Intelligence

Phantom Eye in the Sky

Tuesday’s killing of al-Qaeda deputy Abu Yahya al-Libi proves that persistence pays when it comes to tracking down terrorists. Boeing has just completed the first autonomous flight of its Phantom Eye aircraft over Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., which blazes a new contrail in long-staring persistence.

This is a prototype of the …

White House Says al-Qaeda’s No. 2 Killed

A drone strike in Pakistan has netted a big fish: al-Qaeda’s No. 2, Abu Yahya al-Libi, according to White House spokesman Jay Carney.

Asked about al-Libi’s reported death at Tuesday’s White House briefing, Carney initially was equivocal: “I can tell you that our intelligence community has intelligence that leads them to …

Drone Worrier

On the eve of the 1991 Gulf War – as hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops streamed toward Iraq-occupied Kuwait – a U.S. Army officer remarked how much easier all this would be if someone – a Saddam Hussein turncoat, …

Cold War Calculations

Fascinating study out from the folks up at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass. George J. Borjas (of Harvard’s Kennedy School) and Kirk B. Doran (of Notre Dame) studied U.S. mathematicians to see what impact the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago had on their work.

They were interested in exploring …

Death to “Resource Wars”!

Nice Washington Post piece on Saturday about how the “center of gravity” in global oil exploration and production is shifting to the Western hemisphere. No, the bulk of global conventional oil reserves still sits in the Persian …

NoKo Non-Nuclear Blast: A Secret Plea for Help?

North Korea has reacted sharply to criticism over the weekend from the working G8 lunch at Camp David. “All of us agree that North Korea is violating its international obligations and that there is a path for them to rejoin the international community,” President Obama said. “But that objective will not be achieved if they continue …

Private Bradley Manning: Hero or Traitor?

Army Private Bradley Manning represents a Rorschach tests for many Americans. The Army arrested the 24-year-old two years ago after classified material he allegedly downloaded from a military intelligence network while serving in Iraq ended up being made public by WikiLeaks. His supporters laud him for exposing war-crime atrocities, …

Letters from Abbottabad: Bin Laden’s Bleak Final Days

The latest batch of Osama bin Laden documents shows what you’d expect from a one-time terror mastermind whose best years were behind him. He’d spent six years confined to a house with several of his wives, and where the only way he could get outside was to walk inside the walled compound, or atop the walled rooftop.

Nearly 200 …

Growth Industry

This chart from a new Government Accountability briefing shows the increase in cyber attacks on U.S. government agencies. The number of attacks have jumped from 5,503 in 2006 to 42,887 in 2011, an increase of nearly 680 percent.

“GAO has identified vulnerabilities in systems that monitor and control sensitive processes and …

Navy Looking Skyward to Tame Pirates

From Time’s Techland blog:

Pirates are funny when they’re portrayed by a rum-soaked Johnny Depp. In real life, however, they pose a serious problem, with around 160 ships and 4,000 sailors affected by pirates in the last decade. Last year, three American tourists were killed by Somali pirates after an unsuccessful raid by Navy SEALS.

Final Dive

Christian Lambertsen, a World War II combat diver from the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the CIA, conducted his final mission March 10 when his ashes were committed to the Atlantic Ocean. There was a small …

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