Tag Archives: tech

The Pentagon Is Spending $1 Billion to Protect America From North Korea’s Nonexistent Long-Range Nuclear Missiles

by DenaeTina858 Posted on March 19, 2013

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Last week, US defense secretary Chuck Hagel announced something superficially alarming: Due to the recent tough talk coming out of Pyongyang, the Pentagon has announced a nearly $1 billion project to improve America’s defenses against a potential nuclear attack launched by North Korea. The boost in mainland missile defense will increase the number of ground-based interceptors in California and Alaska to 44 from 30 over the next four years. Part of this plan will involve resurrecting a missile field at Fort Greely, Alaska. “We will be able to add protection against missiles from Iran sooner while also proving protection against the threat from North Korea,” Hagel said during Friday’s Pentagon briefing.

The move comes on the heels of the North Korean government amping up its threats against the US: Along with conducting a third (suspected) nuclear test in seven years and declaring an end to the armistice with South Korea, the regime threatened to nuke American soil amid new UN sanctions. “The White House has been captured in the view of our long-range missile, and the capital of war is within the range of our atomic bomb,” or so goes the narration in a propaganda video post to the North Korean government’s YouTube page on Monday. The video includes a poorly produced animated sequence of the White House and Capitol dome exploding.

Here’s what’s crazy about all this: The Pentagon is spending $1 billion on a gesture. Virtually no one in the US government actually believes that North Korea (or Iran, for that matter) is close to having the ability to hit any part of the United States with nuclear missiles. It is also unclear how close North Korea is to being able to convert their tested nuclear devices to function as warheads. (Click here to get an idea of the state of the supposed North Korean missile threat just last year.)

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The Pentagon Is Spending $1 Billion to Protect America From North Korea’s Nonexistent Long-Range Nuclear Missiles

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MAP: Is the Next Fukushima in Your Backyard?

by Sheeritwern Posted on March 11, 2013

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Two years ago today, floodwaters from a massive, deadly earthquake/tsunami combo in Japan knocked out cooling equipment at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, resulting in what experts were quick to deign the second-worst nuclear disaster in history (after Chernobyl), after radioactive contamination touched everything from tuna to baby formula to butterflies. The $125 billion incident precipitated an identity crisis among the world’s big users of nuclear power, particularly Germany, which was so spooked that it vowed to shut down every one of its nuke plants by 2022.

But here in the United States, there’s no sign of any impending nuclear phaseout, despite the steady parade of meltdown scares reported in a new study by the Union of Concerned Scientists. UCS dug into public data from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the nuclear industry’s top federal regulator, and found that, in 2012, 12 different nuclear power plants experienced “near miss” events, defined as an incident that multiplies the likelihood of a core meltdown by at least a factor of 10. The reasons range from broken coolant pumps to fires to “failures to prevent unauthorized individuals from entering secure areas”; in some cases aging equipment was at fault, and two plants were repeat offenders. One California plant already ranks high in vulnerability to earthquakes. In most cases, the study charges, weak oversight from the NRC was to blame.

In the map below, click on a plant to see what caused it to have a brush with meltdown in 2012:

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MAP: Is the Next Fukushima in Your Backyard?

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Teju Cole on the "Empathy Gap" and Tweeting Drone Strikes

by BakenKesselring341 Posted on March 6, 2013

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“Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Pity. A signature strike leveled the florist’s.” Thus begins a series of tweets from the writer Teju Cole, each one a famous novel’s opening line rudely interrupted by drones. He calls them “drone short stories.”

Discursive, allusive, and always thought-provoking, @tejucole stands out in a Twitterverse crowded by hashtags and throw-away jokes. The Nigerian-American writer published his debut novel, Open City, to great acclaim in 2011, but Cole may be best known (online, at least) for his “small fates” tweets about Lagos. Small Fates is inspired by the French journalistic tradition of fait divers, roughly equivalent to “news briefs.” Perfunctory accounts of crime from Nigerian newspapers are transformed with a literary, humanizing twist: “Love is so restless. When T. Dafe’s girlfriend dumped him in Surulere, he went at her with a pen knife until she was no more.â&#128;&#139;”

His drone vignettes also breathe empathy into anonymous killings that happen far away. And Cole, also an occasional Twitter essayist, previously posted a a series of tweets linking drones, Downton Abbey, the IMF, and Virgin America. It’s easy to ignore drone strikes quietly happening halfway across the world; it’s harder to ignore them when they invade our familiar cultural turf.

1. Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. Pity. A signature strike leveled the florist’s.

2. Call me Ishmael. I was a young man of military age. I was immolated at my wedding. My parents are inconsolable.

3. Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather. A bomb whistled in. Blood on the walls. Fire from heaven.

