U.S. and China to enhance information sharing
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| ICE Director John Morton and China's Economic Crimes Investigation Department Director General Meng Qing-feng sign a letter of intent to strengthen investigative cooperation. Additional photos from this event are available by clicking here. (Photo Courtesy: DHS) |
BEIJING - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Chinese Ministry of Public Security Economic Crimes Investigation Department signed a letter of intent on Tuesday that will strengthen investigative cooperation between both countries.
ICE Director John Morton and China's Economic Crimes Investigation Department Director General Meng Qing-feng signed the document during a formal signing ceremony in Beijing.
Both nations believe cooperation in fighting intellectual property rights crimes will benefit both the United States and Chinese law enforcement agencies. ICE's Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and China's Economic Crimes Investigation Department intend to continue cooperation through the ICE-led National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center.
"I would like to thank Vice Minister of the Ministry of Public Security Meng Hong-wei and Director General of the Economic Crimes Investigation Department Meng Qing-feng for agreeing to strengthen cooperation on areas of mutual concern," said ICE Director Morton. "This is the first trip to China for an ICE director. The meetings between both countries have been productive and I look forward to building on our law enforcement relationship."
The ICE Office of International Affairs is responsible for enhancing national security by conducting and coordinating international investigations. With agents in over 65 locations around the world, the ICE Office of International Affairs represents DHS' broadest footprint beyond our borders. ICE attaché offices work with foreign counterparts to identify and combat transnational criminal organizations before they threaten the United States.
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Joint Forces Must Maintain Balance, Admiral Says
By Lisa Daniel American Forces Press Service
NATIONAL HARBOR, Md., - The success of joint forces depends on their ability to balance competing interests – from preparing for strategic risks to air, land, sea and cyber power, to the work-life balance of servicemembers, the director of the Joint Staff said here today.
"In joint doctrine, balance permeates everything," Navy Vice Adm. William E. Gortney said in a keynote speech to the Air Force Association's Air and Space Conference 2010 here. Gortney was asked to fill in for Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, after Mullen's granddaughter was born yesterday.
"We need to have the right mix of training, personnel, and equipment," Gortney said.
Flexibility is key, the admiral added, because history has shown it's impossible to pinpoint military needs of the future. That's especially true today, he said, due to evolving threats in cyber warfare and from quickly emerging militaries in places such as China.
"If history has taught us anything, it's that the next war will bear little resemblance to the past," Gortney said. "There is no doubt that 15 years from now, we'll talk about how we got it wrong in 2010."
The focus on land forces in today's wars could turn to air and sea power for the next conflicts, Gortney said. Concepts for joint air-sea battles are a natural transition for the future, he said.
The Air Force has a proud history of innovation and hardware expertise that it must continue so it can "be ready to respond to needs not even imagined," he said.
Coordination also is critical to joint forces, as is relationship-building, said Gortney, who commanded U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, the U.S. 5th Fleet and the 26-nation Combined Maritime Forces in the Arabian Gulf. But, he added, "relationships are not built overnight, and they're not built through e-mails and tweets."
Gortney said tough decisions will have to be made while defense budgets flatline for the foreseeable future.
"The downward pressure on the defense budget is real," he said. "We're in a position of having more missions than stuff, so low priority missions are going to suffer. We have to figure out the right balance and figure out where to take risks."
The most important area to strike a balance is not in equipment or training, Gortney said, but in the lifestyles of servicemembers. And in a compliment to the audience, he said the Air Force leads the services in allowing work-life balance.
"The Air Force, hands down, does a better job of it than any service," he said. "It's why I live at Bolling Air Force Base." Lynn Details Threats to U.S., NATO Cybersecurity
By Jim Garamone American Forces Press Service
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Sept. 15, 2010 – If it’s not protected, the great technological superiority the United States and NATO enjoy also could be a great vulnerability, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III said here today.
Speaking at an event sponsored by the Security and Defense Agenda, Lynn said information technology is the basis for much of the military capabilities fielded by the United States and other NATO countries, and that all nations need to invest in cybersecurity.
“[Information systems] provide the kind of real-time situational awareness, the sophisticated command and control, the precision targeting – all the elements that have made it very difficult for any adversary or set of adversaries to challenge us directly in any military confrontation,” he said.
But that strength and reliance also can prove to be a liability, he said. Adversaries can challenge the NATO countries indirectly by compromising information technology. This was brought home in 2008, when a foreign intelligence agency got an infected flash drive into a classified Defense Department computer network in the Middle East. “Malware was loaded on our classified network, and … our systems were compromised,” Lynn said.
The response was called Operation Buckshot Yankee, and it entailed remedial efforts to clean up the spillage, Lynn said. The incident and the subsequent operation led to a change in thinking in the department toward the cybersecurity threat, he added
Officials realized that cyber attacks or cyber espionage will be increasingly a preferred way for enemies to confront the American military, the deputy secretary said.
“It’s relatively low-cost,” said he explained. “You don’t have to invest in fleets of … tanks, planes [or] ships to have a very significant capability to challenge even a sophisticated adversary.”
More than 100 foreign intelligence agencies are trying to hack into Defense Department systems on a daily basis, he said.
Cyber attacks are attractive because of the difficulty of determining who actually launched them, Lynn said. A virus or malware travels at the speed of light, and pinpointing exactly who launched an attack can take months to decipher, if it’s possible at all, he added.
This type of attack also breaks down the strategy of deterrence to an extent, the deputy secretary said. The old idea was that if an adversary launched an attack, the United States would launch a devastating attack in return.
“Where you have difficulties with attribution, it’s hard to guarantee assured retaliation, because you don’t know who to retaliate against,” he explained. “Also, as the set of adversaries we face has shifted to more non-governments – terrorists such as al-Qaida – even if you determine the origin of the attack, they might not have assets that you can truly hold at risk.”
This means the Defense Department has to shift from retaliation to denying an enemy benefit from an attack by beefing up Cybersecurity, Lynn said. Still, he added, this is difficult, because attackers have the advantage.
The Internet is open by its nature, the deputy secretary said, as Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency scientists designed it to facilitate the free and fast flow of information.
“It was not designed with security in mind,” he said. “As defenders, we have to defend every portal. As attackers, a single failure can gain entrance to the networks and allow them to compromise those networks.”
This calls for a different approach to cybersecurity, because no country can hide its networks behind a cyber Maginot Line of firewalls and intrusion devices, the deputy secretary said. “We need a strategy that can deny the benefit to the attackers despite the numerous advantages that the attackers have,” Lynn said.
All of this is further complicated by the fact that attacks are not limited to the Internet.
“You have to look at the supply chain,” Lynn said. Counterfeit chips and malicious code are threats, and they can be extremely difficult to find and fix, he explained.
Lynn said any cybersecurity strategy really has to include nonmilitary systems as well as military systems. The infrastructure networks – the power grid, the transportation networks, the financial networks – are critical in their own right to national security, he said
The deputy secretary argued for a flexible and fast cybersecurity system.
“I think you have to be modest about your ability to predict about where the threat is going to come from,” he said. “The theory is helpful, but not very predictive.”
He said there have been many conjectures, but no one has been particularly good about pinpointing the adversary or what form an attack will take, even in conventional warfare.
“When you look at a strategy, you have to adopt one that is flexible and adaptable in its own right,” he said, “because of the difficulty in predicting the threat and where this threat will appear.”
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