by Jody Ray Bennett

Just days before the end of 2011, the US House Judiciary Committee held its final hearings that year on the issue of SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act), a piece of legislation that sets out to “[expand] the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.” Building upon the lesser known PIPA (the PROTECT IP Act or, Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011), SOPA helped close out the year with controversy characterized by inflamed debate, widespread online hysteria, and hyperbole from supporters and detractors alike – most of which ironically took place on the very turf SOPA is targeting – our beloved information superhighway.

The content of SOPA is very complex, not so much in any sort of details that outline how piracy would be stopped, but because the language is extremely broad. Due to SOPA’s ambiguous language, it is easy to speculate on what the Internet may look like if SOPA becomes the law of the land in the United States. This alone has caused much of the agitation from copyright holders and digital freedom of speech activists alike.

The most basic understanding of SOPA was described in a November 2011 PC World-Business Center article. Essentially, the bill would “allow the U.S. Department of Justice and copyright holders to seek court orders requiring online advertising networks, payment processors and other organizations to stop payments to websites and Web-based services accused of copyright infringement.” Wikipedia, which has come out strongly against the bill, summarized its effect this way:

Depending on who requests the court orders, the actions could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators such as PayPal from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for 10 pieces of music or movies within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.

This has created something of a schism between big media and technology companies seeking to protect their intellectual property from being pirated and in some cases, resold by what they have deemed as “rogue websites.” The situation becomes stickier when innovations or social networking sites created by these large companies allows for users to host or share content within its platform. One article recently noted:

If a ‘directory, index, reference, pointer, or hypertext link’ is found to distribute content without permission, [SOPA] would allow copyright owners or the Attorney General to sue for the deletion of that Internet service from the United States Internet by rendering it unsearchable on search engines and impossible to access with United States DNS servers. (Security experts worry that this will cause Americans who still want to access sites like RapidShare to rely on foreign DNS servers, which would open another can of worms.) Certain protections are available — for example, the offending site has to be determined not to have significant non-infringing uses, which would appear to cover most of the services listed above. However, that is subject to interpretation. Even though Apple reportedly paid $100 million to the major labels for permission to launch the iCloud music locker, it could easily be argued that the majority of content stored there and on any other “legal” music locker service technically infringes on copyright.

This facet alone has caused the divide between big entertainment companies and big tech companies, all of which perceive SOPA differently based on their own interests both inside and outside of the market.

It’s rather clear what the entertainment industry hopes to get from SOPA. Clearly, it’s wrong when theft of creative, original–and copyrighted— data occurs. But, the opposition to the bill feels that this specific type of legislation is trying to kill a flea with cannon. SOPA opposition maintain that legal mechanisms already exist to identify and prosecute those in the game of malicious piracy and that those mechanisms could be applied more effectively. The passing of SOPA, they contend, would, to use the old adage, throw the baby out with the bathwater.

For a strong summarization of those arguments against SOPA and PIPA, consider this short video produced by LifeHacker in response to the bill.

Despite the opposition to the bill, the entertainment industry is arguing that even digital writers—journalists, bloggers, developers—should be concerned about protecting their own original content and SOPA would ultimately allow them to prosecute the plagiarism of their original ideas. In response to this argument, Rebecca MacKinnon, a former CNN journalist, told Bloomberg in an interview that, “the problem is, who decides what is copyright infringement? If you’re setting up a system of blacklisting websites at the national level you’re basically installing a censorship mechanism that is almost identical, technically, to the mechanism the Chinese use to censor their Internet, […] that the Iranians use, and so on.”

Nevertheless, just hours after the final hearings on SOPA occurred on December 15^th, anti-SOPA Internet users began to organize a boycott against the bill’s largest supporters. The first target was GoDaddy.com. When GoDaddy.com, the largest ICANN-accredited registrar in the world, announced its overwhelming support for SOPA, Internet users collectively acted—with much organizing occurring through Reddit.com—and boycotted the service. Over the 2011 Christmas holiday, GoDaddy lost over 37,000 domains in a matter of a few days, effectively forcing the company to discontinue its support for SOPA. Later Republican congressman Paul Ryan reversed his stance on SOPA following pressure from Reddit users.

An incomplete list of companies, websites and organizations supporting and opposing SOPA can be found here, along with what should be assumed to be an incomplete list and analysis of the money trail backing the bill’s legislation.

So what does all of this mean for the future of data? Much is uncertain, and it’s important for those in the data management game not to speculate too much about the future of the Internet. However, the last few weeks should teach all those interested in data governance just how important it is to be aware of not only which service is hosting their content, data, and information, but also which political stance these services hold when it comes to legislation like SOPA.

Despite where one finds his or herself on the issue of SOPA, the debate is sure to arise again once Congress returns from winter recess. For the short term, we can all continue to enjoy the net as it is. For the long term, however, back up your data and hold on to your hard drives – we’re in for a bumpy ride.

How Open Source Intelligence affects, alters, challenges foreign policy

By Jody Ray Bennett

The common sentiment in the American press—even in some academic analysis of international relations—is a variance of the phrase that still seems to be referenced ad-nauseum, that 9/11 changed everything. What was used as perhaps the quickest explanation of why the US was fighting a vague enemy in two wars, one admittedly as a result of faulty or “bad” intelligence, was that “everything changed after 9/11”. Notably, this was the narrative that appeared in ubiquitous fashion in every feverous op-ed or global security analysis well after the attacks.

Many things happened after that infamous day. A refreshed era of American ‘exceptionalism’ ushered in the doctrines of preventative war, a new justification for global military dominance, and an expressed need for a heightened security, exercised by exhaustive measures to gather intelligence via traditional and non-traditional methods.

But what changed, even before the 9/11 attacks ever happened—perhaps even regardless of those attacks—was the exponential growth of digital communication born from the simple computer network.

