RUTHFULLY YOURS

UN Ambassador Nikki Haley warned at a UN Security Council briefing on the nerve agent attack in the UK that “we are rapidly confronting a frightening new reality — if chemical weapons can appear in a small English town, where might they start appearing next?”

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Report on the Attack in Salisbury confirmed the British conclusion that the “high purity” nerve agent used in the attack was Russian Novichok. The UK says it was delivered in liquid form; one of the highest concentrations investigators has found was on Sergei Skripal’s front door handle.

Skripal, a former Russian spy who fed intelligence to the Brits from 1995 to 2004 and was sent to the UK in a spy exchange in 2010, and his daughter Yulia collapsed March 4 at a shopping center in Salisbury. The first police officer on scene, Nick Bailey, was hospitalized in serious condition and later released. A restaurant and a pub in the center tested positive for traces of the nerve agent.

“Last week, the Council met five times to discuss the chemical weapons attack in Douma. Today, we are here yet again talking about chemical weapons. This time, it’s about a military grade nerve agent used against two people on British soil. In the constant push of meeting after meeting here in this chamber, it’s easy to lose track of what this means,” Haley said at the UNSC meeting.

Security, industry and government officials are increasingly warning that the U.S. electrical power grid faces potential widespread failure from broad-based, systemic threats such as a cyberattack or massive electromagnetic pulse (EMP) disturbance. Indeed, nations as varied as North Korea, Iran, China and Russia have hacked into the U.S power grid. As for EMPs, a senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official recently testified before Congress, “EMP can cause widespread disruption and serious damage to electronic devices and networks, including those upon which many critical infrastructures rely.” These so-called “grid-down” risks have yet to be met with the urgency they demand, but time is not on our side.

On the one hand, following growing awareness of the system’s vulnerability to such threats, Duke Energy recently added EMP threats to its emergency plans. Even Congress has gotten engaged by passing EMP-related provisions in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act which, among other actions, directs DHS to include various grid-down scenarios into its planning and exercises.

Yet there has been little progress beyond studies and assessments, many of which conclude that we need more studies and assessments. This is happening even as the potential of conflict this year with Iran and North Korea seems worrisomely high.

If so many authorities agree grid-down cyber and EMP threats are real, why isn’t more being done? The answer, regrettably, lies hidden somewhere in the conflicting roles and responsibilities held by multiple federal, state and local public-sector stakeholders and the thousands of private sector firms that actually run the power grid.

Who sets the standards, who pays for the research, who implements the remedies, and who is liable if they don’t work? The answers, according to most people in each camp, always seems to be the same: “someone else.”

The First Gulf War put American technological advantage on display against an adversary with no means to respond. Media images released throughout the campaign paid tribute to smart bombs, long-range rockets, and vastly improved ground, air and sea-based systems. America’s technological abilities were awe-inspiring.

A quarter-century later, the United States continues to seek technological superiority. Laser weapons, artificial intelligence and unmanned systems—the very stuff of sci-fi movies—are within our grasp. Unfortunately, such advances do not provide the comfort level they previously did.

Unlike the hapless Iraqi Army circa 1991, today’s potential threats and adversaries have the means to respond. Gulf War-era technological advantages like night vision and GPS are becoming commonplace. Advances in computer and information technology enable adversaries to develop new tactics in cyberspace. And nation states have invested in weapon systems and strategies that offset American advantages.

Geography, another traditional American advantage, no longer acts as a protective security barrier. Terror cells and cyber warriors have already shown they can penetrate our borders and deliver devastating blows. The Homeland is no longer a safe haven to build might and project power. Our factories, military bases, and infrastructure will high priority targets in a future war.

This weekend, the so-called charitable arm of the Islamic Circle of North America, ICNA Relief, a group that has been linked to the financing of Hamas, will be sponsoring an event in Texas featuring Hamas operative Monzer Taleb. The title of the event is ‘Changing COMMUNITIES with COMPASSION,’ but there can never be compassion with anything concerning Hamas, only hate, violence and bloodshed.

Monzer Mostafa Taleb (Talib) loves to sing about the Palestinian cause. He has been doing so for years. This includes singing about Hamas, specifically his involvement with Hamas.

During the US government’s prosecution of the Hamas charity Holy Land Foundation (HLF), the trials of which took place in 2007 and 2008, a video was submitted into evidence showing Taleb participating at an event sponsored by the Islamic Association for Palestine as the lead vocalist of a singing troupe called Al-Sakhra. On the video, Taleb sings, “O Jew, O coward… I am from Hamas and have never cheered for anyone else besides her… And she is the one which marches with the light of Muhammad… towards Jihad… And Hamas refuses peace with its enemies, and her slogan is to forever fight the attacker.”

The Islamic Association for Palestine or IAP was the American propaganda wing of Hamas and was founded in 1981 by future Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook and future Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader Sami al-Arian. Both IAP and HLF were member organizations of Marzook’s Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood US umbrella group, the Palestine Committee. [Taleb has also spoken in front of and cavorted with another Palestine Committee member organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).]

Not one of 44 House Democrats bothered with background checks for members of a close-knit group of Pakistani IT aides who ended up gaining “unauthorized access” to congressional data, a new report from The Daily Caller shows.

House security rules require members to start a background check for employees, but they can also put down that another member has vouched for the person.

The background check was waived for all five IT workers, who made headlines last year for what the House inspector general’s report described as activity with “nefarious purposes.”

Pakistan-born Imran Awan, who served as a tech aide in Congress for 13 years, managed to snag congressional IT jobs with salaries as high as $165,000 for his brothers Abid and Jamal, his wife Hina Alvi, and his friend Rao Abbas, who had just been fired from McDonald’s. Together the group was found logging into accounts of representatives who had not hired them, using representatives’ private usernames, and uploading data off of the House network, according to the inspector general’s report.

Abid was working for Representative Yvette Clarke (D., N.Y.) when $120,000 of computer equipment disappeared. Then-congressman Xavier Becerra, who hired Imran, had his server stolen after the inspector general listed it as evidence in an investigation.

Some of the inspector general’s investigators who reviewed the aides’ network activity mused that they may have been ignoring House security protocol simply to share job duties, but others felt it was something more sinister.

One week ago, the City of Atlanta’s computer system took a hit from a ransomware attack that has left the city still struggling to operate normally. The city was caught off guard on March 22 when the attack took place, and the city is still experiencing issues that are at best an inconvenience and at worst an ordeal.

Details about the attack are still a little cloudy. City authorities did confirm that the attack on their network took place and that a ransom note followed. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms stated that the attacker demanded $51,000, though no one else has confirmed the amount.

Bottoms spoke out on the nature of a ransomware attack on her city, as CNN reported:

“I just want to make the point that this is much bigger than a ransomware attack,” she said. “This is really an attack on our government, which means it’s an attack on all of us.”

Ransomware is malicious software that blocks users from accessing some or all of their computer systems by locking them out until a ransom is paid. Officials haven’t said whether the city was going to pay the ransom

“Everything is up for discussion,” was the Mayor’s reply when asked directly by reporters whether the city would pay up.

How has the cyber attack affected the daily lives of Atlantans? Fortunately, the city’s 911 system, law enforcement, and public safety systems did not suffer, nor did Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (though the airport didn’t recover its public wi-fi until Monday). But for the run-of-the-mill citizen attempting to interact with the city, life is certainly not normal.