1. Non-nation state actors now pose a significant threat to nation states
2. Historical threats usually associated with bad nation states, can now be executed by non nation-states
3. Industrial Era, was about a consolidation of power, in the past only the Government could run something as complex as a phone network
4. In a Post-Industrial Era, it's about the decentralization or power--today, modern economies privatize and decentralize important things like the phone network. (my comment: The internet is the epitome of this, a fully decentralized network controlled by no one single entity)
5. American Foreign Policy, Power Projection and Defence has been fully focused on hard power against nation states (hard power =  men with guns)
6. In order to address the threat of non nation-states, the US government has pivoted it's attack vectors and tactics
   • Yesterday  : Killing someone from a foreign army in a designated war-zone
   • Today : Drone Strikes on enemy combatants that aren't fully recognized
   • Yesterday  : Capturing Foreign combatants and imprisoning them
   • Today : Guantanamo
   • Yesterday : Intercepting enemy communications, disabling and sabotaging
   • Today : Programs that Edward Snowden revealed
   • (my comment: I don't think the full surveillance of domestic internet traffic was a good idea)
7. We're seeing the melting down of Post WW2 and Post WW1 global order, and maybe even the breakdown of Westphalian nation-states...ISIS is a response to Westphalian ideas of separation of church and state.
8. There is a fundamental similarity between what Christian Europe faced in the 16th-17th century and what the middle east today, both sides are debating the relationship between religion and power.
9. Christian Europe had the answer of separating them---we call this separation, modern!
10. No guarantee that Islam in the Middle East will come to the same conclusion, i.e. they may never become modern.
11. Less important stuff about Nuclear power, about how Russia is adopting a Nuclear first option, and considering it de-escalatory. And Hayden doesn't like the Iran Deal, and not a big fan of Pakistan.
12. American foreign policy makers like Hayden are more concerned with Chinese failure than with Chinese success. Political, Economical and Social factors may hamper the growth of China, but a failure of the regime is going to a massive problem for the world, while a success for China would a relatively smaller impact that can easily be folded into the world order.
13. The Chinese claims on the 9-dash line, is a nationalistic approach to remedy the economical slowdown (Hayden's opinion), what's more interesting is that this is a diplomatic error, and ASEAN countries are running back to America to balance China's power.
14. Fundamentally though, China has no reason to be an enemy of the US
15. His last slide on American foreign policy, the 4 different president types, as a fan of Wilson, and a World War 1 History freak---that was awesome!! I think one of the best historically precise frameworks for understanding US foreign policy, that isn't based just the last 20 years
16. Only one country supports targetted killings by the US---Israel.

This week, I’ll put the final touches on my move from Malaysia to Singapore.

So, I felt it would a good idea to read through some Singaporean tech articles to see how tech events played out on the little red dot, and offer some unsolicited  and completely useless advice on them.

It wasn’t easy shifting through a boat-load of gadget reviews masquerading as tech journalism (I guess some things are the same in every country), but underneath the hundreds of phone reviews and fiber broadband comparison, I found a little interesting report on illegal downloads.

The Singapore Straits time reports that:

A local law firm that started proceedings to go after illegal downloaders in Singapore on behalf of two Hollywood studios said it will cooperate with the local authorities to ensure no abuse of process.

It follows a rare intervention by the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) in civil applications made by Samuel Seow Law Corp (SSLC) in the High Court last month.

“We will work with the local authorities to ensure that there will be no unnecessary alarm to consumers who receive the letters of demand we plan to send out,” Mr Samuel Seow, managing director of SSLC, told The Straits Times yesterday.

There is something to be said here about copyright-trolling, the abuse of power and the bullying tactics usually involved. But, we’ll leave that discussion for another day.

Today, I want to explore a little bit about anonymity and how many people have a mistaken notion about what it is.

KLANG: Two years on, the the pilot initiative to teach coding and digital security as an SPM subject has been touted as a resounding success, and the government is mulling a move to make it compulsory by 2020.

The announcement shocked parents, as out of 10,000 students who took part in the pilot program, only 10 had scored an A while the rest had failed with a grade of F.