As access to the internet grew globally, global communication inevitably followed with it. Most fascinating is that this globalization of communication occurred—and is still occurring—in a virtual space. The digital age of information has taken humankind down a fascinating road. Not only can internet users chat with people in remote areas of the planet, manage their finances over interstate networks, or participate in virtual college courses, interested governments and businesses alike can now use this same platform to mine, gather, and obtain various levels of information, or digital intelligence. This type of intelligence is typically referred to as Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), but it is a type of intelligence no longer exclusive to state governments.

A 2008 report by the Congressional Research Service described OSINT as intelligence and information as of which is:

[D]erived from newspapers, journals, radio and television, and the internet. Intelligence analysts have long used such information to supplement classified data, but systematically collecting open source information has not been a priority of the U.S. Intelligence Community. In recent years, given changes in the international environment, there have been calls, from Congress and the 9/11 Commission among others, for a more intense and focused investment in open source collection and analysis. However, some still emphasize that the primary business of intelligence continues to be obtaining and analyzing secrets. A consensus now exists that OSINT must be systematically collected and should constitute an essential component of analytical products.

Private corporations, NGOs, journalists, publishers (see: WikiLeaks), hobbyists, and travelers alike all share a new tap into the stream of information that was once exclusively owned and operated by the state. And that is significant. It means that the state as we have come to know it, insofar as intelligence gathering and analysis is concerned, has weakened and allowed other actors to participate alongside itself, or—and perhaps more plausibly— that because so much information is available now, the state never had a chance to monopolize it in the first place. In other words, as the state was the primary investor into the technology that would create the information super highway, the state unknowingly placed itself into a world in which it was forced to utilize andshare that very platform with a host of other actors in the pursuit intelligence gathering and information consumption. And that means the state is competing, for better or worse, with other non-state actors in the game of intelligence data mining—ultimately digital information management sensitive to national security.

So why is this important? The very existence of OSINT means that any interested government, specifically those that currently hold political and economic influence on a regional or global scale—hegemons—are now forced to get in the game of data management and governance in pursuit of its own regional or global interests.

And this is tricky, especially when non-state actors have the ability to obtain information once exclusively owned by nation-states. WikiLeaks showed the world how easy it is to leak highly sensitive information, the contents of which can be argued as a form of leaked, publicized OSINT. Even at the lowest level, bureaucrats and investors alike can seek out, deduce and extrapolate information found in small circulation newspapers in any country in which an interest exists. In fact, because so much information is so widely available, some argue that the vast majority of the intelligence gathered by mandated state departments like the US Central Intelligence Agency or Britain’s MI5 is done so via OSINT.

Robert David Steele, former clandestine services case officer with the Central Intelligence Agency, has stated in various speeches and publications just how widespread open sourced intelligence is:

“The Marine Corps Intelligence Center (today a Command) discovered that 80% or more of what it needed to do policy, acquisition, and operations intelligence support was not secret, not in English, not online, and not known to anyone in Washington, D.C.  That is still true today [July 2007]. OSINT changes the rules of the game by making everyone in the audience a player with a legitimate right to collect, produce, and consume public intelligence […] Today, U.S. ‘intelligence’ is upside down and inside out. It is upside down because it relies on satellites in outer space rather than human eyes on the ground. It is inside out because it tries to divine intelligence unilaterally, without first asking anyone else what information they might provide.”

The redistribution of information that occurs online means that the hard data, information, stories, narratives, even rumors become a part of intelligence that is now digital and that must be managed if any entity, public of private, seeks to maintain power, seek an opportunity, or find an advantage. A 2008 report by the Swiss Institute of Technology’s Center for Security Studies described the parallels between OSINT stuffs now available online:

The evolu­tion of the internet and the emergence of the collaborative web have alerted security actors to the potential of new tools and technologies for collecting, analyzing, and distributing knowledge on global affairs. The proliferation of websites, portals, wikis, and blogs has opened a world of informa­tion hitherto unavailable to most intelli­gence professionals. Google Earth provides more geospatial intelligence than was available to most governments less than a decade ago. Even services such as Wikipedia are increasingly cited as intelligence sources. There is also a growing market for commercial intelli­gence vendors offering products and serv­ices previously restricted to the public sec­tor. Thanks to the information revolution, the traditional intelligence community no longer has a monopoly on the skills or in­formation needed to understand, analyze, or address today’s security threats.

The global acknowledgement of OSINT as a resource occurred after the fall the Soviet Union. While typically still used as a resource by governments and some journalists, it was not until the (perception of) the decentralization of an external threat that helped thrust OSINT into much more effective use.

According to the Center for Security Studies, “During the Cold War, intelligence services were pre-occupied with a limited number of largely state-centric challenges. Discovering the intentions and capabilities of the Soviet Union was the primary task of the West­ern intelligence community. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, however, these threats have multiplied and become more diverse in terms of their agents and nature.”

So did 9/11 change everything? Indeed, it helped place OSINT on the agenda of many governments around the globe. As more information became available, governments and non-governments the world over used OSINT as a resource to predict or shape policies in terms of where they found themselves influenced (or influencing) regionally.

How OSINT has altered or even challenged the foreign policy of states is much more precarious. When data is leaked or released for public consumption and is perceived by the state as a threat to national security (again, WikiLeaks provides a good example here), unofficial policy has a higher chance of undergoing alteration. Because of OSINT, public relations material and an array of damage control resources are kept close by in case especially damaging information about the state is released, uncovered or leaked.

Now that the global political game is now being played in the Age of (Digital) Information, the state is forced to take on a heightened responsibility to manage data—to manage its secrets, non-secrets, and absorb the shock against damaging classified and secret information that later becomes leaked and published (and thereby corroborating and legitimizing correct OSINT analyses). This is a significant first for humankind, and will undoubtedly spin off several national (even global) debates about information security and protection, digital privacy rights, and the overall interlinking between data management and political governance.

