NSA slide (Washington Post)
Yesterday was the day “global spying allegations” went “insane,” according to Foreign Policy. The biggest news was the Washington Post blockbuster that NSA is hoovering up user data from Google and Yahoo. As we’ve said before, and as Shane Harris and Noah Schachtman say again, this is damaging U.S. competitiveness in a hotly contested field. Is the intel we’re getting worth it?
Bloomberg, somewhat breathlessly, wonders whether sequestration is breaking the defense-industrial-Congressional complex.
Joe Royo revisits the Strategy for Peace proposed by Nixon SecDef Melvin Laird, who wrote, “It is not a policy of warfighting; it is not a policy of status quo; it is a policy to move this country and the world towards a generation of peace based on three principles – partnership, strength, and willingness to negotiate.” (Small Wars Journal)
Lazarus offers his take on the worth and fate of the Office of Net Assessment. (Information Dissemination)
Sam LaGrone and Dave Majumdar have a list of 10 areas the Air-Sea Battle Office is working on; just scroll down below the photo of the LCAC. (USNI News)
Warlord’s Quote
“We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by organizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.” — Attributed to Petronius Arbiter, 210 B.C.
Contributed by Col. (ret.) Jim Kurtz, who often served on high-level Pentagon staffs before he became Deputy Director of the Institute for Defense Analyses’ Joint Advanced Warfighting Division. From a list compiled by the Warlord Loop, a private email forum for national security experts.
Keep in touch
For more articles on strategy and other military affairs, subscribe to our bimonthly e-newsletter, follow us on Twitter, or add the AFJ Daily RSS feed to your newsreader. And tell us about your own must-reads at mustreads@armedforcesjournal.com.
Recent Comments