The Urgent Need for Security Clearance Reform
By Evan Loomis
May 21, 2024
U.S. Army

"I wish you had a security clearance so I could tell you what's really going on." It's what those of us working on cutting-edge defense and intelligence technologies hear regularly, and it captures the problem of America's outdated security clearance system.

Born out of the post-World War II era, the U.S. security clearance system was designed for a different time — one of monolithic, slow-moving threats and a government monopoly on foundational research. However, in today's world of rapid technological change, this once-effective system has become a major roadblock. It hinders the creative potential of our brightest minds and leaves investors in the dark, unable to direct resources towards critical national challenges.

The contemporary clearance system has four main levels: Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI), Top Secret (TS), Secret (S), and Confidential (C). Each level grants access to increasingly sensitive information, with TS/SCI being the highest. Obtaining a clearance involves a lengthy background investigation process that can take months or even years.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2024/05/21/the_urgent_need_for_security_clearance_reform_1032849.html

Post
Conversation
Andrew H. Giuliani
@AndrewHGiuliani
Bove pulling up another email from Bob Costello to serial liar Michael Cohen.

Subject: Attorney-Client Communication - Privilege

Bove: Why did you write that?

Costello: Because i was his attorney.

Cohen: Did Cohen continue to give you intructions to communicate info to Rudy Giuliani?

Costello: Yes.
9:04 AM · May 21, 2024

“I see your true colors shining through…”

He’s a Lib.

Sunk at the Pier: Crisis in the American Submarine Industrial Base
by Jerry Hendrix

With the potential for a hot war with China looming over America’s strategic future, the minds of U.S. defense planners increasingly turn with calm confidence to the Navy’s submarine force. Sub­marines—quiet, stealthy, and loaded with lethal combinations of mis­siles, torpedoes, and mines—can penetrate deep into the Pacific’s first and second island chains, negating Chinese investments in so-called anti-access/area denial weapons. These Chinese systems, long-range ballistic and cruise missiles as well as manned bombers and fight­ers, were purposely designed to negate America’s power projection forces—its Navy carriers and Air Force attack aircraft—rendering them irrelevant in the opening weeks of any future Pacific war over Taiwan. If a Chinese invasion force is to be defeated, then, most Western strategists and force planners believe that the burden will fall upon the shoulders of submariners (pronounced sub-mar-een-ers, and they will correct you).

Unfortunately, the U.S. submarine force is poorly postured to meet this challenge. Across my career as a naval officer, entering as an ensign in 1988 and retiring as a captain in 2014, and then as a consultant to both government and industry since, I have watched the American submarine fleet fall precipitously from its Cold War high of 140 nuclear-powered “boats” to less than half that number, sixty-seven boats, today. More­over, of the current sixty-seven nuclear submarines, only forty-nine fall into the hunter-killer “fast attack” classification.

The Navy and its shipbuilding partners have struggled in the post-Covid economy to ramp up submarine production despite rising strategic threats. The Defense Department announced recently that it would procure only one new fast-attack submarine in the fiscal year 2025 budget. Additionally, of the submarine force already in commission, sixteen of those forty-nine boats—or nearly a third of the Navy’s premier offensive force—are in drydocks or tied to piers, lacking required dive certifications. These submarines cannot get underway due to a three-year maintenance backlog in the U.S. Navy.

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2024/05/sunk-at-the-pier-crisis-in-the-american-submarine-industrial-base/