West Philadelphia's community radio station, WPEB 88.1 fm, presents Radio Against Apartheid. Amplifying voices for justice and equality in the Middle East and beyond.

On this week's show, we honor the 68th anniversary of the birth of Bob Marley with a show dedicated to two prophets of our time, Mumia Abu-Jamal and Samer Issawi, who, in spite of the brutality of mass incarceration, give us visions of a more just, beautiful, and free society.

We offer a rare interview of Bob Marley conducted by Mumia Abu-Jamal when Marley and the Wailers visited Philadelphia in 1979, courtesy of Midnight Raver blog. Then we share this week's podcast of Prison Radio by brother Mumia.

Samer Issawi is a Palestinian who has been on hunger strike for 200 days inside of Israeli prisons, challenging his unjust detention and demanding freedom. Though mainstream media has not covered his case, there is an active campaign (on Facebook and Twitter) calling for his release. 

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an African-American writer and journalist, author of six books and hundreds of columns and articles, who has spent the last 29 years on Pennsylvania’s death row. His demand for a new trial and freedom is supported by heads of state from France to South Africa, by Nobel Laureates Nelson Mandela, Toni Morrison, Desmund Tutu, by the European Parliament, by distinguished human rights organizations like Amnesty International, city governments from Detroit to San Francisco to Paris, scholars, religious leaders, artists, scientists, the Congressional Black Caucus and other members of U.S. Congress, the NAACP, labor unions, and by countless thousands who cherish democratic and human rights – and justice -the world over. Despite the fact that the state took him off of death row, citing the improper instructions given to the jury during trial, Mumia is sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole at SCI Mahanoy in Pennsylvania.

On January 16, 2013, we spoke with Farah (@Palestinianism) on the Palestinian village of Bab Al Shams, and the civil disobedience campaign to challenge settlement activity of the state of Israel in the West Bank (20 mins.).

West Philadelphia's community radio station, WPEB 88.1 FM, presents Radio Against Apartheid - amplifying voices for justice and equality in the Middle East.

West Philadelphia's community radio station, WPEB 88.1 FM, presents Radio Against Apartheid - amplifying voices for justice and equality in the Middle East.

West Philadelphia's community radio station, WPEB 88.1 FM, presents Radio Against Apartheid. Amplifying voices for justice and equality in the Middle East.

Welcome back, lovely listeners! After a one-week hiatus, DJ Ev and Matt Graber are back on the air!

On Wednesday, September 12, Former Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates spoke before a packed audience at the Philadelphia Convention Center at the 58th annual ASIS International seminar and exposition. Gates provided former members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Secret Service, and military, as well as members of corporate America with insights, analysis, and reflections gleaned from almost forty-five years in the US intelligence and defense community.

Gates joined the CIA as an officer in 1968, and moved his way through the agency to become CIA Director from 1991 - 93. He then served as Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011 in the White House administrations of presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

The address on Wednesday was the second keynote address of ASIS 2012, a gathering of up to 25,000 security professionals organized by ASIS International, which was formerly known as the American Society for Industrial Security, founded in 1955.

On Wednesday, Robert Gates provided insight and analysis of threats to American interests around the world - in relation to Afghanistan, Iran, and China - and also detailed how he expanded the role of the Secretary of Defense in to domestic politics, and how, with Janet Napolitano, as Secretary of Homeland Security, he authorized the NSA to assume jurisdiction over domestic surveillance.

On Afghanistan

As someone who has dedicated his career to the covert operations of the CIA, Gates expressed continued commitment to the necessity of unofficial and nonmilitary operatives in the service of American military and intelligence. This position is evidenced by the current US strategy in Afghanistan, which Gates drafted and began implementing two and a half years ago, to train an Afghan security force of 100,000 soldiers by 2014 in addition to private security, and a Mining Protection Unit. On Wednesday, Gates said that with this program, he believes that “we finally got the strategy right” in Afghanistan.

On Iran

Gates provided insight into the possibility of a war with Iran. First, Gates described his meeting in 1979 with then-National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Iranian officials in Algiers, in which, following the Iranian revolution, he and Brzezinski refused to give the Shah to the Iranians, as he was being treated in the United States.

