Our Utility Networks are Vulnerable?

Siobhan Gorman, WSJ:

Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials.

The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven't sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war.

Of course they would. It would be leverage against us (i.e. we will take out your power if you don't...) or a way of creating mass havoc at a time of war or invasion.

With this latest in a string of very serious revelations about the threats posed by Russia and China, not jut Iran and North Korea, we will of course hear the same responses:

-These intrusions are coming from individuals, not governments.
-What reasons would Russia and China have to compromise our security?
-I'm more afraid of this being used to deny us our civil liberties.
-etc.

The sophistication of the U.S. intrusions -- which extend beyond electric to other key infrastructure systems -- suggests that China and Russia are mainly responsible, according to intelligence officials and cybersecurity specialists. While terrorist groups could develop the ability to penetrate U.S. infrastructure, they don't appear to have yet mounted attacks, these officials say.

As in the recent news about Chinese worms, private computer network intrusions and theft of sensitive information, the attacks are marked by 'sophistication.' Either the Russians and Chinese are doing a poor job of making their preparations look like the work of individuals, or they are unable to fool our own sophisticated analysts. One thing, however, is certain:

Officials cautioned that the motivation of the cyberspies wasn't well understood, and they don't see an immediate danger.

Our own lack of perspective on these events is the real problem. The Spartans (Russia and China) will do what the Spartans will do. It is the free world that must be on alert.

Unfortunately, we will only squabble amongst ourselves and vote in European trans-nationalists who think defending one's country is bigoted and fascistic, down to the very day when Russia or China would use these methods to compromise us. We better hope that they have no such plans, that everything that has been happening recently is simply evidence of increased surveillance and intelligence work, routine and ordinary and not part of any strategy to attack us. Just as we want to be stronger than they, after all, they want to be stronger than us.

They wouldn't even have to try very hard. They can just say "Iran poses no threat," and we believe it, or half the country believes it. In fact they take our own words and arguments, which may have come from them in the first place in some respect, and throw them right back at us, and we take it as original and unique.

"This president," the Russians say. "We can work with him." Indeed. "Some people in the U.S. still have a Cold War mentality." Indeed again.

It is nearly impossible to know whether or not an attack is government-sponsored because of the difficulty in tracking true identities in cyberspace. U.S. officials said investigators have followed electronic trails of stolen data to China and Russia.

And the Russians have denied it; the Chinese have denied it. And half the country will take their word for it, because to believe otherwise would contradict their childish world view. Out of the second half, four-fifths will ignore it as unpleasant to think about, and after all, a long way off and seemingly inconceivable (that one day, the Chinese and Russians will attack us, utilizing all sorts of agents and methods and controls that had been put into place while we weren't paying attention). The other fifth is ignorant anyway, and even though they rightly fear the Spartans, don't really understand them. The quantity of those who recognize and think rationally about the threat is negligible.

Of course, just because the Russians could smuggle a nuclear weapon in a suitcase across the Mexican border under the guise of terrorists and set it off in Washington, doesn't mean they will or even that they want to. Even though the Chinese, say, could hijack our electrical networks in the midst of a surprise attack by them, doesn't mean they will. The goal, if there is a goal, is still:

All warfare is based primarily on the deception of an enemy. Fighting on a battlefield is the most primitive way of making war. There is no art higher than to destroy your enemy without a fight—by SUBVERTING anything of value in the enemy’s country.

But that doesn't mean there won't be preparations in the case of collapse or civil war. Russia and China would beat themselves up endlessly if a serious crisis erupted in the United States and they were unable to take advantage of it. They must always be ready, but especially at tense and unstable times. That is why they are probing so much and so often right now. We are detecting some of their probes, but they are banking on us getting distracted and forgetting about it, too much focused on "hope" and "change" and economy.

We see here, another conservative publication make the argument:

China, for example, has little incentive to disrupt the U.S. economy because it relies on American consumers and holds U.S. government debt.

