America’s Cyber Vulnerabilities

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Cyber is the newest branch of warfare. Even in its baby stages, it has the potential to cripple the United States.

On the afternoon of Dec. 23, 2015, Ukrainian engineers from a Prykarpattya Oblenergo power station stared at a computer screen while the cursor progressed on its own across the monitor. The mouse on the table had not moved. But the cursor hovered over the station’s breakers, each one controlling power to thousands of Ukrainian citizens. Then, with one mouse click at a time, the hackers now in control of the power station began shutting off power to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.

At the same time, Kyivoblenergo employees watched as dozens of substations shut down, one by one. In their case, there was no phantom mouse. A computer on their network that they could not locate was being used by someone to shut down the power—and there was nothing they could do.

EU ‘gets in the way’ of countries ability to keep their citizens safe, former CIA chief warns

The European Union often “gets in the way” of countries ability to keep their citizens safe, a former CIA chief has warned.

General Michael Hayden said the EU was “not a natural contributor to national security” in member states, and that a vote for Brexit in June would have little impact on America’s willingness to work with the UK or other European intelligence agencies.

Ex-CIA head: I fear Iran ‘has the upper hand’ in nuclear talks

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden said on Sunday that he worries Iran has more momentum than the U.S. heading into final talks over Tehran’s nuclear arms research.

“I would actually fear that the Iranians have the upper hand right now,” Hayden told “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace.

Iranian Nuclear Verification ‘Beyond Reach’ of US Intelligence

The IAEA is stacked with Iranian sympathizers whereas the CIA is heavily infiltrated and the NSA is more worried about labeling ordinary citizens terrorists. In short, Iran having a nuclear weapon should be everyone’s foregone conclusion. So, “What then?”, you ask? War. That’s what.

War will break out beforehand with Israel preemptively attacking as it fights for its existence before the Iranians can launch a nuclear strike. This is if Iran decides to stop patiently waiting for its nuclear arsenal to be complete and attack first. Should war beforehand break out, expect Iran to openly pursue nuclear weapons afterwards and have the entire world line up against Israel as it’s portrayed as the aggressor in a well designed trap. Israel also might not be able to completely knock out what it needs in the event of war due to logistics and limited backing by the Obama administration.

 

WASHINGTON, January 21 (Sputnik) — Verifying Iranian compliance with a nuclear agreement to halt the development of nuclear weapons goes beyond the abilities of US intelligence agencies, and depends on the active role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), former CIA and NSA Director Major General Michael Hayden said at a Middle East conference on Tuesday.

“With regard to verification of an [Iranian nuclear] agreement, do not depend on American intelligence to do that,” General Hayden said, adding that the verification of Iranian nuclear facilities “will be beyond the reach of American intelligence.”

“Biting the Syrian Bullet”

BERLIN/DAMASCUS/MOSCOW (Own report) – The director of the Catholic relief organization, Caritas-Lebanon, has voiced strong criticism of the West’s policy on Syria. The West, together with its Middle Eastern allies, should finally stop equipping Syrian insurgents with military hardware, Paul Karam, Director of the Caritas-Lebanon declared. It must also stop the constant flow of citizens from European countries coming to join the Salafist terrorist militias in Syria – at the expense of the tormented civilian population. Dmitri Trenin, the foreign policy expert of the Moscow Carnegie Center, explains why the West continues to try to overthrow the Assad government, in spite of a growing demand to put an end to the reign of terror of the “Islamic State.” According to Trenin, in the course of the Syrian War, Russia succeeded in inflicting serious political setbacks on the West. The West, for its part, is doing its utmost in the Syrian War to crush Russia’s influence in the Middle East. In Germany, the call for western military intervention in Syria is again being voiced.

Former CIA, AMAN chiefs: Iran is a nuclear threshold state and can no longer be stopped

The former heads of two of the most powerful intelligence agencies in the world, speaking Sunday, Dec. 1, in different parts of the world, were of the same opinion: Iran has reached the point of a nuclear threshold state and can build several nuclear bombs in a matter of weeks. By this diagnosis, Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and NSA, and ex-general Amos Yadlin, ex-chief of AMAN, Israeli military intelligence indicted their respective governments of the US and Israeli for their failure to stop this happening.

Britain ‘under attack’ in cyberspace

Britain is seeing about 70 sophisticated cyber espionage operations a month against government or industry networks, British intelligence has told the BBC.

GCHQ director Sir Iain Lobban said business secrets were being stolen on an “industrial scale”.