Then Gates testified as to why the Iranians may want a nuclear weapon, saying that they “see themselves surrounded by nuclear-armed countries,” and have witnessed the way in which the US military has removed Saddam Hussein, in Iraq, and Muammar Gaddafi, in Libya, from power. By contrast, the US “has been far more cautious dealing with the North Korean regime.”

Further, Gates said the Israelis “feel themselves on a shorter timeline than the US with respect to military action” because of the “geography and history” of Israel, and the rhetoric of the Iranian regime. He stated that, “some elements of the Israeli government.. have been making noises about a potential military strike.. possibly before the US presidential election in an effort to box US President Obama in to supporting it,” naming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barack in particular. Yet, “the Israeli military, however formidable, does not have the capacity to destroy all of the buried nuclear facilities at such a long range,” as “the Iranians have dispersed their nuclear program to multiple sites, many of them in urban areas, many of them deep underground.” Then Gates said, “let there be no doubt - an Israeli attack would be seen in the region and in the Muslim world more broadly as being sanctioned and underwritten by the United States, with the same consequences that would attach to a direct American attack.”

If Israel and the United States do not attack Iran, Gates said, the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran would threaten Israel and Europe, and “ignite a nuclear arms race” in the Middle East. He did not mention the nuclear weapons program of Israel.

Gates said that the current set of sanctions imposed by the United Nations are “our best chance going forward” to pressure the Iranian leadership to abandon any aspirations for a nuclear weapons program, and that “we must make it clear to the.. Israeli government that they do not have a blank check to take actions which could do grave harm to American vital interests and security in that region.”

On China

In relation to China, Gates said, “The only source of legitimacy for the governing elite [of China] is a steadily improving standard of living that requires nine to ten percent annual GDP growth, and the creation of at least twenty million new jobs every year,” and that “the credibility of the Chinese government and the quiescence of the Chinese people depends on sustaining an economic performance that is fundamentally unsustainable.”

In light of these conditions, Gates said, there is growing nationalism and xenophobia in China, and “[t]hey’re becoming more and more aggressive in pursuing China’s interests and defending exaggerated territorial claims.”

Further, “[w]e can expect more belligerence over the months to come as China looks to an immensely important generational transfer of power,” as “no aspiring leader would want to look weak when it comes to defending China’s interests.” Gates notes that China is investing trillions of dollars in foreign cash reserves in new military capabilities and technologies - “anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles, anti-satellite weapons, electronic warfare assets” - “which could alter the balance of military power in the Pacific, which has for all practical purposes been an American lake for our navy since the end of World War II.”

On cyber security and NSA expansion

An integral part of the ASIS 2012 conference was (ISC)2 - a concurrent seminar focusing on cyber security. Noting the capabilities of computer viruses such as STUXNET and the “Love bug” to have drastic consequences, Gates stressed the importance of cyber security. He goes on, “One of the keys to any military success going forward is ensuring that information crucial to operations reaches the widest appropriate audience. I know this is one of the challenges [which] the military and industry face working together, namely how to provide the maximum possible protections and information assurance without undermining one of the traditional strengths of the American way of war - just to push data and decision-making down to the lowest possible level of authority - and to do so without a repeat of the Wikileaks fiasco.”

Then Gates described the decision for the NSA - “a military support agency” - to have jurisdiction over surveillance programs in the United States. Citing “very limited assets, capability, and experience” at the Department of Homeland Security,” Gates said that it “isn’t plausible” “to fashion a brand new, ACLU-approved homeland version of the NSA for domestic surveillance and cyber security;” thus, through a memorandum of understanding drafted by Gates and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano in the summer of 2010, the NSA support for DHS was approved by President Obama.

As an integral part of the passage and implementation of this surveillance program, Gates noted that, as Secretary of Defense, he established a “good rapport between [himself] and first Secretary Rice and Secretary Clinton,” whereas for most of his public life and career the two positions - Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State - neither spoke with one another nor collaborated. 

AUDIO RECORDING AVAILABLE ABOVE AS PODCAST

Robert Gates:

‘Thank you very much, and my thanks to ASIS International for the invitation to address you this morning, bright and early. Hope everyone has had their coffee. Its a pleasure to be here in Philadelphia, though I must tell you, being just a couple of hours drive from Washington D.C. still gives me the shakes, even more than a year after leaving. Such a trip would entail - going from Philadelphia to Washington - going from the City of Brotherly Love to the only city where you can see a person walking down lover’s lane holding his own hand. Its a place I tried to retire from - to escape from - on a number of different occasions. And that was just during the Obama Administration. Like most of you, I spent most of my professional life in what broadly could be defined as the security business. It began of course with the CIA, and, I would say, in a not so particularly auspicious way. 

