RUTHFULLY YOURS

In my writings (and speeches) over the past few years, I have communicated the imperative for protecting critical infrastructure against the threat of both cyber and physical attacks. Below is a short compendium of several articles I composed on the topics. Thanks for reading and sharing!

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Emerging focus on cyber-threats to energy infrastructure

by Chuck Brooks in the Federal Times https://www.federaltimes.com/management/2016/10/18/emerging-focus-on-cyberthreats-to-energy-infrastructure/

Recently, the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security hosted an exercise simulating attacks on the power grid and government computer networks. Participants included law enforcement, first responders, and private sector representatives engaged in health and security.

The exercise centered on how the state would react if hackers were able to take down Kentucky’s energy grid while simultaneously engaged in the exfiltration of information from government computer networks. The goal was to provide a gap model and develop best practices that can be utilized by other states and by the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Also last week, InfraGard of the National Capital Region announced a partnership between the FBI and the private sector to protect critical infrastructure and provide a comprehensive effort to recognize and support National Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience Month. The initiative supports the DHS’ National Protection and Programs Directorate’s (NPPD) Office of Infrastructure Protection mission to raise awareness around critical infrastructure protection during the month of November. The energy sector has been a key area of attention for the NPPD.

And perhaps the most concerning of news activity was the announcement by head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, International Atomic Energy Agency Director Yukiya Amano, that a nuclear power plant in Germany was hit by a “disruptive” cyberattack within the past three years. Amano was quoted by Reuters as saying: “This issue of cyberattacks on nuclear-related facilities or activities should be taken very seriously. We never know if we know everything or if it’s the tip of the iceberg.” And he noted that this is ” not an imaginary risk.”

It should also be noted that in 2014, a computer in the control room at Monju Nuclear Power Plant in Tsuruga, Japan, was subjected to malware, but possibly by accident. And in 2015, South Korean hackers targeted Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Company, but luckily to no avail. Most cyber experts believe that North Korea was behind the attempted cyberattack. These incursions are a wake-up call as there is a very real and growing fear that a future cyberattack on a nuclear plant could risk a core meltdown.

Non-nuclear power plants have also been subjected to intrusions and breaches. A hack in Ukraine was held up as a prime example. In December 2015, hackers breached the IT systems of the electricity distribution company Kyivoblenergo in Ukraine, causing a three-hour power outage.

Refineries, dams and data centers are all potential targets of cyber incursion. According to a report released last month titled “The Road to Resilience: Managing and Financing Cyber Risks,” oil and gas companies around the world could face costs of up to $1.87 billion in cybersecurity spending by 2018.

There have been attempted cyberattacks on grids and utilities, many via phishing and ransomware, and some have been successful. Adm. Mike Rodgers, head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, has stated that only two or three countries have the ability to launch a cyberattack that could shut down the entire U.S. power grid and other critical infrastructure.

Much of our grid still relies on antiquated technologies, and more investment in defenses are needed. As technology exponentially advances and as threat actors (including cyber mercenaries) gain tools via the dark web, that number of potential state-sponsored adversaries could expand in the near future.

In 2013, President Barack Obama issued Executive Order 13636, “Improving Critical Infrastructure Cyber-security,” which called for the establishment of a voluntary risk-based cybersecurity framework between the private and public sectors.

Congressman Trent Franks R-Ariz., chairman of the congressional EMP Caucus, and considered the foremost expert in Congress on electromagnetic pulses, has introduced legislation ( HR 3410) called the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act. The law would enable DHS to implement practical steps to protect the electric grid by training and mobilizing first responders for possible EMP events.

Along with Franks and Peter Prye, who heads the Task Force on National and Homeland Security (a congressional advisory board), several noted industry and policy experts, including former CIA Director Jim Woolsey; Frank Gaffney, former deputy secretary of defense and president and CEO of the Center for Security Policy; and Michael Del Rosso, former chairman of IEEE-USA Critical Infrastructure Protection Committee have been especially active in alerting the public to the critical need to find near-term solutions to protect the grid.

Clearly the entire energy critical infrastructure is justified in garnering the attention of DHS, states, regulatory organizations and the many subject-matter experts on the topic of cybersecurity.