Gordon Chang recently made this argument in National Review. It is a dangerous thing to assume, that economy always trumps ideology. It doesn't, especially not with Leninists. We are seeing this in our own country right now, with the false centrism of Barack Obama, and his party's cynical exploitation of an economic and political crisis to make changes based not on economic rationalism but on ideology with a view to 'social justice' and world perception.

Finally, a point about those intrusions into the grids. We may shore up our cyber-defenses, and that's good. But the hackers may have created superusers and hidden administrator accounts that can lie dormant, ready to be turned on. What's more, it's highly possible and almost certain to be the case in at least a few instances that these utility companies have moles or spies in them who have helped to create vulnerabilities from the inside, or at least pointed out to their Russian and Chinese handlers possible vulnerabilities.

Or maybe it's just that "some people overseas with [a] Cold War mentality are indulged in fabricating the sheer lies of the so-called cyberspies in China."

The Chinese Are Not Our Friends

Casting new light on the "cooperation" between the United States and China on the North Korea problem: China is helping Iran get the materials they need to construct nuclear missiles:

Officials plan to unseal a 118-count indictment Tuesday accusing a Chinese national of setting up a handful of fake companies to hide that he was selling millions of dollars in potential nuclear materials to Tehran.

It's a good thing we caught them. But how many networks like this are we privy to? How much of this kind of thing is going on behind our back?

Every time something like this-- Chinese hacker networks stealing defense information from government computers, Russian journalists murdered in the street by the FSB, secret lines of communication between Russia and Syria, say-- it belies the "partnerships" and "cooperation" we supposedly have with these countries. They are not our friends, no matter how much we want to believe it. They work toward our destruction.

The indictment will outline the financial conspiracy behind 58 different transactions, including shipments of various banned materials from China to Iran between 2006 and late 2008.

Among them:

* 33,000 pounds of a specialized aluminum alloy used almost exclusively in long-range missile production.
* 66,000 pounds of tungsten copper plate, which is used in missile guidance systems.
* 53,900 pounds of maraging steel rods, a superhard metal used in uranium enrichment and to make the casings for nuclear bombs.

And yet we act as if China is key to "pressuring" North Korea not to go ahead with their own missile plans.

Another article on this story has more information on the implication of British bank Lloyds TSB Bank plc, "which allowed Iran and other sanctioned countries illegal access to the U.S. financial system":

Prosecutors in January said they found evidence of Iranian interests trying to buy tungsten and other materials used in the guidance systems of long-range missiles. Lloyds wasn’t the bank involved in those attempts, prosecutors said.

At the time, Morgenthau said nine major foreign banks besides Lloyds were under investigation for using the same technique to disguise illegal money transfers. Credit Suisse Group AG and Barclays Plc have said they’re cooperating in the probe.

U.S. banks have software filters that look for entities barred from doing business in the country, prosecutors said. Lloyds stripped out identifying features on the wires so the filters wouldn’t catch them. Credit Suisse and Barclays say they are among the banks that have been probed for their handling of money subject to sanctions.

I am no anti-capitalist, but on questions of national security and national interest, the desire for profit must be curbed. Banks and other firms must not be allowed to bring about the conditions of destruction of free society just to obtain some filthy lucre.

But this is not just a question of desire for profit jeopardizing our national security. It is a revelation about the fundamental goals and positions of the Chinese government.

This should be a huge, huge story, a scandal splashed across the front page of every newspaper in the country. Here is our main "ally," the second biggest economy in the world after ourselves, who just a moment ago was "helping" us "put pressure" on another dangerous nuclear threat, caught red-handed pursuing a policy of helping another dangerous nuclear threat become more nuclear-enabled and more dangerous.

But it will not be a big story, because it contradicts our wishful thinking about China. China's just a country that wants to make money like any other, the story goes. They wouldn't do anything to sacrifice their economic stability. They are only involved in this for the money, they'll say. Those Chinese, they are unpredictable and strange.

No one wants to hear such a story because China provides massive exports to the United States; foolishly we have tied up our economy with theirs. (For this reason some make the mistaken argument-- see, for instance, the article "Eastern Exposure" by Gordon G. Chang in the April 6 issue of National Review-- that China therefore has more to lose from this economic downturn than the United States, because we at least do not rely on foreign customers.) The import-export balance is only part of the picture. The Chinese own large quantity of our debt, and aren't in debt themselves.

