Thursday, May 27, 2004

The US government's terrorist/outlaw list. 5:02:54 PM    Comment_ Trackback []

Potomac Tech Journal.  A big problem that is severely impacting the GWOT. It's sounds like the system needs to be revamped given the change in the threat's mode of operation. The war on terrorism has forced government contractors in the region into a high-stakes competition for a finite supply of specialized information technology workers with security clearances. "One of my clients tells me he really feels I sent him the perfect person, but he doesn’t have the clearance," Ebert said. "One applicant was a [former] Navy Seal and one was a Green Beret. If you can’t trust those people, and accelerate the process for them, who would you do it for?" A DoD spokesman said last week that the total backlog of investigations had been reduced to 262,000. But one firm’s successes might come at the expense of other contractors in a zero-sum game to recruit a finite pool of candidates with clearances. 11:01:12 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

Red Herring.  Wonder where US venture capital is going?  Answer:  China.   The US venture capital sector is considered one of America's strengths. According to the Hong Kong-based Asian Venture Capital Journal, China attracted $1.57 billion in foreign private equity in 2003 – compared with just $350 million in 2002. 7:38:59 AM    Comment_ Trackback []

Economist wrap up of the IISS terrorism study.  It shows how quickly the 18,000 estimate of al Qaeda's strength is gaining credibility, despite its weakness as an estimate.  My problems with it:  First, its derviative of US intelligence estimates (20,000) of how many people were trained in Afghanistan camps (it doesn't represent new estimates of the number of terrorists trained).  Second, it was calculated by subtracting the number of terrorists captured/killed since the Afghan operation (20,000 - 2,000).  Third, it doesn't account for how many new people were recruited by al Qaeda since the camps were broken up.  The list goes on.  I am really surprised how lightweight IISS's study seems to be given that they get paid for this research.  On the bright side, this points to an opportunity for a new research company that knows how to dominate the information flow in this space.  7:36:11 AM    Comment_ Trackback []