While the threats are complex and the threat actors varied among hackers, state sponsors, organized criminal enterprises and terrorists, there are several themes to adhere to mitigate risk. These include:

Remain vigilant and continually analyze and game the energy cyberthreat landscape, as the methods, means and malware variants are constantly morphing.
Share and communicate cybersecurity information between the public and private sectors (a majority of the energy infrastructure is owned by the private sector). The government and industry are currently using pilot programs including Cybersecurity Risk Information Sharing Program and the Trusted Automated eXchange of Indicator Information to facilitate rapid sharing of security information. DHS NPPD has established an active and successful program in the area. DHS’ Cybersecurity Emergency Response Team responded to 295 cyber incidents in the energy sector in 2015.
Follow industry protocols, especially related to Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA). Power companies use SCADA networks to control their industrial systems, and many of these networks need to be updated and hardened to meet growing cybersecurity threats.
Maintain robust access management control and cyber incident response programs. This includes following National Institute of Standards and Technology, North American Electric Reliability Corporation, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and U.S. Nuclear Energy Regulatory Commission cybersecurity protocols.
Invest in next-generation security controls and cybersecurity technologies.

The World Energy Council says countries must raise their game in combating cyberattacks on nuclear and other energy infrastructures. They note that the frequency, sophistication and costs of data breaches are increasing. The expanding cybersecurity focus on energy infrastructure by both the public and private sectors is certainly a welcome development.

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Meeting Security Challenges Through Vigilance, Readiness and Resilience

by Chuck Brooks

This photo, taken during the International Cybersecurity Forum held in Lille, France, shows cables attached to a protective cybersecurity system.

Photo: Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images

In 2017 we are facing a new and more sophisticated array of physical security and cybersecurity challenges that pose significant risk to people, places and commercial networks. The nefarious global threat actors are terrorists, criminals, hackers, organized crime, malicious individuals, and, in some cases, adversarial nation states. Everyone and anything is vulnerable, and addressing the threats requires incorporating a calculated security strategy.

According to Transparency Market Research, the global homeland security market is expected to grow a market size of $364.44 billion by 2020. A large part of the spending increase over the past year is directly related to cybersecurity in both the public and private sectors.

A security strategy to meet growing challenges needs to be both comprehensive and adaptive. Defined by the most basic elements in managed risk, security is composed of:

Layered vigilance (intelligence, surveillance);
Readiness (operational capabilities, visual command center, interdiction technologies);
Resilience (coordinated response, mitigation and recovery).

The specifics of a security approach may vary according to circumstances, but the mesh that connects the elements is situational awareness combined with systematic abilities for critical communications in cases of emergency.

Because society is undergoing such a rapid technological change, the traditional paradigms for addressing threats are evolving with the security challenges. Two particular security challenges characterize the current and future connective landscape in both the public and private sectors: protecting critical infrastructure, and protecting the Internet of Things (IoT) and Smart Cities.
The Security Challenge of Protecting Critical Infrastructure

During a week that witnessed the departure of several prominent members of President Donald Trump’s White House staff, his current National Security Adviser, Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, removed former U.S. Army Col. Derek Harvey, the top Middle East advisor on the National Security Council (NSC), from his post.

The Trump White House openly confirmed the decision, but stopped short of explaining the circumstances behind the firing of yet another staff member who worked under Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn who was canned after he allegedly lied to the Vice President.

In fact, critics of McMaster claim his goal is to remove any of the holdovers from Flynn’s days at NSC.

The McMaster and Harvey date their relationship back to their time in the Army serving in Iraq. Both men were reputed to have been loyal followers of retired Gen. David Petraeus, but they’ve also had some disputes while serving in the Trump administration.

For example, Harvey was known for being a “hawk” on Iran and had been pushing proposals to expand the U.S. military mission in Syria to go after Iranian proxy forces more aggressively. But other national security voices such as Defense Secretary James Mattis pushed back on such proposals, as did McMaster.

Harvey was selected for his NSC post by Gen. Flynn. After Trump sadly had to let Flynn go in February, some of Flynn’s loyalists left with him. However, Harvey and several others remained in their jobs.

According to Harvey’s personal bio, he’s a retired Army colonel who was credited with recognizing — before anyone spoke about it — that the Bush43 administration had a full-blown insurgency on its hands in Iraq following the swift U.S. invasion in 2003, the ouster of Saddam Hussein, and the disbanding of the Iraqi military forces.

