Monthly Archives: November 2021

The Chinese foreign ministry has lashed out at Lithuania after the small Baltic Sea nation approved the opening of the Taiwan Representative Office in Vilnius. Beijing says it undermines its One China policy.

Beijing was disappointed that Lithuania had proceeded to grant Taiwan permission to open its ‘representative office’ in Vilnius despite “China’s strong opposition and repeated persuasion,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a press briefing on Friday. Taiwan had opened its mission in Vilnius the previous day. 

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Zhao called the move a violation of the One China principle, which he said is undermining China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, while grossly interfering in its internal affairs. The spokesman reminded Lithuania that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory and the Beijing government has sole legal authority. 

As to what necessary measures China will take, you may wait and see. The Lithuanian side shall reap what it sows.

In a “stern warning” to the Taiwanese authorities, Zhao then added that “seeking ‘Taiwan independence’ by soliciting foreign support is a totally misguided attempt that is doomed to fail.”

In August, Lithuania announced that the diplomatic outpost would be named the “Taiwan Representative Office,” angering China. Taiwan’s diplomatic branches – in countries that have de facto relations with the island’s authorities – are normally called “Taipei Economic and Cultural Offices.”

China demanded that Lithuania recall its ambassador from China, which it did. Beijing then withdrew its envoy to the Baltic state.

Chinese officials have repeatedly called on Western nations, notably the UK and US, to stop interfering in Beijing’s internal affairs, stressing that they consider Taiwan to be part of China.

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One of our favorite very specific image genres of funny pictures is cat moms that look completely unprepared for the realities of parenthood. Scroll down to see the best examples!

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An official inquiry has found that Germany’s justice system was staffed with former Nazis for decades after the Second World War, At one point, three out of four top officials at the prosecutor’s office were former party members.

Released on Thursday, the 600-page report was compiled by historian Friedrich Kiessling and legal scholar Christoph Safferling, and covers the Cold War period running from the early 1950s until 1974. The work was commissioned by the federal prosecutor’s office. 

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The researchers found that, at one point during the 1950s, roughly three in four top officials in the federal prosecutor’s office had been members of the Nazi Party. It took until 1972 before former Nazis were no longer in the majority in that office, and until 1992 before the judicial system had been fully purged of ex-members of the fascist party.

“There was no break, let alone a conscious break, with the Nazi past,” the researchers said of the situation. 

Presenting the inquiry’s findings, state secretary at the justice ministry Margaretha Sudhof said the country has “long remained blind” to the presence of ex-Nazis in senior positions after the end of the Second World War.

“On the face of it they were highly competent lawyers… but that came against the backdrop of the death sentences and race laws in which they were involved,” Sudhof commented. 

In a statement about the study’s publication, Justice Minister Christine Lambrecht said she welcomed “the fact that the Federal Prosecutor’s Office is also grappling with its troubled past and is shedding more light on its own Nazi entanglements in the post-war period.”

The federal prosecutor’s office is Germany’s highest prosecutorial authority, responsible for pursuing those who violate international law and commit alleged crimes relating to state security. 

The latest study follows an earlier report published in 2016, which stated that in 1957 – more than a decade after the war had ended – 77% of senior officials in the justice ministry were former Nazis. At the time of that publication, then-Justice Minister Heiko Maas stated that the “Nazi-era lawyers went on to cover up old injustice rather than to uncover it, and thereby created new injustice.”

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The French government has kicked off a €14 million national campaign to tackle underage prostitution and pimping. It comes months after a report found as many as 10,000 youngsters, mostly teen girls, are involved in the sex trade.

The campaign, launched by the Ministry for Solidarity and Health on Monday, is expected to be fully rolled out in 2022. The ministry described the problem as a “growing phenomenon that society can no longer ignore” and about which “too little is known.”

The government programme is expected to “increase awareness” while helping to “inform and provide a better understanding of the phenomenon.” It also aims to help “identify the young people involved” and “prosecute clients and pimps more effectively.”

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According to RFI, the prevalence of underage prostitution has increased by as much as 70% over the past five years, with social media believed to be compounding the problem. The public broadcaster noted that the situation had worsened during the Covid-19 pandemic when young people spent more time online.

In July, a working group produced a damning report that found between 7,000 and 10,000 young people were involved in prostitution across the country. The majority are young girls aged between 15 and 17, but a ministry statement noted that the “entry point” into prostitution was increasingly becoming younger at around 14-15 years.

“There’s really a normalisation of prostitution of young people because girls say that selling sex is a way of making lots of money easily and that it can help them reach their dream life,” deputy public prosecutor Raphaelle Wach told the news outlet France 24.

In its statement, the ministry noted that many minors did not consider themselves victims and valued the “financial autonomy” and feelings of “belonging to a group” and “regaining control” over their lives.

“These minors are however in danger, both physically and psychologically,” the ministry warned.

“Covid played a considerable role because social networking provided new ways of being able to hook in underage girls very easily,” Geneviève Collas, who runs an NGO fighting human trafficking, told RFI. She added that recruiting minors has been made “easier” with short-term apartment rental apps like Airbnb helping mask the scale of the problem on the streets.

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EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — The images from Kabul are demoralizing and depressing—unless you are sitting in the Kremlin, where they are certainly being viewed in a quite different light. Probably something close to giddiness and glee.

