The Science Behind Fire

Emerging Technology, Government Business

Article | October 7, 2022

The Russian-Chinese strategic partnership (RCSP), indoctrinated in 1996, is Eurasia’s geopolitical anchor in the 21st century, shaping its evolution and entrance into the Multipolar World. No other political relationship between the two continents’ actors even comes close, with the RCSP’s only formidable rival being the US via its privileged military alliances with NATO, the Gulf Kingdoms, and Japan. In this century’s struggle for the supercontinent, the interplay between the RCSP and the US will come to define global politics. Western media has been a lot of noise is being raised up, and some have stressed the importance of the Washington consensus, while others believe that it is Moscow's dependence in Moscow. The first is often trumpets Americans and prove the aggression of their government against Russia and China, while others are intended to promote the disinformation campaign to divide Russia and China from each other. The rare mention of the warning is raised up, and the United States to slow down its rules, which is the most responsible way for this development is the western voter. The purpose of this article is to provocatively state that being raised up are becoming a reality in the development and manifestation of a Washington nightmare, and which go beyond Eurasia, also from North Africa and Latin America. It strives to challenge the West's position, but to a direct transition to a multi-polar world, and this is the goal that both countries have expressed 1997 to show solidarity. The United States is not willing to recognize the tectonic changes that have occurred in the world since then, and its stubbornness in expanding the unipolar moment of depression is the largest source of global destabilization. Despite the fact that patients have difficulty with fear and the disorder is raised up quieter, more defensive and more consistent than ever. Discovering links with Russian-Chinese politics in Eurasia and beyond, art proves that lifted up and developing, is actively working on what the world is multi-polarizing for us. AND PART: Structure Russian-Chinese talks in Beijing, May 2014 Before starting geopolitical details, RCSPE must determine its structural basis. There are the role of Russia and China, the principles of their cooperation and institutional activities for the transformation of the international order. Russian balance and Chinese gate There are several roles segmented with which both partners communicate. Russia has a military and political balance in all of Eurasia, which represent an alternative (either the United States or China), the great powers, developing countries and interested organizations. This shows that Russia is working closely with China to ensure that this balance in line with the strategic goals of both sides, sometimes the dynamics of "good policeman, bad cop." China this year moves to the largest economy in the United States and is the dominant economic force in developing countries. Deep and privileged relations in the development of commodity and agricultural commodity markets in Africa, Latin America and Pearl economically valuable for Russia, especially in the light of recent events. So that Russia can provide military and political balance in China in key regions of the world, you can restore economic opportunities and facilitate trade through the established Chinese elite connections and networks. Of course, the tandem of energy between Russia and China is far from perfect, and its strategic use of the whole world, but the general theory of this approach is "hand in hand": Russia is balancing the Chinese gate. More and more people moving from these two countries, such as the Middle East and Latin America see more clearly the multipolar objectives and close cooperation in these countries; Just as two Eurasian seeds are getting closer and closer, relationships are increasingly difficult to understand. Cooperation cradle The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is at home, where he was born and grew up is raised. Founded in Shanghai in 1996. In 2001, with Uzbekistan, it was transformed into SCO. Since then he has started cooperation with Mongolia, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, and has established a partnership with Sri Lanka, Turkey and Belarus. These countries are directly under the direct influence of the PRSP, where Russia and China could have a significant impact on a greater or lesser degree.