The Republic of Seychelles has issued China with an open invitation to establish an anti-piracy base in the small island republic. If accepted, this invitation will have security and strategic consequences for the region.
By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN Insights

On December 3^rd 2011, as part of a ‘goodwill’ trip to the Indian Ocean island nation of Seychelles, Chinese Defense Minister Liang Guanglie met with Seychelles President James Michel and announced a boost in military cooperation between the two states. It was the first time a Chinese defense minister had visited the islands in the nations’ 36 years of ‘uninterrupted partnership’.

During the trip, Michel announced that the island republic would officially invite China to establish a military base there to help with its ramping up of efforts to combat piracy. The Republic of Seychelles spans an archipelago of over 100 islands approximately 1,500 kilometers off the eastern coast of Africa, just north of the island nation of Madagascar. Despite efforts by the international community and the constant patrolling of warships, this region is still heavily affected by organized (and unorganized) piracy by non-state actors.

Foreign Affairs Minister of Seychelles, Jean-Paul Adam, stated, “Together, we need to increase our surveillance capacity in the Indian Ocean [...] as Seychelles has a strategic position between Asia and Africa.” According to one report by Agence France-Presse, Seychelles and China signed on to a military cooperation agreement in 2004 which “has enabled some 50 Seychelles soldiers to be trained in China.” Adam reminded the media that China has already given two light aircraft to the Republic, with the visit by Liang signaling a renewed agreement with China for increased financial support, military equipment and further military training. Chinese media reiteratedSeychelles’ adherence to the One-China policy.

But while this cooperative agreement may seem rather insignificant, military analysts in Washington have cited this agreement as a “warning” that demonstrates China’s ambitions in the Indian Ocean.

“China certainly has an interest in combating piracy in the Indian Ocean. They have requested that regional countries grant them naval base facilities – as happened in Kenya. They currently have warships patrolling the pirate corridor, and no official place for them to rest. Trade is a huge part of their economy; protecting trade is clearly a matter of national security for China,” Deborah Brautigam, professor at the American University’s School of International Service, told ISN Insights.

A String of Pearls?

China’s recent launch of an aircraft carrier is fueling these anxieties in Washington. According to a report in the Los Angeles Times, “An often-quoted classified report by US government consultant Booz Allen Hamilton in 2004, which was later partially leaked to the media, said China was trying to acquire a ‘string of pearls’ of naval bases that would eventually encircle India. That hasn’t happened so far, and China has made a concerted effort to dampen speculation about its ambitions.”

One analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washingtonexplained to the Los Angeles Times that “[China is] going out of their way to say that [this] is not a base, the same way that the United States doesn’t want to use the word in connection with Darwin, Australia.”

The move has some American analysts concerned, specifically because Seychelles already houses a small American drone base used to patrol pirate activity and conduct US surveillance missions over Somalia. India is also likely to be concerned by this development.

“If [China] sets up a base in the Seychelles this would be a huge step, but an inevitable one. They aren’t going to depend forever for their security on our Western defense umbrella,” Brautigam explained.

“The exact nature of the base is important. If the Seychelles is offering up a massive base, with shipyard support, fuel depots and airfield, that could have a huge strategic meaning in the Indian Ocean and East Africa region. On the other hand, if the offer is simply one of allowing a few days of rest and recreation for Chinese crews along with ordinary refueling and replenishment, that has much less strategic importance. A small ‘anti-piracy’ base may mean that the Chinese counter-piracy force has a convenient rest area to break up long deployments and a staging area for combating piracy near the Seychelles,” retired Navy Reserve Captain Mark Tempest told ISN Insights.

Like all major economic actors throughout history, China has a rightful concern about security along trade lines – especially when it comes to those routes where access is only possible by sea. Because piracy off the coast of Somalia has proven to be relatively resilient and resistant to the increased patrolling efforts of Western countries, a Chinese ‘anti-piracy’ base is a probable indication of its willingness and capability to protect its growing economic interests on the African continent.

“It is [also] in Seychelles’ best interests to encourage as many naval powers as it can to participate in counter-piracy operations because Seychelles cannot afford the types and numbers of ships that are needed to fight piracy on the high seas (or even in Seychellois national waters). It is essentially offering up bases in exchange for protection,” Tempest explained.

For the short term, this development enhances China’s rising role in Africa, which is perhaps indicative of its larger grand strategy. For the long term, the more relationships the Chinese establish and maintain around the globe, the less effort in accessing key strategic military bases if and when the US’ status as sole superpower diminishes or is lost. Until then, the island nation of Seychelles is welcoming China with open arms – and the waters off the eastern coast of Africa are set to gain yet another naval actor.

While security and defense contracting in Africa is nothing new, the awarding of another multi-million dollar contract by the US State Department to a controversial private security operation is perhaps indicative of just how thinly stretched the US military is becoming. This does not bode well for either oversight or accountability.

By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN Insights

Jody Ray Bennett is an independent writer, researcher and journalist. His areas of analysis include the global defense industry, private military and security companies and the materialization of non-state forces in the global political economy.

By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN Insights

On 10 March 2011, Saudi security analyst, Nawaf Obaid, wrote an article in Foreign Policy that proclaimed, “There Will Be No Uprising in Saudi Arabia”. The article sparked discussion – not only because Obaid has been accused of being an “indefatigable Washington gadfly” who works to provoke specific outcomes in US-Saudi relations – but because he boldly predicted such an outcome in the midst of unprecedented upheaval in the region: Saudi Arabia has yet to witness any substantial internal uprising.