From Russian President Vladimir Putin’s perspective, this likely reinforces his view that President Joe Biden and his national security team are weak and naïve.  ‘This is Obama’s third term’, Putin must be thinking. And of course, the images of US helicopters desperately trying to evacuate thousands from Kabul also resonate in Kiev, Tbilisi, and probably Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius and beyond—think Taipei.  The appalling mismanagement of the withdrawal from Afghanistan will have consequences that will affect American credibility globally and linger well beyond the end of Biden’s presidency.

A first order consequence concerns Russia.

It is highly likely there was practical cooperation between the Kremlin and the Taliban in the preparation for the American withdrawal and this may have included direct support to Taliban forces. We don’t need to revisit the narrative of Russian bounties for dead American soldiers in Afghanistan, but the evidence of Russian energetic engagement with the Taliban in recent months is manifest and the fact the Russian embassy in Kabul is currently protected by Taliban fighters is significant.

For both Russia and the Taliban there was a clear shared strategic objective: Get the Americans and their allies out of Afghanistan and ideally in the most humiliating fashion possible.  The Russian-Taliban honeymoon may not last long, but for the moment it has served both sides well.

For over a decade and a half of his tenure as Russia’s president, Putin has been preaching the gospel that you can’t trust the Americans to back you in the long run or when the chips are down, but you can count on the Russia he leads (think the Russian intervention in Syria and support for Assad or their intervention—whether acknowledged or not—in Libya on the side of Khalifa Haftar among other examples). This messaging is important in current times and reinforces Putin’s narrative about the decline of the West and the waning relevance of western liberal systems of governance.

In recent years, Chinese President Xi Jinping has picked up the trumpet to echo this message that American power is in decline and that American security guarantees cannot be relied on in East Asia and beyond.

Putin has been Russia’s Czar for over two decades without meaningful interruption and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. He has seen US Presidents come and go and he has been quick to size them up and adjust his moves accordingly. He was genuinely scared of what George W. Bush might do in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and the speed and efficacy of the US response made a deep impression on him.  He adjusted his approach to the US to one of partner and ally against Islamic extremism (Putin was also busy consolidating his control over the Russian Federation in the immediate post-Yeltsin period).

Putin also sized up then-President Barack Obama after Obama’s failure to act when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad blithely crossed the “no use of chemical weapons” red line.  That opened the door for the annexation of Crimea as well as the Russian military intervention in Syria (and later Libya). Joe Biden was Vice President at the time. Putin likely has a very good book on Joe Biden and was quite confident of what the end result for the US in Afghanistan would look like.  Putin may even have a better feel for Joe Biden than many realize, if any of the Hunter Biden material is true.  One leader’s assessment of another, matters in geopolitical relations. Putin has a high level of confidence in his ability to read his international opposition.

As recently as July 2021 President Biden said, “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of the US embassy in Afghanistan.”  He went on to add, “The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.”  President Biden made these statements knowing perfectly or should have known—from intelligence briefings and expert commentary—as well as historical precedent—that when the US announces a withdrawal of forces with a hard deadline, in this case 9/11, our adversaries use the time to prepare for their offensive military action. Our Afghan allies knew this as well and prepared accordingly.  Now the Taliban will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the US embassy in Kabul, probably with their ISIS and Al Qaeda friends as honored guests.  If you think the videos from Afghanistan have been troubling to this point, just wait for the anniversary celebrations.

Perhaps of more near term geopolitical significance, Putin will use the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan to support a narrative that Russia needs to defend its interests from the spread of Islamic extremism from Afghanistan by strengthening “security and counterterrorism” cooperation with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan. Does anyone want an excuse to get – and keep – those pesky Americans out of Central Asia and start rebuilding that corner of the Soviet Union?

Putin’s use of terrorism risk as justification for military action is well-rehearsed and goes back to the Moscow apartment bombings (which the FSB almost certainly organized) in September 1999, which Putin used both to consolidate political power and to justify the brutal military campaign in Chechnya. Putin is acutely aware of the risks of Islamic extremism spreading from Afghanistan to Central Asia, the Caucasus, and into the Russian Federation. In fact, Russian, Uzbek, and Tajik troops conducted exercises in July, which appear to have been designed to prepare to respond to cross border incursions from Afghanistan. This is only the first step in his plan for consolidation of Russian power and influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

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Some might ask – given the risk of the spread of Islamic extremism from Afghanistan to the Russian Federation – why would Putin would want to partner with the Taliban?  Those who ask this question are misunderstanding the depth of Putin’s enmity toward the United States and the West and everything for which we stand.  Putin views the world as a “zero sum” game.  What hurts the US must serve Russia’s interests. The debacle in Afghanistan clearly qualifies. A short-term deal with the Taliban is a risk with taking in Putin’s mind.  Putin plays on the superpower chessboard using the only tools he has at hand, military power, cyber and disinformation capability and US ineptitude and lack of strategic thought.  He has taken clever advantage of President Trump’s four years of thoughtless estrangement of US allies around the world.

Beyond the propaganda value and regional leverage our withdrawal has given adversaries like Russia and China, there is the impact of our withdrawal on the many nations among our allies who contributed to the Afghanistan mission. The images of Afghans clinging to a departing US Air Force C-17 and falling to their deaths will not fade easily. How easy will it be to assemble their support when we inevitably have to go in again to deal with a resurgent Al Qaeda, a globally ambitious Taliban, or an even more dangerous embedded ISIS in the hills of Afghanistan?

