in leisure/hospitality, -50K in accommodation (hotels) and -52K in restaurants.This data strongly implies that the Delta-variant has had a dramatic economic impact.We think this impact will continue at least for another few months.

Weekly Initial Claims (ICs):The weekly data are both encouraging and discouraging.Encouraging because ICs in the state programs fell from 299K to 288k (NSA) the week of August 28.ICs represent new layoffs, and they continue to inch their way toward the 200K/week level that was the pre-pandemic normal.

State Initial Claims

But it is discouraging to realize that there will be a negative economic impact in early September when millions of unemployed lose those benefits.Small business owners are payors into the state systems for their employees, but the owners, themselves, are not eligible for state unemployment benefits (only their employees).The Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) programs were established early in the pandemic for these business owners.As you can see from the PUA Initial Claims chart (data from April through August), the PUA programs have struggled of late (Delta-variant?) and the weekly new claims have remained above 100K.

PUA Initial Claims

The PUA programs end the first week of September, so their demise is imminent.

Continuing Claims (CCs):While the 100K/week ICs are worrisome, the real issue is the imminent cessation of benefits for the 9.2 million Continuous Claimants (those getting benefits for more than one week) in the PUA programs.

Continuing Unemployment Claims

If such recipients have only been receiving benefits of $500/week, they are facing a reduction of $45 billion/month in household income (thats about 3% of such income).Expect a significant impact on consumption at least for the remainder of the year.

Opt-Outs vs. Opt-Ins:The tables below continue to show that the Opt-Out states (those not paying the federal $300/week supplement) have continued to outpace the Opt-Ins as far as reducing the unemployment rolls.From May 15 through August 21, Opt-Out state unemployment has fallen by more than 41% vs. under 20% for the Op-Ins.

Percentage Changes in CCs: Opt-Out vs. Opt-In States

Looking more granularly (table below), using the final data for August 14, Opt-Outs (representing 25% of the total CCs) reduced unemployment by -40K, while unemployment increased in the Opt-In states by +42K!

Relative Performance: Opt-Out States vs. Opt-In States

The preliminary data for August 21 show somewhat better performance of the Opt-Ins, as their CC count decreased only slightly more slowly than the Opt-Outs.As we have said in past blogs, we think the Opt-Ins will catch-up when the PUA programs end. And, once again, it is our belief that once those programs end, there will be a rush to find employment.

However, filling available job slots isnt an instantaneous process.There is an appointment needed, then an interview, a background check, and finally, an offer and acceptance.So, even if the majority of the 9.2 million CCs begin to look for work, it may take several months for a semblance of normality to return.And the economic implication is that there is likely to be a noticeable consumption slowdown, with retail falling at an even faster pace than we are seeing in the current emerging data.

Markets continue to ignore the signs of economic slowdown, as does the financial media.Of course, the equity markets love easy money, and slower economic growth means the Fed will stay easy longer.The bond market, on the other hand, appears to see the softness, and rates have reacted to the downside after some inflation indigestion last quarter.

Besides the existing softening signs, the rapidly approaching end of the special unemployment programs means no weekly checks for more than nine million current recipients.That is bound to have a negative impact on consumption, implying continued economic weakness in Q4.

(Joshua Barone contributed to this blog)

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A Softening Economy Will Be Buffeted By Stimulus Withdrawal And Delta-Variant Surge - Forbes

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Actions of IT giants pave the way for states to monopolize data Snowden – TASS

MOSCOW, September 2. /TASS/. Violations of user rights by IT giants who are now directly checking information and data contained in peoples personal gadgets entails a risk that governments will later monopolize this function, former US NSA staffer Edward Snowden said on Thursday.

"Its no longer a company question, its a government question. So, you have to ask yourself can Apple say no to the US government, the Russian government, the Chinese government, the German government, the French government, the British government? Of course, the answer is no. Not if they want to keep selling their products in these countries. Thats dangerous," he said.

He recalled that Apple earlier announced plans to look for illegal content on their phones even before this information is saved on their servers. "Instead of private companies scanning their files in the cloud on their system, now they are doing it on your phone. This has caused a lot of concern for people around the world even though they say that the system for now is only rolling out in the United States." Snowden noted. "The reasons for it are once Apple proves that it is possible for them to scan for some kind of forbidden content <> they cant decide in the future what kind of files would be searched for."