At the time of Obaid’s writing, the US was pulling back from its commitments to assist Saudi Arabia against external threats, particularly the mounting one vis-à-vis Iran. In fact, it was the Gulf Cooperation Council’s (GCC) military force that had to step forward in mid-March to quell a Shiite revolt inside Bahrain – one that was generally believed to have been supported by Iran. That GCC military force – a 40,000-strong army called the “Peninsula Shield” – had to be revived in response to the absence of US military action. In response, Obaid deemed the US “inadequate in defending [Saudi Arabia] against Iranian influence” and that it had “abandoned its regional allies”.

Saudis and the Persians could be described as maintaining a love-hate relationship, and with a Saddam-free Iraq – Iran’s only border-challenger – Saudi Arabia inevitably became the only other regional power that could counterbalance a growing Iranian hegemony. The US’ promotion of Saudi Arabia as the sole hegemon in the region is one of strategic necessity, based on a more than 60-year relationship with the leading OPEC oil producer.

Helping the hegemon

By July – in the midst of the Arab Spring – Riyadh presented Washington with something of a false choice: fund the Saudi security infrastructure to help quell Iranian influence (which could occur directly or by proxy like in Bahrain), or do nothing and allow Iranian hegemony to grow, placing American interests in the Arabian peninsula in jeopardy. Unsurprisingly, Washington reacted by committing to a new US-Saudi arms deal containing “warships with integrated air and AEGIS missile defense systems, as well as helicopters, patrol craft and shore infrastructure” and a program to “train a new Facilities Security Force (FSF) designed to protect sensitive Saudi oil installations . . . to reach 35,000 strong.”

Essentially, the FSF was created out of fear by the Saudi elite, who watched with alarm as Iran influenced the Bahraini revolt. And the Saudis knew the US could not ignore growing Iranian influence in Saudi Arabia. The creation of an FSF does two things: it develops yet another defense against a potential attack from Iran, but it also defends Saudi elites from the population, which could be influenced by Iran or others.

According to Dr Ehsan Ahrari, an independent defense consultant, former professor at the US Air War College, Joint Forces Staff College of the National Defense University, and the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Honolulu:

The United States cannot afford a regime change in Saudi Arabia, which is the most important of all Arab countries for the US. Thus, [the US] is training FSF forces; [Washington] will sell them huge military packages …to keep [American] defense industries running. Even CENTCOM and AFRICOM will be involved in this deal for proper coordination.

Recent WikiLeaks cables have revealed that the blueprints for the ‘Facilities Security Force’ in Saudi Arabia went as far back as 2007, with the private security industry in Saudi Arabia already ramping up efforts to train private security guards within the country.

Indeed, US funding of Saudi security forces is not new. Since 2007, US defense contractor giant Lockheed Martin has trained over 10,000 recruits for domestic security operations – exactly the type of personnel who would be used for an FSF. Excluding the supply of military hardware like missile defense systems and fighter jets, the Middle East Economic Survey estimated in 2007 that the scale of a recent US-Saudi arms deal was “so immense” that “several years are likely to elapse until the new force is fully capable [with a cost] likely to reach $5bn.”

The uprisings that swept across the Middle East, however, have started to bring the force into fruition.

“First and foremost, the beneficiaries [of the US-Saudi deal] are Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain from their endeavors to avert regime change. The next is the US government and [its] defense contractors, who are most worried about the disappearing defense dollars inside the US political arena due to budget shortfalls,” Ahrari told ISN Insights.

The US has continued to spend money on the Arabian Peninsula to assert its dominance in the region. In June 2011, the Associated Press reported that the creation of a secret CIA-controlled drone facility near Yemen was to be used “as a backstop, if al-Qaida or other anti-American rebel forces gain control.”

And US-Saudi security cooperation is moving forward on other fronts. On 3 August, OilPrice.com reported that a visit by Obama cabinet members to Saudi Arabia would be a “preliminary” step to “discuss the possibility of moving forward on a nuclear cooperation agreement.” Until this occurs, however, the king recognized that increasing security and granting some (perceived) marginal civil liberties to the country might be needed to protect the monarchy from jeopardy.

During the Bahraini uprising, the King handed out $91 billion to the population while boosting the number of police on the ground, in what Reuters correctly identified as “a mixture of carrot and stick to stave off unrest rocking the Arab world.” On 25 September, Abdullah announced that beginning in 2015, Saudi women would be able to vote and run in local elections. As such, Saudi Arabia seems to have found an arrangement that many other Arab states did not in recent months: by beefing up security forces and conceding a few civil liberties to the population, the dominant power structure can at least for a time remain intact with a popular uprising kept at bay.

Jody Ray Bennett is an independent writer, researcher and journalist. His areas of analysis include the global defense industry, private military and security companies and the materialization of non-state forces in the global political economy.

Last October, the US Navy unveiled the first military vessel to run on “eco-friendly fuel.” The 49-foot command ship can carry up to 24 troops and runs entirely on a combination of algae-based fuel and diesel. As the Wired report notes, this came months after the US Military launched its “Green Hornet” jet in celebration of Earth Day – an “unmodified F/A-18 Super Hornet [using] a 50/50 blend of camelina-sourced biofuel and traditional JP-5 fuel.” In 2009, General Dynamics created a military ground vehicle based on hybrid technology.

All of this is part of a much greater plan for the Pentagon to reduce its oil consumption without having to sacrifice major cuts to its force size. Ironically, while the US Department of Energy remained silent, the US military was the first to warn that oil production could dip, causing massive shortages by 2015. As a Guardian report notes, “Future fuel supplies are of acute importance to the US military because it is believed to be the biggest single user of petrol in the world.”

In response, the Pentagon created a new energy office for Operational Energy Plans and Programs, tasked with “finding ways for the US armed forces to cut its dangerous reliance on oil.”