4. I am an invisible man. My name is unknown. My loves are a mystery. But an unmanned aerial vehicle from a secret location has come for me.

5. Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was killed by a Predator drone.

6. Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His torso was found, not his head.

7. Mother died today. The program saves American lives.

Intrigued by all of the above, I telephoned Cole to ask him what it means to be a writer in the 140-character era.

Mother Jones: What was the inspiration for your drone stories?

Teju Cole: I had been thinking so intensely so much about the global war on terror, especially the heavy silence that has surrounded the use of drones to assassinate people outside this country. I just realized that we’re facing here is an empathy gap. And this was just another way to generate conversation about something that nobody wanted to look at. The weird way that things come together is that when I wrote those drone tweets, the subject was not on the front page of papers. Two, three weeks later, it’s on the front page of the New York Times and everybody is talking in a very direct way because the release of this white paper.

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Teju Cole on the "Empathy Gap" and Tweeting Drone Strikes

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Can This Contraption Make Fracking Greener?

by 9ji7g4x Posted on March 5, 2013

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Although natural gas production emits less CO2 than other fossil fuels, it still spits plenty of junk into the atmosphere. But backers of a new gadget released yesterday say they’ve hit on a way to help frackers clean up their act.

Boosters of natural gas often flaunt the stuff as a “clean” fossil fuel, because when it burns—in a power plant, say—it releases far less carbon dioxide than coal or oil. But with the growth of fracking nationwide, some academics and environmentalists have flagged a silent problem that threatens to undermine the purported climate gains of natural gas: “fugitive” methane emissions.

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, even more so than CO2 over the short-term. And natural gas production creates a lot of it: The EPA predicts that methane from the natural gas industry will be one of the top sources of non-CO2 emissions in coming decades. A 2011 federal study found that taken all around, the total greenhouse footprint for shale gas could be up to twice that of coal over a 20-year period. The catch is that it doesn’t have to be so bad. Much of that methane is leaking out (hence “fugitive”) unnecessarily from gas wells, pipelines, and storage facilities—so much so that the Environmental Defense Fund calls methane leakage from natural gas operations “the single largest US source of short-term climate-forcing gases“.

But nailing down exactly how much methane leakage there is has proved a bit challenging: Some independent academic studies say up to nine percent of all the natural gas extracted leaks out, while the official EPA figure is less than three percent. Academics, government agencies, and environmental NGOs are at work to shore up this figure, but the effort can be costly and require teams of specialized physicists and chemists.

Enter Picarro, a California-based scientific instrument company that yesterday released a new gadget the company says will streamline locating leaks and finding out how much methane is streaming out of them. The “Surveyor” attaches to any car, and consists of a computer, an air sampling hose, and a GPS device. Together, says Picarro CEO Michael Woelk, they can sniff out methane and pinpoint the exact spot—like a crack in a pipe—it’s coming from, then feed the data to any web-enabled mobile device in a format understandable without an atmospheric physics PhD.

“All we have to do is drive downwind of the source,” Woelk said.

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Can This Contraption Make Fracking Greener?

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Drones: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know But Were Always Afraid to Ask

by Edbre23ne Posted on March 5, 2013

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If you’ve checked out the news these past few (or many) months, you’ve probably noticed some news about drones: Drones used by the CIA to vaporize suspected terrorists. Drones used by the United States military. Drones that deliver food. Drones used by cops. Drones possibly violating the US Constitution. Drones protecting wildlife. Drones in pop culture. Maybe this has left you with some burning questions about these increasingly prominent flying robots. Here’s an easy-to-read, non-wonky guide to them—we’ll call it Drones For Dummies.

When was the drone invented?
Assuming you’re talking about the scary kinds of drones that bomb America’s suspected enemies, you’re probably thinking of the MQ-1 Predator, developed by military contractor General Atomics. This Predator drone was first introduced in 1995 as a surveillance and intelligence gathering tool, and was then tricked-out to launch weapons like hellfire missiles.


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The MQ-1 Predator—used mainly by the CIA and the US Air Force—has seen action in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Somalia, and Bosnia and Serbia. The subsequent (and larger) incarnation of the Predator is the MQ-9 Reaper.

But hasn’t this idea been around a lot longer?
Indeed, the modern military drone can be traced back to the early 20th century: ­In the­ 1930s, the British Royal Navy developed the Queen Bee, a rudimentary radio-controlled unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that was used for aerial target practice for British pilots. The Queen Bee could fly as fast as 100 mph; the top speed for your average modern day Predator is 135 mph.

There is even a rough historical blueprint for modern-day UAVs from the American Civil War, in which both the North and South floated balloons packed with explosives and time-sensitive triggers. The idea was for the balloons to drop into enemy depots and blow up enemy supplies and ammo. (Things didn’t go as planned: “It wasn’t terribly effective,” according to Dyke Weatherington, the man responsible for acquisition oversight of Department of Defense unmanned aircraft systems.)