So this is not some sort of conspiracy-theory-mongering. It is a basic reality of the world, made evident periodically. But with our short-term, hopeful outlook, we always forget.

Charles Krauthammer, though, gets it:

Well, the administration is pretending, as we heard from Susan Rice, that China is on our side on this. It's not. It has no interest in weakening its ally and puppet in Pyongyang. It's working against us.

We are not going to get a resolution of any sort. Even if we did, it would have no influence.

As for the presidential statement, which is a weak alternative, as Bill indicated, we couldn't even get a presidential statement from the council because China objected to any expression and use of the word "concern," let alone "condemn" or "denounce."

So it's entirely a fantasy. But what makes it worse is that Obama, in Prague, spoke about getting the whole world behind us. He spoke about the international community, which is, in and of itself, is a fiction. He spoke about the U.N. and these resolutions having force, which is also a fiction.

He spoke about a world without nuclear weapons, which is beyond a fiction. It's a childish fantasy.

And what does he talk about? America signing the test ban treaty and working on START talks with the Russians. They are both useless.

Our only defense, our only incremental increase in our defense against these weapons is missile defense. And what the Obama administration announced a day after the launching of this missile from North Korea? A drastic cut in missile defense, which is our only hope of having something which would be effective.

And onward we march to the tune of Obama's childish fantasies...

Comrade Obama

To American audiences, it's a joke:

Russia's Dmitry Medvedev hailed Barack Obama as "my new comrade" Thursday after their first face-to-face talks, saying the US president "can listen" -- even if little progress was made on substance.

But to Russian ones it is a signal-- you have no friend in President Obama. He, and the world, are going our way. And there is nothing you can do about it.


Otherwise, the substance of the Russians' remarks were catered to American ears, American audiences. They are reinforcing our own little delusions about the nature of American foreign policy and this historic 'change' that has taken place. Interspersed are subtle jabs, announcements of victory:

"I liked the talks. It is easy to talk to him. He can listen. The start of this relationship is good," he said, adding: "Today it's a totally different situation (compared to Bush)... This suits me quite well."

And again:

"Today from the United States there is at least a desire to listen to our arguments," he said, adding that: "Such defence measures should be carried out jointly" between Washington and Moscow.

The missile defence plan was "a mistake that the previous US administration is responsible for. Many of my European colleagues also believe this," the Russian leader added, without specifying who.

Obama, speaking on Wednesday, admitted US-Russian ties had cooled, saying: "What we've seen over the last several years is drift in the US-Russian relationship.

"There are very real differences between the United States and Russia, and I have no interest in papering those over. But there are also a broad set of common interests that we can pursue," he said.

The notion that the Russians were hurt and offended by the intransigence and belligerence of the mean Bush, but now are heartened by the open and friendly Obama, is quite ludicrous. Yet it is exactly what the Obama people, and their loyal denizens in the media, and thus all sophisticated Americans, actually believe.

In reality, Bush was almost as taken in by the Russians as Obama was. However, he was not an ideologue, so he wasn't about to 1) compromise on missile defense, 2) leave our true allies in the cold, 3) disarm nuclear weapons, and 4) apologize for American arrogance. Obama has already done most of those things, and is prepared and eager to carry them out completely. It is a very, very dangerous thing.

Meanwhile...:

"It's impossible that capitalism can regulate the monster that is the world financial system, it's impossible," Chavez told Venezuela's state TV late Thursday. "Capitalism needs to go down. It has to end. And we must take a transitional road to a new model that we call socialism."

Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, shared that critique, saying "some decisions by the world leaders cannot restore dead imperialism."

The two leaders, appearing Friday at the inauguration of joint commercial bank, referred to their nations as the "G-2." In recent years, Chavez and Ahmadinejad—both well-known for their anti-U.S. rhetoric—have boosted economic and political ties.