Education Minister, Dato’ Seri Java, said that this reflects the current IT market, where out of 10,000 security consultants, only 10 will ever give you good advice.

“We benchmarked against the industry, and set the grading curve accordingly, so only a 10 students getting an A was the intention!! We can’t have cases where students just memorize a textbook and then score an A, this is not History or Geography, this is an important subject” he said, while further mocking drama and English literature under his breath.

Deputy Director of Education, Perl Ramachandran further added that instead of focusing on the 9,990 students who failed, the public should instead focus on the ‘A’ students who showed exemplary work and are were ‘bright spots’ in the dark abyss which is the Malaysian education system.

One such exemplary student was 17-year old lass Siti Pintu bt. Belakang, she had managed to install a backdoor into the MOE exam system and downloaded the question paper days before the exam. A backdoor is an application that allows an attacker unfettered access to the compromised system, and Siti managed to code one from scratch specifically for this purpose.

Already Russian cyber-criminal organizations are offering her scholarships to prestigious universities, Perl further added.

Then there Godam a/l Rajakumar, who instead of stealing exam papers, simply hacked into the MOE grading system and gave himself a ‘A’.

So now, only actual travellers will be allowed into airports, and everybody else from your mother to your 3rd aunty twice removed has to say their teary goodbye at home rather than at the Airport KFC.

But why?

So that terrorist will now have to buy a ticket in order to blow up the airport? I can picture out now, “Al-Qaeda attempt to bomb KLIA foiled due to lack of funds for ticket purchase”

….riiiiggght!

Do these people even consider just how easy it is to circumvent some of the ridiculous ‘security measures’ they put in place these days.  If all it takes for a terrorist to gain entry into an airport is a plane ticket, it’s not a very tall order for them to go out and buy one, or just print a fake copy good enough to fool the security officers.

We’d be spending countless of man hours, for security personnel on entry points scanning through useless documents with no real security in return.

What a waste–just like those women only KTM coaches that do absolutely nothing.

Some interesting links you might want to check out during my interview on BFM today, will tidy up this list later in the week.

Office of Personnel Management Data Breach (Chinese hackers breaking into US Federal Employee Databases)

China arrested the hackers responsible for OPM breach

Turkey losing Personal Information on 50 Million Citizens

This will easily be the most controversial blog post I ever wrote, so consider yourself warned.

It’s controversial, because it touches on multiple taboos in our society, sex, child abuse and security theater. You see, there’s been a growing call for a national sex offender registry, especially in the wake of news that a British Pedophile had sexually abused up to 200 children in Malaysia.

The news is especially shocking for Malaysians, who are still coming to grips with the fact that a foreign ‘mat salleh’ abused our children, in our country, right under our fucking noses, and we’re only now learning about it….years after the abuse had taken place and even then, the details are sketchy.

As I said,many have renewed the call for a Sex Offender registry. The idea being, that if we start registering sex offenders, we could more easily monitor them, and be able cut-off  their ability to further abuse children. It’s a great idea, but it wouldn’t have saved these 200 children, simply because Richard Huckle wasn’t convicted of any sexual abuse, he wouldn’t have been on the registry even if had one.

Then we have calls for better screening procedures of people who work with children. Another great idea, but again wouldn’t have stopped Richard Huckle. Maybe a extremely thorough and in-depth screening  process that interviewed his parents, grandparents and fourth grade history teacher would have uncovered something about his psychology that may have triggered some alarms–but that level of screening is both unrealistic and a gross invasion of privacy.

Finally we have calls for better sex-education in schools, which I’m 100% in favor off. Proper sex education may have prompted one of Huckle’s victims to speak out and report the issue, which may prompted his arrest at a much earlier time–but ultimately these were impoverished children who were not given access to proper education anyway, so sex education in public schools probably wouldn’t have helped them.

But are we forgetting something obvious?

Gawker is the internet’s most slimy news organization, a online website that has no qualms disclosing people’s sexual infidelities regardless of the cost such disclosures have on their personal lives.