In May, Bloomberg Radio reported that Harvey had come up with memo that described what he called “Obama holdovers” at the NSC whom he suspected were leaking to the anti-Trump news media. When chief strategist Stephen Bannon and President Trump urged McMaster to fire them, he simply refused.

In an interview with Al-Monitor, Kenneth Pollack, a former CIA official, said Harvey was handpicked by Petraeus, the former U.S. commander in Iraq and later CIA director, to devise the surge strategy for overcoming the insurgency in Iraq and stabilizing that war-torn country.

Several sources have told Conservative Base that the Trump team must purge the “swamp” within the White House since there’s a good chance most of the leaks are emanating from those surrounding Trump and his inner-circle. “Trump has his work cut out for him: he must endure attacks from the Democratic Party, some Republican Party members, most of the denizens of the news industry and even members of the White House staff,” said former military intelligence officer and police commanding officer Michael Snipes.

“Once the ‘right’ people are purged from the White House, Trump can begin draining the swamp in earnest,” Snipes advised.

President Trump’s intensifying crackdown on transnational crime gang MS-13 is being met with fierce resistance by the Left.

Understanding the leftist mind is an inexact science but the complaints seem to center around the idea that in the Trump era trying to eliminate an ethno-culturally non-diverse criminal organization is somehow racist, no matter how horrifying and brutal the group’s crimes against innocent Americans may be. The Left habitually sides with antisocial causes, putting partisanship over the interests of the American people. Left-wingers promote so-called sanctuary cities which are magnets for illegal aliens and the crime that accompanies them. They don’t care about the damage such policies do to American society.

Although it may sound like hyperbole to some, leftists hate Donald Trump and everything he stands for, so if Trump comes out against rapists and serial killers, for example, the Left will defiantly take a stand in favor of rapists and serial killers.

Racist left-wing journalist Jamelle Bouie of Slate argues that MS-13 is nothing to be afraid of. It’s all hype. He writes that the president’s speeches on MS-13 and illegal aliens employ words to “make white people afraid.”

“Trump wasn’t just connecting immigrants with violent crime,” according to the in-your-face Black Lives Matter supporter. “He was using an outright racist trope: that of the violent, sadistic black or brown criminal, preying on innocent (usually white) women.”

The massive pile of corpses generated by MS-13 suggests otherwise.

Trump’s clampdown on MS-13 is “emboldening them, because this gives them the opportunity to tell immigrants, ‘What are you gonna do? Are you going to report us? They’re deporting other innocent people … [so] they’re going to associate you with us by you coming forward,'” says Walter Barrientos, Long Island coordinator for the far-left Make the Road, which CNN describes as an immigrant advocacy group.

“‘So what are you going to do? Who’s going to protect you?’ And that’s what really strikes many of us.”

Make the Road is heavily funded by George Soros’s philanthropies, National Council of La Raza, as well as by other left-wing funders, including the Tides Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund Inc., Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Surdna Foundation, and the Robin Hood Foundation.

What on earth could generate such apoplexy among left-wingers?

On August 1, 2017, Fox News reported the worrying headline, “Pentagon investigators find ‘security risks’ in government’s immigrant recruitment program, ‘infiltration’ feared.”

Military bases are among the most sensitive facilities to be found in the United States. Classified materials, weapons and, of course, our members of the armed forces, can all be found on every military base. Time and again, we have seen terrorists in the Middle East carry out “Insider Attacks” by joining the military or police and then, when the opportunity presents itself, turn their weapons on their trainers and other soldiers.

Military training is highly prized and sought after by terrorists and criminals. Many terrorists travel around the world to attend terror training camps. Undoubtedly, the training our military recruits receive is a quantum leap above anything that terror training camps provide. Additionally, our soldiers learn the “playbook” employed by our military forces on the battlefield.