After joining the agency, one of my first training assignments was to practice street surveillance. I was assigned to a team attempting to secretly follow a woman CIA officer around downtown Richmond, Virginia, at eight o’clock in the morning. Now, all I can tell you is that in 1968, there weren’t very many people on the streets of Richmond, Virginia, at eight o’clock in the morning. And, when you add to that [the fact] that our team wasn’t very stealthy, eh, someone reported to the police that three disreputable looking men - that would be our CIA team - were stalking this poor woman. My two colleagues were soon picked up by the police, and the only reason I didn’t get arrested was because I lost sight of her long before the police came in to the picture. Not long after, I - and the CIA - decided that I should stick to analysis, and leave the clock and dagger to the others.

When I later became the Deputy CIA Director in the 1980s, operations came in to my portfolio. While in that position, I recall being briefed on a plan to help bring down the Gaddafi regime in Libya. The plan involved launching balloons that would drop leaflets, telling the people to overthrow their government. And after getting briefed on this scheme, I told the planners to be sure that the leaflets specifically said it was Gaddafi who should be overthrown. I could imagine strong westerly winds carrying the balloons right across Libya in to Egypt. And I didn’t think President Mubarak would be too thrilled.

Just a few years later, the Cold War was over, and we entered a period of transition and optimism. Flush with victory in the Cold War and the first Gulf War, the United States stood supreme, militarily, to be sure, but also in terms of our economic power, credibility, and influence around the world - those elements that would later be called “soft power.” There was even the naive hope, on the part of some, that the apparent triumph of democratic values and free market economics portended the end of history, in all its chaotic and tragic dimensions. 

Twenty years later, the world’s security, the world’s situation belies that naive idealism. Today, even as this country’s political class and citizenry are understandably focused inwardly on our own economic problems and political paralysis in dealing with it, the rest of the world continues to march on, becoming only more turbulent, more complex, and in some instances more dangerous. So I’d like to share my perspective on some of the main security challenges the US faces around the globe, including areas that are of interest to this conference, such as homeland and cyber security. 

It will soon be clear that the messy post-Cold War world does not lend itself to immutable doctrines and grand strategies, much less insightful assessments about the intentions of other nations and peoples we barely understand. In fact, I would confess to you that after a lifetime spent in the national security arena, I have become quite honest with respect to grandiose pronouncements and forecasts about the future and our ability to discern it. As the noted American historian Gordon Wood has written, “History does not teach lots of little lessons. In so far as it teaches any lessons, it teaches only one thing: that nothing ever works out quite like the managers intended.” Wood’s observation seems especially appropriate in the wake of yesterday’s eleventh anniversary of 9/11 attacks that defied expectation and imagination, and humbled the national security apparatus of our entire government in the process. 

The 9/11 attacks made tragically apparent the drift and neglect with respect to our government’s handling of intelligence, homeland security, and terrorism. One of the things I have observed over these many years is that democratic governments of all stripes seem to have great difficulty summoning the will and the resources to deal with with threats that are obvious and likely inevitable, much less threats that are more complex and over the horizon. There is, however, no inherent flaw in human nature that keeps us from preparing for potential challenges and dangers by taking far-sighted actions with long-term benefits. We do this all the time as individuals, but collectively the tendency is to postpone our drastic problems until they reach crisis points, which is what happened with respect to terrorism on 9/11. And in all of our political institutions before 9/11, there was no apparent Churchillian voice sounding the alarm forewarning. After the most serious failure of intelligence and law enforcement in American history on 9/11, our lead government agencies with those responsibilities - the FBI, Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, the intelligence community and all of its elements - all had a lot of tough questions to answer. 

I would argue so did American political leaders of both political parties during the 1990s. Our intelligence agencies during that period were denied any real budget increase for nearly fifteen years, and yet were later chastised for not connecting the dots, or not having enough human resources or foreign language experts to translate signal intercepts. In response to political pressure, the CIA was required to put a higher priority on foreign agents having clean human rights records than having valuable information about our enemies, yet politicians would later criticize the intelligence community for not having spies within terrorist cells, where of course nearly everyone has bloody hands. 

