Good morning. Here’s your Daily Situational Awareness for Tuesday, 12 October 2021. You can receive this daily briefing by signing up at https://forwardobserver.com/daily-sa
TODAY’S BRIEFING:
- Space Force cyber chief resigns over China
- Biden targets big tech, flow of information
- Pelosi’s parliament tricks to pass debt increase
SITUATIONAL AWARENESS
RESIGNATION: The Chief of Software Development for the U.S. Air and Space Force resigned, citing the poor cyberculture, cumbersome decision making processes, and offer of platitudes in lieu of cyber policy. “We have no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years. Right now, it’s already a done deal; it is already over in my opinion,” Nicholas Chaillan wrote. He further categorized U.S. cyber defenses as “kindergarten level” with a severe lack of private sector involvement to help modernize government systems. (Analyst Comment: We’ve discussed the number of federal agencies that continually fail to implement the most basic information or cybersecurity measures, such as encrypting data. Given the high-profile nature of this resignation, the problems appear to be worse than previously thought. This resignation could embolden China towards greater cyber exploitation which is already having a deleterious effect on the information environment. This is a major, self-inflicted, information-operations loss for the United States. – D.M.)
BIG TECH: President Biden assembled a “trifecta” of anti-big tech advocates at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Justice Department, and inside the White House. The President said talk of government mandated corporate breakups were “premature,” but was “something we should take a really hard look at.” Increased scrutiny of social media and search platforms is expected under this administration as the FTC appointment, Lina Khan, wrote the literal book for breaking up companies like Amazon. (AC: The potential for insidious manipulation or coercion of tech companies will increase as the government threatens breakups or anti-trust lawsuits. The potential for de facto government regulation of speech increases as Far Left lawmakers target tech companies. The expectation is already known as social media and search companies routinely tip the scales in favor of their preferred political candidate by obfuscating or manipulating access to information through a process called weaponized mediatization. – D.M.)
HOUSE: The House of Representatives will meet today to vote on “a rule providing for consideration of a short-term debt limit increase.” The parliamentary trick allows for unrelated legislation (protections for pumping breast milk in the workplace, age discrimination protections, and the Family Violence and Prevention Services Act) to determine whether or not the debt-limit increase is adopted. Adoption of the measures will keep the government funded through the first week of December, according to estimates. (AC: The reconciliation process is ongoing with Democrat lawmakers jockeying for billions in funding without a final text released to the public. Several measures, such as a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants, cannot be adopted through a simple-majority vote. This indicates the implementation of the Far Left agenda will be delayed until 2022, rendering significant legislative victories highly unlikely. Failure to pass the “human infrastructure” bill will likely spark protests by Far Left groups as rental assistance, student loan forgiveness, daycare, and other measures are included in the proposed legislation. – D.M.)
HAZARDS WARNING
HURRICANE SEASON: Hurricane Pamela is expected to make landfall in Mexico on Tuesday evening. According to the National Hurricane Center, portions of Texas and Oklahoma will receive heavy rainfall starting Wednesday evening. Urban and small stream flash flooding is possible by Thursday.
In today’s Early Warning, we discuss the potential for Far Left activity with supply chain failures. Upgrade your Situational Awareness to Early Warning here: https://forwardobserver.com/subscribe