US agrees to delay wargames for Olympics; Big security holes found in PC chips; ‘Surprising capabilities’ chief tapped to lead USAF acquisition; France proposes fake-news law; and just a bit more...
The U.S. and South Korea will delay regular joint military exercises until after the Winter Olympics are held in PyeongChang in February. In a phone call between the countries’ leaders, President Trump acquiesced to Moon Jae-in’s month-old request for a pause. In a press release, the White House confirmed that the leaders agreed to “de-conflict the Olympics and our military exercises so that United States and Republic of Korea forces can focus on ensuring the security of the Games.” Via Yonhap News, here.
The move apparently took the Pentagon by surprise, reports NBC’s Hans Nichols: “We will support the best decision for the U.S. ROK alliance,” said Pentagon spox Col. Rob Manning.
That followed a subdued diplomatic back and forth this morning when, Quartz reports, “North Korea initiated a phone call with its neighbor today (Jan. 4) at around 9:30am local time to check whether the line was working, according to (link in Korean) a South Korean official with the country’s unification ministry. When the South asked the other side whether they had any updates, the North Korean side said ‘no,’ but that if there were they would contact the South again, and then hung up.”
And in case you were curious, “Nothing was said on the call regarding president Moon Jae-in’s proposal to hold inter-Korean talks on Jan. 9, or North Korea’s participation in next month’s Winter Olympics in South Korea.” Read the rest via Quartz, here.
Wild story on the Korean peninsula from April 2017. About nine months ago, one of North Korea's intermediate range ballistic missiles failed and hit one of its own cities — Tokchon — shortly after launch, The Diplomat’s Ankit Panda and Dave Schmerler of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies report off their detailed work investigating open source intelligence. Be prepared to be impressed with how much they can glean from one photo — then extend that approach to about a half-dozen other photos, here.
Updated risk assessment, via U.S. Forces Korea Commander, Gen. Vincent K. Brooks: "We can be generally pleased by the recent overtures that happened. But we must keep our expectations at the appropriate level," he told South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency this morning in Seoul.
Have a sec for a metaphor? Yonhap writes that Brooks “likened North Korea to the center of a palm and the five regional powers to five fingers, showing his right hand. The North wants these five fingers to be separated, but they should operate in ‘harmony and closely connected to one another’ as a fist to create the pressure necessary to change the regime's course.” Read on, here.
From Defense One
'Surprising Capabilities' Guru Tapped to Lead Air Force Acquisition // Defense One’s Caroline Houck: But assuming Will Roper wins confirmation, what will become of the Strategic Capabilities Office he helped create?
Waiting for the Bomb to Drop // Eliot A. Cohen of SAIS, former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: There are sounds, for those who can hear them, of the preliminary and muffled drumbeats of war.
Trump's Belligerence Toward Pakistan Isn't Unreasonable // The Atlantic’s Krishnadev Calamur: His threatening tweet might signal increased pressure on Islamabad for its support of Afghan militants.
The Remarkable Resilience of the Prime Minister of Iraq // Jack Watling: In December, Haider al-Abadi declared victory over ISIS. But with Iranian militias still to contend with and tensions with the Kurds high, challenges to peace remain.
Welcome to this Thursday edition of The D Brief by Ben Watson and Bradley Peniston. Email us. And if you find this useful, consider forwarding it to a friend or colleague. They can subscribe here for free. OTD1989: U.S. Navy aviators shoot down a pair of Libyan MiGs (ht @NescitOccasum).
Cybersecurity researchers have found two critical flaws in microprocessors that allow hackers to access “the entire memory stored on practically any computer in the world,” Buzzfeed News reports.
Reach and impact: “Researchers said that the Meltdown flaw could affect nearly all of the microprocessors made by Intel since 1995,” Buzzfeed writes, “which power the vast majority of the world's personal computers and those used by businesses. Researchers said that they successfully tested the exploit on Intel processors made as early as 2011.”
And for Spectre, it “could affect personal computers, smartphones, and servers because it's present on Intel processors, as well as those made by AMD and ARM, two of the world's other major processor makers, the researchers warned...Researchers believe Spectre is more difficult to exploit than Meltdown, but there is also no known fix.”
About those names: “Researchers said they named one flaw ‘Meltdown’ because it ‘basically melts security boundaries which are normally enforced by the hardware.’ The name ‘Spectre’ for the second flaw came from the fact that there is no easy fix, which means it will likely ‘haunt us for quite some time.’”
Bruce Schneier explains a bit about what’s going on, calling them “side-channel attacks where one process can spy on other processes. They affect computers where an untrusted browser window can execute code, phones that have multiple apps running at the same time, and cloud computing networks that run lots of different processes at once. Fixing them either requires a patch that results in a major performance hit, or is impossible and requires a re-architecture of conditional execution in future CPU chips."