At the end of the Cold War, it was apparent the CIA needed many more field officers operating under deep cover independently of American embassies. After all, the kind of sources we needed to learn about -  terrorism, narco-trafficking, weapons of mass destruction - were probably not going to be found on the diplomatic cocktail and tennis circuit. The programs that I used to tutor and develop hundreds of these kinds of non-official cover officers were gutted in the mid-1990s, and in fact within three years of my leaving the CIA in 1993, the agency would have twenty-five percent fewer people, and the situation at the National Security Council, and the National Security Agency, was arguably worse. Other agencies responsible for protecting America’s homeland - the Coast Guard, Border Patrol, the military command responsible for protecting US air space - all suffered from budgetary shortfalls and cutbacks as well. This is not meant to excuse the real failures of leadership and execution that took place, but to realize that these failures must be understood in the context of those agencies being denied adequate resources to do all of the things that are expected of them. And I mention all of this because I think its important to keep our history in mind as our political system careens towards the so-called fiscal cliff later this year - a scenario that will result in deep, damaging cuts to the national defense and homeland security capabilities of our government.

The death of Osama bin Laden last year was obviously a huge step forward in the fight against al Qaeda. Especially when coupled with significant success killing other al Qaeda leaders over the last several years. While al Qaeda is on its heals, to be sure, particularly in the Afghan-Pakistani border area, it is certainly not out. The organization has metastasized beyond that border area to Iraq, North and East Africa, Nigeria, and Yemen. Further, al Qaeda has increasingly turned to alienated indigenous muslims outside of the greater Middle East to launch attacks in their home lands, especially in the United Kingdom and the United States. You’re familiar with other attempts that failed - the so-called airline shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the Times Square bomb that literally fizzled - but the massacre at Fort Hood carried out by a disaffected Muslim American Army officer also illustrates the dangers posed by individuals who radicalize themselves on the internet, limited in their capabilities to conduct a mass 9/11-type attack, but still able to sow fear and disruption. 

Now, eleven years ago today, on September 12, 2001, no one would have predicted there would not be another terrorist attack on American soil for the next decade. At one level we’ve been lucky. A number of plots that could have caused great damage have failed. In some cases because of the blundering and amateurish attempts by the would-be terrorists, but there is also no question that our military operations in Afghanistan and our growing counter-terrorism and intelligence capabilities improved cooperation within our own government and with other governments, as well as the heightened awareness of our own citizenry, have all dramatically improved America’s ability to thwart terrorist attacks. But in considering the terrorist threat a little over a decade after 9/11, we have to be honest with ourselves. We can no more eliminate the risk from terrorism altogether than we can eliminate crime. To expect that the government will be able to stop any and all kinds of future terror attacks is completely unrealistic, especially in a large, open country with 300 million people. We can and we must and we are pursuing vigorous measures to manage and minimize this risk, as have other countries that have dealt with terrorist threats for decades. We must do so without sacrificing our dignity, our privacy, and our individual rights. 

Preventing a major terrorist attack here at home continues to require an aggressive campaign against violent extremist groups abroad, hitting them on their ten-yard line before they come to our ten-yard line. In this respect, Central Asia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in particular continue to be a critically important region for our national security. Its a region in which our country remains very much at war, despite the evident wish of most Americans and their elected leaders for the conflict and the threat simply to go away. Though much of the news and commentary coming out of Afghanistan continues to be quite negative, I continue to believe that after nearly a decade of distraction and neglect, two and a half years ago we finally got the strategy right and dedicated the necessary resources to achieve our long term objectives there. We should remain focused on the main purpose of this campaign, which is not to stay in Afghanistan in large numbers forever or even after 2014. We’re to turn the country into a modern centralized state. Our goal is to build just enough Afghan security and governing capacity to enable the Afghans to control their own territory, contain the Taliban, and prevent al Qaeda and other extremist Muslim groups from launching attacks against the United States and our allies. And all of that with minimal direct military support from the US and others. The transition to Afghan security responsibility is already under way. Our strategic agreements should signal to the Afghans, the Taliban, and the neighborhood that the US will not repeat the mistake of the early 1990s, when we essentially abandoned the country to [unintelligible] the Soviets. Still, I am concerned that a premature [unintelligible] before the Afghan government and its security forces are ready, would lead to a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, and likely it would [inaudible]. Taliban-ruled areas could once again become in short order sanctuary for al Qaeda as well as a staging area for a real resurgent militant groups on the offensive in Pakistan. It would be perceived as a victory for violent Islamic extremists, boosting the morale and the  ambitions of terrorist networks all around the world. 