We should also consider the impact on Pakistan.  Pakistan has nurtured Islamic extremism in Afghanistan for decades.  While a part of the Pakistani security establishment partnered with the US effectively after 9/11, other parts simultaneously were nurturing relations with extremists including the Taliban. The “Great Game” is still being played in that part of the world, and neither the Pakistanis, nor the Indians or Chinese have forgotten it.

Pakistan also still certainly chafes from the US raid to kill bin Ladin in Abbottabad a little over ten years ago.  One wonders if the waning of US influence in Islamabad has opened the door for Islamic extremists to enter the security establishment there. Pakistan is a nuclear power and has in recent years, increased its development of tactical nuclear weapons. Does the Taliban now have a path to nuclear weapons?  This is an important question and it’s answer casts a shadow over our withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The Biden Administration, for all its vaunted claims of “return to competence” in Washington, has fallen flat in its first serious challenge. One could argue that Biden’s capitulation on Nord Stream 2 and Putin’s mocking rejection in Geneva of charges of US election interference and cyberattacks on the US, foretold the debacle in Afghanistan. The challenge for the US now will be to manage the airlift of those Afghans who were willing to partner with the US and carefully look for opportunities to rebuild the credibility of US security guarantees around the world.

Taiwan and South Korea would seem good places to start.

At the same time, we need to recognize that Afghanistan will once again become the training ground for those who hope to replicate 9/11 attacks on the US. A strong and robust intelligence capability will be essential in mitigating that risk.

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As infections are rising again, scientists all around the world are rushing to fight the danger, offering a choice of new treatments and unusual variants of vaccines.

Levels of contagion are setting new records, hospitals are overwhelmed, governments are starting to introduce lockdowns, and not only for unvaccinated people ​​– the picture of the fight against Covid-19 looks quite disappointing. However, there’s still a place for good news: Research teams report positive results while trialling new medicines and vaccine types.

Nasal vaccines 

Vaccination will remain one of the most effective tools against Covid-19. As Professor David Dockrell, from the Center for Inflammation Research of the University of Edinburgh, told RT, “vaccines will continue to be a central part of how we control the virus.”

“If we can dampen down the number of infections, and the severity of infections, and also the extent to which the virus can replicate in people when they become infected, then we are slowing down the ability of the virus to change and to mutate,” he explains. 

So I think the vaccines still will be a very important part of the preventive strategy. It’s vital that they are available to all the world’s population, irrespective of where people live, and the wealth of the country in which they live. 

However, vaccination doesn’t always mean you have to get an injection. For instance, several intranasal Covid-19 vaccines are currently being developed. As the virus gets into the body through the nose, a nasal spray or drops are aimed to produce mucosal immune response and prevent it from getting into the lungs.

In India, a vaccine of this type is already completing Phase 2 of clinical trials. In Russia, a nasal vaccine is undergoing a clinical trial on volunteers. In Thailand, a home-developed product is expected to be trialed on humans next spring. In the US, Universities of Houston and Stanford recently reported good results of their experiments carried out on mice.

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Intranasal vaccines can have several potential benefits compared to inoculation. 

“They would be easier to use, because they can be self-administered. They wouldn’t need a nurse or clinical settings,” Swedish professor emeritus of epidemiology Marcello Ferrada de Noli explained to RT. As a result, he says, there’s hope that fewer people will be reluctant to be immunized. Not so many of us find it pleasant to get a jab ​​– and after all, there are those who are just afraid of needles. Also, it would be much easier to vaccinate children with nasal substances. 

However, what concerns Prof. de Noli the most is the duration of the effect of a vaccine of this type. Still, scientists can’t say for sure whether a nasal substance may completely replace a shot. According to Alexander Gintsburg, the head of Moscow’s Gamaleya Center biomedical research institute, which created the Sputnik V vaccine, the nasal version they are working on would serve for an additional protection against the virus, but would not replace the injections.

Chew the virus away? 

A nasal vaccine is not the only one being developed. In summer, it was revealed that Russian Defense Ministry scientists were creating a ‘chewing gum’ vaccine, also targeting the mucosal immune response. Meanwhile, a UK firm announced this month that it would conduct a human trial of a skin patch that uses T-cells to confront the virus. Developers hope it would offer longer-lasting immunity than the existing vaccines. Work on a similar project is being done in the University of Queensland, Australia.

While it all looks so promising, Prof. de Noli warns that it would still take a lot of time until these products become available to the public. “I think that discoveries in this field are a very good thing. But if we say ‘We discovered a new type of vaccine’, people will say ‘Aha, so I’m going to wait’. But we need to vaccinate people now,” he points out.

Improving Covid treatment

Vaccines are not a silver bullet, unfortunately, given the not-so-high level of global immunization and the constantly emerging new strains of the virus. “People might get infected despite having had a vaccine, but I still think the vaccine strategy is going to be central to how we manage this kind of virus going forward,” Prof. Dockrell says. “But we will have other strategies that will be very important. We will have other elements. When we put them all together, it gives us the best opportunity that people can live with coronaviruses, and hopefully, the mortality can be limited to much lower extense than what we’ve sadly seen in the last eighteen months.”

