zenpundit.com

Complicit: How Greed and Collusion Made the Credit Crisis Unstoppable by Mark Gilbert

Inside Cyber Warfare: Mapping the Cyber Underworld by Jeffrey Carr

Received courtesy review copies of two books that will serve to “stretch” my knowledge base and increase my cognitive map.

Mark Gilbert is a financial columnist and bureau chief for Bloomberg News in London and he has written a hard hitting deconstruction of the great credit collapse and crisis bail-out of 2008-2009. Gilbert is telling a story of breathtaking risk assumption, regulatory capture, academic hubris, central bankers as naked emperors and unrepentant banksters who have learned nothing and forgotten nothing from the crisis. My personal background in credit issues is rooted solidly in the dustily agrarian economic history of the 19th century and the painful transition from yeoman “book debt” to gold standard dollars, so I look forward to broadening my understanding of modern financial systems from reading Complicit.

I will probably review Complicit in a cross-blog conjunction with Lexington Green, who also has a copy in his possession.

Jeffrey Carr is the CEO of GreyLogic and a researcher, presenter and consultant on issues related to cybersecurity, hacking, cyberterrorism and asymmetric conflicts in virtual domains. Carr offers a cohesive and compact look at the major problems and players in the uncertain crossroads of national security and cyberspace. Non-geeks (like myself) will appreciate Carr’s focus in Inside Cyber Warfare on the connection to the worlds of intelligence, law enforcement, international law and military operations and doctrine. As an added bonus, the foreword is by Lewis Shepherd, another blogfriend and the former Senior Technology Officer of the DIA.

Originally, I had wanted to review Inside Cyber Warfare before last Christmas, so now that I have the book, I will move it to the top of my titanic reading pile.

Which would be a cool title if there ever was one.

Except it is not a title but a metaphor being used by Jeff Carr of Intelfusion in a thought provoking post at O’Reilly Radar:

Loki’s Net – The National Security Risks of Gov 2.0 and the Social Web

…Here’s an updated version of an old Trickster tale that I think is particularly relevant to the topic of this post–the national security risks associated with a more open Government in general and social software in particular.

 Loki, the Norse God of mischief and mayhem, had taken to the mountains for refuge after angering the other Gods with his latest antics. The first thing he did was build a house with four doors; one on every side so that he could see in all directions. With his Intrusion Detection System in place, Loki spent the rest of his time playing in the water as a salmon, leaping waterfalls and negotiating mountain streams.

One morning, Loki sat by a fire and considered how the gods might capture him. Since he spent much of his time as a fish, Loki grabbed some linen string and fashioned a fishing net of a size and weight sufficient to snare him. Unfortunately, just as he finished, the other Gods rushed in. Loki threw the net into the fire, transformed into a salmon, and swam away. Acting quickly, the Gods extracted the ashes of the net from the fire and, from the remnants, rebuilt Loki’s net, eventually ensnaring him in it.

Like Loki, we construct through our Twitter posts, Facebook Wall entries and LinkedIn profiles our own unique “net” that sets us up for a social engineering exploit, a financial crime, or an act of espionage.

The Trickster archetype aptly frames this discussion about the risks and benefits of bringing Government into a Web 2.0 world because the classic Trickster is neither good nor bad, but encompasses elements of both. Too often, the debate surrounding Gov 2.0 becomes polarizing. Critics are frequently grouped together as Gov 1.0 thinkers struggling against a 2.0 world, while advocates sometimes embrace Gov 2.0 as a holy quest, refusing to acknowledge any significant risks whatsoever.

I cannot emphasize enough that the surest way to slow our progress toward a more technologically open Government is to try to craft this debate in dualistic terms. Indigenous Trickster tales teach us that a more valuable approach is to substitute utility for morality. Loki and  Coyote (a famous Trickster in Native American lore) both understand how to trap a fish because they have swum as fish. Hyde writes in his book Trickster Makes This World that “nothing counters cunning like more cunning. Coyote’s wits are sharp precisely because he has met other wits.”

Read the rest here.

Through Twitter, I’ve become familiar with Jeffrey Carr’s excellent blog IntelFusion which covers a range of topics of great interest to readers here. Several recent posts that have caught my eye:

Unrestricted Warfare, the Chinese Box, and the game of Go

In 1999, a seminal work on Chinese military strategy was published by two Senior Colonels of the Peoples Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), SrCol Qiao Liang and SrCol Wang Xiangsui, entitled Chaoxian zhan (translated as “Warfare that exceeds boundaries”).

….In July, 2002, the Asia Times printed a new article by the two Colonels “Chinese box approach to international conflict“. In it, they discuss China’s uber strategy in dealing with specific international issues:

“It is Chinese practice to attack an issue with a framework larger than the issue itself. When a crisis occurs, Chinese leaders first detach from it temporally and spacially. They spend time thinking about the issue before action, thus allowing more room for maneuver in the future. This is somewhat like playing with a magic box: first you pack the specific problem and related factors into a box and then fit it into larger boxes with related problems in different levels. Finally, you come up with a framework of highest generality to harness the whole situation.”

In this article, the authors later allude to the Chinese game of Weiqi (more commonly called by its Japanese name “Go”) and the strategy of the “idle piece”.

Nuclear black market still operating in the DRC

Ever since WWII, when the Democratic Republic of the Congo provided the raw uranium ore for U.S. production of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, various States interested in acquiring nuclear weapons have been attracted to the Congo’s relatively lax export controls for uranium found in its Cobalt and Copper ore. The most recent incident just occured a few days ago :

Security forces in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Katanga province have intercepted a truck transporting radioactive mineral ore bound for export, local authorities said on Friday. The truck, carrying 30 tonnes of copper and cobalt ore for Chinese-run firm Hua-Shin Mining, was stopped at an inspection checkpoint near Kolwezi, one of Congo’s biggest copper belt mining towns, on Wednesday.

Last November, another attempt to smuggle uranium resulted in the radioactive ore being dumped into a river causing serious health concerns for the surrounding population.

Read these posts in full at IntelFusion.