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Pentagon Cyberweapons 'Disappointing' Against ISIS (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:
It has been more than a year since the Pentagon announced that it was opening a new line of combat against the Islamic State, directing Cyber Command, then six years old, to mount computer-network attacks... "In general, there was some sense of disappointment in the overall ability for cyberoperations to land a major blow against ISIS," or the Islamic State, said Joshua Geltzer, who was the senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council until March. "This is just much harder in practice than people think..."
Even one of the rare successes against the Islamic State belongs at least in part to Israel, which was America's partner in the attacks against Iran's nuclear facilities. Top Israeli cyberoperators penetrated a small cell of extremist bombmakers in Syria months ago, the officials said. That was how the United States learned that the terrorist group was working to make explosives that fooled airport X-ray machines and other screening by looking exactly like batteries for laptop computers... The information helped prompt a ban in March on large electronic devices in carry-on luggage on flights from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries to the United States and Britain.
Citing military officials, the Times also reports that "locking Islamic State propaganda specialists out of their accounts -- or using the coordinates of their phones and computers to target them for a drone attack -- is now standard operating procedure."
Even one of the rare successes against the Islamic State belongs at least in part to Israel, which was America's partner in the attacks against Iran's nuclear facilities. Top Israeli cyberoperators penetrated a small cell of extremist bombmakers in Syria months ago, the officials said. That was how the United States learned that the terrorist group was working to make explosives that fooled airport X-ray machines and other screening by looking exactly like batteries for laptop computers... The information helped prompt a ban in March on large electronic devices in carry-on luggage on flights from 10 airports in eight Muslim-majority countries to the United States and Britain.
Citing military officials, the Times also reports that "locking Islamic State propaganda specialists out of their accounts -- or using the coordinates of their phones and computers to target them for a drone attack -- is now standard operating procedure."
The secret is he's full of shit.
For those who doubt he claimed a secret plan
Table-ized A.I.
The terrorists are winning! We need more cyber stuff (especially mass surveillance) to stop the terrorists! If we don't ramp it up there will be more terror attacks besides 9/11 (year 2001, almost 16 years ago).
Of *course* these "cyberweapons" are ineffective against ISIS!
These weapons and the entire current US surveillance infrastructure were designed from their inceptions to monitor and control the US population and their digital communications. It is entirely unsuited to combating external threats.
That's like using a hammer on a machine-screw. Duh! Wrong tool for the job.
It's either that, or the US government has known beforehand of past attacks and allowed them to go forward and kill innocent people to stir up fear and panic so the populace will be willing to let them take away and violate the people's rights, freedoms, and privacy.
They are either so incompetent they should be removed from power, or they are totalitarian/authoritarian, oath-violating, power-seeking, criminal, seditious, corrupt, shitheads that should be hung by the neck from the nearest tall object and left up as an object lesson. I leave the decision to the reader.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
That's the way the Middle East is. Any one group gets too much power and they usually become assholes. Meddlers, like the US, try to balance things out so each group keeps each other in check, but that usually fails for various reasons. It's like building Frankensteins to stop other Frankensteins, and then acting surprised when they run amuck.
When ISIS is diminished, some other jerky clan will step in to be the Asshole of the Month and Washington DC pointy fingers will have another blamefest, and the Military Industrial Complex will have another jizzfest, showing off shiny new war-ware that doesn't really work. Rinse, repeat, profit!
Table-ized A.I.
But they're REALLY effective against themselves and the American people, when they leak.
Alex Jones, is that you?
Share some with the entire Middle East ... and Washington DC.
Table-ized A.I.
an organization that relies primarily on soviet era guns, makeshift bombs and the occasional 50 caliber on the back of a Toyota? Ya don't say... Next you'll tell me they're completely ineffective against the Amish.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Actually, when you think about it, the whole Earth is bipolar! :)
Back in early 2000s, Al Qaeda (cough CIA's clandestine Arabic unit cough) tried in desperate vain to have a simple html web page that was properly taken down multiple times by registrars and well to do web security professionals.
Nowadays, we have major corporations who are so inept that they let the same malcontents run their propaganda crap on simple to use platforms instead of immediately banning them.
You want to fight an information war? Start by banning their social media accounts.
Everybody has a major cow over civilian casualties, despite the fact that only one side - ours - is concerned about that. But the people of Raqqah are not innocent bystanders: they are Sunni opponents of the Assad regime and support ISIS for that reason.