According to Sharon Burke, director of the new Pentagon office, US military operations account for the overwhelming majority of the federal government’s total energy use – last year, the energy budget for the US armed forces reached $13.4 billion. In aninterview, Burke stated “Of federal energy use, the [Department of Defense (DoD)] accounts for 80 percent or so. As a total user of energy in the US economy, it’s closer to one percent, a significant [statistic] for a single institution.”

“Last year,” she stated, “70 percent of the cost and 75 percent of the amount was for [military] operations. That’s almost 121 million barrels of oil equivalent.” One report notes that the figures of consumption are somewhat skewed since “the DoD excludes energy consumed at numerous military family housing communities that are privatized and outsourced transport services.”

With such a massive rate of consumption, DoD has ironically established a “ DoD Goes Green” website featuring a chorus of public relations material reiterating the Department’s latest “green” innovation, energy awareness themes and cost savings initiatives.

“The US military is doing the right thing but not doing it right. It pays too much attention to installation energy (energy consumed in buildings and platforms) rather than operational energy (energy used to run tactical vehicles, especially aircraft and ground vehicles). Almost all of the operational energy is oil. Recent initiatives such as synthetic fuel and biofuels are not a remedy. Green energy such as solar, wind, etc., could target installations. This is the dilemma that DoD faces,” Dr Sohbet Karbuz, amilitary energy analyst told ISN Insights.

For obvious reason, what is absent from the website is a startling statistic from a 2009peer-reviewed study by Princeton University that sought to determine the cost of keeping aircraft carriers alone in the Persian Gulf from 1976 to 2007 – a cost overwhelmingly attributed to oil, writes Foreign Policy, “Because carriers patrol the gulf for the explicit mission of securing oil shipments.” The cost over 30 years? $7.3 trillion – over half the current US national debt.

The global effect

“Soaring oil prices over the past few years had a considerable impact and burden on armed forces of many countries. Many have been looking at ways to lessen the pain of high oil prices. Some (like the French navy and Portuguese air force) considered this issue as a short term trend and tried to find temporary solutions by cancelling several missions and trying to refuel at places (ports for instance) where fuel prices were lower,” Dr Karbuz explained.

“Some militaries take a longer term vision. Chinese armed forces started to reduce costs and reduce energy use in response to the government’s call for a resource efficient and environmental friendly society – the armed forces were considered to be a leading driver. Canadian military forces started to concentrate on energy efficiency to cut fuel costs. For this aim it created a new office to monitor fuel consumption and set standards and procedures for the use of alternative energy sources. The South Korean military took measures to save oil by minimizing field operations, exercises and vehicle mobilizations. The UK Ministry of Defense has set up a forum to look at all aspects of fuel usage while studying initiatives to save energy. However, none of the military forces I mentioned above are as committed and determined as the US military,” he said.

Committed, indeed. Defense Secretary Robert Gates identified energy concerns as one of the department’s top 25 transformational priorities, and the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review addressed energy for the first time as a strategic issue. But while the Pentagon has led the way in many areas concerning renewable energy, it has yet to make it a top priority, falling back on rhetoric before any meaningful institutional changes.

“Because the US military runs on oil, oil becomes a foreign policy issue. Consider one example of US oil consumption abroad,” Dr. Karbuz said.

He points to a 21 December 2010 report from the Majority staff of the US House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs titled, Mystery at Manas: Strategic Blind Spots in the Department of Defense’s Fuel Contracts in Kyrgyzstan. It stated:

“The collateral consequences of the United States’ lack of strategic oversight of its fuel contracting in Central Asia have been significant. Allegations of corruption in the Manas contracts have been linked to two revolutions in Kyrgyzstan and resulted in widespread public perceptions – shared by interim President Rosa Otunbayeva and much of the political elite – that the United States has deliberately and illicitly used the fuel contracts to bribe Kyrgyzstan’s two past presidents.”

The US House Oversight Committee has since removed the report from its website .

As thousands of US soldiers leave the Iraqi battlefield, the US military ramps up efforts to increase unmanned and automated technologies, Jody Ray Bennett writes for ISN Security Watch.

By Jody Ray Bennett for ISN Security Watch

Last July, Piasecki Aircraft Corporation, with the help of Carnegie Mellon University, developed a navigation system that allows the full-sized helicopters to fly at low altitudes without a pilot. These new unmanned helicopters are the latest in automated military technology; where the predator drone UAV demonstrated a significant step in the development of unmanned – and lethal – military technologies, these helicopters can now be controlled remotely by nothing more than a pilot and computer.

In a press release from Helicopter Association International, such autonomous flight at low altitudes is an “unprecedented” innovation, and can be used for “future unmanned helicopters to evacuate wounded soldiers from contaminated or live-fire battlefields and to resupply forward military bases [as well as] aid to help both military and civilian pilots avoid obstacles, such as power lines, and select landing sites in unimproved areas such as emergency scenes, even when operating in low-light or low-visibility conditions.”

“The last decade has seen great advances in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), including both fixed and rotary wing types, [such as] planes and helicopters as well as related variants like quadcopters. Most systems so far have been relatively small and are already widely used in military and security contexts, especially for reconnaissance and surveillance. The development of an autonomous full-sized helicopter was hence to some extent a natural – though also highly challenging – next step,” School of Engineering and Science professor at the Bremen-based Jacobs University, Dr Andreas Birk, told ISN Security Watch.

Parallel to this development, defense giant Lockheed Martin came up with a system able to be installed on Army road vehicles that would allow for autonomous control in dangerous areas. In a $5.3 million contract signed with the US Army, Lockheed developed the Convoy Active Safety Technology (CAST) that can be “[attached] to [a] truck that enables it to drive itself, using radar and sensors (not, say, GPS) to navigate toward a programmed destination.”

