The ‘Left of Launch’ Strategy: Yet another reason why Iran is not a nuclear threat to America.

Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Wednesday, 08 March 2017 23:27.

An interesting story appeared at ASPI today, regular people have now become aware of the existence of the ‘left of launch’ strategy. Which you can read about at the links included in the Cyber wrap 154 which I’ve reproduced in full below.

The utility of having people know about the ‘left of launch’ strategy is that it even further reduces the credibility of any of Donald Trump’s feigned hyperventilating about the alleged (and in fact non-existent) ‘threat’ of Iran ever attaining a nuclear weapon, much less having the ability to use such a weapon against anyone.

Armed with this information, it is possible for people to go out into the world and make the case that even if one were to entertain the idea that Iran were willing to create some improbable doomsday scenario, there is no need for anyone to send a single American aircraft, tank, or armoured patrol vehicle anywhere near Iran in order to avert such a scenario.

If Donald Trump and his supporters continue to behave like Iran is a ‘major nuclear threat’ despite the existence of the ‘left of launch’ strategy in public view, there is only one place that such a ridiculous narrative can be actually originating from, and that place is Israel. That is the case which should be made over and over again, until it becomes a kind of mantra.

Here’s ASPI’s Cyber wrap:

ASPI - The Strategist, ‘Cyber wrap 154’, 08 Mar 2017 (emphasis added):

Lightbulb

Welcome back to your weekly fix of cyber news, analysis and research.

The New York Times reported last Saturday that, back in 2013, President Barack Obama ordered cyber sabotage operations against Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. The persistently high failure rate of the US’s kinetic antimissile weapons, despite significant investment, reportedly prompted Obama to consider a cyber supplement. The project to pre-emptively undermine missiles in their development stages, known as a ‘left of launch’ strategy, receives dedicated resources at the Pentagon and is now President Trump’s to play with. However, experts are concerned that this kind of cyber offensive approach sets a dangerous precedent for Beijing and Moscow, particularly if they believe that US cyber operations could successfully undermine their nuclear deterrence capability.

Staying stateside, the future of the NSA’s spying powers are   under scrutiny this week as elements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) approach sunset. Section 702 of the Act forms the basis for the NSA’s monitoring of foreign nationals’ communications around the globe in the interests of national security. It was under this FISA authority that the US’s infamous “big brother” program PRISM—revealed in the Snowden disclosures of 2013—was established.

While the legislation is designed for foreign targets, there have long been concerns it could be used to surveil US citizens through their contact with foreigners. Human rights advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union are protesting the renewal of this legislation in defence of international privacy. The issue also has the trans-Atlantic data-sharing agreement on thin ice, especially given that EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova has made it clear that she ‘will not hesitate’ to suspend the painstakingly crafted arrangement should the US fail to uphold its stringent privacy requirements.

That task may be even more difficult after WikiLeaks’ overnight release of a dossier, dubbed ‘Vault 7’, detailing the CIA’s cyber espionage tools and techniques. WikiLeaks released over 8,000 documents it claims were taken from a CIA computer network in the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence. The documents detail the agency’s expansive and sophisticated cyber espionage capability, including compromising the security common devices and apps including Apple iPhones, Google’s Android software and Samsung televisions to collect intelligence.

China’s Foreign Ministry and the Cyberspace Administration of China this week launched the country’s first International Strategy of Cooperation on Cyberspace. The Strategy outlines China’s basic principles for cyber diplomacy and its strategic goals in cyberspace. Encouragingly, the Foreign Ministry’s Coordinator for Cyberspace Affairs Long Zhao stated that ‘enhancing deterrence, pursuing absolute security and engaging in a cyber arms race…is a road to nowhere’. Unsurprisingly, the Strategy offers strong support for the concept of cyber sovereignty, stating that ‘countries should respect each other’s right to choose their own path of cyber development’, and emphasises the importance of avoiding cyberspace becoming ‘a new battlefield’. You can read a full English language version of the Strategy here.

The revelation that the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) was temporarily forced to rely on diesel generators during last month’s heat wave has prompted the government to significantly upgrade to the agency’s infrastructure. The Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Cyber Security told Parliament on Wednesday that it was recommended by ActewAGL and the NSW Department of Environment that ASD switch to back up power on 10 February as part of state-wide load shedding to protect power supplies. The new $75 million project, funded by the Defence Integrated Investment Program, is intended to bolster the intelligence agency’s resilience.