No, the vast majority of the people of Raqqah are just ordinary people that want to live a decent life, just like most everyone else all over the planet.
Levelling the city would be a good solution, but unpalatable to our PCMC sensibilities.
What you're proposing is genocide. I have no idea what PCMC sensibilities are, but yes, I'm all in favour of having a major cow over that. And that's just based on ethics, there's also the point that levelling a city is a very effective way to create terrorists.
It's hard to believe that ISIS is very dependent on computers.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I bet ISIS refused to run the windows updates required to allow the cyberwarfare thingymagic! :)
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
You mean the person who claimed that 9/11 was an inside job is incapable of blaming the US for the creation of ISIS?
"or using the coordinates of their phones and computers to target them for a drone attack"
So ISIS just have to use a phone to post crap to Facebook, then drop it wherever they want bombed, and the Americans will bomb it for them?
Don't believe it then.
Actually, like all the others, they are dependent on money
The truth is dead...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
... it is already SOP at almost every airport xray worldwide to turn on the laptop so the security can confirm that the battery is functioning and not a bomb.
You don't actually fly anywhere, do you.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
FTFY
BAE Systems' subsidiary, Applied Intelligence, got around UK export controls by having it's Denmarked-based subsidiary sell Qatar (ISIS buds) their Evident technology, which has state-of-the-art decryption programs (for decrypting your emails, etc.). Stands to reason the Pentagon stuff would be a dud.
I'd much rather have a bomb go off in a cargo hold. Where the bomber has no control of it's exact location and the blast might be muffled by suitcases full of clothing. Instead of being held up against the fuselage wall in the cabin.
Have gnu, will travel.
Nah they just save all the good stuff for their citizens.
Only the best. Amiright?
We just need to send ISIS some laptops with WindowsXP installed. Then they will be easy to cyber-attack.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
What's the biggest threat: bombs in the cargo hold, or an undiscovered fire from a Lithium Ion battery?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It's hard to believe that ISIS is very dependent on computers.
They have been very adept at using social media. They are younger and more tech savvy than more traditional jihadist groups like Al Qaeda. ISIS is mostly millenials.
But perhaps the Pentagon shouldn't have "pre-announced" their cyber-offensive.
And your evidence for that is? Historically, that entire region has been about either Muslims persecuting non Muslims (Christians, Yazidis, et al), Arab Muslims persecuting non Arabs - Muslim or not - like Kurds, Sunnis persecuting Shia wherever they are in the majority (like Saudi Arabia), Shia persecuting Sunnis wherever they are in the majority (like Iraq, Iran) and so on. The people of Raqqah are no different. They threw their lot in w/ ISIS b'cos like most of their Sunni compatriots, they can't stand the idea of an Alewite regime in Damascus. Incidentally, the converse is true as well - the Alawites know that if the Sunnis came to power, the Alawites would be massacred
Do you honestly think that Ahmed the grocer and Alia the farmer's wife and the thousands of their colleagues leading simple lives have had any influence on these events? Do they really deserve to be `collateral damage' for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
What you're proposing is genocide. I have no idea what PCMC sensibilities are, but yes, I'm all in favour of having a major cow over that. And that's just based on ethics, there's also the point that levelling a city is a very effective way to create terrorists.
It's called war. Genocide would be if a city w/ only civilians but no fighters were to be massacred - something like the recent Syrian chemical weapons attack. But if in a city you have a mix of terrorists & civilians, you level it, and the civilians are collateral damage. Throughout history, innocent civilians have died in wars, which is why one tries not to have them in the first place. But if they are fought, the consequences have to be recognized - that innocent civilians are going to die in the process. Once they make an example of any place by levelling it, ISIS will realize that using human shields is useless, and they'll resort to other tactics. Thereby, ironically, such massacres would minimize future hostage situations where Jihad terrorists try to blackmail those Geneva convention complaint armies into not attacking them.
My, what a neat little theory you have for your blood thirst. You may want to look into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... for people that had theories like yours, and what happened to them. Yes, it is war. That's why genocide is called a warcrime.
“When I use a word,” Lewis Carrol said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Most importantly, the earth quake detector didn't detect the mass of the twin towers falling, as if the tower mass disappeared before falling.
