RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/11/23/restart-

The modern core of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative is called Ground-based Midcourse Defense technology (GMD). That technology can engage and destroy intermediate and long-range ballistic missiles in space to protect America’s homeland.

It relies on ground-based interceptor (GBI) rockets to deploy exoatmospheric kill vehicles (EKV) into the path of incoming nuclear warheads. Those EKVs use globally deployed sensors and sensor/propulsion technology onboard to guide the vehicle to use kinetic energy from a direct hit to destroy the incoming target vehicle. That has been proven to work to stop incoming missiles in recent tests.

The Pentagon was planning to modernize this system by replacing the old EKVs with new redesigned kill vehicles (RKVs), specifically intended to defend against possible ballistic missile attacks from North Korea and Iran. But in May this year, the Pentagon reported a two-year delay in the RKV’s development and announced a pause in the modernization as a result.

Now Michael Griffin, undersecretary of Defense for research and engineering, has issued a stop-work order to Boeing on further development of the new, more modern RKV “due to technical design problems.” Raytheon is the actual developer of the RKV, serving as a subcontractor to Boeing.

The RKV was meant to replace the EKVs on all current and future GMD interceptor rockets, a total of 64 ultimately. Currently, there are 44 GBIs at Fort Greely in Alaska and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, with plans to add 22 additional missile silos at Fort Greely to support 20 more GBIs.

Under the new Defense Department budget, the RKV is now planned for its first intercept test in fiscal 2023. The plan is now to deploy the RKV on GBI missiles in 2025 at the soonest.

Meanwhile, the old EKV is still working, now better than ever, given the most recent tests. The Missile Defense Agency needs to complete its modernization with the new RKV before missile defense is dangerously degraded.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/former-cia-officer-sentenced-to-19-years-in-prison-over-chinese-espionage-contacts/

A Central Intelligence Officer who was paid nearly $1 million from Chinese sources, and admitted to taking directions from Chinese agents to reveal classified U.S. intelligence, was sentenced to 19 years in prison Friday, the third former U.S. intelligence officer to be convicted this year over contacts with China.

Jerry Chun Shing Lee, who served for over a decade in the CIA, “had firsthand knowledge of some of the CIA’s most significant secrets, from the location of operations to counterintelligence techniques to the identities of clandestine human sources and the identities of covert CIA officers,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.

Lee was arrested in January 2018 after the FBI found notebooks and a thumb drive containing classified intel on CIA operatives and locations. He pleaded guilty in May to conspiring to provide national defense information with a foreign government.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/macys-holiday-breach-highlights-retailer-need-for-encryption-and-scrutiny-of-third-party-systems/

Attackers were collecting user credit card information for an entire week from the Macy’s website before they were alerted. Here’s how retailers can protect themselves.

Just a few weeks before America spends billions of dollars on Black Friday, Macy’s is facing a PR nightmare after it was forced to notify thousands of customers that their credit card information was sent to cybercriminals during a hack on October 7. 

The billion-dollar retailer, which controls nearly 600 stores across the country, said hackers injected malicious “card-skimming” JavaScript into their ‘Checkout’ and ‘My Wallet’ pages, meaning the credit card information, addresses and names of thousands were recorded on another website that could be accessed by the attackers. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/11/19/chicago-college-student-arrested-trying-support-isis-terrorists/4243954002/

CHICAGO — A 20-year-old U.S. college student was arrested Monday for allegedly writing computer code to help the Islamic State spread propaganda online, according to the FBI.

Thomas Osadzinski, a student at DePaul University who lives in the city’s northside neighborhood of Buena Park, was charged in a federal criminal complaint with one count of attempting to provide material support to a terrorist organization — a charge punishable by up to 20 years.

Osadzinski appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeffrey Cole in Chicago Tuesday and was ordered held without bond.

According to the complaint, Osadzinski designed a process that uses a computer script to make ISIS propaganda easier to access and disseminate on a social media platform, bypassing preventive code which routinely removes ISIS content due to the violent nature of the materials.

The complaint, however, did not identify the social media platform, saying only that it was a mobile and desktop messaging application.

Osadzinski earlier this year shared his script — and instructions for how to use it — with individuals whom he believed to be ISIS supporters and members of pro-ISIS media organizations, the complaint says. Those individuals were actually covert FBI employees and a person working with them.

Printing an ISIS poster in the DePaul library

Osadzinski was born in Park Ridge, Illinois. Agents began tracking him in June of 2018, when Osadzinski posted in a pro-ISIS chatroom, according to the complaint. Osadzinski, unsolicited, began reaching out to pro-ISIS media platforms and offering to help translate videos from Arabic to English.

