Evan Kohlmann of the CT Blog steps into my wheelhouse: The United States is gradually losing the online war against terrorists. Rather than aggressively pursuing its enemies, the U.S. government has adopted a largely defensive strategy, the centerpiece of which is an electronic Maginot Line that supposedly protects critical infrastructure (for example, the computer systems…

There is a big difference between politicizing intellience and pointing out that there may be precious little intelligence to politicize. Fred certainly has his views, but whatever they may be the fact remains that US intelligence has a hell of a time going after hard targets like Iran. Identifying gaps and – in light of…

If Web readers in Britain were intrigued by the headline “Details Emerge in British Terror Case,” which sat on top of The New York Times’s home page much of yesterday, they would have been disappointed with a click. “On advice of legal counsel, this article is unavailable to readers of nytimes.com in Britain,” is the…

The federal research agency in charge of countering emerging terrorist threats such as liquid explosives is so hobbled by poor leadership, weak financial management and inadequate technology that Congress is on the verge of cutting its budget in half. The Homeland Security Department’s Science and Technology Directorate has struggled with turnover, reorganizations and raids on…

(Pardon the long post, but after week of fishing I’ve got a jonesing . . .) Senior U.S. intelligence officials meeting in Denver on Monday (8/21) revealed new measures to try to fix the nation’s ailing intelligence system, which insiders say leaves the government overloaded with data but unable to answer key questions. One leader…

A shameless plug for my old boss:   Still, Donavan Lewis, chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s threat analysis division, wants the United States to think more about long-term trends. “China has shifted its dependence away from the United States to [countries such as Malaysia and South Korea], while our dependence on them has grown,”…

I can’t help myself . . . A tiny software company has been tapped by the new U.S. spy chief to lead a “tremendous leap forward,” in technology and policy that will enable the sharing of sensitive information between intelligence agencies and state and local law enforcement and other first responders. The project aims to…

For those of an Ichthyological bent, the scores as of EENT Friday were: Walleyes 0, Me 1Largemouth Bass 0, Me 1Smallmouth Bass 0, Me 3Pumpkinseeds 0, Me 4Perch 0, Me 2 And I noticed while I was gone that: The Army has figured out that there is more to Jean Larteguy’s poem than another piece…

All of these plots, successful and otherwise, contradict a prevalent theory in counter-terrorism circles that all the skills necessary to conduct a successful attack can be learned in the comfort of a terrorist’s own home. This paradigm is based on the belief that internet technology has removed the need for terrorist training camps by creating…