It’s Tech Summit Day; Meet the White House’s counter-propaganda czar; We’re already losing the gray war; Carter proposes end to up-or-out; and a bit more.
In 30 minutes, we kick off Defense One’s first-ever Tech Summit at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. Defense Secretary Ash Carter keynotes at 1 p.m. EDT, for a stacked day with an agenda that includes speakers from Silicon Valley to Crystal City, including the NSA, DARPA, the U.S. military and more.
On the docket: Super soldiers and how performance technology is changing warfare; what digital security means for the future of defense IT networks; how the business community is engineering new technology to keep pace with the new wars of today and tomorrow; how the NSA is looking to leverage emerging technologies; a discussion about what stands in the way of linking the military and tech worlds more closely; and “From DARPA to Daesh: Today’s Future Warfare Tech” just 30 minutes before Secretary Carter takes the stage for a conversation with Defense One Executive Editor Kevin Baron.
Catch the complete guest list, along with a full schedule and livestream link, all right here.
Go inside the new U.S. war with Brand ISIS in a new profile of the White House’s new counter-propaganda czar, Michael Lumpkin, the former Navy SEAL who served as deputy commander of all special operations forces early in the Iraq War. Lumpkin is now formally known as the director of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, and he told Defense One Tech Editor Patrick Tucker that he believes he’s got a model for efforts to counter extremism online in real time.
Money talks: Lumpkin’s GEC is much better funded than its predecessor, the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC) which then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stood up to fight al-Qaeda’s propaganda efforts. In fiscal 2015, the former program’s budget was $5.4 million. The new GEC budget will reach close to $16 million this year and the administration want $21.5 million next year.
So what’s the plan for all those taxpayer dollars? Tucker explains, with some help from a diverse ensemble of experts, here.
Welcome to the Gray Zone. The new era of defense competition and conflict is here, and the U.S. is already taking losses — according to the authors of a new Army War College study on the “gray zone,” that not-war-not-peace space that Russia, China, and Iran have exploited deftly and to America’s detriment. The piece, by Nathan Freier and two co-authors, describes the key conclusions of a nine-month study launched by the Army Chief of Staff and sponsored by the Joints Chiefs. These include several reasons why Russian and Chinese moves have tended to flummox U.S. policymakers; and that a national-level response is needed to jumpstart an effort to start adapting to the new era. It’s an important piece; read it, here.
From Defense One
Carter pitches “huge” Pentagon personnel system overhaul. The defense secretary unveiled major proposals that would reform the military's “up or out” promotion system and allow civilian recruiters to bypass the traditional federal hiring process. Carter’s opinion of the project: “Make no mistake: this is going to be huge.” Government Executive’s Kellie Lunney digs in, here.
France just launched a new terror alert app ahead of the Euro 2016 soccer tournament in western Europe. The weeks-long championship, with 51 games across 10 venues, is expected to draw millions of fans to crowded stadiums and “fan zones.” All of which, in light of the attacks on Paris late last year, are being considered potential terrorist targets. The Atlantic’s CityLab has more, here.
Welcome to the Tech Summit edition of The D Brief, by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. On this day in 1972, American F-4 Phantom jets dropped a dozen 2,000-pound MK-84 laser-guided bombs and destroyed three generators at the Soviet-built Lang Chi hydroelectric power plant 63 miles northwest of Hanoi, Vietnam—leaving the attached dam in place and preventing the death of an estimated 23,000 civilians. Send your friends this link: http://get.defenseone.com/d-brief/. And let us know your news: the-d-brief@defenseone.com.
The White House could soon widen its airstrikes in Afghanistan to include the Taliban, a senior U.S. defense official told AP Thursday. “The official said a final decision has not been made, but the discussions are in their final stages. There is a broad desire across the Obama administration to give the military greater ability to help the Afghans fight and win the war. The official said the U.S. is likely to expand the authority of U.S. commanders to strike the Taliban and do whatever else is necessary with the forces they have to support the Afghan operations.”