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Monoclonal antibodies will be central to the ongoing vaccine strategy, Prof. Dockrell explains. These are the antibodies similar to those the body uses to fight the virus. They are produced in labs and given via infusion or injection to boost the patient’s response against certain diseases. Monoclonal antibody treatment is used for people under a high risk of developing severe infection (including older patients 65+ years old or those with chronic medical conditions). It’s already being used in the US, following last year’s FDA approval. Earlier in November, the European Medicines agency recommended authorizing two monoclonal antibody medicines.

In October, UK’s AstraZeneca reported positive results of a Phase 3 study of its antibody combination, which, according to developers, is highly effective in both prevention and treatment of coronavirus.

Researchers are also working on a possibility to save Covid-infected patients from the so-called ‘cytokine storm’ – a situation when the immune system reacts so intensely that kills not only the virus, but the whole organism itself. A drug to ‘calm the storm’ was registered in Russia this year, and it’s already being used on patients.

Another way to fight Covid-19 is to use antiviral drugs. When the pandemic started, medics had to use something already existing (like anti-influenza Favipiravir) or something being authorized for emergency use (like remdesivir). Now, more than a year on, the work to create a special drug to specifically cure Covid-19 is giving its results. This month, Russia registered its first injectable anti-Covid medicine. A bit earlier, the UK became the first country to approve an antiviral pill produced by the US-based companies Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics. Another American firm, Pfizer, got positive results from trials of its drug of the same kind. Both firms hope that with a drug in the form of a pill it would be easier to treat people at home.

Appreciating all the efforts on the field of developing anti-Covid treatment, Prof. de Noli points out that still, the key issue now is to reduce the spreading of the virus. “The new medicines are developed for people who already got the disease,” he says.

But we need to prevent people from getting the infection, not let them get infected because we have some new medicine that can cure them.

The same idea is echoed by scientists all over the world quoted in plenty of articles dedicated to the medical gains: it’s great to have the treatment, but none of the drugs may substitute vaccination, as first and foremost, humanity has to adopt preventive measures and stop the pandemic.

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Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has called on Canadian singer Justin Bieber to cancel his upcoming concert in what it calls the “Zionist occupation state” of Israel.

Bieber announced his 2022 world tour dates this week, with a concert in Tel Aviv planned for next October. On Thursday, Hamas’ Artistic Production Department issued a statement, cited by the Palestinian Sawa news outlet, “condemning and denouncing” the performer. It called on the star to cancel the show and “boycott the Zionist occupation state in protest at its repeated crimes against the Palestinian people.” 

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Bieber has performed in Israel multiple times, his last performance there having been in 2017 at Park HaYarkon – the same venue slated for next year. Since the announcement of the ‘Justice’ tour dates, calls for him to cancel the Tel Aviv show have gained momentum across social media, with many posters condemning the singer for supporting what one called an “apartheid state.”

Some noted that Bieber was set to arrive in Israel after performing in South Africa. “Justin Bieber is really going straight from SA to Israel. From a country that fought apartheid to a country that’s practicing apartheid,” one Twitter user complained.

A petition asking the singer to boycott Israel and exclude it from his tour has been launched online, and had garnered some 3,700 signatures by Friday. 

In 2018, the New Zealand singer Lorde canceled a concert in Israel, subsequently thanking fans for “educating” her on the issue, and, the same year, US artist Lana Del Rey at first defended her decision to perform in the country, saying her appearance would not be a “political statement,” before backtracking and canceling the gig.

Hamas has been designated a terrorist group by the US, the EU, and, as of Friday, the UK. In April 2021, international non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch concluded in a report that Israel had committed “crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution.”

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Syrian-born musician Omar Souleyman, who worked with the likes of Bjork and Damon Albarn, has been detained in Turkey over alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is deemed a terrorist group by Ankara.

Souleyman was brought in for questioning on Wednesday, with officers also searching through his home in Turkey’s southeastern province of Sanliurfa, the singer’s manager said.

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The arrest was likely provoked by recent reports that the musician had traveled to an area in Syria controlled by the Kurdish militias known as the YPG, he added.

The YPG have been US allies in the fight against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), but Turkey considers them to be an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and a threat to its national security.

For decades, the Workers’ Party has been fighting Turkish troops in the southeast of the country, striving for greater autonomy for the Kurdish population.  

Souleyman’s son denied his father’s alleged terrorist links, saying he didn’t have any political affiliation and had become the victim of a “malicious report.” Some media outlets claimed the musician could be released from custody later on Thursday.

Coming from Syria’s majority-Kurdish province of Hasekeh, Souleyman had been known as a prolific wedding performer in his home country. But his international career skyrocketed after he moved to Turkey a decade ago, fleeing the Syrian conflict. The 55-year-old’s clips, including his top hit ‘Warni Warni’, have garnered millions of views on YouTube. He performed at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in 2013, as well as at many large festivals around the globe.

His unique style, which is based on mixing traditional Middle Eastern folk music with electronic sound, has attracted the attention of such stars as Bjork, Four Tet, Damon Albarn, and Diplo, who have all collaborated with Souleyman.

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(Editor’s Note: This article was first published by our friends at Just Security and is the third in a series that is diving into the foundational barriers to the broad integration of AI in the IC – culture, budget, acquisition, risk, and oversight.)

OPINION — As I have written earlier, there is widespread bipartisan support for radically improving the nation’s ability to take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI). For the Intelligence Community (IC), that means using AI to more quickly, easily, and accurately analyze increasing volumes of data to produce critical foreign intelligence that can warn of and help defuse national security threats, among other things. To do that, the IC will have to partner closely with the private sector, where significant AI development occurs. But despite the billions of dollars that may ultimately flow toward this goal, there are basic hurdles the IC still must overcome to successfully transition and integrate AI into the community at speed and scale.

