The United States has not met its national security goals to destroy terrorist threats and close the safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA. Since 2002, the United States relied principally on the Pakistan military to address U.S. national security goals. Of the approximately $5.8 billion the United States provided for efforts in the FATA and border region from 2002 through 2007, about 96 percent reimbursed Pakistan for military operations there. According to the Department of State, Pakistan deployed 120,000 military and paramilitary forces in the FATA and helped kill and capture hundreds of suspected al Qaeda operatives; these efforts cost the lives of approximately 1,400 members of Pakistan’s security forces. However, GAO found broad agreement, as documented in the National Intelligence Estimate, State, and embassy documents, as well as Defense officials in Pakistan, that al Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack the United States and had succeeded in establishing a safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA.

The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas

Following a fascinating debate that ranged from bullet-proof hosting to onion-routing, the conclusion had to be that the cyber security threat was evolving rapidly and was touching all aspects of society. Its political importance is also increasing and in a cyber society that “has no rules or borders, according to Estonia’s Minister of Defence Jaak Aaviksoo, there is a need for improved coordination at the highest level.

Assessing the Cyber Security Threat

On April 14, 2008, we issued our report on the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) air traffic control modernization efforts. At the request of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, we examined three objectives: (1) trends in recent FAA capital spending, (2) changes in cost and schedule baselines of major acquisitions, and (3) the effect of the transition to the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) on existing projects.

Air Traffic Control Modernization

Six civil technologies offer the potential to enhance or degrade US power over the next fifteen years according to National Intelligence Council (NIC) sponsored contractor research. These include biogerontechnology, a energy storage technology, biofuels and bio-based chemical technology, clean coal technology, service robotic technology, and information technology devoted to increased connectivity of people and things.

Six Technologies with Potential Impacts on US Interests out to 2025

The internet bellwether has reported fewer clicks on its ads. The billion-dollar question is what that means.

Will Google Earnings Save Tech?

I'm largely tired of opinion -- my own included. I am, however, increasingly fascinated with capturing and incorporating useful, alternative data sources from the edge. You see some of that beginning to happen via Twitter (and I'm advising an interesting company doing work here), but there are all sorts of opportunities at the confluence of unstructured data, companies like QL9 and Kirix, webcams and video analytics, and, yes, blogs.

While I've long incorporated meta-data from blogs in my thinking, I want to make it more explicit. I want blogs about data, sites that reshape and repurpose data as their central purpose. Sort of like a Bespoke with an API, to use one example, but there are lots of others. Bring 'em on.

Paul Kedrosky: Bring on the Data Blogs

This report describes virtual reality technology, which uses three-dimensional user-generated content, and its use by the U.S. military and intelligence community for training and other purposes. Both the military and private sector use this new technology, but terrorist groups may also be using it to train more realistically for future attacks, while still avoiding detection on the Internet. The issues for Congress to consider may include the cost-benefit implications of this technology, whether sufficient resources are available for the communications infrastructure needed to support expanded use of virtual reality technology, and whether there might be national security considerations if the United States falls behind other nations in developing or adopting this new technology. This report will be updated as events warrant.

Avatars, Virtual Reality Technology, and the U.S. Military: Emerging Policy Issues

Key Findings

The ”original” Al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden accounts for a mere fraction of jihadist media production.

Virtual media production and distribution entities (MPDEs) link varied groups under the general ideological rubric of the global jihadist movement. The same media entities that “brand” jihadist media also create virtual links between the various armed groups that fall into the general category of Al-Qaeda and affiliated movements.

Three key entities connect Al-Qaeda and affiliated movements to the outside world through the internet. These three media entities — Fajr, the Global Islamic Media Front, and Sahab — receive materials from more than one armed group and post those materials to the internet.

Information operations intended to disrupt or undermine the effectiveness of jihadist media can and should target the media entities that brand these media and act as the virtual connective tissue of the global movement.

While video is an important component of jihadist media, text products comprise the bulk of the daily media flow. Within text products, periodicals focused on specific “fronts” of the jihad are an important genre that deserves more attention from researchers.

The vast majority of jihadist media products focus on conflict zones: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia.

The priorities of the global jihadist movement, as represented by its media arm, are operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and North Africa.

Jihadist media are attempting to mimic a “traditional” structure in order to boost credibility and facilitate message control. While conventional wisdom holds that jihadist media have been quick to exploit technological innovations to advance their cause, they are moving toward a more structured approach based on consistent branding and quasi-official media entities. Their reasons for doing so appear to be a desire to boost the credibility of their products and ensure message control.

In line with this strategy, the daily flow of jihadist media that appears on the internet is consistently and systematically branded.

Al-Qaeda Media Nexus: The Virtual Network Behind the Global Message

A journey through the mangrove forest of Bengal.

The Natural World: Tigerland

What determines open source project success? In this study, we investigate the impact of network social capital - the benefits open source developers secure from their memberships in a developer collaboration network - on open source project success. We focus on one specific type of success as measured by the productivity of open source project team. Specific hypotheses are developed and tested on a longitudinal panel of 2378 projects hosted at Sourceforge. We find that network social capital is not equally accessible to or appropriated by all projects. Our main results are (1) teams with greater internal cohesion are more successful, (2) external cohesion (cohesion among the external contacts of a team) has an inverse U-shaped relationship with the project's success; moderate levels of external cohesion are the best for a project's success, rather than very low or very high levels of this variable, (3) the technological diversity of a contact also has the greatest benefit when it is neither too low nor too high, and (4) the number of direct and indirect external contacts are positively correlated with a project's success with the effect of the number of direct contacts being moderated by the number of indirect contacts. These results are robust to a number of control variables and alternate model specifications. Several theoretical and managerial implications are provided.

Network Effects: The Influence of Structural Social Capital on Open Source Project Success