Politico

Cyberattack on the Infrastructure Alarms Petraeus, Coats

September 9, 2018 by Llewellyn King Leave a Comment

War always goes for the infrastructure: take out the bridges, cut off the electricity and water supplies. All that used to be done with artillery, tanks and bombs.

Going forward, it will be done by computers: Cyberwar.

Every day the early skirmishes — the tryout phase, if you will – are taking place. There are tens of thousands of probes of U.S. infrastructure by potential enemies, known and unknown, state and non-state. A few get through the defenses.

Jeremy Samide, chief executive officer of Stealthcare, a company which seeks to improve cyberdefenses for a diverse set of U.S. companies, sees the cyber battlefield starkly. He says the threat is very real; and he puts the threat of serious attack at 83 percent.

Jeremy Samide is chief executive officer of Stealthcare.

As Samide looks out across the United States from his base in Cleveland, he sees probes, the term of art for incoming cyberattacks, like an endless rain of arrows. Some, he says, will get through and the infrastructure is always at risk.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats issued a warning in July that the alarms for our digital infrastructure are “blinking.” He compared the situation to that in the country before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The situation, he told the Hudson Institute in a speech, is “critical.” Coats singled out Russia as the most active of the probers of U.S. infrastructure.

Samide says probing can come from anywhere and Russia may be the most active of the cyber adventurers.

A common scenario, he says, is that the electric grid is target one. But considerable devastation could come from attacking banking, communications, transportation or water supply.

Retired Army Gen. David Petraeus, a former director of the CIA and current chairman of KKR Global Institute, in an article coauthored with Kiran Sridhar and published in Politico on Sept. 5, urges the creation of a new government agency devoted to cybersecurity.

Samide and others endorse this and worry that the government has much vital material spread across many agencies and not coordinated. Behind Petraeus’s thinking is one of the lessons of 9/11: Government departments aren’t good at sharing information.

Conventional wisdom has it that the electric grid is super-vulnerable. But Politico’s cybersecurity reporter David Perera, who consulted experts on the feasibility of taking down the grid, somewhat demurs. In a Politico article, he concluded that the kind of national blackout often theorized isn’t possible because of the complexity of the engineering in the grid and its diversity.

The difficulty, according to Perera, is for the intruder to drill down into the computer-managed engineering systems of the grid and attack the programable controllers, also known as industrial control systems — the devices which run things, like moving load, closing down a power plant or shutting off the fuel supply. They are automation’s brain.

Perera’s article has been read by some as getting the utilities off the hook. But it doesn’t do that: Perera’s piece is not only well-researched and argued but also warns against complacency and ignoring the threat.

John Savage, emeritus professor of computer science at Brown University, says, “I perceive that the risk to all business is not changing very much. But to utilities, it is rising because it appears to be a new front in [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s campaign to threaten Western interests. While I doubt that he would seek a direct conflict with us, he certainly is interested in making us uncomfortable. If he miscalculates, the consequences could be very serious.”

Samide warns against believing that all probes are equal in intent and purpose. He says there are various levels of probing from surveillance (checking on your operation) to reconnaissance (modeling your operation before a possible attack). Actual attacks, ranging from the political to the purely criminal, include ransomware attacks or the increasing cryptojacking in which a hacker hijacks a target’s processing power in order to mine cryptocurrency on the hacker’s behalf.

The threats are global and increasingly the attribution — the source of the attack — concealed. Other tactics, according to Samide, include misdirection: a classic espionage technique for diverting attention from the real aim of the attack.

The existential question is if cyberwar goes from low-grade to high-intensity, can we cope? And how effective are our countermeasures?

Today’s skirmishes are harbingers of the warfighting of the future. — For InsideSources

The Media-Pollster Axis Stole the Election

November 16, 2014 by Llewellyn King Leave a Comment

Politics is the hot ticket in journalism these days. Young reporters long to cover Capitol Hill, when once they longed for the exotic life of the foreign correspondent. “Timbuktu or bust” has become “Washington or fail.” Journalism's stars today are those who can reel off the precincts of Iowa or the hobbies of senators, not the wonders of rural Sri Lanka.

Yet the passion for politics that has seized the Washington press corps and those who want to join it across the country has not been reflected in the public – not, at any rate, by the abysmally low national turnout of 36. 3 percent on Nov. 4, arguably one of the most important midterm elections in a long time.