The thought that foreign terrorists may have successfully infiltrated our military and gained access to all of the above is highly disturbing, to put it mildly. One recruitment program, known as MAVNI (Military Accessions Vital to National Interest), has especially raised serious concerns in this context. Under this program, according to the Defense Department:

The Secretary of Defense authorized the military services to recruit certain legal aliens whose skills are considered to be vital to the national interest. Those holding critical skills – physicians, nurses, and certain experts in language with associated cultural backgrounds – would be eligible. To determine its value in enhancing military readiness, the limited pilot program will recruit up to 5,200 people in Fiscal Year 2016, and will continue through September 30, 2016.

The Fox News report on MAVNI began with this excerpt:

EXCLUSIVE: Defense Department investigators have discovered “potential security risks” in a Pentagon program that has enrolled more than 10,000 foreign-born individuals into the U.S. armed forces since 2009, Fox News has learned exclusively, with sources on Capitol Hill and at the Pentagon expressing alarm over “foreign infiltration” and enrollees now unaccounted for.

After more than a year of investigation, the Pentagon’s inspector general recently issued a report – its contents still classified but its existence disclosed here for the first time – identifying serious problems with Military Accessions Vital to the National Interest (MAVNI), a DOD program that provides immigrants and non-immigrant aliens with an expedited path to citizenship in exchange for military service.

Defense Department officials said the program is still active but acknowledged that new applications have been suspended.

First of all, it is extremely important to not forget the honorable and dedicated service of many foreign nationals who have served in our nation’s military. Many have made the ultimate sacrifice to safeguard America and Americans, while others have suffered grievous injuries. Those are facts that we must never lose sight of.

However, I ask that you stop and take notice that none of the aliens who participated in MAVNI were illegal aliens. All of the aliens in this program — among whom are those who have apparently gone missing and may have used this program to infiltrate the United States and gain access to military bases and military training — were, as a requirement, legally present in the United States.

Nevertheless, even as you read this, Congress is considering the creation of a similar program for illegal aliens under the auspices of the ENLIST Act (H.R. 60) The term “ENLIST” is an acronym for: “Encourage New Legalized Immigrant to to Start Training.” This dangerous and wrong-headed program would provide illegal aliens who, in the parlance of the open borders/immigration anarchists, entered the United States “Undocumented.”

The cold, hard, irrefutable truth is that these are illegal aliens who entered the United States surreptitiously, without inspection. In other words, they are undocumented. And you cannot tell a “good guy” from a “bad guy” without a scorecard. Undocumented aliens have no scorecards.

If there is a serious problem in vetting aliens who entered the United States with passports and visas, how in the world could our officials begin to vet aliens who evaded the inspections process conducted at ports of entry to prevent the entry of criminals, fugitives and terrorists?

Of course my question is not a really a question in search of an answer, but a rhetorical question. The answer should be self-evident. There is no easy or effective means of vetting such aliens.

A lonely, alienated and angry person is convicted of a crime and imprisoned. Although he is prone to violence, and feels he has been wronged by “the system” he is fearful of prison predators and generally a loner. He is befriended by another prisoner, a skillful radical Moslem who introduces him to the Koran and shows great empathy and offers protection and social interaction. He converts to Islam and meets a charismatic Moslem chaplain, who has been chosen for the job by an Imam with close ties to organizations known to enable and fund terrorism. First, he becomes a messenger whose visitors who are sympathetic to his hatred of authority become conduits of information from and to outside terror operations with calls and orders emanating from the chaplain’s quarters. Ultimately he is converted to the cause of terror and jihad. Thus, a prison terror cell is hatched.

This may sound like a proposal for a movie but it is very real and happens throughout American jails. All Americans interested in national security and terrorism must read Patrick T.Dunleavy’s mesmerizing book “The Fertile Soil of Jihad-Terrorism’s Prison Connection.”

Patrick Dunleavy, former deputy inspector general of the Criminal Intelligence Unit of the New York State Department of Correctional Services which investigates and infiltrates criminal enterprises and conspiracies was a key figure in “Operation Hades” which probed the radical Islamic recruitment for jihad inside and outside prison walls.

In January 1993, only a month before the first World Trade Center bombing, a young Palestinian Arab named Abdel Nasser Zaben was imprisoned for robbery and kidnapping. Medical and psychological records indicate that his language, reading, comprehension and mathematics skills were below average. His devotion to Islam, however, was disciplined and orthodox and he was keen to convert and recruit. Furthermore, his ability to spot a potential recruit and manipulate his fears and frailties is impressive.