Less than five years after the last Soviet tank crossed the Termez Bridge out of Afghanistan in 1988, and we turned our backs on that country, Islamic radicals based in that region struck the World Trade Center in New York for the first time. This mistake we must not make again. And while the world of terrorists and other violent extremists, insurgents, and IEDs is with us for the long haul, I also recognize that another world has emerged. 

“Growing numbers of countries and even non-state actors are employing the most advanced and increasing accessible technologies, to put the United States at risk in unpredictable ways. Hybrid and high-end asymmetrical capabilities are becoming available at affordable cost to smaller and mid-size powers as well as non-state groups. In August of 2008, the Russians preceded their armored invasion of Georgia with a highly sophisticated cyber attack. The militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon has some 40,000 missiles and rockets, more than most nation-states. And then there’s the vexing security challenge posed by America’s old nemesis, the Islamic Republic of Iran. In some respects, Iran is my old nemesis as well. In November 1979, just nine months after the Iranian revolution, I accompanied then-National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski to Algiers. He was representing the US at the 25th anniversary of the Algerian revolution, and I was there as his special assistant. While we were in Algiers, the Iranian delegation asked to meet with Brzezinski. I accompanied him as the note-taker. He offered the three Iranian ministers official recognition of their revolution. He told them we would sell them all of the arms we had contracted to sell [to] the Shah. He told them that we have a common enemy to your north, the Soviet Union, and there is no reason we cannot work together. The Iranians weren’t interested. They only wanted us to give them the dying Shah, then being treated in the United States. It went back and forth like this for a while. Brzezinski finally refused, standing up and saying, “For us to give you the Shah is incompatible with our national honor. That ended the meeting. Three days later came word that our embassy in Tehran had been seized, and two weeks after that, the three people we had dealt with - the prime minister, the defense minister, and the foreign minister - were all out of their jobs and/or in jail. Thus began my more than three decade long quest for the elusive Iranian moderate. I have long been convinced that Iran is determined to develop a nuclear weapons capability, a nationalist aspiration that predates the Islamic revolution. The Iranians see themselves surrounded by nuclear-armed countries. They also realize that the US easily removed Saddam Hussein, who had no nuclear weapons. Then a rag-tag rebel army with western air support was able to take down Gaddafi. By contrast, we and our allies have been far more cautious dealing with the North Korean regime, which has at least a primitive nuclear capability. The country most immediately threatened by Iran’s nuclear program is Israel. The Israelis, given their geography and history, not to mention the vicious rhetoric of the Iranian regime, understandably see the threat more urgently than the United States. Consequently, the Israeli government, primarily Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barack, feel themselves on a shorter timeline than the US with respect to military action. Recently, some elements of the Israeli government - both hawks and doves - have been making noises about a potential military strike sooner, rather than later, possibly before the US presidential election, in an effort to box US President Obama in to supporting it. The Israeli military, however formidable, does not have the capacity to destroy all of the buried nuclear facilities at such a long range. After seeing how easily Israel destroyed Iraq’s Sirac reactor in 1981, the Iranians have dispersed their nuclear program to multiple sites, many of them in urban areas, many of them deep underground, and I’m confident there are some we have not yet identified. At best, the Israelis can delay the Iranian program by a couple of years. And let there be no doubt - an Israeli attack would be seen in the region and in the Muslim world more broadly as being sanctioned and underwritten by the United States, with the same consequences that would attach to a direct American attack. And what would those consequences be? While the US military could undoubtably do more severe damage to the Iranian nuclear program than the Israelis, and set it back several years, such an attack, mind you, would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable. They would just bury the program deeper, and go more covert. Further, 700 million Iranians currently unrest and unhappy with their government would rally behind the Mullahs. While the Iranians have virtually no military capability to directly attack the United States, and won’t for the foreseeable future, they do have the capacity to disrupt oil shipments through the Persian Gulf, and launch a wave of terror across the Middle East and potentially here at home as well. They could destroy vital oil facilities around the Gulf, including in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. And its hard to over-estimate Iran’s ability to dramatically worsen the situation in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Lebanon. The results of an American or an Israeli military strike on Iran could prove catastrophic, haunting us for generations in that part of the world. But if the Iranian government does not change its policies, and there is no attack on their nuclear facilities, we will very likely face a catastrophe of a different sort: a nuclear-armed Iran, with missiles that can reach Israel and eventually Europe. An Iran that likely would ignite a nuclear arms race in the most volatile region of the world. An Iran emboldened to behave even more aggressively in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and all across the region. Through the good work of your other keynote speaker, Mohammed El Baradei, the world is on notice with respect to the progress of the Iranian nuclear program. The most recent set of sanctions imposed by the UN with American leadership are really starting to bite and to impact the average Iranian. And that’s our best chance going forward: to ratchet up the economic pressure and diplomatic isolation to the point where the Iranian leadership concludes that it actually hurts Iranian security to go forward with the bomb, and to pursue nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, on the military side, the United States must retain robust air, naval, and missile defense capabilities in the Gulf region. We have to pursue partnerships with Gulf nations most vulnerable to an Iranian attack and intimidation. And we must make the Israelis understand clearly that we share their sense of alarm and urgency. But we must also make it clear to the most hawkish elements of the Israeli government that they do not have a blank check to take actions which could do grave harm to American vital interests and security in that region. After all, we’re all in this together, and this is perhaps the most difficult and challenging national security problem that I have seen since joining the government over forty-five years ago.

