Noah Shachtman - 07.20.09

Todd Pedersen had to hustle—the sky was scheduled to start glowing soon, and he didn’t want to miss it. It was just before sunset, a cold February evening in deep-woods Alaska, and the broad-shouldered US Air Force physicist was scrambling across the snow in his orange down parka and fur-lined bomber hat. Grabbing cables and electronics, he rushed to assemble a jury-rigged telescope atop a crude wooden platform.

The rig wasn’t much, just a pair of high-sensitivity cameras packed into a dorm-room refrigerator and pointed at a curved mirror reflecting a panoramic view of the sky. Pedersen had hoped to monitor the camera feed from a relatively warm bunkhouse nearby. But powdery snow two feet deep made it difficult to string cables back to the building.

As darkness closed in, Pedersen tried to get the second imager working—with no luck—and the first one began snapping pictures. A few minutes before seven, throbbing arcs of green and red light began to form on his monitor, eventually coalescing into an egg shape. Other shards of light shimmered, gathered into a jagged ring, and spun around the oval center. “This is really good stuff,” Pedersen cooed. This wasn’t just another aurora borealis triggered by solar winds; this one Pedersen made himself. He did it with the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (Haarp): a $250 million facility with a 30-acre array of antennas capable of spewing 3.6 megawatts of energy into the mysterious plasma of the ionosphere.

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Whistleblower Mark Klein tells in his new book of how he was ignored. He spoke with IDG News.

Robert McMillan - July 17, 2009

p>The cliché doesn’t seem far off the mark after reading Mark Klein’s new book, “Wiring up the Big Brother Machine … and Fighting It.” It’s an account of his experiences as the whistleblower who exposed a secret room at a Folsom Street facility in San Francisco that was apparently used to monitor the Internet communications of ordinary Americans.

Klein, 64, was a retired AT&T communications technician in December 2005, when he read the New York Times story that blew the lid off the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. Secretly authorized in 2002, the program lets the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) monitor telephone conversations and e-mail messages of people inside the U.S. to identify suspected terrorists. Klein knew right away that he had proof — documents from his time at AT&T — that could provide a snapshot of how the program was siphoning data off of the AT&T network in San Francisco.

Amazingly, however, nobody wanted to hear his story. In his book he talks about meetings with reporters and privacy groups that went nowhere until a fateful January 20, 2006, meeting with Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Bankston was preparing a lawsuit that he hoped would put a stop to the wiretap program, and Klein was just the kind of witness the EFF was looking for.

With the EFF on board, Klein was briefly a media celebrity — the man who had the guts to expose the NSA’s secret wiretapping program. In his book he provides the documents and the stories that illustrate how all of this transpired.

Klein has been politically active since the 1960s, when he protested the Vietnam war. “I came to view the government with great suspicion like a lot of people back then and I still do,” he said in an interview he granted the IDG News service on Friday. “I guess that sort of laid the groundwork for my later experience, because I didn’t trust the government to begin with.”

Today he lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Linda, and his two dogs. He self-published his book last week.

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New budget docs reveal that the NSA is building a large new datacenter in Utah so that it can inhale more of your e-mail traffic. No word yet on how much it will pay for the large lidless eye wreathed in flame that will tower over the new facility.

Jon Stokes - July 6, 2009

A set of congressional budget documents reveals that the NSA plans to spend almost $1.8 billion over the next few years building a massive datacenter at Fort Williams in Utah. The docs describe the first part of a multi-phase construction project, which is slated to start next year. This first phase (PDF) involves developing infrastructure for the one million square foot center, infrastructure that includes 65MW of electrical power distribution, basic plumbing and drainage, and security and access control.

Power is apparently one of the key reasons that the NSA is looking to branch out from its massive Fort Meade facility and set up datacenters in other locations. The Salt Lake Tribune, which appears to have been first to the story, reports that there are two large power corridors that pass through Camp Williams, so the NSA will focus on hooking into those in the first phase of the project.

The Baltimore Sun ran a story in 2006, well before work started on this new facility, about the strain placed by the Fort Meade facility on Baltimore’s power grid. (The Sun link is broken, but this Slashdot link still works.) The NSA was allegedly in danger of overloading the grid, so it was taking various measures to reduce datacenter power consumption.

Design work on the new center apparently started in November 2008, according to one document, and the NSA is targeting June 2010 to actually start work on the new facility.

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David Hambling - June 3, 2009

The story that the CIA uses tiny homing beacons to guide their drone strikes in Pakistan may sound like an urban myth. But this sort of technology does exist, and might well be used for exactly this purpose. It might even have been the “secret weapon” that Bob Woodward said helped the American military pacify Iraq.

The military has spent hundreds of millions of dollars researching, developing, and purchasing a slew of “Tagging tracking and locating” (TTL) gear — gizmos designed to keep covertly tabs from far away. Most of these technologies are highly classified. But there’s enough information in the open literature to get a sense of what the government is pursuing: laser-based reflectors, super-strength RFID tags, and homing beacons so tiny, they can be woven into fabric or into paper.