Besides General Atomics, who else is in the drone business today?
The usual suspects: major defense contractors including Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Raytheon, plus a number of smaller companies.

Who besides the US has drones for national security purposes?
The following 11 governments are known to possess armed UAVs:

China
France
Germany
India
Italy
Iran
Israel
Russia
Turkey
United Kingdom
United States

And according to a July 2012 report by the US Government Accountability Office, 76 countries have UAVs of some kind, up from 41 countries in 2005. Here’s a map and list from the 58-page document:

Via GAO

Do all military drones look like this one I’ve seen in the news?

An Honorable German/Flickr

Nope. Drones used by militaries around the world come in a variety of shapes and sizes. For instance:

US Navy photo by Photographers Mate 2nd Class Daniel J. McLain

Here is another chart from the 2012 GAO report detailing the three major categories used by the US military—Mini, Tactical, and Strategic:

Via GAO

How much do drones cost?
Depends on the type and level of sophistication, of course. $12,548,710.60 will get you one MQ-9 Reaper. Roughly $5 million will get you a Predator.

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Drones: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know But Were Always Afraid to Ask

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Meet the 3 Chinese Hackers Pwned By Mandiant

by da3xs1z Posted on February 19, 2013

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In case you missed it, the cybersecurity firm Mandiant just released a bombshell report (pdf) on how more than 150 sophisticated hacking attempts against American corporations and government agencies over the past decade almost certainly originated from a single Shanghai office building controlled by People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The hacking group, dubbed APT1 in the report, launches its attacks from roughly the same address in the city’s Pudong New Area as the one used by the PLA’s Unit 61398, a probable cyberwar division. But the excellent New York Times exclusive on Mandiant’s findings omits some colorful details about the hackers themselves. One of them, for instance, is apparently a Harry Potter fan. Here are profiles of the three Chinese hackers Mandiant outed in its report.

Jack Wang, a.k.a. Wang Dong, a.k.a. Ugly Gorilla

A profile photo used by Ugly Gorilla

Back in 2004, the cyberwarfare expert Zhang Zhaozhong was participating in an online Q&A hosted by the website China Military Online. A retired PLA rear admiral, professor at China’s National Defense University, and strong advocate of the “informationization” of military units, Zhang had written several works on military tech strategy, including “Network Warfare” and “Winning the Information War.” One question for Zhang came from a site user with the handle “Greenfield,” who brought up the United States’ cyberwar capabilities. “Does China have a similar force?” he asked. “Does China have cyber troops?”

Greenfield would soon become one of those troops, according to Mandiant. When he registered for the China Military site, he gave his real name as “Jack Wang” and the email address uglygorilla@163.com—details that would later be associated with the hacker known as Ugly Gorilla. That October, Ugly Gorilla registered the hacker zone HugeSoft.org, a name that, as Bloomberg has reported, “combines two common descriptors of a gorilla, along with sub-domains like ‘tree’ and ‘man.'”

In 2007, Ugly Gorilla authored the first known sample of a widely used family of Chinese malware and brazenly left his signature in the code: “v1.0 No Doubt to Hack You, Writed by UglyGorilla, 06/29/2007.”

DOTA, a.k.a. Rodney, a.k.a. Raith

DOTA may have taken his or her name from the video game “Defense of the Ancients,” commonly abbreviated DotA. The name shows up in dozens of email accounts that DOTA created for social engineering and phishing attacks, according to Mandiant. It appears Mandiant was able to hack some of these accounts, allowing them to get DOTA’s phone number (a mobile phone in Shanghai) and the username of DOTA’s (blank) US-based Facebook account, where DOTA registered as female. Mandiant published a screen-grab of one of DOTA’s Gmail accounts:

DOTA appears to speak fluent English and may be a fan of American and British pop culture. The answers to security questions associated with his or her internet accounts—such as, “Who is your favorite teacher?” or “Who is your best childhood friend?”—are often some variation of “Harry” and “Poter.”

Mandiant linked some of DOTA’s other passwords to a pattern that seems to be associated with Unit 61398, the PLA’s cyberwar division.

Mei Qiang, a.k.a. SuperHard

Similar to Ugly Gorilla, Mei Qiang signs much of his work by embedding his name into the code. His malware is often signed “SuperHard” and his Microsoft hacking tools are altered from “Microsoft corp.” to “superhard corp.”

SuperHard primarily works on tools used by other Chinese hackers; he’s probably employed in APT1’s research and development arm, according to Mandiant. He has also volunteered to write Trojan software for money. Mandiant researchers gained access to some of the hacker’s internet accounts. They believe he (or she) used the email address mei_quiang_82@sohu.com, which, based on Chinese habit, suggests that the user is Mei Quiang, born in 1982. They also traced SuperHard to Shanghai’s Pudong New Area—information that should give US security experts plenty of leads, assuming the hacker hasn’t been fired yet.