Government Business

Article | July 11, 2022

With Iran in escalation mood to get n to "Holy War" or "War For Survival of Islam" with Air Striking US and Allied Bases in Iraq which though has hardly given any blow to US Confidence and its Marines deployed there,Iran is going to architect a full blown war which as we know it would feature a series of moves and countermoves, we know it’d be very messy and confusing, and we know it’d be extremely deadly. But unlike with the path to war, it’s less useful to offer a play-by-play of what could happen. So with that in mind, it’s better to look at what the US and Iranian war plans would likely be — to better understand the devastation each could exact. How the US might try to win the war The US strategy would almost certainly involve using overwhelming air and naval power to beat Iran into submission early on. “You don’t poke the beehive, you take the whole thing down,” Goldenberg said. The US military would bomb Iranian ships, parked warplanes, missile sites, nuclear facilities, and training grounds, as well as launch cyberattacks on much of the country’s military infrastructure. The goal would be to degrade Iran’s conventional forces within the first few days and weeks, making it even harder for Tehran to resist American strength. That plan definitely makes sense as an opening salvo, experts say, but it will come nowhere close to winning the war. “It’s very unlikely that the Iranians would capitulate,” Michael Hanna, a Middle East expert at the Century Foundation in New York, told me. “It’s almost impossible to imagine that a massive air campaign will produce the desired result. It’s only going to produce escalation, not surrender.” It won’t help that a sustained barrage of airstrikes will likely lead to thousands of Iranians dead, among them innocent civilians. That, among other things, could galvanize Iranian society against the US and put it firmly behind the regime, even though it has in many ways treated the population horribly over decades in power. There’s another risk: A 2002 war game showed that Iran could sink an American ship and kill US sailors, even though the US Navy is far more powerful. If the Islamic Republic’s forces succeeded in doing that, it could provide a searing image that could serve as a propaganda coup for the Iranians. Washington won’t garner the same amount of enthusiasm for destroying Iranian warships — that’s what’s supposed to happen. An Iranian Army soldier stands guard on a military speedboat, passing by a submarine during the “Velayat-90” navy exercises in the Strait of Hormuz on December 28, 2011. Ali Mohammadi/AFP/Getty Images Trump has already signaled he doesn’t want to send ground troops into Iran or even spend a long time fighting the country. That tracks with his own inclinations to keep the US out of foreign wars, particularly in the Middle East. But with hawkish aides at his side, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, there’s a chance they could convince him not to look weak and to go all-in and grasp victory. But the options facing the president at that point will be extremely problematic, experts say. The riskiest one — by far — would be to invade Iran. The logistics alone boggle the mind, and any attempt to try it would be seen from miles away. “There’s no surprise invasion of Iran,” Brewer, who is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, told me. Iran has nearly three times the amount of people Iraq did in 2003, when the war began, and is about three and a half times as big. In fact, it’s the world’s 17th-largest country, with territory greater than France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, and Portugal combined. The geography is also treacherous. It has small mountain ranges along some of its borders. Entering from the Afghanistan side in the east would mean traversing two deserts. Trying to get in from the west could also prove difficult even with Turkey — a NATO ally — as a bordering nation. After all, Ankara wouldn’t let the US use Turkey to invade Iraq, and its relations with Washington have only soured since. “IT’S ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO IMAGINE THAT A MASSIVE AIR CAMPAIGN WILL PRODUCE THE DESIRED RESULT. IT’S ONLY GOING TO PRODUCE ESCALATION, NOT SURRENDER.” —MICHAEL HANNA, A MIDDLE EAST EXPERT AT THE CENTURY FOUNDATION The US could try to enter Iran the way Saddam Hussein did during the Iran-Iraq war, near a water pass bordering Iran’s southwest. But it’s swampy — the Tigris and Euphrates rivers meet there — and relatively easy to protect. Plus, an invading force would run up against the Zagros Mountains after passing through, just like Saddam’s forces did. It’s for these reasons that the private intelligence firm Stratfor called Iran a “fortress” back in 2011. If Trump chose to launch an incursion, he’d likely need around 1.6 million troops to take control of the capital and country, a force so big it would overwhelm America’s ability to host them in regional bases. By contrast, America never had more than 180,000 service members in Iraq. And there’s the human cost. A US-Iran war would likely lead to thousands or hundreds of thousands of dead. Trying to forcibly remove the country’s leadership, experts say, might drive that total into the millions. That helps explain why nations in the region hope they won’t see a fight. Goldenberg, who traveled recently to meet with officials in the Gulf, said that none of them wanted a US-Iran war. European nations will also worry greatly about millions of refugees streaming into the