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Antifascist - June 10, 2009

What Pentagon theorists describe as a “Revolution in Military Affairs” (RMA) leverages information technology to facilitate (so they allege) command decision-making processes and mission effectiveness, i.e. the waging of aggressive wars of conquest.

It is assumed that U.S. technological preeminence, referred to euphemistically by Airforce Magazine as “compressing the kill chain,” will assure American military hegemony well into the 21st century. Indeed a 2001 study, Understanding Information Age Warfare, brought together analysts from a host of Pentagon agencies as well as defense contractors Boeing, Booz Allen Hamilton and the MITRE Corporation and consultants from ThoughtLink, Toffler Associates and the RAND Corporation who proposed to do just.

As a result of this and other Pentagon-sponsored research, military operations from Afghanistan to Iraq and beyond aim for “defined effects” through “kinetic” and “non-kinetic” means: leadership decapitation through preemptive strikes combined with psychological operations designed to pacify (terrorize) insurgent populations. This deadly combination of high- and low tech tactics is the dark heart of the Pentagon’s Unconventional Warfare doctrine.

In this respect, “network-centric warfare” advocates believe U.S. forces can now dominate entire societies through ubiquitous surveillance, an always-on “situational awareness” maintained by cutting edge sensor arrays as well as by devastating aerial attacks by armed drones, warplanes and Special Forces robosoldiers.

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Paul David Collins | 2009-05-31 - Cook’s own observations since leaving NASA have led him to conclude that the space militarization agenda has continued on to the present day. The agenda saw a temporary setback during the Clinton Administration when use of the Shuttle for military missions was discontinued. But the George W. Administration saw the return of militarization efforts. This time, according to Cook, the effort is being carried out under the pretext of colonizing the moon.

http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/Articles/War_In_The_Heavens.htm

Karl Fabricius - Apr 26, 2009

Man has climbed the highest mountains; he has penetrated the densest forests, crossed the greatest deserts and descended miles below to the murky depths of the ocean floor. He has conquered the skies, the land and the sea, but there is one battle he has not won – yet – the battle to conquer the mind.

In a sleepy suburb on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Margaret Newsham is attempting to lead a normal life away from the days where she worked at a giant listening station at RAF base Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, England. Despite this, she is unable to escape her past.

She sleeps with a loaded gun under her bed and is protected by her 120-pound German shepherd, who is trained to guard and attack. At any time, certain factions in the NSA and the CIA may attempt to silence her for her role in the most extensive espionage network on earth, capable of tapping into millions of phone calls an hour: project ECHELON.

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Huge news for real-life ray guns: Electric lasers have hit battlefield strength for the first time — paving the way for energy weapons to go to war.

Noah Shachtman - March 18, 2009

In recent test-blasts, Pentagon-researchers at Northrop Grumman managed to get its 105 kilowatts of power out of their laser — past the “100kW threshold
[that] has been viewed traditionally as a proof of principle for ‘weapons
grade’ power levels for high-energy lasers,” Northrop’s vice president
of directed energy systems, Dan Wildt, said in a statement.

That much power won’t get you a Star Wars-style blaster. But it should be more than enough to zap the mortars and rockets that insurgents have used to pound American bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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Wired | Mar 17, 2009

By Noah Shachtman

Some of the military’s leading scientific advisers are looking into the idea of remaking the planet’s environment, to stave off global warming.

The idea of “geoengineering” — hacking the Earth’s climate, to prevent more radical changes — has been kicking around the scientific fringes for years. One scheme calls for adding iron to the ocean, to stimulate the growth of greenhouse gas-absorbing algae. Another for “loading the skies” with sulfate particles that “act as mini-reflectors, shading out sunlight and cooling the Earth.” A third, “covering the Arctic with dust.” Most mainstream climatologists have responded to the proposals with a combination of snickers and horror; the environment is such a chatoic system, they argue, that there’s no telling what such wholesale monkeying around with it will do.

In recent months, however, several “top institutions have launched efforts to study the subject,” the ScienceInsider blog notes. The Pentagon’s secretive JASON scientific panel is schedule to discuss geonengineering soon. The National Academies are hosting a workshop over the summer. The U.K. Royal Society should have study out by then, too.

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via Cryptogon

(MICHAEL FIELD 06/03/2009) - A leaked American study into military actions in Afghanistan reveals New Zealand is now plugged into the world’s most secret intranet, allowing access to the Pentagon’s battle plans.

“Secret Internet Protocol Router Network”, or SIPRNET, is a sophisticated alternative to the internet, allowing New Zealand frigate control rooms and armoured vehicles access to material seen on generals’ desks in Washington.

Defence Minister Wayne Mapp refused to comment on the link. “We don’t discuss security matters,” he said through a spokesman.

A spokeswoman for the United States embassy in Wellington said it would not comment on security or intelligence matters. “What I can say is that the US considers New Zealand a partner, a team-mate and an extremely close friend.

“Bilateral communication is an obvious part of such a friendship but the specific mechanisms we use for government-to-government communication are not something we discuss publicly.”