Among the top hurdles are the U.S. government’s slow, inflexible, and complex budget and acquisition processes. The IC’s rigid budget process follows the standard three-year cycle for the government, which means it takes years to incorporate a new program and requires confident forecasting of the future. Once a program overcomes the necessary hurdles to be included in a budget, it must follow a complex sequence of regulations to issue and manage a contract for the actual goods or services needed. These budget and acquisition processes are often considered separately as they are distinct, but I treat them together because they are closely related and inextricably intertwined in terms of the government’s purchasing of technology.

Importantly, these processes were not intended to obstruct progress; they were designed to ensure cautious and responsible spending, and for good reason. Congress, with its power of the purse, and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), as the executive branch’s chief budget authority, have the solemn duty to ensure wise and careful use of taxpayer dollars. And their roles in this regard are vital to the U.S. government’s ability to function.

Unfortunately, despite the best of intentions, as noted by some in Congress itself, the budget process has become so “cumbersome, frustrating, and ineffective” that it has weakened the power of the purse and Congress’ capacity to govern. And when complicated acquisition processes are layered on top of the budget process, the result is a spider web of confusion and difficulty for anyone trying to navigate them.

The Need for Speed … and Flexibility and Simplicity

As currently constructed, government budget and acquisition processes cause numerous inefficiencies for the purchase of AI capabilities, negatively impacting three critical areas in particular: speed, flexibility, and simplicity. When it comes to speed and flexibility, the following difficulties jump out:

• The executive branch has a methodical and deliberate three-year budget cycle that calls for defined and steady requirements at the beginning of the cycle. Changing the requirements at any point along the way is difficult and time-consuming.
• The IC’s budgeting processes require that IC spending fit into a series of discrete sequential steps, represented by budget categories like research, development, procurement, or sustainment. Funds are not quickly or easily spent across these categories.
• Most appropriations expire at the end of each fiscal year, which means programs must develop early on, and precisely execute, detailed spending plans or lose the unspent funds at the end of one year.
• Government agencies expend significant time creating detailed Statements of Work (SOWs) that describe contract requirements. Standard contract vehicles do not support evolving requirements, and companies are evaluated over the life of the contract based on strict compliance with the original SOW created years earlier.

These rules make sense in the abstract and result from well-intentioned attempts to buy down the risk of loss or failure and promote accountability and transparency. They require the customer to know with clarity and certainty the solution it seeks in advance of investment and they narrowly limit the customer’s ability to change the plan or hastily implement it. These rules are not unreasonably problematic for the purchase of items like satellites or airplanes, the requirements for which probably should not and will not significantly change over the course of many years.

However, because AI technology is still maturing and the capabilities themselves are always adapting, developing, and adding new functionality, the rules above have become major obstacles to the quick integration of AI across the IC. First, AI requirements defined with specificity years in advance of acquisition – whether in the budget or in a statement of work – are obsolete by the time the technology is delivered. Second, as AI evolves there is often not a clear delineation between research, development, procurement, and sustainment of the technology – it continuously flows back and forth across these categories in very compressed timelines. Third, it is difficult to predict the timing of AI breakthroughs, related new requirements, and funding impacts, so money might not be spent as quickly as expected and could be lost at the end of the fiscal year. Taken together, these processes are inefficient and disruptive, cause confusion and delay, and discourage engagement from small businesses, which have neither the time nor the resources to wait years to complete a contract or to navigate laborious, uncertain processes.

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Simply put, modern practices for fielding AI have outpaced the IC’s decades-old approach to budgeting and acquisition. That AI solutions are constantly evolving, learning, and improving both undermines the IC’s ability to prescribe a specific solution and, in fact, incentivizes the IC to allow the solution to evolve with the technology. The lack of flexibility and speed in how the IC manages and spends money and acquires goods and services is a core problem when it comes to fully incorporating AI into the IC’s toolkit.

Even while we introduce more speed and agility into these processes, however, the government must continue to ensure careful, intentional, and appropriate spending of taxpayer dollars. The adoption of an IC risk framework and modest changes to congressional oversight engagements, which I address in upcoming articles, will help regulate these AI activities in the spirit of the original intent of the budget and acquisition rules.

As for the lack of simplicity, the individually complex budget and acquisition rules are together a labyrinth of requirements, regulations, and processes that even long-time professionals have trouble navigating. In addition:

• There is no quick or simple way for practitioners to keep current with frequent changes in acquisition rules.
• The IC has a distributed approach that allows each element to use its various acquisition authorities independently rather than cohesively, increasing confusion across agency lines.
• Despite the many federal acquisition courses aimed at demystifying the process, there is little connection among educational programs, no clear path for IC officers to participate, and no reward for doing so.

The complexity of the budget and acquisition rules compounds the problems with speed and flexibility, and as more flexibility is introduced to support AI integration, it is even more critical that acquisition professionals be knowledgeable and comfortable with the tools and levers they must use to appropriately manage and oversee contracts.