French President Emmanuel Macron has proposed a new law against fake news. "Makes complete sense," says the U.S. hedge fund manager-turned human rights activist behind the Magnitsky Act, Bill Browder. "Everybody should be doing this," he says.
What Macron wants: “When fake news are spread, it will be possible to go to a judge,” he said at his annual speech to the press on Wednesday, “and if appropriate have content taken down, user accounts deleted and ultimately websites blocked.”
What else will change if this becomes law: “Platforms will have more transparency obligations regarding sponsored content to make public the identity of sponsors and of those who control them,” Macron said, “but also limits on the amounts that can be used to sponsor this content.” A tiny bit more from Politico, here.
Germany and France want an armed UN mission in eastern Ukraine — and German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel says he wants it before Russia’s presidential election this March, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports this morning.
The moves come shortly after Washington said it will send lethal weapons to the Ukrainian military, including anti-tank Javelin missiles. While Gabriel said the goal with the UN mission is to establish a lasting ceasefire in eastern Ukraine’s Anti-Terrorism Zone, that goal still feels a long way off, he said. "We in Germany take a rather skeptical view of arms deliveries being able to resolve the conflict,” he told reporters Wednesday. “If there is one thing there is too much of in this region, that is weapons." Read the rest, here.
In Syria, alleged rebel shelling has destroyed at least seven Russian jets at the northwestern Hmeymim air base on Sunday. Reuters calls it “the single biggest loss of military hardware for Russia since it launched air strike[s] in Syria in autumn 2015.”
The damage involved “at least four Su-24 bombers, two Su-35S fighters and an An-72 transport plane, as well as an ammunition depot” that was hit by the shelling.
As well, “more than 10 servicemen were wounded in the attack,” which Russia said was caused by “radical Islamists.” Russia is said to be investigating why it’s air defense systems were unable to stop whatever projectiles may have caused the destruction. More from Reuters, here.
Also in Syria: A new bridge. The U.S.-led coalition against ISIS says it — along with “Syrian partners…erected a steel bridge in only 16 hours on Dec. 27, 2017, near the village of Hawi al-Hawa, west of Raqqah Province, Syria,” CENTCOM announced this morning.
Key leader quote: "The bridge provides much needed access to parts of Raqqah following the destruction to critical infrastructure caused by Daesh," said Special Operations Joint Task Force - Operation Inherent Resolve Commander, Maj. Gen. James Jarrard. "The bridge will enable the Raqqah Civil Council to increase required humanitarian assistance efforts and will improve vital access by Improvised Explosive Device experts working to reduce threats to citizens." Photos of the bridge — it’s a modest one — can be found, here.
The U.S. Navy seems to have lost one of its underwater drones in the waters off Yemen’s coast. There, according to a video posted online, “four men described as members of the 'Houthi Navy' in dive gear are surrounding what appears to be a REMUS 600 UUV with the name 'Smokey' printed on the body. According to the AMN News web posting, the Houthis discovered the UUV within the past week,” U.S. Naval Institute News reported Wednesday.
Known-knowns so far: “The UUV, branded with the logos from manufacturer Hydroid and parent company Kongsberg, was a passive system being operated by the Navy as part of a meteorological study, a U.S. defense official told USNI News on Tuesday.”
Service reax: “U.S. Navy officials in Washington and at U.S. 5th Fleet would neither confirm whether if the REMUS 600 belonged to the service nor provide details about any unmanned underwater vehicle missions in the region when asked by USNI News.” More here.
New suit at the Pentagon. Defense News: “The U.S. Senate easily confirmed John Rood as undersecretary of defense for policy, in an 81-7 vote Wednesday, overruling lawmaker concerns that industry executives are overrepresented in the Trump administration’s Pentagon. Rood, who most recently was vice president for intentional sales at Lockheed Martin, now fills a key vacancy in the team of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis – a job that had been empty since the Trump administration came to office almost a year ago.” Story, here.
Lastly today: You have 12 months to learn “How to Take a Picture of a Stealth Bomber Over the Rose Bowl,” if you follow the guidance laid out here by photographer and Cessna pilot Mark Holtzman, interviewed by The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal after a pretty phenomenal shot on New Year’s Day over Pasadena, Calif.
Some tips: Acquire your own plane (good luck); snag a trusty pilot for your plane; get flight clearance from authorities (obviously); get on the same freqs as the B-2 (speaking to folks for flight clearance will help here); telescoping lenses are your friend (Holtzman used a 70-200mm); and shoot with an incredibly high shutter speed to catch the bird in flight. Read on for what else you’ll need, over here.