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The U.S. Department of Defense will have an increased role in domestic U.S. security; a Pentagon plan calls for up to 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe
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An independent commission of experts, set up by Congress as part of the recommendations by the 9/11 commission, concludes that terrorists will most likely carry out an attack with biological, nuclear, or other unconventional weapons somewhere in the world in the next five years
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The commando-style attacks that killed some 200 people in Mumbai, India, last week began with a small-scale amphibious invasion that bears uncanny resemblance to recent pirate attacks off the African coast
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The Pentagon has spent more than $14 billion so far to find way effectively to counter IEDs; it has even created an agency — the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization — to do the work; still, there are about 1,400 IED attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan every month, and about 350 attacks in other parts of the world; a congressional panel notes progress in countering IEDs but says much works remains
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Seventeen pro-democracy, anti-terror groups from South Africa, Britain, and the Middle East which have an online presence will gather in New York to exchange notes
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The $100 million project was launched after 9/11; the facility would eventually receive video footage from 3,000 cameras posted in and near the financial district, an area of about 1.7 square miles
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The Strait of Malacca between Malaysia and Indonesia, and the Gulf of Aden, are among the most sensitive choke points in global commerce; trouble is, the stable, the comparatively wealthy Southeast Asian countries that line the Malacca Strait have committed their naval and coastal forces to stamping out hijackings and piracy, but the Gulf of Aden is bordered by poor or dysfunctional countries like Djibouti, Yemen, and particularly Somalia
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Raytheon awarded contract for exploratory nuclear detection research… Navies may get tougher on piracy after tanker seizure… U.S. donates nuclear detection equipment to Nigeria
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Trend
Forget Captain Kidd, wooden legs, or treasure maps; modern pirates are equipped with supercharged speedboats, large-caliber weaponry, and all the radio intercept technology they need to identify and locate valuable ocean-going booty; on 9/11 we saw what damage a jumbo jet could do when used as a weapon; how about a supertanker as a weapon?
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The war against terrorists has two characteristics: It is fought in populated areas — big cities or remote villages — and the death of noncombatants offer terrorists propaganda victories; smarter bombs aim to address these problems
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Ammonium nitrate mixed with fuel oil commonly is used as an explosive in mining and has been used by terrorists — such as Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma; DHS proposes to regulate its use
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Piracy off the Somali coast is becoming a serious problem; so far this year there have been 81 pirates attacks in the region, including 32 hijackings
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One of the major problems in attacking the WMD facilities of rogue nations is the the destruction of these facilities may scatter the toxic materials over a wide area; a secret Pentagon weapon program aims to address this problem
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The Turkish government a comprehensive study for a new counterterrorism strategy, using the U.S. model for counterterrorism coordination as a possible base
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A government study finds that government counter-terrorism funding to local authorities and neighborhood policing over the last two years has yet to translate into a coherent strategy to stop people from becoming terrorists or supporting violent extremists
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Congress has placed a 77,000-ton limit on the amount of nuclear waste that can be buried in Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository (the repository will open in 2020 at the earliest); trouble is, the 104 active U.S. nuclear reactors, together with the Pentagon, produce that amount of waste in two years
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A U.S. Navy admiral expresses an interest in Active Denial Systems (or nonlethal weapons which emit an ear-piercing sound) against pirates; Pentagon skittish about use of such systems
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In the early days of Star Wars it was believed that only beam weapons would offer the hope of destroying hundreds of warheads and thousands of decoys which would be part of a Soviet missile attacks on the United States; Iran and North Korea do not have hundreds of missiles and thousands of decoys, so kinetic multiple-kill vehicles may do the job
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The computer systems of critical businesses in the United Kingdom, such as power companies and large financial institutions, are being repeatedly probed to steal information or uncover weaknesses that could take them down
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The long view
To prevent Iranian nukes, a negotiated deal better than a military strike: David Albright
David Albright is the founder and president of the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), and author of several books on fissile materials and nuclear weapons proliferation. In a testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, and an interview with Deutsche Welle on Thursday, Albrights says that there is every reason to be suspicious of Iran because it has cheated on its obligations in the past and has been uncooperative on an ongoing basis. Iran has also built many sites in secret, so any agreement with Iran should have extra insurance — a more powerful inspection and verification tool to try to ferret out any secret nuclear activities or facilities that Iran would build. Still, a negotiated deal, if it includes sufficiently robust inspection and verification measures, would be a more effective way than a military strike to make sure Iran does not develop nuclear weapons.
Fusion centers, created to fight domestic terrorism, suffering from mission creep: Critics
Years before the 9/11 attacks, law enforcement agencies throughout the country, alarmed by the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, began to monitor and investigate signs of domestic terrorism. That increased monitoring, and the need for coordination among various law enforcement agencies, gave rise to the fusion centers. A new report, which is supported by current and former law enforcement and government officials, concludes that post-9/11, fusion centers and the FBI teams which work with them shifted their focus from domestic terrorism to global terrorism and other crimes, including drug trafficking.Experts say that at a time when the number of domestic terrorism threats, many of which are linked to right-wing extremist groups, is surging, law enforcement must refocus their attention on the threats from within.
Lack of evidence-based terrorism research hobbles counterterrorism strategies
The Global Terrorism Database at the University of Maryland estimates that groups connected with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State committed almost 200 attacks per year between 2007 and 2010. That number has increased to about 600 attacks in 2013. As terrorism becomes more prevalent, the study of terrorism has also increased, which, in theory, should lead to more effective antiterrorism policies, and thus to less terrorism. The opposite is happening, however, and this could be partly due to the sort of studies which are being conducted. The problem: few of these studies are rooted in empirical analysis, and there is an “almost complete absence of evaluation research” concerning anti-terrorism strategies, in the words of a review of such studies.
California drought highlights the state’s economic divide
As much of Southern California enters into the spring and warmer temperatures, the effects of California’s historic drought begin to manifest themselves in the daily lives of residents, highlighting the economic inequality in the ways people cope. Following Governor Jerry Brown’s (D) unprecedented water rationing regulations,wealthier Californians weigh on which day of the week no longer to water their grass, while those less fortunate are now choosing which days they skip a bath.