continent, which would put immense pressure on governments already dealing with the fallout of the Syrian refugee crisis. Israel also would worry about Iranian proxies targeting it (more on that below). Meanwhile, countries like Russia and China — both friendly to Iran — would try to curtail the fighting and exploit it at the same time, the Century Foundation’s Hanna told me. China depends heavily on its goods traveling through the Strait of Hormuz, so it would probably call for calm and for Tehran not to close down the waterway. Russia would likely demand restraint as well, but use the opportunity to solidify its ties with the Islamic Republic. President Donald Trump and Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, stand side by side in the group picture at the G20 summit on June 28, 2019. Bernd von Jutrczenka/picture alliance via Getty Images And since both countries have veto power on the UN Security Council, they could ruin any political legitimacy for the war that the US may aim to gain through that body. The hope for the Trump administration would therefore be that the conflict ends soon after the opening salvos begin. If it doesn’t, and Iran resists, all that’d really be left are a slew of bad options to make a horrid situation much, much worse. How Iran might try to win the war Retired Marine Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart left his post as the No. 2 at US Cyber Command in 2019, ending a decorated four-decade career. Toward the end of it, he spent his time at the forefront of the military intelligence and cybersecurity communities. If anyone has the most up-to-date information on how Iran may fight the US, then, it’s Stewart. “The Iranian strategy would be to avoid, where possible, direct conventional force-on-force operations,” he wrote for the Cipher Brief on July 2, 2019. “They would attempt to impose cost on a global scale, striking at US interests through cyber operations and targeted terrorism with the intent of expanding the conflict, while encouraging the international community to restrain America’s actions.” In other words, Tehran can’t match Washington’s firepower. But it can spread chaos in the Middle East and around the world, hoping that a war-weary US public, an intervention-skeptical president, and an angered international community cause America to stand down. That may seem like a huge task — and it is — but experts believe the Islamic Republic has the capability, knowhow, and will to pull off such an ambitious campaign. “The Iranians can escalate the situation in a lot of different ways and in a lot of different places,” Hanna told me. “They have the capacity to do a lot of damage.” Take what it could do in the Middle East. Iran’s vast network of proxies and elite units — like Soleimani’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — could be activated to kill American troops, diplomats, and citizens throughout the region. US troops in Syria are poorly defended and have little support, making them easy targets, experts say. America also has thousands of civilians, troops, and contractors in Iraq, many of whom work in areas near where Iranian militias operate within the country. US allies would also be prime targets. Hezbollah, an Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, might attack Israel with rockets and start its own brutal fight. We’ve heard this story before: In 2006, they battled in a month-long war where the militant group fired more than 4,000 rockets into Israel, and Israeli forces fired around 7,000 bombs and missiles into Lebanon. About 160 Israelis troops and civilians died, according to the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and about 1,100 Lebanese — most of them civilians — perished, per Human Rights Watch, a US-headquartered advocacy organization. It also reports about 4,400 Lebanese were injured, and around 1 million people were displaced. But that’s not all. Iran could encourage terrorist organizations or other proxies to strike inside Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other Gulf nations. Last year, it planned and executed drone strikes on two major Saudi oil facilities deep inside the kingdom, convulsing world markets. Its support for Houthis rebels in Yemen would mostly certainly increase, offering them more weapons and funds to attack Saudi Arabia’s airports, military bases, and energy plants. The US government on April 8, 2019, said it had designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization, marking the first time a US government has made such a designation on a foreign government’s organization. Rouzbeh Fouladi/NurPhoto via Getty Images Experts note that the Islamic Republic likely has sleeper cells in Europe and Latin America, and they could resurface in dramatic and violent ways. In 1994, for example, Iranian-linked terrorists bombed the hub of the Jewish community in Argentina’s capital, Buenos Aires, killing 85 people and injuring roughly 300 more. That remains the largest terrorist attack in Latin America’s history, and the possibility for an even bigger one exists. In 2018, Argentina arrested two men suspected of having ties with Hezbollah. But Chris Musselman, formerly the National Security Council’s counterterrorism director under Trump, told me the US and its allies may have the most trouble containing the proxy swarm in Western Africa. “We could see a conflict that spread quickly to places the US may not be able to protect people, and it’s a fight that we are grossly unprepared for,” he said, adding that there’s a strong Hezbollah presence in the region