Think About It

Where is Russia Going?

The spy novel isn’t dead.   It has been 18 years since Soviet tanks rolled in the vanguard of the May Day parade, which traditionally celebrates the 1945 victory over Nazi Germany.  Tanks and missiles not only rolled through Red Square, but through nearly every major city in Russia.

In the traditional speeches that accompany the the military show, Putin’s handpicked successor, President Dmitry Medvedev, made several thinly veiled comparisons between the Nazi invasion and NATO’s eastward expansion.  Putin, part old-style hard-liner and part magician, has brought a resurgence of pride back to the rank and file Russian. 

Clearly, Russia is reverting back to the days that preceded Glasnost.  Russia appears to be run by a cabal of ex-KGB, the Russian Mafia, and a few old hands from the Communist Politburo.  The primary question is, where are they going with this?

Other Questions:

Is Russia bent on going back to the old-style of Communism or have they come too far down the road of Capitalism?

Will Putin and his cronies use military force if they see their power slipping?

How much of the May Day parade was for the benefit of the Ukraine, Georgia, and other Soviet states who are hostile to the current Russian government?

Or, is this merely a “feel good” parade to take Russian minds off of rising food prices and to stir nationalistic pride?

Where is Russia going on the Capitalism - Socialism - Communism scale?

The Unseen War with China

  The U.S. is at war, but not in the conventional sense.  Computer hacking, once the domain of geeky teenagers, has now moved into the shadowy world of foreign intelligence agencies.  Our government is reluctantly admitting that secret files within the Pentagon have been breached by unknown an unknown person or persons in China.  Recently, an innocent looking military shopping list from India was found to contain a deeply embedded computer code known as “Poison Ivy,” which allows the foreign agent to view each and every keystroke that is subsequently made on the recipient’s computer.  Poison Ivy also renders firewalls useless, and malware software isn’t detecting the embedded codes.  Last year, over 12,000 of these mysterious e-mails turned up in government agencies and defense contractors, and most of these intrusions can be traced back to the Internet address cybersyndrome.org, which is based in China.  Cybersyndrome is one of China’s largest Internet providers.  Other hacking has been traced back to Russia.  “It’s espionage on a massive scale,” said Paul Kurtz, a former high-ranking national security official.

   Often these foreign intruders route their electronic spying through one or more other countries, such as Saudi Arabia.  The detection is difficult because the foreign agents constantly change the coding, which means as soon as one is discovered and erradicated, another pops up.  This problem is not confined to the U.S.; Britain’s MI5 notified nearly 300 companies in 2007 that hackers from China were attempting to gain information. 

   The questions are:  How much sensitive information have they gotten?  How many of our intelligence agents are known to China and Russia?  How many trade secrets have they stolen?  How many Trojan Horses have they planted deep into our computer systems?  Will all of this render our missile defenses useless?    Think About It.