New Zealand’s place in the network has been revealed by whistleblower Wikileaks, which published a Rand Corporation study into intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wikileaks says the study into counter-insurgency is a notable news and policy source for the wealth of revealing interview quotes it contains.

Rand says that, in Iraq and Afghanistan, coalition forces often did not have access to US intelligence and at times this put British soldiers at “mortal risk”.

As a result the US National Security Agency and Defence Department opened SIPRNET “to a small pool of trusted allies”, including Australia, Canada, Britain and New Zealand.

There are no New Zealand forces in Iraq, but a reconstruction team works in Afghanistan and at times the Special Air Service is deployed there.

New Zealand’s high level of trust contrasts with the official political line that it is a friend but not an ally of the US as a result of its ban on nuclear weapons.

Few details of SIPRNET are public. It is a closed system with no access to the internet, thus protecting it from virus attacks. Last year Colonel Mike Convertino of the US Air Force Cyber Command told media: “We conduct wars on SIPRNET, so it’s very important that there is little to no chance that it can be interfered with.”

Cryptogon - February 12th, 2009

So, an Iridium satellite just happened to collide with a defunct Russian military satellite…

You’re about to learn how the sausage gets made, and, before we begin, you should know that it’s not pretty.

I don’t know the whole story about Iridium, but it has got to be one of the spookiest tales of them all.

In November 1998, Motorola activated the Iridium communications network, a constellation of low-earth orbit satellites that provides wireless telecom and data services to any location on the planet. The cost to build the system? About $5 billion. By August 1999, unable to sign up enough customers — because of extremely high handset costs and per minute usage fees — Iridium was facing bankruptcy.

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Peter Singer’s Wired for War has been praised by everyone from former National Security Advisor Anthony Lake to Jon Stewart as a definitive look at the growing use of robots on the battlefield. Just before his talk at TED 2009, we chatted with Singer, a Brookings Institution senior fellow and Danger Room contributor, about the rise of the machines.

Danger Room: Your last two books were on mercenaries and child soldiers. Why the switch to robots?

Peter Singer: I think the opening line of my book explains it all: “Because robots are frakkin’ cool.”

The long answer is that as I looked around at everything from the Roomba that cleans my house (and scares my cat) to the drones my friends in the Air Force were flying, I became  more and more convinced that something big was going on. When historians look back at this period, they may conclude that we are today at the start of the greatest revolution that warfare has seen since the introduction of atomic bombs. It may be even bigger. Our new unmanned systems don’t just affect the “how” of war-fighting, but are starting to change the “who” of the fighting at the most fundamental level. That is, every previous revolution in war was about weapons that could shoot quicker, further, or had a bigger boom. That is certainly happening with robots, but it is also reshaping the identity and experience of war. Humankind is starting to lose its 5,000-year-old monopoly of the fighting war.

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Noah Shachtman - December 16, 2008

Fear not, tinfoil hat brigade. Despite what you may have heard on the Internets, the rippling of spacetime cannot be used as some sort of weapon. So says JASON, the Pentagon’s premiere scientific advisory board.

For years, word has circulated among the fringe-science set that high-frequency gravitational waves, or HFGWs, could be harnessed for “tremendously lucrative commercial and military applications.” Not only could these perturbations in spacetime produce the “ultimate wireless system” that “could communicate directly through the Earth from New York in the United States to Beijing in China, without the need for fiber optic cables, microwave relays, or satellite transponders.” To promoters like Dr. Robert Baker (pictured), HFGWs could also be a source “for through-earth, or through-water ‘X-rays.’” And they could knocking off-course “the motion of objects such as missiles (anything from bullets to ICBMs), spacecraft, rogue comets or minor planets that are destined to impact Earth, land or water vehicles or craft – a totally new propulsion system!”

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Lewis Page - 3rd December 2008

Russians patent shockwave storm-squelch scheme

A Russian professor at an Ohio university has applied to patent a method for snuffing out hurricanes by flying jet fighters around the eye of the storm at supersonic speeds.

Professor Arkadii Leonov and his collaborator Atanas Gagov, both of Akron Uni, actually filed their patent application “Hurricane Suppression by Supersonic Boom” last year. It was unearthed by the New Scientist patents column this week.

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Dr. J. Craig Venter

Scientists get closer to creating artificial life: study

AFP | Dec 5, 2008

CHICAGO (AFP) — Scientists have discovered a more efficient way of building a synthetic genome that could one day enable them to create artificial life, according to a study.

The method is already being used to help develop next generation biofuels and biochemicals in the labs of controversial celebrity US scientist Craig Venter.

Venter has hailed artificial life forms as a potential remedy to illness and global warming, but the prospect is highly controversial and arouses heated debate over its potential ramifications and the ethics of engineering artificial life.

Artificially engineered life is one of the Holy Grails of science, but also stirs deep fears as foreseen in Aldous Huxley’s 1932 novel “Brave New World” in which natural human reproduction is eschewed in favor of babies grown in laboratories.

The J. Craig Venter Institute succeeded in synthetically reproducing the DNA of a simple bacteria last year.

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