Political Repression 2.0 – NYTimes.com

Let you think that technology has led the revolutions occurring around the Middle East, Evgeny Morozov, author of The Net Delusion explains the other side of the equation, namely Internet monitoring–and the companies that make it all happen.

Amid the cheerleading over recent events in the Middle East, it’s easy to forget the more repressive uses of technology. In addition to the rosy narrative celebrating how Facebook and Twitter have enabled freedom movements around the world, we need to confront a more sinister tale: how greedy companies, fostered by Western governments for domestic surveillance needs, have helped suppress them.

via Political Repression 2.0 – NYTimes.com.

And in the Atlantic, Rebecca Rosen writes about a piece in Technology Review that cuts deeper than the cliche about “Facebook/Twitter leading the revolution” to help us understand–in their second draft of history–how individuals and groups organized online to make the revolutions occur.

WikiLeaks Prompts New Diplomatic Uproar – NYTimes.com

Assange returns with a new stash of docs.  Previous debates as to the value and ethics of Wikileaks tactics continue to be relevant, even as historians largely cheer (and diplomats shudder.)  In this case, however, the “named” may be in clear and present danger.

Because the newly disclosed cables reveal the names of more than 100 people in foreign countries whom diplomats had marked for special protection, the cables raised new fears over the safety of diplomats’ sources. Previous cable releases had often removed the names of vulnerable people

via WikiLeaks Prompts New Diplomatic Uproar – NYTimes.com.

Captured by Group Think – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com

Ever wonder if there are “Jack Ryan’s” in the CIA who understand the problem but just need to be heard?  Who knows–that’s Clancy’s fictional imagination at work–but groupthink is a real phenonemon that can help explain why intel agencies miss out predicting the future.  This is also an astute career insight for future would-be diplomats, as well:

No American diplomat in Foggy Bottom’s Near East bureau can expect to rise through the ranks if he underscores the deleterious effect of the “peace process” on the Palestinian people. No analyst in — or foreign-service officer in the field — could have expected much applause if he’d unceasingly stressed the imminent democratic wave that was about to crest over the Arab world. Functionally, there is no difference in professional curiosity between a diplomat and an analyst at State: both must conform or risk oblivion.

The power of conformity is even greater elsewhere in the intelligence community, where the intellectual claustrophobia that comes with working in isolated, highly classified environments is more acute. (State is a realm of audacious libertines compared to the Central Intelligence Agency’s “campus” in suburban Virginia.) Intelligence bureaucracies ruthlessly extirpate intuition, the key ingredient that makes first-rate analysis. For wholly understandable reasons, bureaucracies can’t handle intuition: you can’t quantify it, you can’t really teach it and those who don’t have it — the vast majority of analysts — will rise in indignation against its use.

via Captured by Group Think – Room for Debate – NYTimes.com.

Why WikiLeaks Is Bad for Scholars – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education

Even though this sounds like a nice solution for IR scholars, Drezner later comes down on the side that WikiLeaks are bad for scholarship overall.

International-relations experts writing about recent events suffer a handicap that other scholars avoid: Information that can make or break our arguments is often classified. Most governments keep foreign-policy memoranda classified for decades. We can and do rely on other sources to “process-trace” decisions on foreign policy, including news reporting, interviews with policy makers, memoirs, and the occasional Bob Woodward book. After 25 years or so, most of the key documents are declassified and published in Foreign Relations of the United States, a many-volume compendium of primary-source documents. Until then, however, scholars wonder if there are top-secret memos somewhere that vindicate or vitiate our hypotheses.Seen in this light, WikiLeaks clearly has the potential to be a game changer.

via Why WikiLeaks Is Bad for Scholars – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Ambitions – FoxNews.com

Fascinating new details on the X-Files computer worm, Stuxnet:

The construction of the worm was so advanced, it was “like the arrival of an F-35 into a World War I battlefield,” says Ralph Langner, the computer expert who was the first to sound the alarm about Stuxnet. Others have called it the first “weaponized” computer virus.

Simply put, Stuxnet is an incredibly advanced, undetectable computer worm that took years to construct and was designed to jump from computer to computer until it found the specific, protected control system that it aimed to destroy: Iran’s nuclear enrichment program.

via FoxNews.com – Mystery Surrounds Cyber Missile That Crippled Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Ambitions.

Best Commentary on the Russian Spy Case

Thinks are never as simple as they seem when you go down the rabbit hole.

For one thing, the F.B.I., in rounding up these unusual subjects, expended many man-hours and (just guessing here) a staggering amount of taxpayers’ dollars. This gave the Russians, who might well have sensed that their assets were being watched, an opportunity to study the bureau’s methods to see if it was up to any new tricks.

Secondly, the operation was ridiculed from the start as a farce rather than as a serious affront to United States national security. These Russian spies were so inept that they weren’t even charged with spying. Instead, they were given a good talking-to and, in effect, released into the custody of their guardians. Being forbidden to go on pretending that they were Americans was punishment enough….

If this story was the thriller it was clearly meant to be, the whole dreamed-up thing would, of course, be a joint Russian-American op to swap those four freedom fighters for those 10 fun-lovers and take the world for a ride. But fiction isn’t that strange.via Op-Ed Contributor – Under Cover of Ineptitude – NYTimes.com.