Impactful Solutions: A Target Rich Environment

Many of these problems are not new; indeed, they have been highlighted and studied often over the past few years in an effort to enable the Department of Defense (DOD) and the IC to more quickly and easily take advantage of emerging technology. But to date, DOD has made only modest gains and the IC is even further behind. While there are hundreds of reforms that could ease these difficulties, narrowing and prioritizing proposed solutions will have a more immediate impact. Moreover, significant change is more likely to be broadly embraced if the IC first proves its ability to successfully implement needed reforms on a smaller scale. The following actions by the executive and legislative branches – some tactical and some strategic – would be powerful steps to ease and speed the transition of AI capabilities into the IC.

Statements of Objectives

A small but important first step to deal with the slow and rigid acquisition process is to encourage the use of Statements of Objectives (SOO) instead of SOWs, when appropriate. As mentioned, SOWs set forth defined project activities, deliverables, requirements, and timelines, which are used to measure contractor progress and success. SOWs make sense when the government understands with precision exactly what is needed from the contractor and how it should be achieved.

SOOs, on the other hand, are more appropriate when the strategic outcome and objectives are clear, but the steps to achieve them are less so. They describe “what” without dictating “how,” thereby encouraging and empowering industry to propose innovative solutions. SOOs also create clarity about what is important to the government, leading companies to focus less on aggressively low pricing of specific requirements and more on meeting the ultimate outcomes in creative ways that align with a company’s strengths. This approach requires knowledgeable acquisition officers as part of the government team, as described below, to ensure the contract includes reasonable milestones and decision points to keep the budget within acceptable levels.

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New Authorities for the IC

Two new authorities would help the IC speed and scale its use of AI capabilities: Other Transaction Authority (OTA)  and Commercial Solutions Openings (CSO). Other Transaction Authority allows specific types of transactions to be completed outside of the traditional federal laws and regulations that apply to standard government procurement contracts, providing significantly more speed, flexibility, and accessibility than traditional contracts. While OTA is limited in scope and not a silver bullet for all acquisition problems, OTA has been used to good effect since 1990 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Activity (DARPA), DOD’s over-the-horizon research and development organization, among others.

CSOs are a simplified and relatively quick solicitation method to award firm fixed price contracts up to $100 million. CSOs can be used to acquire innovative commercial items, technologies, or services that close capability gaps or provide technological advances through an open call for proposals that provide offerors the opportunity to respond with technical solutions of their own choosing to a broadly defined area of government interest. CSOs are considered competitively awarded regardless of how many offerors respond.

Both OTA and CSO authority should be immediately granted to the IC to improve the speed and flexibility with which the IC can acquire and transition AI into the IC.

Unclassified Sandbox

The predictive nature of the IC’s work and the need to forecast outcomes means the IC must be able to acquire AI at the point of need, aligned to the threat. Waiting several years to acquire AI undermines the IC’s ability to fulfill its purpose. But with speed comes added risk that new capabilities might fail. Therefore, the IC should create an isolated unclassified sandbox, not connected to operational systems, in which potential IC customers could test and evaluate new capabilities alongside developers in weeks-to-months, rather than years. Congress should provide the IC with the ability to purchase software quickly for test and evaluation purposes only to buy down the risk that a rapid acquisition would result in total failure. The sandbox process would allow the IC to test products, consider adjustments, and engage with developers early on, increasing the likelihood of success.

Single Appropriation for Software

DOD has a pilot program that funds software as a single budget item – allowing the same money to be used for research, production, operations, and sustainment – to improve and speed software’s unique development cycle. AI, being largely software, is an important beneficiary of this pilot. Despite much of the IC also being part of DOD, IC-specific activities do not fall within this pilot. Extending DOD’s pilot to the IC would not only speed the IC’s acquisition of AI, but it would also increase interoperability and compatibility of IC and DOD projects.

No-Year Funds

Congress should reconsider the annual expiration of funds as a control lever for AI. Congress already routinely provides no-year funding when it makes sense to do so. In the case of AI, no-year funds would allow the evolution of capabilities without arbitrary deadlines, drive more thoughtful spending throughout the lifecycle of the project, and eliminate the additional overhead required to manage the expiration of funds annually. Recognizing the longer-term nature of this proposal, however, the executive branch also must seek shorter-term solutions in the interim.

A less-preferable alternative is to seek two-year funding for AI. Congress has a long history of proposing biennial budgeting for all government activities. Even without a biennial budget, Congress has already provided nearly a quarter of the federal budget with two-year funding. While two-year funding is not a perfect answer in the context of AI, it would at a minimum discourage parties from rushing to outcomes or artificially burning through money at the end of the first fiscal year and would provide additional time to fulfill the contract. This is presumably why DOD recently created a new budget activity under their Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) category, which is typically available for two years, for “software and digital technology pilot programs.”

AI Technology Fund

Congress should establish an IC AI Technology Fund (AITF) to provide kick-starter funds for priority community AI efforts and enable more flexibility to get those projects off the ground. To be successful, the AITF must have no-year funds, appropriated as a single appropriation, without limits on usage throughout the acquisition lifecycle. The AITF’s flexibility and simplicity would incentivize increased engagement by small businesses, better allowing the IC to tap into the diversity of the marketplace, and would support and speed the delivery of priority AI capabilities to IC mission users.