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Meet the 3 Chinese Hackers Pwned By Mandiant

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Too Fast To Fail: Is High-Speed Trading the Next Wall Street Disaster?

by biglermyrta910 Posted on February 4, 2013

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At 9:30 A.M. on August 1 a software executive in a spread-collar shirt and a flashy watch pressed a button at the New York Stock Exchange, triggering a bell that signaled the start of the trading day. Milliseconds after the opening trade, buy and sell orders began zapping across the market’s servers with alarming speed. The trades were obviously unusual. They came in small batches of 100 shares that involved nearly 150 different financial products, including many stocks that normally don’t see anywhere near as much activity. Within three minutes, the trade volume had more than doubled from the previous week’s average.

Soon complex computer programs deployed by financial firms swooped in. They bought undervalued stocks as the unusual sales drove their prices down and sold overvalued ones as the purchases drove their prices up. The algorithms were making a killing, and human traders got in on the bounty too.

Within minutes, a wave of urgent email alerts deluged top officials at the Securities and Exchange Commission. On Wall Street, NYSE officials scrambled to isolate the source of the bizarre trades. Meanwhile, across the Hudson River, in the Jersey City offices of a midsize financial firm called Knight Capital, panic was setting in. A program that was supposed to have been deactivated had instead gone rogue, blasting out trade orders that were costing Knight nearly $10 million per minute. And no one knew how to shut it down. At this rate, the firm would be insolvent within an hour. Knight’s horrified employees spent an agonizing 45 minutes digging through eight sets of trading and routing software before they found the runaway code and neutralized it.

By then it was shortly after 10 a.m., and officials from the NYSE, other major exchanges, and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority were gathering for an emergency conference call. It didn’t end until 4 p.m.

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Too Fast To Fail: Is High-Speed Trading the Next Wall Street Disaster?

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World Leaders Flocked To Twitter in 2012

by kowalski099 Posted on January 2, 2013

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If you are interested in following Mohammed Magariaf, the new president of Libya, he is indeed on Twitter, with a Klout score in the low 50s. And joining him on the world’s most gloriously addictive/time-sucking social media site is the majority of world leaders.

A new study (PDF) by The Digital Policy Council, the research arm of the consulting firm Digital Daya, finds that 123 of 164 countries (75 percent) now have a head of state who is tweeting (or perhaps has staff tweeting for them) from either a personal or government account. In 2011 DPC identified 69 actively tweeting heads of state. This 78-percent uptick is visualized in the chart below:

Courtesy of DigitalDaya.com

Barack Obama is the most popular world leader on Twitter with 25 million followers—roughly 2.3 million fewer than Barbadian pop singer Rihanna, and 7 million fewer than Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar’s Canadian archrival Justin Bieber.

It only makes sense that more heads of state and national governments are utilizing Twitter for PR and propaganda purposes. “Based on these growth rates, the Digital Policy Council anticipates penetration on Twitter for world leaders to be nearing 100% in 2013,” the report states. “This would render Twitter as a de facto communication tool for all heads of state.”

For instance, Muhammad Morsi, Egypt’s new Islamist president, has been tweeting in Arabic to his now 850,000+ followers since late 2011 (he came in at No. 14 on DPC’s list). The government of war-torn Somalia has found time to Tweet some (Somalia was ranked No. 101 with 765 followers, narrowly beating out Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, and the governments of Oman and Grenada). Hell, even the totalitarian regime of North Korea started Tweeting its anti-Seoul and anti-American propaganda—from the Pyongyang-based account @uriminzok—in 2010. (Not to be confused with @KimJongNumberUn, just to be clear.) North Korea did not qualify for DPC’s study, but currently has close to 11,000 followers and, in case you’re curious, follows these three accounts:

Twitter

Here are the top five world leaders on Twitter, as ranked by DPC in December 2012:

1. Barack obama

President of the United States: 25 million followers

2. Hugo Chávez

President of Venezuela: 3.8 million followers

Twitter

3. Abdullah Gül

President of Turkey: 2.6 million followers

4. Rania Al Abdullah

Queen of Jordan: 2.5 million followers

5. Dmitry Medvedev

(Former) President of Russia: 2.1 million followers

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World Leaders Flocked To Twitter in 2012

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Our 10 Favorite Fake Twitter Accounts

by kowalski099 Posted on January 2, 2013

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Twitter has become a comedic haven for role players and impostors posing as politician, celebrities, and inanimate objects. Behold a few of our faves.

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Our 10 Favorite Fake Twitter Accounts

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