Iran represents the lower to middle portion of the threat spectrum, then there’s the higher end challenge: those by rising powers that are upgrading their capabilities and their militaries, developing technologies that could over time pose a challenge to the United States. They are developing asymmetric means that take advantage of new technologies and our vulnerabilities to sever lines of communication and block freedom of movement, and in so doing narrow our military options and strategic choices. Now, because I am no longer in government, I can come out and say we’re actually talking about China. I don’t need to educate this audience about the impact of China with respect to global trade, commerce, and the balance of payments. Where I think there is less understanding, mainly because of the opaqueness of the Chinese themselves, is the global security implications of China’s growing wealth and influence. As a result, there are many exaggerated claims of the Chinese military threat and imperial intentions on one side of the spectrum, while others cling to what I would regard as the naive view that financial self interest will keep the Chinese quiescent for the foreseeable future. In spite of China’s growing power and influence, their leadership continues to exhibit paranoia and hypersensitivity to the smallest international criticism or internal political challenge. China’s leaders are keenly aware that the country’s bullish macroeconomic numbers conceal major underlying weaknesses. The only source of legitimacy for the governing elite is a steadily improving standard of living that requires nine to ten percent annual GDP growth, and the creation of at least twenty million new jobs every year. Much of China’s phenomenal growth has been driven by exports, but as the Japanese, European, and American economies struggle, such a high growth level is becoming harder to sustain. In summary, the credibility of the Chinese government and the quiescence of the Chinese people depends on sustaining an economic performance that is fundamentally unsustainable. Lacking the legitimacy that comes from democratic governance and political freedom, the Chinese leaders, like many authoritarian regimes before them, are increasingly turning to nationalism, to xenophobia. They’re becoming more and more aggressive in pursuing China’s interests and defending exaggerated territorial claims vis-a-vis its neighbors. In the case of Japan, inflaming resentments left over from the second world war. This is increasing the likelihood of armed confrontation on disputed islands and at sea, conflicts that could draw in the United States given our military alliances in that part of the world. We can expect more belligerence over the months to come as China looks to an immensely important generational transfer of power this year. Given intense internal politics, no aspiring leader would want to look weak when it comes to defending China’s interests. We know China is investing a portion of its huge foreign cash reserves, now in the trillions of dollars, in new military capabilities and technologies that could alter the balance of military power in the Pacific, which has for all practical purposes been an American lake for our navy since the end of World War II. Having learned from the demise of a bankrupted Soviet Union, the Chinese are not seeking to build their own trillion-dollar version of the US military, fighter to fighter, ship to ship, tank to tank. Instead, they’re focusing defense investments on capabilities - anti-ship ballistic and cruise missiles, anti-satellite weapons, electronic warfare assets - that could effectively blind US forces and deny them ability to maneuver and strike in defense of our allies and interests. With good reason, Chinese military strategists have called this portfolio of related capabilities “assassin’s mace.”

