I’ve begun to wonder about the future of U. S. security policy. This isn’t a serious analytical post; it’s just what I call “musing”—committing disorganized thoughts to writing.

Is there a quiet cyberwar going on and we are just starting to notice it?

Via the LAT:  Iran agrees to exchange of nuclear material In what could be a stunning breakthrough in the years-long diplomatic deadlock over Iran’s nuclear program, Tehran has agreed to send the bulk of its nuclear material to Turkey as part of an exchange meant to ease international concerns about the Islamic Republic’s aims and [...]

Some retired military officers have formed something called Mission: Readiness to highlight the impact of our unfit youth on national security. A group of retired military officers says high-calorie school lunches are threatening national security. A study by the group Mission: Readiness finds that school lunches are making American kids so fat that fewer of [...]

Company policies requiring you to constantly change your password? Almost certainly more harmful than useful. The study, by a top researcher at Microsoft, found that instructions intended to spare us from costly computer attacks often exact a much steeper price in the form of user effort and time expended. “Most security advice simply offers a [...]

A 68-year-old DC woman was killed last night as her bicycle collided with a 5-ton military truck providing security for the attendees of the Nuclear Security Summit.  ABC7: “Our assignment was to block the intersection as motorcade came through,” stated Major General Errol Schwartz. D.C. National Guard moved in to block 12th Street at New [...]

When the Heritage Foundation announced this week that it had moved the United States to “mostly free” for the first time in the history of its Index of Economic Freedom, I took it as a flaw in the index rather than a useful statement about freedom in this country. Like many libertarian-leaning conservatives, I frequently [...]

A Qatari diplomat with a disregard for the rules and an odd sense of humor managed to create a major air incident — including the dispatch of a pair of F-16s — for trying to sneak a cig in the lavatory of a 757 while in flight. ABC’s Rhonda Schwartz, Richard Esposito, and Brian Ross [...]

A huge chunk of downtown DC will be closed for three days to accommodate next week’s Nuclear Security Summit.  A memo went out sometime yesterday and a colleague passed it on late in the afternoon. As Josh Rogin notes, this will be incredibly inconvenient in a city whose infrastructure is already stretched to capacity: If [...]

The headline “New U.S. Airport Security Measures To Use ‘Real-Time’ Intelligence” caused a chuckle when I saw it on the RFE/RL Twitter feed.  Not to overly disparage the TSA’s screeners, intelligence agents they ain’t.  But a description of the program makes it sound like a step in the right direction. The U.S. Department of Homeland [...]

The goalies for the U.S. Olympic hockey team have been told to remove slogans on their facemasks. U.S. netminder Jonathan Quick will be ordered to remove the slogan ‘Support Our Troops’ from his helmet for contravening Olympic rules on political propaganda, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) said on Monday. Netminder Ryan Miller, Quick’s team [...]

In a recent post James returned to a subject he’s mentioned frequently, his dissatisfaction with the security measures we’ve got in place for commercial air passenger security: Presuming that Osama is still alive and the tape is genuine, it’s quite interesting that he’s now reduced to bragging about horribly botched operations to bolster his credibility. [...]

AP’s Harry Weber offers some tips to “speed through airline security.”  For the most part, they’re rather dubious. Consider bringing your laptop in a sleeve. Skooba Design sells a laptop sleeve for $19.95 that you can carry on your own with a removable shoulder strap and can unfold to lie flat on the airport X-ray [...]

Yet another incident aboard Flight 243 from Amsterdam to Detroit. Sources tell Fox 2 that a flight from Amsterdam into Detroit Metropolitan Airport was held on the tarmac after landing because of unruly behavior by some of the passengers.The source says four men from Saudi Arabia were saying something in Arabic that alarmed four on-board [...]

Longtime national security blogger Michael Yon posted this on his Facebook page about an hour ago: Got arrested at the Seattle airport for refusing to say how much money I make. (The uniformed ones say I was not “arrested”, but they definitely handcuffed me.) Their videos and audios should show that I was polite, but [...]

An aside in my post this morning defending President Obama from charges he took inadequate measures to prevent the attempted Detroit bombing has caused John Cole some distress. I observed that, “There’s room to criticize the administration’s response to the crisis, most notably DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s idiotic insistence that “the system worked.” John retorts: [...]

There’s quite a bit of chatter this morning about the fact that two travel bloggers of whom I’d never previously heard have  had their computers confiscated pursuant to subpoenas after publishing unclassified but sensitive TSA screening procedures.  AP’s Eileen Sullivan has the rundown: As the government reviews how an alleged terrorist was able to bring [...]