Several cyber incidents have kept the internet on its toes this week. The Amazon Simple Storage Service cloud hosting service went down last week, knocking hundreds of thousands of popular websites and apps offline. The disruptive incident, originally described by the company as ‘increased error rates’, was actually not the result of cyber criminals or hacktivists, but that of an employee’s fat fingers entering a command incorrectly—whoops! Yahoo is in the doghouse (again) with the awkward announcement in its annual report to the Security and Exchange Commission that 32 million customer accounts are thought to have been compromised through forged cookies. This isn’t to be confused with the entirely separate and very embarrassing loss of 1 billion accounts in a 2013 breach, which recently cost the company $350 million in its acquisition deal with Verizon and CEO Marissa Mayer her annual cash bonus. And if you’ve been tracking the #cloudbleed saga, catch up with some post-mortems here, here and here.

Finally we’ve got you covered for your weekly cyber research reads. A new Intel report, written by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, examines the discrepancies in cyberspace that put defenders at a disadvantage. Titled Tilting the Playing Field: How Misaligned Incentives Work Against Cybersecurity, the report reveals the gaps between attackers vs. defenders, strategy vs. implementation and executives vs. implementers, offering recommendations to overcome such obstacles. And get your fix of statistics from PwC’s annual Digital IQ assessment based on a survey of more than 2,000 executives from across the world. The research reveals that only 52% of companies consider their corporate Digital IQ to be ‘strong,’ a considerable drop from 67% last year.



Comments:


1

Posted by DanielS on Thu, 09 Mar 2017 12:05 | #

That is a significant story, Kumiko, thank you: maybe should be in the evergreen section…

Its particularly important to equip people with this understanding of the futility of an Iranian nuclear program, even if Iran wanted one; given that Trump is, as you observe, not the whore for business and other national interests that other candidates were - The Iran Deal had come about despite Israel’s objections as it was overwhelmingly in the business interests of other nations and lobbies - Whereas Trump is a single issue whore on behalf of Israel such as the Presidency has never known; oblivious to various interests and nations in opposition to the deal; he’s a whore who services no interests in conflict with the YKW/Israel - in turn, the sole opposition to the Iran deal

                             

We know the issue that launched Trump’s career - and we now know just how phony and crooked an issue that is.


2

Posted by Kumiko Oumae on Sun, 12 Mar 2017 10:25 | #

That’s exactly correct, the whole issue that launched Donald Trump’s political career was basically his motivation to end the Iran deal and destroy all of the hard work that everyone did to bring that deal about, because the most important thing for Donald Trump is his desire to defend Israel.

We at Majorityrights.com are practically the only people who have been willing to consistently point this out. Regarding myself specifically, the view that I’ve taken ever since I’ve started posting here is that I am different from all the other authors out there at any of the other sites, because I don’t approach the world from the perspective of a jilted ‘culture warrior’. I approach the world from the perspective of geoeconomics, geostrategy, and organised violence.

I never have taken the ‘SJW American College’ problem personally like how all of the Alt-Right commentators did, the ‘SJW’ phenomenon was interesting to me only insofar as the ‘SJWs’ were being leveraged in the service of the foreign policy of Qatar (more on that later), and that’s basically it.

Because I never really cared about ‘culture war’ stuff beyond its utility in the geoeconomic and geostrategic realm, I was able to see clearly what was the true nature of Donald Trump, behind all the absurd posturing about how he was ‘against political correctness’. Donald Trump is actually ‘politically correct’ – which is to say politically toxic – in the most devastatingly bad way of all. His administration is the most ardently Zionist administration that has ever existed in the United States or in any other country other than Israel itself, ever.

Prior to 2017, it was a matter of debate as to whether the United States was under a ‘Zionist Occupation Government’. Ironically, the Alt-Right itself, despite all their faux anti-semitic rhetoric, actually supported and voted the most overt and consolidated version of a Zionist Occupation Government into power and cemented it. No longer are the Zionists forced to engage in incessant battles with other lobbyist groups to try to make themselves heard, now they simply win on every issue instantly and immediately. It is no longer a matter of debate as to what the status of the United States is. The United States is a Zionist Occupation Government.



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