Asymmetric tactics are also spreading beyond the traditional domains of armed conflict. The US military and economy relies on information to function, which has created new vulnerabilities. While China and Russia continue to be the source of many sophisticated cyber attacks, those wishing to cause us harm no longer need an industrial complex to martial deadly force. Advanced weapons systems like stealth fighters or carrier battle crews require tens of billions of dollars of research, development, and production - a significant technological base. In contrast, cyber capabilities have low barriers to entry. A small number of highly trained programmers using off-the-shelf equipment can develop toxic tools and deploy them to great effect. And when a teenage hacker in the Philippines can reap ten billion dollars in damage to the US economy over night by planting a virus, as happened ten years ago with the “Love bug,” imagine what a sophisticated, well-funded effort to attack the computer base of our economy could accomplish. To date, we’ve seen - primarily seen - cyber tools used to exploit information or disrupt networks. We are now beginning to see cyber tools used to cause physical effects, such as the reported havoc reaped by the STUXNET virus on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Presently, the highest levels of cyber capabilities reside in nation-states. But because US military power provides a strong deterrent, most nation-states in conducting an easily traceable and highly destructive cyber attack than they do a conventional military attack. The risk for them is too great. Terrorist groups, however, have no such hesitation. With few assets to strike back at, they are hard to deter. If a terrorist group gains a disruptive and destructive capability, we have to assume they will strike with no hesitation. So in cyber, we have a small window of opportunity to act before the most malicious actors acquire the most destructive technologies. For this reason, cyber is one of the few parts of the defense enterprise to see its budget mostly protected in future years, although all bets are off in the event of [unintelligible] administration. One of the keys to any military success going forward is ensuring that information crucial to operations reaches the widest appropriate audience. I know this is one of the challenges [which] the military and industry face working together, namely how to provide the maximum possible protections and information assurance without undermining one of the traditional strengths of the American way of war - just to push data and decision-making down to the lowest possible level of authority - and to do so without a repeat of the wikileaks fiasco. Our government, working with partners in the private sector and overseas, must continue to move aggressively to protect our military, government, and critical infrastructure networks. One effort that began on my watch as Defense Secretary was a pilot program to extend dot mill network protections to select companies in the US defense industry, frequently a target for cyber snooping and hacking attacks. 

Which brings me to one of the thorniest political and bureaucratic associated with cyber security, and that’s the question of which agency should have authority and jurisdiction over various facets of cyber defense and data collection. The administration’s position is [that] the Department of Homeland Security should have authority to regulate the cyber security of vital systems, such as power grids and transportation networks. But there remains squeamishness over the prospect of a military support agency like NSA prowling around private data networks within the continental United States. As policy-makers, we faced a situation where the Defense Department, the cyber command, NSA, and other related organizations had nearly all of the assets and the capability in cyber with limited authority outside of the war-fighting realm overseas. Correspondingly, the Homeland Security Department - assigned to lead in this area - has very limited assets, capability, and experience. To fashion a brand new, ACLU-approved homeland version of the NSA for domestic surveillance and cyber security isn’t plausible. There isn’t time, there isn’t enough money, and there isn’t enough human capital. And when Congress takes it upon itself to remedy past deficiencies by cobbling together new organizations, well, that’s how we ended up with DNI (Director of National Intelligence) and DHS in the first place. So the US government had and continues to have a real dilemma reconciling competing values and priorities when it comes to cyber security. 