Two days after a Nigerian al Qaeda operative tried to blow up Northwest Flight 253 as it landed in Detroit, we had an eerie repeat.  Another Nigerian on the exact same flight locked himself in the lavatory and refused to come out.  Thankfully, it was a case of the trots, not a terrorist plot. The [...]

Not surprisingly, TSA is going to make flying even more aggravating in a stupid overreaction to the Detroit terror plot. In the wake of the terrorism attempt Friday on a Northwest Airlines flight, federal officials on Saturday imposed a new layer of restrictions on travelers that could lengthen lines at airports and limit the ability [...]

An air strike in Yemen may have killed the top leaders of al Qaead’s branch in that country, along with an American-born cleric linked to the Fort Hood massacre. A Yemeni air raid may have killed the top two leaders of al Qaeda’s regional branch on Thursday, and an American Muslim preacher linked to the [...]

Google has a ton of great applications that can make your life easier. But Quentin Hardy wonders if we’re going to far in trusting our information to one company. Your day begins with a wake-up call from your Google Android phone. As you run to the shower, you hit Google News and check headlines, then [...]

Are you a terrorist who would like to blow up an airliner but confused about how best to elude screening?  Well, luckily for you, the Transportation Security Administration has published a How To manual to answer all your questions. In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inadvertently posted online its airport screening [...]

The Obama administration is fighting to dismiss Jose Padilla’s lawsuit against John Yoo, citing executive privilege. The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise [...]

In yet another example of a change of administrations not leading to a change in behavior, the Obama White House is refusing to allow Congress to question the social secretary on the matter of the “party crashers.” The White House on Wednesday invoked the separation of powers to keep Desiree Rogers, President Obama’s social secretary, [...]

The two pranksters who crashed the White House party the other night managed to meet President Obama. The photographic proof is on the White House Flickr page: I love the legal disclaimer that comes with the release: This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal [...]

My first piece for ForeignPolicy.com, “Europe’s Obama Fatigue,” is online. Despite George W. Bush’s defiant “you’re with us or you’re against us” public stance, he actively solicited advice and input from his NATO partners. Obama, by contrast, is saying all the right things in public about transatlantic relations and NATO but adopting a high-handed policy and [...]

This weekend, I got one of those fake “virus clean” popups after clicking a link to a New York Times article from Memeorandum.   Apparently, I wasn’t alone as there are a dozen or more posts about it today at Techmeme. The NYT itself has this Note to Readers: Some NYTimes.com readers have seen a pop-up [...]

Chris Battle is surprised how often he hears the question “How many terrorists has the Department of Homeland Security caught?” He argues that DHS’ job is prevention, not apprehension; that’s what the FBI does. The implication of the question — usually the questioner already knows the answer — is that the failure to catch members [...]

Given how much of the early years of OTB was devoted to writing about the war in Iraq, it wouldn’t do to fail to mention the fact that we have formally handed over control of Baghdad to the Iraqis, withdrawing our combat troops.  It was not at all long ago that the headline currently topping [...]

The Clear Card program whereby pre-screened passengers are expedited through airport security is no more.  I received this email overnight: Ensuring that this wasn’t some sort of odd email fraud scheme, I did a quick news search and, sure enough, it’s true: Clear began in 2005 with the potential to make airport security quicker and [...]

Jeff Jarvis notes that there has been some controversy over Google’s Streetview, which allows people to see videos of what’s going on in the streets, including residential neighborhoods, in an ever-expanding number of locations. In a few countries around the world, we’ve seen a backlash against Google’s Streetview as somehow an invasion of privacy, even [...]

The man who killed a security officer at the Holocaust Musuem yesterday may have had a different/additional target in mind, Ben Smith reports: FBI agents visited the offices of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine yesterday after a shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum and told employees they’d found the magazine’s address.   A senior Standard staffer [...]

The blogosphere is abuzz with news that the Obamas spent the afternoon relaxing in NYC. President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama landed in New York Saturday afternoon, and after taking a helicopter from JFK into Manhattan, drove up the West Side Highway, where the northbound lanes were shut down by police for their visit, past [...]

Hilzoy wonders why we take counterterrorism more seriously than food inspection. After all, food-borne illness kills about 2,000 more people every year than died on 9/11; why we should spend over half a trillion dollars a year defending ourselves against human invaders while leaving ourselves open to bacteria that are every bit as lethal is [...]