It was the lowest voter turnout in 72 years: a seeming monument to voter apathy. Certainly not the sign of a seething, unhappy electorate which believes the bums should be thrown out because the country is on the wrong track. That may be so, but you wouldn't know it from the voter turnout.

The voter turnout wasn't large enough for anyone to claim that the country has veered to the right, or that the victors have a mandate. Yet we know President Obama is held in low esteem, although not as low as the risible contempt in which Congress is held.

If the voters didn't come out in large enough numbers to give us a clear reading, how do we know that Obama is on the ropes and that Congress is despised? We know it, without doubt, from the innumerable opinion polls which are now part of the journalistic toolbox.

There is no doubt about the public mood. So why didn't the public vote when there was so much journalistic enthusiasm for the election; when an amazing amount of television time, especially on cable, was given to politics; and when radio goes at politics 24-7?

The paradox may be journalism and its commitment to opinion polls, largely funded by the media. If you know who is going to win the match, why buy a ticket?

The passion in journalism for politics has made politics a victim, robbed it of surprise and tension. I voted without passion because I had a very complete picture of the outcome before I did my civic duty. It was like reading an otherwise gripping who-done-it, when I already knew it was the butler.

The metadata people, like Nate Silver, aren't helping either.

When newspapers are cutting their staffs and budgets are tight, why is political coverage and polling out of Washington thriving? First, it is cheaper to create news than find it. With polls, you scoop the election result. Second, there is a large pot of money for “political issues” advertising that has given rises to a raft of new outlets, forcing old-line media to double down.

Washington politics is no longer a franchise of The Washington Post and The New York Times. It has its own trade press, led by the upstart and well-funded Politico, a big news predator in a school of hungry fish. There is The Hill, Roll Call, National Journal, RealClearPolitics and more than a dozen others, like The Cook Political Report and Talking Points Memo.

It is these new entrants, with their access to instant electronic delivery, that have led the change and fueled the frenzy. They are in danger of becoming the game instead of covering it. They have become more interested in what the polls say than what the politicians say.

On Capitol Hill, members of Congress are in bunker mode. They are afraid to say anything or look a bit tired, distressed or unkempt because these ill-considered words and unflattering images will be flashed across the Internet – there to be retrieved at any time, for all time.

There is a joke around Washington that if a member of Congress breaks wind, Politico will have the story. In this new world, every trifle is recorded and archived. Is this the way to foster statecraft in a dangerous and unforgiving world? Let's poll that question, shall we? — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

When Less Was More in the News Business

June 23, 2014 by White House Chronicle Leave a Comment

When I first worked at the newspaper trade in Washington, back in 1966, it was a different journalism. I don’t mean the difference in the technology, the 24-hour news cycle, or the ramped up interest in celebrity. I mean something more protean, more organic.

I worked at The Washington Daily News — a tabloid in size but not in mission — and we covered the news in a very traditional way: whatever our news judgment demanded. Although we were a Washington afternoon newspaper, politics was just part of the mix.

The Daily News had one full-time congressional correspondent, and we sent reporters to Capitol Hill when there was really a lot going on. The Washington Post — then as now the dominant paper in town — covered The Hill more intensely, but not with the intensity that it does today.

In short, political coverage was more laid back; not asleep, but not as frantic as it is now. Nobody felt it necessary to record every slip of the tongue, or where a congressman had lunch or, for that matter, with whom. Certainly, nobody felt they should shun the wine list — and few did.

Covering the White House was a simple matter: once through the gate, you could stroll through the West Wing and talk to people. Today, even if you have a regular or so-called hard pass, you are restricted to walking down the driveway to the press briefing room. If you have an appointment, or want to smell the flowers, you have to have an escort – usually a young person from the press office.

Why this is, and what the purpose of this minder is, nobody has been able to tell me. It is so dispiriting to see the equanimity with which reporters accept their prisoner status.

It did not happen overnight, but gradually under president after president. In my time in Washington, reporter freedom has been curtailed at the White House to the point that unless you want to go to the briefing, there is no point in going through the gate. No news is available because you, the reporter, are not at liberty to collect it.

News out of the White House now has to be gained off the premises, on the phone or by the Internet. The briefing room is a dead zone for print reporters, with the television reporters going back and forth with the press secretary, which is what their medium demands. No news is broken except when the president saunters in and things pick up. That is not worth hanging around there day after day.