Dunleavy traces Zaben’s peregrinations through boroughs and mosques in New York as well as his prison “career” where he recruited a significant and diverse number of common criminals to the cause of Islamic terrorism in several penitentiaries starting with Riker’s Island.

Rashid Baz.

At Riker’s Island, Zaben reconnected with a friend Rashid Baz, a Lebanese livery cab driver celebrated by Hamas sympathizers as the “Holy Warrior and Son of Islam” for opening fire on a van full of Hasidic Jewish boys on the Brooklyn Bridge in March 1994, killing one and wounding several others. Baz was tried and convicted of the second-degree murder of Ari Halberstam, a 16-year-old Jewish yeshiva student from the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, along with fourteen other counts of attempted murder.

From Riker’s Island Zaben moved through the New York Downstate Correctional Facility, a maximum security Auburn Correctional Facility, Cayuga Correctional Facility in the Finger Lakes district of New York, Fishkill Correctional Facility, and finally, after a parole rejection, Shawangunk Correctional Facility from which he was released and deported in 2005.

On June 3, 2017, a man boarding a bus in a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland was recognized by one of the passengers as the perpetrator of an armed robbery that had taken place earlier in the day. The passenger immediately called the police, and officers intercepted the bus at a subsequent stop, blocking one of its doors, to prevent the suspect — 35-year-old Blaine Robert Erb — from fleeing.

Erb responded by drawing two semi-automatic pistols from his backpack and firing both in all directions. He was killed during the shootout, which was captured on surveillance cameras.

What was not covered by the press about the incident — reported as yet another example of the wanton violence that has come to characterize Baltimore – was a description of Erb’s attire and other aspects of his appearance. This is a significant “oversight”: what the video footage reveals is that Erb was wearing a Muslim thobe and large skull cap, and that he sported a long, bushy red beard. This could indicate that he is among those coined by certain experts in the U.K. as “ginger jihadis” to denote “redheaded men and women … replacing the ritual bullying of the playground with the ritual strictures of radical Islam, perhaps… as a result of the bullying and persecution they endure early in life.”

Although it is not clear whether Erb was bullied as a child or ever converted to Islam, his extensive rap sheet is on record. Wanted for failing to appear in court on multiple DUI charges, Erb served jail sentences for various crimes, including assault, theft, robbery and possession of illegal weapons. According to a 2014 report in the Daily Caller, in 2006, then-FBI Director Robert Mueller told a Senate committee that prisons were becoming a “fertile ground” for jihadis, who were indoctrinating and recruiting fellow inmates in the ideology of radical Islam. Erb could easily have been recruited behind bars. In April 2016, the New York Times reported that the number of convicted terrorists currently housed in American prisons is 443 — a number that dwarfs the number of inmates at Guantanamo Bay.

This prison practice, in high gear across the West, sparked Britain to create three special “jihadi jails-within-jails,” to keep the most dangerous extremists from having contact with, and then influencing, the general criminal population. A recent report in the U.K.’s Metro states that Michael Adebolajo — one of the men who murdered British Army soldier Lee Rigby — and the extremist Muslim preacher Anjem Choudary are thought to be among the prisoners transferred to a separate facility.

The American twist to Erb’s story is its connection to another domestic terrorism problem plaguing the U.S. — the growing number of jihadis targeting police officers. The case of ISIS supporter Edward Archer — who confessed to gunning down a Philadelphia police officer “in the name of Islam” — is but one example.

In Queens, New York, 32-year-old Zale Thompson attacked New York City police officers with a hatchet. Thompson, who friends claimed also espoused “black power” politics, had viewed a total of 277 websites promoting jihad, Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and beheadings prior to launching his attack. He also had previously been arrested several times in California and charged with domestic violence.

Also in New York, Ismaayil Brinsley posted extremely pro-jihad Koran quotes and other such material on his Facebook and Twitter accounts before murdering two NYPD officers in December 2014. Brinsley, like Thompson, had connections to black supremacist organizations, including the Black Guerrilla Family. Brinsley most probably had made such connections while serving time in Georgia and Ohio prisons. Brinsley had already been arrested 19 times.