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ICWERX  

To quickly take advantage of private sector AI efforts at scale, the IC must better understand the market and more easily engage directly with the private sector. To do so, the IC should create an ICWERX, modeled after AFWERX, an Air Force innovation organization that drives agile public-private sector collaboration to quickly leverage and develop cutting-edge technology for the Air Force. AFWERX aggressively uses innovative, flexible, and speedy procurement mechanisms like OTA and the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs (SBIR/STTR) to improve the acquisition process and encourage engagement from small businesses. AFWERX is staffed by acquisition and market research experts who are comfortable using those authorities and understand the market. While the IC’s needs are not identical, an ICWERX could serve as an accessible “front door” for prospective partners and vendors, and enable the IC to more quickly leverage and scale cutting-edge AI.

De-mystify Current Authorities

While there is much complaining about a lack of flexible authorities in the IC (and a real need for legal reform), there is flexibility in existing rules that has not been fully utilized. The IC has not prioritized the development or hiring of people with the necessary government acquisition and contracts expertise, so there are insufficient officers who know how to use the existing authorities and those who do are overworked and undervalued. The IC must redouble its efforts to increase its expertise in, and support the use of, these flexibilities in several ways.

First, the IC should create formal partnerships and increase engagement with existing U.S. government experts. The General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS) and FEDSIM, for example, work across the federal government to build innovative acquisition solutions and help agencies more quickly adopt AI. In addition, DOD’s Joint AI Center has built significant acquisition expertise that the IC must better leverage. The IC also should increase joint duty rotations in this area to better integrate and impart acquisition expertise across the IC.

Second, the IC must prioritize training and education of acquisition professionals. And while deep acquisition expertise is not necessary for everyone, it is important for lawyers, operators, technologists, and innovators to have a reasonable understanding of the acquisition rules, and the role they each play in getting to successful outcomes throughout the process. Collaboration and understanding across these professions and up and down the chain of command will result in more cohesive, speedy, and effective outcomes.

To that end, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) should work with the many existing government acquisition education programs, as well as the National Intelligence University, to develop paths for IC officers to grow their understanding of and ability to navigate and successfully use acquisition rules. The ODNI also should strengthen continuing education requirements and create incentive pay for acquisition professionals.

Third, the IC should prioritize and use direct hire authority to recruit experts in government acquisition, to include a mix of senior term-limited hires and junior permanent employees with room to grow and the opportunity for a long career in the IC. Such a strategy would allow the IC to quickly tackle the current AI acquisition challenges and build a bench of in-house expertise.

Finally, practitioners should have an easily accessible reference book to more quickly discover relevant authorities, understand how to use them, and find community experts. A few years ago, the ODNI led the creation of an IC Acquisition Playbook, which describes common IC acquisition authorities, practices, and usages. The ODNI should further develop and disseminate this Playbook as a quick win for the IC.

Incentivize Behavior

To encourage creative and innovative acquisition practices, as well as interdisciplinary collaboration, the IC must align incentives with desired outcomes and create in acquisition professionals a vested interest in the success of the contract. Acquisition officers today are often brought into projects only in transactional ways, when contracts must be completed or money must be obligated, for example. They are rarely engaged early as part of a project team, so they are not part of developing the solutions and have minimal investment in the project’s success. Reinforcing this, acquisition professionals are evaluated primarily on the amount of money they obligate by the end of the fiscal year, rather than on the success of a project.

Therefore, to start, project teams should be required to engage acquisition officers early and often, both to seek their advice and to ensure they have a good understanding of the project’s goals. In addition, evaluation standards for acquisition officers should incorporate effective engagement and collaboration with stakeholders, consideration of creative alternatives and options, and delivery of mission outcomes. If an officer uses innovative practices that fail, that officer also should be evaluated on what they learned from the experience that may inform future success.

Lastly, the ODNI should reinvigorate and highlight the IC acquisition awards to publicly reward desired behavior, and acquisition professionals should be included in IC mission team awards as a recognition of their impact on the ultimate success of the mission.

Conclusion

Between the government’s rigid budget and acquisition processes and confusion about how to apply them, there is very little ability for the IC to take advantage of a fast-moving field that produces new and updated technology daily. Tackling these issues through the handful of priority actions set forth above will begin to drive the critical shift away from the IC’s traditional, linear processes to the more dynamic approaches the IC needs to speed and transform the way it purchases, integrates, and manages the use of AI.

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When The Washington Post reported this week that CIA Director William Burns slipped into Afghanistan on Monday to meet with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar, it was described as the highest-level face-to-face encounter between the Taliban and the Biden Administration.  WaPo cited anonymous sources for the information and the CIA offered no immediate comment on the reporting.  If the reporting is accurate, it doesn’t answer any immediate questions about why the President would dispatch the CIA director for such a meeting.

What we do know, is that the unexpected advances of the Taliban that have dominated the headlines over the past week and a half were initially blamed on an intelligence failure by many.  Early on, Cipher Brief Expert and former Acting Director of CIA John McLaughlin tweeted that “The ‘intelligence failure’ drumbeat is starting. People should be careful about the charge if they have not actually seen/read the intelligence…”

So, what intelligence did the US have that would have led to a different outcome in Kabul and throughout the country?

• The New York Times reported last week that “classified assessments by American spy agencies over the summer painted an increasingly grim picture of the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and warned of the rapid collapse of the Afghan military, even as President Biden and his advisers said publicly that was unlikely to happen as quickly.” The paper cited current and former US government officials, saying, “By July, many intelligence reports grew pessimistic, questioning whether Afghan security forces would muster serious resistance and whether the government could hold on in Kabul, the capital.”
• On August 15, The Wall Street Journal reported that administration officials said they knew that a “total capitulation of the Taliban was a possibility, and they planned their withdrawal efforts accordingly.” But they also cited an administration official, saying “it wasn’t so much a failure in intelligence in which the administration based its decision, but rather, a change in circumstances brought about by the swift U.S. withdrawal.”