We ignore the growing alliance between Iran and Venezuela...


...a partnership that is almost certainly fostered by Russia...


and yet our new administration is 'pushing the reset button' on relations with Russia.


Russia, our friend, our strategic partner...


Just like China...


Russia, China...


Apologizing for American arrogance, asserting European prominence, representing American spinelessness, bowing to barbaric dictators...


And everybody's happy:

Disarmament, etc.

As far as I'm concerned, what has just happened is very bad for so-called "Russian-U.S. relations":

The United States and Russia set a newly ambitious course for global cooperation Wednesday as presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev ordered negotiators into immediate action on a treaty to further reduce nuclear weapons.

This is, of course, what Obama promised he would do. There is no negotiation here; it is mere surrender. Obama and his foreign policy people naively believe that the only way we can "improve relations" with Russia is by admitting fault and negotiating on their terms.

John Bolton has a good article on this in the latest issue of National Review. Basically he makes the point that one side can't unilaterally "push the reset button" on relations without completely acquiescing to the desires of the other country. But this is the naive, peacenik foreign policy. This is what it amounts to.

The justification, absurd as it is, is accepted by many Americans, stupefied as they are by their indoctrinating education. It's this simple: Bush's attitude has caused all of our problems with Russia. Now that he is gone, our attitude is different, and so everything is different. The naivete of this is astounding.

Meanwhile, the Russian government continues to murder journalists in the street:

A newspaper employee in a Moscow suburb has died after being beaten near his home in the latest of a string of attacks on journalists in Russia, his editor said Wednesday.

But the problem was Bush's attitude? These people are children.

They don't remember that nuclear disarmament was a policy of Soviet Russia in the latter half of the 20th century-- a strategy for gaining the upper hand against the West by using its own peaceful inclinations and liberalizing influences against us. This is not Golitsyn-conspiracy stuff. This is basic reality. And the neo-Soviet regime in Russia today is pursuing this same path. But the people in charge in America are the kind of people who thought in the 70s and 80s that all we needed to due was disarm our nuclear weapons and all the world's problems would be solved.

What we have here is shocking in its scope: They set a date for "a substitute treaty for START." Obama pledged "to work for the U.S. ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty." The article happily notes that "Moscow has ratified the test ban pact, but the United States has not." Well, why not? Because we have known (until the leadership of our country was assumed by morons) that Moscow would not comply with the terms of the treaty, and we would.

The new U.S. president also said he would put his shoulder behind Russia's bid for World Trade Organization membership, a key to Moscow's integration into the global trading system.

In return, the Russians put Iran on notice that it "needs to restore confidence in its exclusively peaceful nature."

Restore confidence? When was there any notion of Iran's "peaceful nature"? Never! And yet we are making all these concessions to the belligerent Russians, whom we know are helping the Iranians with weapon and energy technology, in exchange for them to "put Iran on notice"? This is a joke.

Going into the new nuclear talks, the United States had 2,200 strategic nuclear warheads deployed; Russia has 2,800. Under the subsequent 2002 Treaty of Moscow, a plan negotiated under the Bush administration, the two sides committed to reducing their nuclear warheads to between 1,700 and 2,200.

Wait, I thought "Obama's engagement with the Russians marks a stunning reversal from policies of the Bush administration, which was disinclined to take up deep arms control negotiations..."? No? They actually agreed to something, the Americans complied and the Russians didn't? Then why the hell are we making agreements with them now?

Obama has declared his belief that the United States and Russia should take the lead in ridding the world of nuclear weapons altogether.

President Obama is either a useful idiot or a Soviet plant. There is no way he could possibly think that what he is doing is in the best interests of American safety, security, and sovereignty. Unfortunately, he is a naive transnationalist who thinks that the future of world relations lies in international bodies. Thus American security means little to him; America as such means little. That's why he is incredibly dangerous. First he leaves our crucial NATO allies, Poland and Czechoslovakia, out in the cold on the missile defense systems for which their leaders worked hard on our behalf-- for nothing, for a word. And now he is committing to American disarmament, always a long-term Russian goal-- for nothing, for word.