And at this point, let me note parenthetically that one of the reasons Texas A&M government professors never invited me to speak to their class is because the first thing I would tell the students is that everything their professor was teaching them about how government works is wrong. Whatever the [unintelligible] or broader socio-political-economic trends, success or failure almost always boils down to personal relationships. For example, its rather difficult to execute a national security strategy successfully when the Secretaries of State and Defense aren’t speaking to one another, as was the case for most of my career and public life. That was one of the reasons I made it a priority once I became Defense Secretary to establish a good rapport between myself and First Secretary Rice and Secretary Clinton. It certainly helps when the Defense Secretary does not aspire to be the chief spokesperson for the United States’ foreign policy. Indeed, the reason we were able to make the misbegotten DNI structure work pretty well under both Bush 43 and Obama is because of frequent consultation and communication between me, the DNI, and the CIA director. We found a way to iron out the various inconsistencies and statutory shortcomings through signed agreements and secret meetings. Furthermore, our subordinates knew that it was not career-enhancing to stir up inter-agency disputes and try to get us to fight with one another. Likewise, during the Obama Administration I made it a priority to establish a solid relationship with Janet Napolitano, your keynote speaker on Monday. We both agreed it would be a lot faster and a lot cheaper to make sure NSA is supporting DHS effectively, than to expect Homeland Security to try to replicate the NSA capabilities, for all the reasons I described. As a result, and with the inter-agency apparatus mired in bureaucratic squabbles and stalemate, Janet and I got together, and by the summer of 2010 worked out a memorandum of understanding between our departments. The broad purpose was to align and enhance America’s capabilities to protect against threats to critical civilian and military computer networks. The concept was similar to that used when the military is called on for natural disasters like hurricanes or wildfires, in which case a presidential order dispatches the military forces, working under the control of FEMA. Under Napolitano’s and my proposal, and with new rules and some modest bureaucratic changes, DHS could pass NSA in real time. The goal was to ensure a rapid response to a cyber threat while balancing concerns that civil liberties might be at risk should the military take over such domestic operations. The privacy purists and organizations like the Electronic Freedom Foundation weren’t satisfied, but its hard to imagine a workable scenario in which they would be. We took the memo straight to the president, and to our pleasant surprise he signed it within three weeks despite the inevitable gnashing of teeth by past members of the White House staff and other departments of the government. Now, I wish I could stand here and proclaim that we achieved a great success. As you all know better than most, the proof is always in the implementation. And as crazy as it may sound to someone not in government, just because the president of the United States, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security want something done, doesn’t actually mean that it will get done. At least not without sustained pressure from above, especially when the first instinct of folks in the middle and upper levels of the agencies may be to renew old turf battles or climb on old hobby horses.

My final observation in dealing with some of these security challenges is the need to maintain a sense of balance and proportion. In particular, avoiding in the virtual world some of the excesses of our government in the areas of facilities and force protection. For example, as a reaction to the bombings in the late nineties of our embass[ies] in Africa and Saudi Arabia barracks, we now have a situation where many new American diplomatic facilities abroad resemble medieval fortresses, communicating an image of fear and isolation rather than confidence and a desire to engage with the people in the host country. The point of even having an embassy in the first place is fundamentally undermined. And as we know, misconduct and overbearing tactics by some private security contractors has done real harm to relations with the local populations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. So I’m pleased that ASIS is working with the Defense Department and other agencies to develop quality assurance standards for the use of PSCs in the future.

When it comes to information assurance, we should avoid protocols and procedures so [unintelligible] that they incentivize circumvention or avoidance of secure networks altogether, just so people can get their work done. Hence the need to accept the fact that some breaches and lapses will inevitably occur, and to build resilience in to the system, rather than aspiring to perfection that cannot be achieved without unacceptable cost and unintended consequences. The quote attributed to Frederick the Great applies here: “He who would defend everything defends nothing.”

Let me close with a quote from Sir William Stevenson from the introduction to his book, A Man Called Intrepid. He wrote, “Perhaps a day will dawn when tyrants can no longer threaten the liberty of any people. When the function of all nations, however varied their ideologies, will be to enhance life, not to control it. If such a condition is possible, it is in a future to far distant to foresee. Until that safer, better day, the democracies will avoid disaster and possibly total destruction only by maintaining their defense.” Stevenson continued, “Safeguards to prevent abuse must be devised, revised, and rigidly applied, but as in all enterprises, the character and wisdom of those to whom it is entrusted will be decisive. In the integrity of that guardianship lies the hope of free people to endure and to prevail.” Thank you very much.

West Philadelphia's community radio station WPEB 88.1 FM presents Radio Against Apartheid, amplifying voices for justice and equality in the Middle East.

[Kabul] is a very hard city for children. It was so cold in the winter in Afghanistan. There were one hundred recorded deaths of children under five who froze to death. Twenty-six children in Kabul froze to death, and many were infants. They never knew a day of warmth, some of them, in their entire life. Eight of them were children in one particular refugee camp that I visited, a wretched, squalid place. There are four hundred new refugees every single day in Afghanistan.