“I know English well. If you need help tell me…” he wrote to an agent in Arabic on the social media platform.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/ten-years-after-115-lloyd-billingsley/

On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood, Texas, Major Nidal Hasan, a self-proclaimed “soldier of Allah,” gunned down 13 unarmed American soldiers, including Pvt. Francheska Velez, who was pregnant. Yelling the familiar “Allahu akbar,” Hasan chased down the wounded and shot them in the back. The major would have killed many more if police officer Kim Munley had not fired on the shooter. For the more than 30 the Muslim major wounded, the troubles were only beginning.

The 11/5 Fort Hood massacre was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.

For the president of the United States formerly known as Barry Soetoro, it was only “workplace violence,” not even “gun violence.” That prevented the survivors from getting the medals and medical treatment they deserved. For his part, Major Hasan never should have been in a position to attack them.

As Robert Spencer notes, Maj. Hasan told colleagues infidels should have their throats cut, heads chopped off, and boiling oil poured down their throat. He told students Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution and suicide bombings were justified. Hasan’s jihadist tilt was well known but his Army superiors “kept promoting him” even as the FBI tracked his terrorist contacts.

As a 2012 congressional hearing revealed, Hasan openly communicated with Muslim cleric and terrorist mastermind Anwar al-Awlaki. In one email, Hasan told al-Awlaki, “Please keep me in your Rolodex in case you find me useful, and please feel free to call me collect.” Even so, under FBI boss Robert Mueller “the case was dropped until November 5, when the media began circulating reports of the massacre” and at that time the FBI agents “knew exactly who the perpetrator was.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/schumer-complains-about-isis-terrorists-michael-cutler/

President Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria was borne of his desire to keep his campaign promises of not continuing to spill American blood by having American troops serve as the “police force for the world.”

It should come as no surprise that Senator Chuck Schumer was among the most vociferous opponents of the President’s decision.  Virtually any statement or decision that President Trump might make immediately becomes the subject of a Chuck Schumer tirade.

On October 17, 2019 the Washington Times reported, Chuck Schumer’s bid to rebuke Trump over Syria fails in Senate. That news report began with this excerpt that show how there is no easy or clear path as to how to deal with this international diplomatic and military quagmire that preceded Trump’s election:

Senators fought Thursday over how to try to patch up the mess in Syria, but it quickly became clear that beyond being frustrated with President Trump, there’s little unity on what, exactly, the U.S. should do.

Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, tried to force a symbolic rebuke of Mr. Trump, saying it would send a signal that might make the president reverse his decisions and send U.S. troops back in, but that was blocked by Sen. Rand Paul.

The Kentucky Republican said not only has Congress never authorized going to war in Syria, but sending troops back would mean putting them in between Turkey and the Kurds, both U.S. allies but who are now battling each other.

On October 13, 2019 MSN (MicroSoft News) republished a news report posted by the local NYC radio station, CBS News Radio 880, that announced, Schumer: Trump’s Syria Troop Withdrawal Threatens Security Of NYC.

Here is an excerpt from that report:

Schumer says New Yorkers know the impact of terrorism more than anyone else.

HTTPS://GIZMODO.COM/U-S-MILITARY-WILL-STOP-USING-FLOPPY-DISCS-TO-OPERATE-I-18391

The systems used to control the United States arsenal of nuclear weapons rely on outdated computers. But the Department of Defense is updating at least one part of the archaic technology—the floppy disk storage systems.

A 60 Minutes segment in 2014 presented a tour of a nuclear control center, revealing to the public that the computers that would take a nuclear launch order from the President rely on 8-inch disks invented nearly half a century ago.

Defense tech news site C4isrnet reports that the Strategic Automated Command and Control System (SACCS)—the communication infrastructure that transmits emergency action messages for nuclear command centers—is ditching the floppy disks. Lieutenant Colonel Jason Rossi, 595th Strategic Communications Squadron commander, told C4isrnet the SACCS is upgrading to a “highly-secure solid state digital storage solution.”

U.S Strategic Communications did not immediately respond to a Gizmodo request for comment on the report.

As C4isrnet points out, the Government Accountability Office wrote in 2016 that the SACCS operates on an IBM Series/1 computer from the 1970s, and the Pentagon planned “to update its data storage solutions, port expansion processors, portable terminals, and desktop terminals by the end of fiscal year 2017.”