So what are you saying, that aliens vaporized the insides of the tower before it collapsed? Are you saying that coordinating a plane hijacking and demolition is what happened? That someone was able to place a bunch of explosives in the building without any eye-witnesses?
Do you really believe our government, or any operation of that scale, is capable of succeeding without having whistleblowers or leakers?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Is put trackers in all those Toyotas they sold them. Then they could drone them up at will. Maybe put trackers in all the arms we sold over there to Saudi Arabia as well. --OR-- We could stop providing material support to anyone in the entire region and anyone who does business with those in the region since all of our arms and materials end up in the hands of terrorists.
"That's the way the Middle East is. Any one group gets too much power and they usually become assholes."
No that's not the way the Middle East is' anymore than that's the way anywhere else is.
That's the way the Middle East is. Any one group gets too much power and they usually become assholes
And how that's different from the rest of the world?
I believe he excluded nukes as the secret in the video.
Table-ized A.I.
What's the biggest threat:
It's sort of a toss-up. There have been a few laptop fires. There have also been a couple of bombs on aircraft.
Have gnu, will travel.
... its shit away ...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Not everything is about us.
We did play our part, but so did a lot of others, including the Russians, the Assad Regime, and a multi-year drought which displaced most of Syria's rural population just as global wheat prices spiked.
Our part was next door in Iraq, and intrinsically unstable pseudo-country that was held together by a dictatorial regime we removed.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This.
Iraq is an oil war and we didn't even get a fucking T-shirt.
Afghanistan is a revenge war for 9/11 but it's a false flag.
None of the terrorists were from there.
No, Afghanistan is a surrogate for Saudi Arabia.
The whole idea, of course, is to subsidize the military and its logistical needs.
The pussy grabber wants 25 billion dollars to beef up the military and the military is confused as to what it's supposed to do with the goddam money.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
come on trump, make it happen, it was over obamas head.
oooooh, you got angry because I proved you were wrong. Have a nice day.
You couldn't deal with my questions. They hurt too much.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Actually he's had us working on a virus that edits a few select genes of the target population -thanks crispr. 90% of the male children born to those in a certain part of the world will be homosexual over the next 20 years. It was a pretty fabulous plan.
How about you answer my questions?
Oh, you can't. All you can do is cuss and seethe in your own rage.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
All I said was the US earth quakes detectors didn't detect the full mass of the twin towers.
All I did was ask questions to clarify your position.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And all I am doing is reporting an anti-social bomb maker to various law enforcement agencies.
I noticed. Apparently that's what you do when you can't answer questions.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Why are you even arguing about it, watch the friggen video instead of yap
Table-ized A.I.
Do you honestly think that Ahmed the grocer and Alia the farmer's wife and the thousands of their colleagues leading simple lives have had any influence on these events? Do they really deserve to be `collateral damage' for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?
The problem with that argument is that it applies equally to Helmut the grocer and Helga the farmer's wife.
There were very few cows had.
Now, to what extent Ahmed and Alia are comparable to Helmut and Helga in this particular case, and in this particular time I don't know. I'm just pointing out that for there apparently is clear historical modern precedent.
Stefan Axelsson
"This is just much harder in practice than people think..."
The Russians don't seem to be having much trouble doing it. Maybe the Pentagon should consider outsourcing. It'd be a lot cheaper too.
It is simple math. People just don't want to believe it. Although we all know math doesn't lie.
Is it possible that the way to defeat ISIS is with fake news? Flood the internet with good news about deeds that former ISIS people are doing and demote violence. Replace violence with positive deeds and show construction of schoolsâ, hospitalsâ, businessesâ and communities. Do it right and you will turn many away from the evil path.
Ha, like spread rumors that Osama bin Ladin has been seen in Bukhara building schools and mosques alongside Gandhi?
I think you would also need to do something to counter ISIS' innate appeal to our conquest instinct.............
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"Saying that anywhere else in the world, ... , is just as unstable as the Middle East is nothing but a lie."
Instability? was saying that the idea "Any one group gets too much power and they usually become assholes" is not restricted to the Middle East.
I have been given consent from time to time and I treated that gesture with respect.
Can't say that for some people.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Right, and in the end, the people who stand up against that 'shit' will all have their throats slit open by Jihadists b'cos they are too 'humane' to do what would actually solve the problem!
But they will be some form of Muslim without a doubt.