In case you’re just now catching up to this, the Pentagon has already been striking “al-Qaida and Islamic State militants in Afghanistan. But strikes against the Taliban were largely halted at the end of 2014, when the U.S.-led coalition's combat role ended.”
Also in the cards “is whether the U.S. should reduce the number of American troops in Afghanistan to 5,500 as planned by the end of this year, or if a higher number is needed.” Read the rest, here.
In the wider battle of hearts and minds still taking place in Iraq, U.S. airstrikes on ISIS positions aren’t always the neat, tidy affairs the Pentagon would like them to be, the Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe and Loveday Morris report. Their story begins with an airstrike near Mosul in 2015, but it becomes something else entirely with a simple email sent to an Iraqi citizen working at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.
“The email passed from the U.S. Embassy staff to the U.S. military command in Baghdad and then on to investigators in Qatar. In it, [Raja’a Zidan al-Ekabee, the email’s author] described fleeing her home in Mosul and paying a driver to smuggle out the car she had left behind. Her 2011 Kia Sorento, she wrote, was stopped at an Islamic State checkpoint near the Iraqi village of Hatra when a ‘missile of the international air forces struck the checkpoint.’”
The problem: “Inside the Kia, along with the driver, were three women and two children. The car was traveling with a GMC Suburban when the bombs and bullets hit, causing both vehicles and the people inside them to ‘burn entirely,’ she said.”
Inside the Suburban: “the family of a lieutenant colonel with the Iraqi police.”
After more than a year of no reply from the U.S. military, Ekabee learned she would receive no payment for the car since it was blown up during “combat activity.” (The colonel never filed a complaint.)
Ezabee’s stark takeaway: “This email means that the lives of innocents are cheap and that they don’t want to be responsible for their mistakes.” Read the rest, here.
When it comes to the UN, money talks and integrity walks. That’s the takeaway from FP’s Colum Lynch (which follows up on his earlier report from Tuesday) who writes “Ban Ki-Moon, the U.N. secretary-general, confirmed Thursday he was essentially blackmailed into removing the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen from a U.N. blacklist of countries, rebel movements, and terrorist groups that have killed, maimed, or otherwise abused children in conflict.”
Ban tried to keep his reputation intact, hitting “back publicly on Thursday, telling reporters he continues to stand by the report’s finding that the Saudi-led coalition is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Yemeni children. Though he didn’t single out Saudi Arabia by name, Ban told reporters in a prepared statement that unnamed countries threatened to cut off financial support for vital U.N. programs if Saudi Arabia and its allies were not removed from the list.”
Outraged friends: “U.N. officials said Ban received calls of protest from senior officials from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and other close Saudi allies who demanded the stigma be lifted.”
So how much money are we talking about? “Between 2012 and 2015, the Persian Gulf oil sheikdoms have contributed more than $7 billion to global relief efforts. Last year, Saudi Arabia alone contributed more than $100 million to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA, and more than $360 million to fund U.N. and international operations in Yemen, including a UNICEF program for children.”
Ban’s anguish: “Delisting the Saudi-led coalition ‘was one of the most painful and difficult decisions I have had to make,’ Ban said. ‘I … had to consider the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously if, as was suggested to me, countries would defund many U.N. programs. Children already at risk in Palestine, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and so many other places would fall further into despair.’” Read the rest of this don’t-tell-your-children story of how the UN works, here.
Finally this week, the good folks at LEGO have at last given us the Saturn V rocket, “the historic booster, which launched the first astronauts to land on the moon”—thanks to some crafty fans, Felix Stiessen and Valerie Roche, “who created the toy Saturn V and shared it on LEGO Ideas, a website where the public can suggest and vote for the models they would like to see be offered for sale.”
“That's one small step for a man," declared Hasan Jensen, a community specialist at LEGO's headquarters in Billund, Denmark, repeating the famous words by moonwalker Neil Armstrong.It stands more than 36” tall, and you glimpse the blueprints, here—or catch a more complete video of it all, here. Have a great weekend, everyone!