According to a report by Danger Room and the latest edition of Defense Technology International, “The system is designed to keep formation with its convoy partners, adjusting speed to maintain safe distances between vehicles, and to pick up the slack if a lead vehicle is disabled.” Reports further note that, after a significant amount of research, “drivers-turned-passengers riding in CAST-controlled trucks were 25 percent more likely to spot roadside bombs.”

Deploying robots

By early August of this year, the US military partnered with the government of Belize to test an unmanned Boeing A160T Hummingbird helicopter, which was photographedin the skies of Cayo, 25 miles from the border of Guatemala. According to Aviation Week, this aircraft was “one of two deployed to Latin America by US Special Operations Command to test the DARPA-developed Forester foliage-penetration radarin counter-narcotics operations.” Danger Room noted that the aircraft “could also prove useful in urban areas or in Afghanistan, where its radar could help it surveil forested mountains and bring supplies to Special Forces teams at night.”

While deployment to warzones has yet to materialize, testing these technologies is increasing, especially considering the recent crash of an unmanned helicopter in California’s Mojave Desert. On 29 July 2010, a Boeing A160T Hummingbird reconnaissance helicoptercrashed while being controlled two miles away from the old George Air Force Base where Boeing Advanced Systems has a test facility.

But the US is not the only country hoping to augment some of its force with electronic capabilities. In fact, these types of technologies are already being developed by other states: Russia has developed an unmanned rotocraft; Burma reportedly has a line of UAVs (although currently delayed due to a few missing components); China has its own US drone knock-off; and Israel has developed some of its own unmanned technologies, which include UAVs it has used to train German soldiers to fly in Afghanistan earlier this year.

“The related work in the USA is currently a bit more military oriented, whereas rescue and safety applications dominate the research in Europe and Japan. Firefighting – especially for large forest fires – is of some interest in Europe; earthquake response is a major application area in Japan. Given the significant engagements and problems of the US in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is understandable that the military side of applications plays a bigger role in the US,” Birk said.

All of this is bringing about new concerns of unmanned and automated technological developments, many of which are being eyed by the US military for eventual use in surveillance and combat scenarios.

“The main scientific challenge, especially for helicopters, is the flight control, which has to be very fast and which has to deal with a very complex, hard-to-model system. It is a great scientific achievement to let a full-sized helicopter engage in autonomous flight,” Birk explained.

And all of this has significant implications for the future of warfare. From the Pentagon’s perspective, research in these technologies should reduce risks and casualties to its own forces, potentially allowing US military hegemony to sustain itself over longer periods of time with fewer backlashes from a public that would otherwise grow increasingly enraged over a large and long-term American presence abroad coupled with increased soldier deaths.

That said, Birk does “not expect a decrease in manpower by using more and more computerized or robotized systems. The systems need a significant amount of supervision and maintenance. And even in autonomous operations, it is very likely that there is somewhere a human in the loop specifying the mission and controlling its outcomes. But the profile of soldiers will significantly change to be more technology-oriented.”

Beyond this, ethical concerns still remain in the debates that have developed between unmanned, automated and robotized technologies. But even as the American economy dwindles, the Pentagon will surely continue to fund the research and development of these new machines, either to help scale down its human force in favor of ‘warbots,’ to potentially decrease the level of casualties of its forces (and thereby decrease political constraints to its interests globally), or both.

Kandahar, Afghanistan — Moving all the things 100,000 troops need to fight and survive in a hostile foreign land is never an easy task. In a landlocked, mountainous country the size of Texas, with few paved roads, it is even harder.

“I don’t think anyone has ever brought in this much equipment to a landlocked country that has only two major airports,” said Col. Gary Sheffer, acting commanding general of the U.S. Military’s Joint Sustainment Command in Afghanistan. “Without the road network, the railroad network, it’s a huge effort.”

And the effort has only grown more intense this summer. Sheffer and the 5,000 troops under his command are responsible for supplying all American forces in Afghanistan with everything from food and water to bullets and beds.

They are now on the front lines of President Barack Obama’s troop surge into southern Afghanistan that began this summer. Almost 100,000 U.S. troops are now in Afghanistan — up from about 40,000 when Obama first came into office. That increase has come in a short period of time, with 30,000 arriving in just the last eight months.

With the surge, Sheffer’s quartermasters and logisticians have seen their jobs grow more frantic. The dusty central receiving and shipping point at Kandahar Airfield, one of several massive supply yards here, is filled with everything the troops might need: mobile kitchens, bulldozers, transport trucks and thousands of shipping containers stacked in twos and threes. They are filled with radios, tires and everything else imaginable.

“We’ve had a 300-percent increase of what used to be pushed through here since we took over,” said Staff Sgt. Jose Garcia, from the 567th Cargo Transport Company, as he directed a forklift bearing yet another shipping container to its spot in the stack.

The 567th transports about 150 to 200 shipping containers or other pieces of equipment per day.

Sheffer said moving supplies in Iraq, with its port, relatively flat topography and extensive highway network, was a breeze compared with Afghanistan’s mountains and mostly dirt or gravel roads.

He said Kandahar Airfield has become the busiest single runway airport in the world with a flight slot every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day. The military uses planes and helicopters to move much of its “sensitive equipment,” like ammunition and combat vehicles.

But trucks are the main mode of transport. They pick up supplies from the port in Karachi, Pakistan, where U.S. supplies are shipped from either Kuwait or the United States.

Lt. Col. Ralph Burks, the distribution integration branch chief for the Sustainment Command, said between 6,000 to 8,000 Afghan and Pakistani trucks move 80 percent of the U.S. military’s supplies around Afghanistan each day.

“That many trucks moving back home would be impressive,” he said. “Out here, it’s amazing.”