The Chechen Tsarnaev brothers set off bombs at the Boston Marathon, and then murdered MIT police officer Sean Collier during their attempted escape. The elder brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, began his criminal career as a low-level drug dealer who played a role in a triple-murder in Waltham in 2011.

In France, police have also been the victims of jihadi shootings and car bombs. Last April, a gunman with known ties to jihadi networks killed a police officer on the Champs Elysées. “Karim C” had an extensive history of moving in and out of jail.

According to Aaron Klein, author of Schmoozing With Terrorists, ISIS began to take advantage of racial tensions in America in 2015 by attempting to recruit disgruntled black Muslims in Ferguson and Baltimore. This was months after the Daily Mail reported that ISIS supporters vowed on Twitter to send militants to fight police in Ferguson if protesters committed to Islam.

The irony is that the more the West pledges to combat global terrorism and keep it contained militarily or through criminal justice systems, the more jihadists manage to spread their message — on social media, in mosques and in prisons — by infiltrating the hearts and minds of individuals and groups susceptible to it. Erb appears to have been such a person. His story should be highlighted, not buried.

What are the new Cybersecurity stakes – what are the vulnerabilities and risks?https://highperformancecounsel.com/new-cybersecurity-stakes-interview-cybersecurity-thought-leader-chuck-brooks/

We live in world of algorithms; x’s and o’s. Our digital world is ripe for access and compromise by those who want do harm from just a laptop and server. A myriad of recent breaches have demonstrated that as consumers we are becoming more and more dependent upon digital commerce. Our banking accounts, credit cards, and financial daily activities are interconnected. We are all increasingly vulnerable from hackers, phishers, and malware proliferating across all commercial verticals.

In the past year, the employment of ransomware has become a method of cyber-attack choice by hackers. This is because many networks (especially hospitals, utilities, universities, and small businesses) are comprised of different systems, devices and often lack required patching and updating necessary to thwart attacks. The recent Wannacry, and Petya attacks were certainly wake up calls to the disruptive implications of ransomware. We can expect to see more such attacks because of the ease of infection and because the vulnerabilities to networks still remain.

Ransomware is not a new threat, it has been around for at least 15 years, but it has become a trending one. Experts estimate that there are now 124 separate families of ransomware and hackers have become very adept at hiding malicious code. Success for hackers does not always depend on using the newest and most sophisticated malware. It is relatively easy for a hacker to do. In most cases, they rely on the most opportune target of vulnerability, especially with the ease of online attacks.

More ominous are the Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDoS). Tech Target provides a succinct definition of A distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is an attack in which multiple compromised computer systems attack a target, such as a server, website or other network resource, and cause a denial of service for users of the targeted resource. The flood of incoming messages, connection requests or malformed packets to the target system forces it to slow down or even crash and shut down, thereby denying service to legitimate users or systems. The connectivity of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its billions of connected devices is conducive for DDoS activities. In 2016 a DDoS attacks were launched against a Domain Name System (DNS) called Dyn. The attack directed a variety of IoT connected devices to overload and take out internet platforms and services.

Consider the dire and eye opening facts: Hackers attack every 39 seconds and around one billion accounts and records were compromised worldwide last year. There are estimates that global Cybercrime damage costs will reach $6 trillion annually by 2021. Cybercrime is growing exponentially and so are the risks.

In 1989, America had 1,000 nuclear missile silos, and a small number of additional bomber and submarine bases and submarines at sea, facing 13,500 Soviet warheads. Today, the U.S. has 450 such silos facing 1,750 Russian warheads. That is a switch from a ratio of 13 Russian warheads to every U.S. missile silo, to a ratio of 4 Russian warheads to every U.S. missile silo. Getting rid of Minuteman ICBMs would reverse that progress and make the ratio even worse, with 175 Russian warheads to every U.S. missile silo. How is that an improvement?

The U.S. “cannot afford to delay modernization initiatives” while the “American people and our allies are counting on congressional action to fund our nuclear enterprise modernization efforts.” — General Robin Rand, the commander of the Air Force Global Strike Command.

America’s ability to defend itself is at stake.

In April 2017, the Pentagon launched the U.S. Defense Department’s legislatively mandated quadrennial Nuclear Posture Review to determine American policy, strategy and capabilities. The process now underway involves testimony from experts arguing over how the estimated $27 billion spent annually (growing over the next decade by an additional $10 billion a year) on America’s nuclear arsenal should be allocated.