and American embassy security there isn’t great. Making matters worse, he continued, the US isn’t particularly good at collecting intelligence there, meaning some militants could operate relatively under the radar. “This isn’t really a law enforcement function that US can take on a global scale,” he said. It would require that countries unwittingly hosting proxies to lead on defeating the Iranian-linked fighters, with US support when needed. The chaos would also extend into the cyber realm. Iran is a major threat to the US in cyberspace. Starting in 2011, Iran attacked more than 40 American banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. The attack made it so the banks had trouble serving its customers and customers had trouble using the bank’s services. In 2012, Iran released malware into the networks of Saudi Aramco, a major oil company, which erased documents, emails, and other files on around 75 percent of the company’s computers — replacing them with an image of a burning American flag. In the middle of a war, one could imagine Tehran’s hackers wreaking even more havoc. “WE COULD SEE A CONFLICT THAT SPREAD QUICKLY TO PLACES THE US MAY NOT BE ABLE TO PROTECT PEOPLE, AND IT’S A FIGHT THAT WE ARE GROSSLY UNPREPARED FOR” —CHRIS MUSSELMAN, FORMERLY THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL’S COUNTERTERRORISM DIRECTOR UNDER TRUMP “I would expect them to have begun selected targeting through socially-engineered phishing activities focused on the oil and gas sector, the financial sector and the electric power grid in that order,” Stewart wrote. “There may be instances now where they already have some persistent access. If they do, I expect they would use it, or risk losing the access and employ that capability early in the escalation of the crisis.” Recent reports indicate that Iranian cyberwarriors have stepped up their online operations, with a particular emphasis on preparing to attack US firms. Among other moves, they’re aiming to trick employees at major businesses to hand over passwords and other vital information, giving them greater access to a firm’s networks. “When you combine this increase with past destructive attacks launched by Iranian-linked actors, we’re concerned enough about the potential for new destructive attacks to continue sounding the alarm,” Christopher Krebs, a top cybersecurity official at the Department of Homeland Security, told Foreign Policy last July. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attends a graduation ceremony of the Iranian Navy cadets in the city of Noshahr on September 30, 2015. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images All of this — proxies striking around the world, cyberattacks on enterprise — would happen while Iran continued to resist conventional American forces. In the Strait of Hormuz, for instance, Iranian sailors could use speedboats to place bombs on oil tankers or place mines in the water to destroy US warships. The Islamic Republic’s submarines would also play a huge part in trying to sink an American vessel. And the nation’s anti-ship missiles and drones could prove constant and deadly nuisances. Should US troops try to enter Iranian territory on land, Iranian ground forces would also push back on them fiercely using insurgent-like tactics while the US painfully marches toward Tehran. Put together, Brewer notes succinctly, a US-Iran war would be “a nasty, brutal fight.” Aftermath: “The worst-case scenarios here are quite serious” Imagine, as we already have, that the earlier stages of strife escalate to a major war. That’s already bad enough. But assume for a moment not only that the fighting takes place, but that the US does the unlikely and near impossible: It invades and overthrows the Iranian regime (which Trump’s former National Security Adviser John Bolton, at least, has openly called for in the past). If that happens, it’s worth keeping two things in mind. First, experts say upward of a million people — troops from both sides as well as Iranian men, women, and children, and American diplomats and contractors — likely will have died by that point. Cities will burn and smolder. Those who survived the conflict will mainly live in a state of economic devastation for years and some, perhaps, will pick up arms and form insurgent groups to fight the invading US force. Second, power abhors a vacuum. With no entrenched regime in place, multiple authority figures from Iran’s clerical and military circles, among others, will jockey for control. Those sides could split into violent factions, initiating a civil war that would bring more carnage to the country. Millions more refugees might flock out of the country, overwhelming already taxed nations nearby, and ungoverned pockets will give terrorist groups new safe havens from which to operate. Iran would be on the verge of being a failed state, if it wasn’t already by that point, and the US would be the main reason why. To turn the tide, America may feel compelled to help rebuild the country at the cost of billions of dollars, years of effort, and likely more dead. It could also choose to withdraw, leaving behind a gaping wound in the center of the Middle East. In some ways, then, what comes after the war could be worse than the war itself. It should therefore not be lost on anyone: A US-Iran war would be a bloody hell during and after the fighting. It’s a good thing neither Trump nor Iran’s leadership currently wants a conflict. But if they change their minds, only carnage follows. “The worst-case scenarios here are quite serious,” Hanna told me.