The amount of supplies moving around the country is equally amazing and the costs staggering.

The Sustainment Command has supplied 47 million meals to U.S. troops in Afghanistan over the last six months at a cost of $900 million. During the same period, the Command processed 15 million pounds of ammunition, 21 million pounds of mail and distributed 237 million gallons of fuel. At the same time, the Sustainment Command’s troops also procured and delivered over 2 million gallons of bottled water. Capt. Jason Mann said they buy water from 10 plants located around the region.

“We’ve got some that comes from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, two located in-country in Kabul, and various plants in the [United Arab Emirates] that we source from,” he said.

All that water has to be shipped to Karachi and then driven by truck to Afghanistan. That means that by the time a single bottle gets to Kandahar it costs the U.S. taxpayer an average of $1.50 to $2 per half liter bottle.

The price can even rise as high as $6 per bottle if unforeseen costs, of which there are many, crop up.

Some of that cost is generated up by the notorious corruption endemic at all levels of Afghan society.

Many of the supplies must be trucked through dangerous and hostile routes in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The dangers of that journey are evident at the central shipping yard where one shipping container lays abandoned after being shredded by a rocket propelled grenade attack. Another truck is smashed and battered after what looks like a roll over. Bullets have shattered the glass on many of the vehicles.

Lt. Col. Beau Eidt, commander of the 4th battalion of the 401st Army Field Support regiment, said the drivers have to brave dangerous roads where they might encounter Taliban, bandits or warlords. Many such characters demand bribes for passage.

“There are a lot of entrepreneurial enterprises between here and the port of Karachi that may or may not affect their pocket book on the way up here,” Eidt said. “That’s a nice way of saying that warlords are stripping them. And sometimes warlords wear uniforms.”

Private security companies also play this game. They often charge the U.S.-led NATO force here between $1,500 and $2,000 per truck to provide security to escort convoys.

A recent U.S. congressional report has called for more oversight of U.S. military contracts with private Afghan trucking and security firms. And in August, the Afghan government announced it would disband the country’s private security industry within four months in an effort to regulate the unruly sector.

But because the U.S. and Afghan security forces are so dependent on the private trucking and security companies, many see the order [2] as unrealistic and unenforceable.

Government leaders are closely linked to ownership of some of the major Afghan-owned security companies, an investigation by The Killid Group has revealed.

President Hamed Karzai has openly accused the companies of thefts, murders, kidnappings and cooperating with the enemy.

The investigation indicates that over 5,000 armed men have been working with security groups belonging to the president’s family members or people close to him.

We also learned that some members of the Northern Alliance, who initially started security companies, have moved into the logistics business – they pay security companies smaller sums to guard their convoys. Interviews with senior officials of six of the biggest companies confirm that the companies belong to such power-brokers.

President Karzai’s statements, we discovered, have had an impact on them – creating a rift between the owners. Some have stepped back and seemingly will end their activities; others have scoffed at the president’s remarks and believe he will be unable to shut down the firms.

ASIA SECURITY GROUP

This company has belonged to the president’s cousin, Hashmat Karzai, son of Khalil Khan Karzai. Both brothers – Hashmat and Hekmat  – are close to President Karzai.

Asia Security Group (ASG), based in Sherpur, Kabul, operates with hundreds of guards, and sources in the security business say it has contracts to escort the coalition forces’ supply convoys to the south.

Now President Karzai has demanded that the security firms be shut down. Hashmat Karzai says that he is no longer the owner of ASG. He said it has been a while since he sold the company; when we asked why he sold ASG, he said he didn’t like it, so he sold it. However, the company’s permit in the records of AISA (the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency) is in the name of Hashmat Karzai, and security guards with ASG cap badges can be seen around his guesthouse in Kabul.

WATAN RISK MANAGEMENT

KANDAHAR SECURITY GROUP

The leading operations by private security companies in southern Afghanistan are undertaken by these two organisations. Many staff members confirmed off the record that the president’s half-brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, has a major role in both companies.

Watan Risk Management is part of Watan Group, owned by brothers Ahmad Rateb Popal and Ahmad Rashed Popal, who are distant relatives of the President . Kandahar Security Group has been operating under Ruhullah (who only uses one name), another distant relative.

As an operations commander for Watan Risk, Ruhullah said on August 9 that he welcomed the president’s decision on security companies and had resigned from his job there, but, during an interview that day with Killid, he confirmed he remained active in Kandahar Security Group.

Ruhullah has been a famous commander of security companies for seven years and ran an unregistered company called Amneyat Commando for four years. It used to operate on the Kandahar-Helmand highway and then merged with Watan Risk, which escorts NATO supply convoys from Maidan-e-Shahr to Kandahar and Helmand.

Watan Risk has been accused of paying tax to the Taliban and bribing them.  Ruhullah denied co-operating with them, and told Killid that the Americans had conducted an inquiry into this. He said: “U.S. congressmen called Rashed Popal, Rateb Popal and I to Dubai where we had an eight-hour meeting. They had no evidence and just made claims. We showed them where we spent the 10 million dollars that was our income  … we finally convinced them.”

Ruhullah said he had not watched the video uploaded on You Tube  in which his armed men are torturing some unknown people and later beheading them. But he said: “Anyone who was slaughtered must have been those who slaughter our men. This was done by my guards. I was in Kabul … There are 200 staff on the highway and they see one of their comrades being killed – if a Taliban soldier falls into their hands, they do the same to him,” he said.

When asked how we can believe the men his guards beheaded were Taliban and not civilians, he replied: “Taliban and civilian cannot be distinguished in the video – it is not written on their face whether they’re Taliban or civilians. The people killed were those who tried to kill me, and … if the Taliban accuse me of killing 5000 of their men, I won’t deny their allegation.”