One claim, made by a number of experts, is that investing in the effort to upgrade America’s exiting nuclear arsenal — the land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) — would be destabilizing and wasteful. They are, it is claimed, highly vulnerable to enemy attack and therefore do not provide deterrence. Among the 40 House members who suggest killing the land-based missiles is the ranking Democratic member of the House Armed Services Committee.

The opposite position was expressed recently by General Robin Rand, the commander of the Air Force Global Strike Command (AFGSC). He persuasively argued that, far from being either destabilizing or unnecessary, “Our bomber and Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) forces, and our nuclear command, control, and communications systems defend our national interests, assure our allies and partners, and deter potential adversaries.”

Addressing the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee on June 7, Rand said, “ICBMs are the sole weapon system capable of rapid global response and impose a time-proven and unpalatable cost to attack by peer, near-peer and aspiring nuclear nations.”

The discrepancy in viewpoints stems from the difference in perception about American nuclear power and deterrence. Those who disagree with Rand are stuck in Cold War thinking, which has become largely irrelevant in today’s world. To understand this better, a review of the history of the U.S.-Soviet arms race is necessary.

In January 1967, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson announced that the USSR had greatly expanded its powerful multiple-warhead land-based missiles, as well as having begun to build an anti-ballistic-missile defense system (ABM) around Moscow — which would enable it to launch a first strike against the U.S. without fear of an effective retaliation against Soviet leadership bunkers — and called for strategic arms limitations talks (SALT).

Johnson’s successor, Richard Nixon, continued with the process, formally launching the negotiations in November 1969 that led to the signing of the SALT I executive agreement in May 1972. When Gerald Ford became president, he agreed with Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev on a general framework for a second agreement — SALT II — marginally to limit the deployment capabilities of each side, but still allow major increases in warheads, especially powerful, multi-warhead land-based Soviet missiles.

Why didn’t intelligence agencies prevent 9/11? According to the 9/11 Commission, before the attacks, information from intelligence agencies “often failed to make its way to criminal investigators” at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

By the summer of 2000, the Central Intelligence Agency already knew that two future hijackers were associates of known terrorists, that both men held visas to enter the U.S., and that one had in fact flown to Los Angeles in March 2000. Unfortunately, the FBI learned of this in August 2001—at which point the men had already made their last, fateful entry into the U.S. With better information-sharing, the FBI might have arrested the terrorists and prevented the 9/11 attacks.

Some members of Congress now propose to erect new barriers against information-sharing within the intelligence community that could make it even more difficult for officials to spot future terrorists before they strike.

The proposal would affect Section 702, a 2008 law that allows the intelligence community to collect the communications of foreign intelligence targets when the communications travel across U.S. internet cables or are stored on U.S. servers. This has been an effective counterterrorism tool because foreign targets’ messages often touch the U.S. internet infrastructure.

Foreign targets are not protected by the Fourth Amendment, so the government has the authority to collect their messages under Section 702 without a warrant. But when foreign targets communicate with Americans, those messages are collected as well, raising privacy concerns.

Another key aspect of the privacy debate around Section 702 is what intelligence agencies should be allowed to do with that data. Courts have allowed agencies to search their 702 records for foreign intelligence purposes and, in the FBI’s case, for evidence of crime, which sometimes includes searches for information about Americans.

Privacy-minded House members from both parties are now reportedly considering amending Section 702 to bar government officials from searching 702 data for information about an American unless they get a warrant, based on probable cause, from a federal judge. Reformers have leverage this year because Congress must pass a 702 reauthorization bill before the law sunsets on Dec. 31.

But keeping officials from searching this data would make it more difficult to prevent homegrown terrorist attacks. In 2009 the National Security Agency used 702 to collect emails in which an unknown person in the U.S. asked an al Qaeda member in Pakistan for advice on making explosives. Those emails led the FBI to Najibullah Zazi, a Colorado man with imminent plans to bomb the New York subway system. Catching him saved dozens if not hundreds of lives. If an American appears to be radicalizing, the first thing the FBI should do is check the information already in its database to see whether that person has been in contact with known ISIS or al Qaeda operatives. CONTINUE AT SITE