Together, Presidents Obama and Medvedev released a statement. It is a shameful day for American strength. Our liberal commentators are calling it a "foreign policy coup." They are idiots. It is a coup only for the Russians.

We, the leaders of Russia and the United States, are ready to move beyond Cold War mentalities and chart a fresh start in relations between our two countries. In just a few months we have worked hard to establish a new tone in our relations. Now it is time to get down to business and translate our warm words into actual achievements of benefit to Russia, the United States, and all those around the world interested in peace and prosperity.

The cynicism of the Russians knows no bounds.

Answer this, if you doubt. Why, nearly twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, are we still using phrases such as the "need to move beyond Cold War mentalities"? If we really had moved past that, there would be no need to say so. Instead, every indication from the Russian domestic front is that they have returned to the Cold War mentality, if they had even left it at all.

So why, now, do we pretend that they are our strategic partners? It is extremely disheartening.

Finally, a word from Iran that is telling about where we, and they, are coming from:

Iran dismissed American government reports that senior U.S. and Iran envoys had a cordial—and promising—face-to-face exchange at an international conference, saying Wednesday that no "talks" took place. The competing accounts of Tuesday's encounter in the Netherlands appeared to reflect the different approaches to overtures to end the United States' and Iran's nearly 30-year diplomat standoff.

Indeed. The purpose of the Obama administration's foreign policy doesn't seem to be to pursue the best course for the future strength and stability of the United States, but to make it seem to the American people that they are achieving all sorts of concessions and friendships with countries that only disliked us before because of the belligerence of George W. Bush. Irrational Bush-hatred will win them much esteem for a long time in America, but their actions will do us great harm. After all, our enemies are actually trying themselves to win an advantage. And Obama's weakness and naivete is already a coup for them.

I was watching the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC and she mentioned this exchange, speaking of how much of a breakthrough this was. She said that this hadn't happened in 30 years, that-- she said in her youth culture, hip, chic, disgustingly ignorant way-- it was like a happy song from Radiohead.

In fact, the Bush administration had 28 separate meetings with Iran. But reality, to these people, is nothing but appearance.

Review: Myagkov's Inside the KGB

There are numerous memoirs from KGB defectors floating around out there, mostly out-of-print and hard to find. One of them is Aleksei Myagkov’s Inside the KGB, published in 1976.

This book is certainly a good addition to any collection of accounts of former KGB officers. It is unique in that Myagkov was part of the Third Chief Directorate, responsible for military counter-intelligence in the Soviet Union. Most other accounts we have (such as the Mitrokhin Archive) and books from other defectors concern the First Chief Directorate, which performs foreign intelligence (thus giving officers a chance to defect); and the Second Chief Directorate (internal security and counter-intelligence).

Inside the KGB gives an account of how Soviet military counter-intelligence works. Myagkov was in charge of intelligence for—spying on—a Soviet army unit stationed in East Germany. The author portrays the power and prestige of the KGB, its pervasiveness and influence, its networks of informants and the total freedom it has over Soviet citizens. He also shows us the organization's opulent corruption, from the top on down, and compares it to the poverty of the people.

Of course, many similar books give such an account, and more eloquently. But this is Myagkov's own story, and an interesting one. The body of the book is framed by a thrilling tale of the author's defection during a trip to West Germany, during which he was the one who was supposed to be watching out for defection of military officers in the unit.

No KGB defector ever has the whole picture, and for that reason I think Myagkov would have been better off telling us more about his own life and responsibilities than trying to piece together an account of how the system works all the way through. Even then, the book is very quick, readable, and interesting. If you're only going to read one book about the KGB, you’re definitely better off reading something else. But Inside the KGB is a nice, quick little supplement to more weighty and far-reaching tomes.

George C. Constantinides, author of Intelligence and Espionage: An Analytical Bibliography (1983), wrote that the author's knowledge of the KGB was “largely bound by his association with this one department.” I agree. Nevertheless, Myagkov was the only defector from that department to write an account of his KGB work, as far as I know.