But the real change is the proliferation of political media, including the dedicated publications like Roll Call, The Hill, Politico, The National Journal and the cable news networks. This means there are more reporters chasing snippets of news. The big issues get lost as often as not while the news hounds are baying after trivia, little non-events, misstatements, or failure to apologize for imagined sleights.

Also, White House staffers and people who work on Capitol Hill have less and less confidence in reporters and are less frank with them. I find very little point in interviewing Congress people these days because they worry that whatever they say will, if you like, go into their record to be dredged up way in the future.

The other great organic change is in reportorial ambition. Back in the 1960s (and I must confess I started reporting in the 1950s), reporters longed to be foreign correspondents; to go abroad and tell us about life in faraway places. Today, with the emphasis on politics, the ambitious reporter longs to cover politics in Washington. So if there is a big international event, such as the Iraq-ISIS conflict, it ends up being covered through politics. What did Obama say about it? Has John McCain been heard from?

This affects both our understanding of an issue, and does nothing to ameliorate propaganda narratives. Over-covering the snippets does not help: it obscures when it should clarify.

A lot of news used to come out of reporters' long lunches with politicians. Now the number of drinks served, as espied from another table, would be the news. — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate

Where Are the Dog Days of Yesteryear?

July 30, 2010 by White House Chronicle 4 Comments

The Greeks started the whole thing by calling sultry summer weather “Dog Days,” blaming it on the brightest star in the sky besides the Sun, Sirius, also known as the Dog Star. But it was the Romans who really took it seriously: They sacrificed brown dogs to appease the rage of Sirius and ameliorate the weather.

Now, could it be that the Dog Days in Washington are a thing of the past?

The weather has been foul enough, but where is the cessation of news? Where are the soft, feature articles masquerading as news that marked the metaphorical Dog Days? Where are the lesser politicians trying to get noticed for bills they have introduced that will died in committee?

It used to be at this time of year, when Congress was preparing for its long summer recess, things just slowed down, practically flat-lined. Washington emptied; the traffic thinned; no reservations were needed in restaurants; and clubs, like the Metropolitan and the Cosmos, opened their doors to non-members.

While there has been some summer flight, the journalistic and political intensity continues apace. Not only is this an election year, but the whole structure of political reporting has been revolutionized.

In a time of journalistic agony in most publications, political reporting is booming, fed by new technologies and cable news. Well, that is on the surface; out of sight, the furnace is fed by money, lobbying money.

If you want Congress to pass legislation favorable to your interests, or not to pass something unfavorable, then you hire a slew of lobbyists. They, in turn, place “advocacy” ads and the political media are off to the races. These ads appear on air, on line, on paper and on our doorsteps. Some media outlets charge hefty subscription fees, like Congressional Quarterly and National Journal, others are given away. But all seek and promise to lift the veil of secrecy in Washington.

The reporters—for Roll Call, The Hill, The Daily Caller, and hundreds of blogs clustered around publications and television channels, mainstream newspapers and wire services–slice, dice, puree, chop, blend, mix, pound, julienne, mince, whip and, sometimes, flavor the news. But mostly they feed the rapacious, 24-hour news cycle by blowing the slightest slip of the tongue, the smallest infraction of decorum, the inadvertent utterance into national events.

The remarkable new entry in the field is Politico, which exploded on the scene with the considerable fortune of Robert Allbritton, chairman and chief executive officer of Allbritton Communications, which owns television stations in Washington and elsewhere. As an example of innovative multi-platform publishing, it is an exemplar.

The impact in the surge in political reporting across the board is questionable: too many peas of news in mattresses of words. There is no time to investigate, and none to ponder. Better to be first and wrong than second and right.

One result of the swelling ranks of political reporter is politicians have clammed up. It is unwise for them to say anything that has not been vetted by their staffs. Hence, their infatuation with social media.

Here in high summer, one realizes that the glorious lazy, hazy Dog Days are a thing of the past; a time to do that interview you had put off, to try to be little more creative with your writing, to talk the bureau chief or editor into an off-beat story. No, instead, hundreds of political reporters are looking for something, anything, to fill today’s void. Was a congressman seen with a pretty woman (Damn, it is his daughter!)? Did a senator misspell something on her Facebook page?

It is this frenzy for faux news that brought us stories like Acorn, Shirley Sherrod, and the endless sightings of President Obama with known socialists? Whew!

Bring back the ancient Dog Days, but spare the brown dogs.