So for most people, seeing WWF superstar Hulk Hogan win a lawsuit against Gawker to the tune of $140 Million dollars was a real sight for sore eyes. But when it was revealed that Hogan was funded by Billionaire Peter Thiel, the internet suddenly lost its damn mind.

Some people are fans of medieval torture, and who can blame them. There’s just something about the sadistic treatment of people that makes us both want to watch with a bowl of popcorn in our hands, yet at the same time turn away in disgust and discomfort.

How else do you explain the popularity of shows like Saw?

I personally am a fan of the Iron Maiden, which before it became a name of rock band, was a evil torture device designed to impale its victims with spikes, but meticilously avoid crucial organs thereby prolonging the agony, letting the victim slowly bleed to death rather than die from something boring like heart failure or liver damage.

There’s a list on Wikipedia, that has all the gory details of medieval torture techniques, including keel-hauling (which I always though was some pirate term) and Scaphism, which is  a Persian specialty where the victims dies of Diarrhea.

It’s a whole new level when the victim dies of Diarrhea—Diarrhea!! (and the smart-ass know it all types probably are thinking that Persia wasn’t in the medieval period–yes, I know and I don’t care)

[*Steve in the comments points out that Scaphism didn’t really die from diarrhea but from insects feasting on them. Which doesn’t exactly make it sound any better ]

Fortunately, we live in a modern world, where such barbarism is consigned to history classes rather than current affair shows, and trust me while water boarding is torture, it’s probably a couple of rungs lower on the cruelty scale than an Iron Maiden or Scaphism.

It’s good to view out past just to figure our far along we’ve come along as a species, to take stock in the great progress we’ve made in civil liberties. Torture is a fine example of such progress, but take for example the what 16th century English had to deal with, when they were sent to the Star Chamber!

On April 2nd, 1917, the President of the United States of America addressed an extraordinary session in congress, asking them to authorize America to declare war against the central powers in World War 1.

Across the Atlantic, the European continent had been devastated by nearly 3 years of bloody conflict. Regardless of who started the war, President Wilson was sure the war was at it’s tail end and he knew that if America stayed a neutral observer any longer, it might not get a seat at the table to discuss peace terms.

President Wilson had an agenda to setup the League of nations, to ensure that such wars would never be waged again, and this would truly be the war to end all wars.

Sadly, with hindsight we know the truth, that America would reject the League of Nations, and the peace treaty at Versailles would act more as a 20 year armistice than an indication of true lasting peace.

America was a pale shadow of what is it today. Britain was the richest country on earth and had the biggest Navy while Germany had the best industry and the biggest army. America was a sleeping giant, but one awoken by WW1 and one that has never slumbered since.

But what made her go to war?

What compelled this great nation, whose on founding fathers warned would never go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, to take up arms and cross an ocean to wage war?

Many think it was Lusitania, some suggest the Zimmerman telegrams, but those were merely side distractions to the true cause of America’s involvement. The true reason for her involvement and ultimate victory is found in one sentence from the speech of President Wilson on that fateful day–The world must be made safe for democracy.

It wasn’t that America was trying to impose democracy on Europe or Asia, rather it was merely making it safe for democratic principles to thrive in the face of despotic monarch and militaristic dictators. Contemporary American foreign policy fails to distinguish between making the world safe for democracy and imposing democracy.

America can never please her critics, get too involved and she’s accused of meddling in affairs, while staying neutral and distant invites the critic of indifference to human suffering.

But not all dangers to democracy come in the form of dictators with armies at their disposal, and in one sense America continues to make the world safe–while the rest of us remain blissfully unaware of her efforts.

Nobody really knows how the FBI is hacking into iPhones.

Well nobody, except Cellebrite and the FBI themselves.

We can safely assume that the underlying crypto wasn’t hacked–that would be truly catastrophic for everyone’s security, and way above the pay grade of a company like Cellebrite.

So we have to conclude that somehow the FBI has managed to trick the iPhone into giving up it’s encryption keys, or bypassed the Passcode protections on the phone. Apparently the hack doesn’t work on iPhone 5S and higher devices,  and obviously this can’t be a software bypass (because all iOS devices literally run the software), so it has to be a hardware limitation, one that probably affects the key storage.