But private sector analysts were watching as well. Here’s an inside look at what The Cipher Brief has been publishing since January with key outtakes from Cipher Brief Expert Tim Willasey-Wilsey:

Brief: January 25, 2021

“The Afghans themselves are also monitoring the Washington newsfeeds in forensic detail and will be encouraged by Sullivan’s statement. Recently, all too many conversations in Kabul have been about when to leave and which route to take. Some wealthier Afghans already have their money in Dubai and children in foreign universities. Some even have passports and property in the United States, UK or Germany. For those who are less fortunate, the discussions are about which route to take out. The Uzbekistan border is favoured because a visa costs just $30 and there is a variety of onward routes via Turkey or Russia to the West whereas the routes via Iran or Pakistan are more restrictive or liable to interference.”

Brief: March 11, 2021

“Saleh will advise Ghani not to take Taliban or Pakistani promises on trust. Instead, Ghani may decide to call Washington’s bluff. He may doubt that Washington is really willing to abandon Afghanistan on 1^st May with the risk of a rapid Taliban victory jeopardising all the hard-won advances in areas such as women’s rights and counterterrorism over the past 20 years. The spectre of Al Qaida re-establishing camps in Afghanistan would surely be too much for Biden and Blinken.”

“Even if there were no helicopters from the US Embassy roof, the TV pictures of the Taliban entering Kabul, and of Afghan refugees fleeing their advance could evoke memories of Saigon in 1975. The reimposition of Taliban curbs on women would provoke international opprobrium. And subsequent reports of AQ training camps being re-established in Afghanistan would bring back recent and painful memories. After all the blood and treasure expended in Afghanistan that would be a disastrous outcome.”

Brief: April 19, 2021

“The Afghan government may be able to hold on to power for a few years as the Najibullah administration survived after the Soviet departure. However, there is a danger that there will be a sudden dam-burst in confidence with senior officials and politicians leaving en masse and hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing westwards through Iran, Pakistan and the Central Asian Republics. As the Taliban re-enter Kabul, we could see disturbing scenes of retribution and, in time, the return of Al Qa’ida figures from their hiding-places in the tribal borderlands in Pakistan. Only then will people re-examine this decision and recognise that the Afghan deployments since 2014 have not been that onerous.”

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Brief: June 1, 2021

“According to my sources, the Taliban are convinced they can take Kabul “within days” of the NATO withdrawal and they believe the Afghan army is “in a shambles and demoralised”. Although the Taliban will not disrupt departing US troops (unless attacked) they are not willing to wait until September to continue their campaign against Kabul government forces.”

“But we should not take much comfort from the Najibullah example. The comparisons with today’s Afghanistan are misleading. Najibullah’s government was able to reach and supply all the major towns by military convoy. The Afghan army was deployed to protect towns and road communications. By contrast, in 2021, only the route between Kabul and Jalalabad is reasonably safe. Convoys cannot get through from Kabul to Kandahar, Kandahar to Herat, or Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif. The Afghan army is spread across the country in piecemeal district centres (often surrounded by Taliban-controlled countryside) and have to be resupplied by air. This is not a sustainable model.”

“Furthermore, a number of today’s Afghan leaders, officials and military officers have received offers to relocate to the United States, Germany and elsewhere. As the security situation continues to deteriorate, the gradual trickle of departures is likely to gather pace. In such circumstances, the government could implode quite suddenly.”

“To some, this may evoke images of the 1975 fall of Saigon with the big losers being the Afghans who remain, particularly the women, who face a future of uncertainty and anxiety. There could also be a migration crisis reminiscent of Syria in the last decade.”

Brief: June 28, 2021

“One key indicator is that Afghan security forces have begun to surrender to the Taliban. The procedure is quick and simple. Tribal elders are used to deliver a stark message to Afghan troops often holding positions in district centres. The message is often; “The non-believers are leaving Afghanistan. They are defeated. Your leaders are corrupt. You can surrender now, and we will protect you; or you can fight, and we will kill you.” Recently, the Taliban appear to have honoured their promise not to punish Afghan soldiers who surrender. News of this new-found leniency is likely to encourage other units to follow suit and lay down their arms. In several provinces, including in the north, the Taliban are tightening their grip on those cities which are still held by the government. The Taliban will soon be in a position to cut off food supplies and demand their surrender, possibly offering a similarly lenient dispensation to the population. Now that the Taliban possesses captured armoured vehicles and artillery, their ability to exert pressure on the cities is enhanced. In Kabul, a sense of panic has begun to grip the capital. There are desperate attempts to sell family homes but there are no buyers even when houses are on the market at one tenth of their previous value. Some families have departed to Tajikistan, conscious that several of the land border crossing-points with the Central Asian Republics have been captured by Taliban forces in recent weeks.”

Read also Putin’s Calculated Afghanistan Play from Cipher Brief Expert Robert Dannenberg

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The Cipher Brief hosts private briefings with the world’s most experienced national and global security experts.  Become a member today. 

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Read more expert-driven national security insight, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

 

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