President Obama will soon get his BlackBerry back, Bill Gertz reports, with some mods from Q. President Obama will soon get his souped-up, high-security BlackBerry for use in and around the White House and during presidential travel, according to Obama administration officials. The top-secret BlackBerry 8830 is in the final stages of development by the [...]

It’s a boon to scriptwriters who need some phlebotinum, but in the real world face scanner technology isn’t making the grade: Airport face scanners designed to verify travellers’ identity against their passport photographs are working at such a low level that they would be unable to tell the difference between Osama bin Laden and the [...]

Robert Farley thinks the United States spends far too much on defense. Absent supplementals, the United States currently runs a defense budget of just over half a trillion dollars, a number which does not include defense-related spending in other departments. By the kindest calculations, this means that the U.S. spends roughly four to six times [...]

In my New Atlanticist piece “Obama Advisors Stiffed on Administration Jobs,” I tackle the hurt feelings of the preponderance of the 300 Obama foreign policy advisors who didn’t get administration jobs for their efforts.  The conclusion: It’s worth noting, too, that most senior level political appointments, especially in technocratic fields like foreign- and national security-policymaking, [...]

Andrew Exum catches something that we online-only news consumers missed: Those of you who still read the paper copy of the Washington Post in the morning could not have helped but notice the full-page color advertisement for the F-22 in today’s front section. The really interesting thing about the advertisement was that it made the [...]

A front page story in today’s WaPo describes in detail President Obama’s ambitious plans for reorganizing the National Security Council and the entire process of decision-making in that realm.  In my New Atlanticist piece “Obama to Run Foreign Policy From White House,” I assess the changes and explain why they will be almost impossible to [...]

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live tonight from 7-8 Eastern. Dave Schuler will join me  on the first full day of the Obama presidency to discuss the changing of the guard in Washington as well as developments in Afghanistan and information security that went largely unnoticed in [...]

While of no consequence whatsoever to the tens of millions who watched the inauguration from the cozy comfort of their living rooms and offices (as I did) yesterday’s event was ruined for more than a few die-hard Obama supporters who braved hours of bitter cold only to be denied entry to the event. WaPo’s Inauguration [...]

The country’s first black president will also be its most heavily protected, WaPo‘s Spenser Hsu reports. As jubilant Democrats nominated Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) for president in a Denver convention hall in late August, the U.S. Secret Service in Washington placed its largest ever order for bulletproof glass. The service requested about 5 tons of [...]

Next Tuesday’s inauguration, scheduled in 1789, has been declared a federal emergency. President Bush on Tuesday declared the District a federal emergency area, clearing the way for the city to receive federal money to help cover the overwhelming cost of providing security for official inauguration events. Officials said it was the first time the designation [...]

One of the side discussions over the Blair House brouhaha has been that having the Obamas stay at the Hay-Adams Hotel would pose a major inconvenience for those who drive through that part of the District of Columbia, as roads around the hotel would be closed for security reasons.    With the hotel only three blocks [...]

Not surprisingly, the massive Israeli strikes into Gaza are the prime topic of conversation in the blogosphere. The basic facts, as reported by the NYT: Waves of Israeli airstrikes destroyed Hamas security facilities in Gaza on Saturday in a crushing response to the group’s rocket fire, killing more than 225 — the highest one-day toll [...]

Dave Schuler’s arguments and his responses to my cross-examination questions highlight three critical failings in his argument. These flaws are his preference for inertia over strategic assessment, overweighing ambiguous evidence that marginally supports his case while ignoring compelling evidence that refutes it, and a failure to account for what might be called “conditions on the [...]

Hilzoy has a longish post arguing that, in return for the UAW agreeing to cut pay and benefits to levels commensurate with what their non-union counterparts working in American plants in the South make, auto CEOs should do the same. She notes that the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay has skyrocketed over the [...]

Thomas Schweich fears a military coup in the United States.  Or something like that. In a breathless WaPo op-ed, “The Pentagon is muscling in everywhere. It’s time to stop the mission creep” (with the clever subhead, “The Pentagon is muscling in everywhere. It’s time to stop the mission creep”) he fears that the proliferation of [...]

American Security Project fellow Bernard Finel argues that we need a Counterterrorism Strategy Reboot. He begins with an interesting paradox: The implementation of the Bush Administration’s counter-terrorism strategy has been more successful than anyone could have expected and yet the threat from violent jihadist groups remains undiminished. A little more of the same is not, [...]