Learning about Terrorism

One way to better understand the motivations, strategies, and interests driving terrorism is to talk to terrorists.  This approach is not without its critics, namely the U.S. Supreme Court. But two researchers try to make the case that what’s good for the academy is good for national security:

It is important to realize that in a political struggle, leaders often wish they could communicate with the other side without their own supporters knowing. Thus the idea that all negotiation should be conducted in the open is simply not very practical. When there are no suitable “official” intermediaries, private citizens can fill the gap.

Conditions, of course, should be stringent — there must be trust on all sides that information is being conveyed accurately, and that it will be kept in confidence as long as needed. Accuracy requires both skill in listening and exploring, some degree of cultural understanding and, wherever possible, the intellectual distance that scientific data and research afford.

via Op-Ed Contributors – Why We Talk To Terrorists – NYTimes.com.

Another interesting angle comes from Jessica Stern, a well-regarded terrorism analyst and scholar who was raped at gunpoint as a young girl–and now years later has drawn on that trauma to come face-to-face with terrorists.   “I am fascinated by the secret motivations of violent men,” she writes in “Denial,” “and I’m good at ferreting them out.”

Not the least of her contributions, he went on to say, was that she was one of the very first terrorism scholars to realize that the way to discover what terrorists were thinking was to go and talk to them.

“She was asking the right questions of the right people,” he added, “and if some of that comes from her own experience of being terrorized, then the lessons were very fruitful.”

“This is an example,” he said, “of a very strong person taking something terrible and carving something valuable out of it.”

State Dept Cables Coming into the Open?

Since reports from Wired that a 22 year old Army intel analyst allegedly leaded secret State Department cables came out, diplomats are sweating what could be a major diplomatic disaster.

If he really had access to these cables, we’ve got a terrible situation on our hands,” said an American diplomat. “We’re still trying to figure out what he had access to. A lot of my colleagues overseas are sweating this out, given what those cables may contain.”

He said Manning apparently had special access to cables prepared by diplomats and State Department officials throughout the Middle East regarding the workings of Arab governments and their leaders.

The cables, which date back over several years, went out over interagency computer networks available to the Army and contained information related to American diplomatic and intelligence efforts in the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, the diplomat said.

via State Department Anxious About Diplomatic Secrets Bradley Manning Allegedly Downloaded – The Daily Beast.

Three Afghanistan Stories: CIA, Voting, and Strategy…plus one more.

The plot thickens—as policymakers search to find the right direction in Af-Pak–and news that the CIA funded President Karzai’s brother:

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

via Brother of Afghan Leader Said to Be Paid by C.I.A. – NYTimes.com.

John Burns of the Times blog At War also weighs in on the implications of this major story from last week.

On the voting issue, former Ambassador to Croatia, UN elections official (and BYU Human Rights Seminar speaker) Peter Galbraith warns in an Op-Ed today that all is not well in Kabul for the runoff election:

Still, much more needs to be done. The conditions that made fraud possible in the first round are still present. Although the Election Complaint Commission did a Herculean job of tossing out illegitimate votes, the final tally still included hundreds of thousands of phony ballots, most for Mr. Karzai.

via Afghanistan Votes, the U.N. Dithers – NYTimes.com.

And finally, Timothy Egan muses on “Napoleon’s Dynamite” and the benefits of dithering in making empire-building (or busting) decisions:

We were wary, following the advice of Jefferson and others, of ceaseless and senseless overseas wars. Wars for territory. Wars for defense. Wars for revenge. Wars because one religion was better than another. This was not our way. We didn’t meddle. We fought “good wars,” against imperial occupiers like Great Britain and, much later, the Nazis. …

Now comes the first United States official known to resign in protest of American strategy in Afghanistan. Matthew Hoh, former Marine Captain and up-and-coming foreign service officer, says American presence has thus far only fueled the insurgency. …

Yet, to leave now, we are told, would be to abandon a country to people who live 8th century lives with 21st century weapons. And they have a hatred warped by religion — making for the worst kind of enemy….

For the president, if thoughtful dithering produces a more enlightened policy, he will be well served by stretching time.

via Napoleon’s Dynamite – Timothy Egan Blog – NYTimes.com.

UPDATE:  An extra courtesy Prof. Valerie Hudson and the NYT—this one is a little mind-bending in the good, historical manner of speaking:

“Our soldiers are not to blame. They’ve fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills.” He went on to request extra troops and equipment. “Without them, without a lot more men, this war will continue for a very, very long time,” he said.

These sound as if they could be the words of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, to President Obama in recent days or weeks. In fact, they were spoken by Sergei Akhromeyev, the commander of the Soviet armed forces, to the Soviet Union’s Politburo on Nov. 13, 1986.

Read on at Transcripts of Defeat – NYTimes.com

Going to Extremism – The Conversation Blog – NYTimes.com

In a Kennedy Center Lecture yesterday, a terorrism analyst painted a grey picture of the threats 8 years after 9/11 that isn’t a whole lot better.  In that spirit, see this fascinating chat between two Times columnists, Gail Collins and David Brooks:

The mind gapes at events like these, yet each year there are thousands and thousands of honor killings.  Now, of course, it should be said immediately these sorts of practices are perpetrated by an extremist fringe. But this extremism seems to have an outsized influence on world events….Does any of this ring true? Do you see a confrontation looming?