Emerging Technology

Article | July 13, 2022

“Belonging to the essential nature of a thing; originating and included wholly within an organ or part.” That is the definition of “Intrinsic.” When we were developing the “IT Manhattan Project” framework, we were doing so in direct response to some of the most significant hacks in U.S. Federal history, which piled on to the already unprecedented push to expedite the modernizing of federal IT because of the COVID-19 response. The COVID-19 response shifted the way that the U.S. federal government operated, where our workforce worked from, the immediate need for mobile ‘available from anywhere’ workloads, and how to both secure and support that new way of doing federal business. A new, vigorous push towards rapidly modernizing federal IT environments was underway. Ultimately, it laid the groundwork for producing transformational federal memos and oversight by way of some of the following: Executive Order 14028: “Improving The Nation’s Cybersecurity” M-22-09: OMB’s Zero Trust Strategy M-22-09 NIST 800-53rev5: Fulfilling an expedited realization of the overall intent of NIST 800-53r5 through the emphasis on things like conditional access, TIC 3.0 frameworks, Secure Orchestration/Automation/Remediation, and modernized, agile approaches to secure micro-segmentation from Hybrid Environments up to Federal Cloud instances Overall mandates like these carry with them a consistent anthem driving at rapid IT modernization with rigorous proof of performance schedules attached. Piling on top of those Herculean efforts, the urgency was drastically increased by several of the highest profile cyber compromises in U.S. federal history. Rapid modernization had to happen right away. The time for IT transformation was here, backed by promises of significant funding and a high level of political visibility. The Shift to Zero Trust At their core intent, Zero Trust architectures are expected to provide a centralized policy structure that dictates how every individual flow in our IT environments are permitted to talk. No user, host, or flow is permitted without being subjected to rigorous authentication and authorization policy. This shifts our previous understanding of North-South, East-West traffic and how we police it. The foundational intent of Zero Trust architectures centers around applying unified policy to every transaction that occurs between enterprise resources, and doing so in ways that are agnostic to the IT Silo that they reside in. Zero Trust assumes there is no implicit trust granted to assets or user accounts based solely on their physical or network location.” NIST 800-207 aptly They go on to explain that the scope of this posture includes all assets, workflows, network accounts, and the like. In summary, police everything, abstract production traffic intent from the underlying infrastructure that supports it, and institute a unified security posture to execute the policing at every network entry point. Regardless of the domain. We all know that this is a tectonic but much-needed shift in our industry. I’d go so far as to say that the successful instantiation of this approach across Federal IT environments is critical to our national security going forward. Management Complexities Enterprise IT domains contain varied mixtures of OEM solutions, home-grown tools, and utilize a wide variety of protocols to intercommunicate that aren’t necessarily standardize. Each of these domains is normally managed by separate IT teams who specialize in maintaining those environments. In the federal landscape, each of these domains aren’t just managed by separate enterprise IT teams, but are commonly managed by different contractors. Therefore, IT security organizations have a difficult time achieving and maintaining the necessary operational awareness required to enforce centralized policy. These cultural complexities exacerbated by budgeting concerns have created a fatalistic mentality when it comes to far-reaching mandates. This is where the tectonic shift in architectural and administrative approach is so necessary. This is where multidomain architectures shine. Let’s define a common baseline of enterprise domains seen across traditional IT environments: Cloud Data Center Enterprise Networking Extended Enterprise (IoT, OT/ICS) Remote Access But to deliver a successful Zero Trust across the enterprise, it is first necessary to understand some foundational building blocks on which to construct our architectural approach: We can’t have MULTIDOMAIN POLICY without first achieving fuller We can’t deliver macro and micro-segmentation without first having robust MULTIDOMAIN We can’t have multi-vendor MULTIDOMAIN Zero Trust POLICY without sensical INTEGRATIONS to stitch each enterprise domain together. Let’s face it, enterprise IT environments don’t simply include infrastructure from a single manufacturer, or even a few key manufacturers. Rather, our Enterprise IT environments are represented by a plethora of IT manufacturers specializing in different niches of IT and the domains they are commonly found in. These environments are managed by different Federal IT organizations, different contractors who support these Federal IT organizations, and many different teams that support each common IT silo. Different teams that support oft-compartmentalized areas like Network Security Operations, Network Operations, Data Center Operations, Institutional Services, Wide Area Networking contracts, Operational Technologies, and dotted lines to different leadership oversight like CIO Programs, CTO Architecture, the Cyber Security Office, and the audit oversight bodies that they are subjected to. Each of these make up a complex support structure that isn’t necessarily streamlined for efficiency. Summary and Overarching Goals In articles to follow, you’ll see us referencing the IT Manhattan Project framework several times. Though many details of the framework can’t be discussed due to their sensitivity, the foundational principles are relevant across the board when pursuing intrinsic multidomain Zero Trust. Establish Visibility (Administration, Telemetry, Assurance) Define Straightforward Policy Structure and Hierarchy (Auth Chains) Perform Multidomain Integrations (API Integrations) Deploy Software-Defined Framework (Day-0, Programmable Fabrics, Multi-OEM Fabric Integrations) Establish Sensical Automation Runbooks (Day-2 Operations) We will also explore some areas that deliver unexpected value to the agency business in immediate ways. All of this will help create a cohesive story that helps CIOs, CISOs, and enterprise architects alike communicate the criticality of this multidomain Zero Trust approach to agency leaders across the federal spectrum.

Article | April 14, 2021

COVID-19 placed enormous demands on government services—demands that are not likely to go away. Moreover, the private sector now looks to government to facilitate the data transparency, digital processes, and data security needed to fuel recovery. Governments now understand those old ways of doing business no longer work. They need to become agile and flexible to meet today’s needs. Some were moved in that direction by the unexpected demands of the pandemic. For others, COVID-19 simply accelerated their digital transformation journey that was already underway.