According to him, this function will give Apple opportunity to look through and search for any personal information stored on phones. "Now they are telling your device what to look for. And if they find something thats forbidden, thats against the law <> but tomorrow it can be something else, some new category. You dont know what they are scanning for," he said. "Once Apple breaks down this barrier between their servers and your phone and now they start scanning on your phone, they can scan for anything, they scan for political criticism, they can scan for financial records," he concluded.

In early August, Apple revealed that the company would start checking messages and iCloud content for child pornography. Apple said on Thursday that the necessary means to technically do that would be introduced in the new software for all its devices.

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Actions of IT giants pave the way for states to monopolize data Snowden - TASS

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Microsoft’s Azure Government Top Secret Cloud: All you need to know – TechHQ

Just last month, Amazon Web Services (AWS) was named the winner of a US$10 billion cloud computing contract, called WildandStormy, for the National Security Agency (NSA). But Microsoft was evidently not satisfied with the results, given the ongoing legal tussle between both companies on the Pentagons JEDI cloud computing contract. In an apparent counter move, Microsofts Azure made Government Top Secret its cloud service for governmental agencies that need to manage top-secret data generally available a couple of weeks ago.

As Microsoft Azure corporate VP Tom Keane put it in a blog posting, This announcement, together with new services and functionality in Azure Government Secret, provides further evidence of Microsofts relentless commitment to the mission of national security, enabling customers and partners to realize the vision of a multi-cloud strategy and achieve greater agility, interoperability, cost savings, and speed to innovation.

The company has long offered Government and Government Secret services, but now is after highly classified data workloads. Unlike its other offerings, Azure Government Top Secret supports Intelligence Community Directive 705 standards, a list of precise steps a compartmented information facility has to follow.

Azure Government Top Secret is now generally available for US national security agencies. Source: Microsoft

Developed in collaboration with the US government, Microsofts Azure cloud has data centers organized into regions, with its own personnel comprising only US citizens and its own network fiber that is separate from the Azure commercial offering. The data centers need to follow strict rules on construction, physical security features, and staffing checks. As part of the process, the Azure regions are air-gapped.

The new regions, whose locations are not detailed, are launching with more than 60 Azure services, with more to come. Built into a unified data strategy, these services help human analysts more rapidly extract intelligence, identify trends and anomalies, broaden perspectives, and find new insights, Keane said.

Keane also shared that the Azure Government product portfolio was developed to further Microsofts relentless commitment to the mission of national security. Microsoft also revealed that it has added new services to Azure Government Secret, including Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Functions, and Azure App Service. There are now 73 services available on the Government Secret cloud. In addition to those, Microsoft offers data analysis and AI services to government agencies through Azures Data Lake, Cosmos DB, HDInsight, and Cognitive Services.

Keanes blog post highlighted that in order to develop a unified cybersecurity approach to protect the nations data, mission owners can utilize products informed by this threat intelligence, including Azure Security Center and Azure Sentinel to integrate multiple security point solutions and continually assess, visualize, and protect the security state of resources in Azure, on-premises, and in other clouds. B

Microsoft was approved as a supplier of cloud services to the US intelligence community in 2018, and two years later was chosen, along with AWS, Google, Oracle, and IBM, as part of the multibillion-dollar C2E cloud contract where the CIA will get each company to bid for specific task orders for itself and the 16 other agencies within the US intelligence community.

This month, however, Microsoft lost out on a US$10 billion cloud contract with the NSA. It is protesting the decision to award the deal to Amazon Web Services in court. The company is likely hoping to score the same victory as AWS did with JEDI, the Department of Defenses US$10 billion-valued cloud contract. It was awarded to Microsoft in October 2019, but that contract was scrapped after a lengthy legal battle.

It is also fair to note that AWS was the first company to launch top-secret regions that were deemed fit to host the governments exceedingly private data. So, this levels the playing field and provides the government with a choice because previously, it was just a one-horse race, Keane said.

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Microsoft's Azure Government Top Secret Cloud: All you need to know - TechHQ

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