He denies partnering with Wali Karzai.  He says: “I swear by God that Wali Karzai doesn’t even have one percent share in our company or any other company. This is all nonsense to say he is a shareholder.”

Ruhullah said 98 percent of the process for Kandahar’s official registration – the company employs 2,200 guards – had been completed. Now the permit only requires the President’s signature, but he is no longer sure whether the president will give his approval.

Companies with ties to senior Afghan officials

STRATEGIC SECURITY SOLUTIONS INTERNATIONAL

This company (SSSI) belongs to Haji Hassin, brother of Marshal Qasim Fahim, First Vice-President.

Ahmad Fawad, who holds the license for the company, confirmed that it was Haji Hassin’s business. Hassin was in London, he said this week, and he could not give an interview while Hassin was away. SSSI is registered at AISA as an English company.

NCL

NCL belongs to Hamed Wardak, the son of Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak. Hamed is founder, chairman and CEO of NCL Holdings, which includes logistics and security operations. The permit for NCL has been issued to Najib Wardak, a former security commander in Baghlan province and a U.S. citizen.

Hamed Wardak is in the U.S. and has been vehemently criticizing President Karzai’s policies; he says he has started a party called Fidayane Sulh (which translates as Sacrificing for Peace).  When we saw Najib Wardak, he said he had quit his job with NCL and had not even received his 10 percent share from the company.

ELITE

Elite belongs to Sadeeq Mujadadi, son of Sebghatullah Mujadadi, head of the Meshrana Jirga or Senate, and briefly President in 1992. Mr. Mujadadi is currently in Turkey, but his partner in the company, Mawdood Popal, told Killid that he was considering stopping the operations of the company, due it having no contracts. He added that other sections of the company, such as logistics and construction, would continue operating. Mawdood disagreed with President Karzai’s statement that security companies do not provide security for Afghanistan. He said: “The security companies provide security for those who pay them; they provide security for the convoys in return for payment.”

RESERVE OPERATIONS UNIT

Matiullah Khan, a police officer who also runs a militia group, has more than 3,000 armed men operating in Uruzgan, where he is in charge of the Kandahar-Uruzgan highway. He lives in the family home of Jan Muhammad Khan, a former governor of Uruzgan, who boasts of being an advisor-minister to President Karzai. Matiullah Khan told Killid in an interview: “I have 648 men as part of the Ministry of Interior, but more than 3,000 men have picked up their weapons from their houses and are working with me. I get their salaries and other benefits from the foreigners’ convoys and each one of them is paid $240 per month.”

SHAMSHAD

Shamshad belongs to Abdul Raof Zadran, son of Padsha Khan Zadran, the former governor of Paktia province and now a member of parliament. His brother, Abdul Wali Zadran, is district governor of Wazi Zadran district in Paktia province. Shamshad escorts the foreign convoys on the Khost-Gardez highway. Interviewed by Killid, Abdul Raof said he was considering increasing the number of guards and expanding the company. He says he has no connections with the Taliban nor any plans to deal with them. Shamshad has no official permit, but Zadran says he has received a temporary permit from Paktia province.
NORTHERN ALLIANCE LINKED COMPANIES

One owner of a security company is Jalaludin Rabbani, son of Burhanudin Rabbani, who was President from 1992 to 1996, and again briefly in 2001.

Nazir Shafaee, in charge of Burhanudin Rabbani’s office, told us that they were going to call the company Afghanistan Risk, but they couldn’t do so, for some unspecified reason. Jalaludin was in Canada, and at present we can provide no further details of the company.

Members of the Northern Alliance were the first to cooperate with the foreign forces. Now some have opened logistics companies – and make more money. Ruhullah, the director of Kandahar Security Group says: “Most security companies have contracts with the logistics companies and not with foreign forces. When these companies transport a vehicle for foreign forces, they charge them $4000 for each vehicle and then they sign a contract with us, but they pay us only $500 to $800 when we escort them.”

One security company, Afghanistan Navin, belongs to Lutfullah, a commander who fought with jehadi leader Abdulrab Rasul Sayaf.

Amanullah Guzar, one of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud’s commanders, has been reported as Lutfullah’s partner, though the latter denied. it

Navin has a big contract with Bagram military base, and his company regularly escorts foreign convoys from Shair Khan in Kunduz province to Bagram, and from there to Ghazni. Lutfullah said he has 500 guards.

Khurasan Security Company belongs to Wahidullah Frozi, the brother of Haji Khalil-Khalillulah Frozi-chief executive of Kabul Bank. The Panjshiri brothers’ company provides security for Kabul Bank.

The employees of the security companies are paid at least $200 and on average $400 per month, but those working on highways and in insecure areas make up to $800 per month. There is tough competition between the companies operating on highways – to the point that some company owners are convinced their convoys are attacked by competitors, not just by insurgents.

In June, a US Congessional investigation published the report “Warlord Inc”, probing the bribes paid to the Taliban to allow convoys through. But this is not a new phenomenon in Afghanistan – Ruhullkah described how, during the 1980s, Soviet supplies used to be transported by people who bribed the Mujahidin.

We asked Abdul Rahim Salarzoi, the owner of Salarzoi Company, who they pay on the Kabul-Kandahar highway. He said they pay only some individuals living in the area, to tell them whether or not the Taliban have set an ambush – and if so, where. He says most of the reports they get are accurate.

Will President Karzai shut down the security companies, employing as many as 50,000 guards, in four months, as he has said? With 90 percent of the companies providing services to foreign troops and institutions, how will the vacuum created by their closure be filled? Will it be acceptable to the foreign forces when Karzai says the guards working for these companies should be part of the Afghan National Army and National Police? Many running the firms are former army generals or police officers – who typically quit their jobs for better salaries in the private sector.