Flawed Comparison

HoCo has always had a split personality when it comes to the big cities to the north and south of us. Some cheer the Ravens and the Orioles while others root for the Nats and the Redskins. When traveling outside of the area and asked where they’re from, some locos will say Baltimore while others will say DC.

As far as the Bureau of Labor Statistics is concerned however, HoCo is part of Baltimore. That means job growth at Fort Meade gets attributed to the Baltimore Metropolitan area as opposed to the Maryland suburbs of DC.

Yesterday, in his column in The Washington Post, Robert McCartney pointed out that job growth in “suburban Maryland is lagging far behind” that of Northern Virginia and Washington, DC.

“The contrast in jobs performance is dramatic. Here are the figures on how many full-time jobs each jurisdiction added in the 12 months ended in July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Northern Virginia: 32,200 jobs (a 2.4 percent increase);

District of Columbia: 10,000 (up 1.4 percent);

Suburban Maryland: 1,400 (up less than one-fifth of 1 percent).”

In the very next paragraph he points that employment increases in HoCo and AA counties aren't included into the suburban Maryland numbers.

“Those counties are gaining jobs as military intelligence facilities expand in and around Fort Meade, just 28 miles from the White House — but they’re counted as part of greater Baltimore. Northern Virginia includes counties such as Spotsylvania, more than 50 miles away.”

Now before you start railing about Maryland being overly dependent on federal spending remember that Northern Virginia and DC are just as dependent on those federal dollars we are, especially DC.

On the other hand, we could still stand to be a bit more business-friendly in the Free State, even if we are solid blue.

“The fact is, Northern Virginia’s advantage has been growing for years, and has been fostered by both Republicans and business-friendly Democrats.”

We just need more of those “business-friendly” Dems in Annapolis.

General Alexander and the Hackers

General Keith Alexander, Director of NSA and Commander of the U.S. Cyber Command will travel to Las Vegas next week to speak at Def Con, the 20th annual hacker conclave. According to this story by Timothy W. Coleman in Intelnews.org, the gathering “has become a Mecca of sorts for those interested in groundbreaking developments and nefarious possibilities within the computer security and cyber realm.”

It could present an awkward moment for the four star general.

“Attendees are encouraged to make a scene and yell out that they spotted a Fed. An interview of the suspect will take place and an informal vote will be conducted, as to the likely veracity of the attendee being a so-called Fed.  It’s meant to be in good fun and if the Fed is ousted a tee shirt is awarded to the accuser (“I spotted the fed!”) and to the Fed (“I am the fed!”).”

I’ll bet he gets a t-shirt.

Wanted: Cyber Warriors

For recent college grads that have had difficulty getting their footing in the job market, you may want to head back to school to study cybersecurity. According to this article by Alexander Fitzpatrick in The Washington Post yesterday “not enough digital experts are entering the cybersecurity field to meet the ever-growing demand.”

“The government needs to hire at least 10,000 experts in the near future and the private sector needs four times that number, according to Tom Kellermann, vice president at Trend Micro and former member of President Obama’s cybersecurity commission. Booz Allen Hamilton, a private security firm in McLean, has hired nearly 3,000 cybersecurity experts in the past two years, and that trend is expected to continue.”

In The Washington Post today, Ellen Nakishima reports that DARPA, the folks that brought you the Internet, has launched a five year $110 million effort dubbed Project X  “to develop technologies to improve its cyberwarfare capabilities, launch effective attacks and withstand the likely retaliation.”

DARPA is tapping into the “private sector, universities and even computer-game companies“ to assist in the effort.

It just might be time to reconsider that degree in Art History.

Pandoras Box

On 60 minutes last night, Steve Kroft reported on the repercussions of the Stuxnet virus. He spoke with Sean McGurk, the former head of cyber defense at the Department of Homeland Security.

"Sean McGurk: You can download the actual source code of Stuxnet now and you can repurpose it and repackage it and then, you know, point it back towards wherever it came from.

Kroft: Sounds a little bit like Pandora's box.

McGurk: Yes."

WikiLeaks Suspect Coming to Fort Meade

The soldier who is accused of slipping “hundreds of thousands” of classified documents to Julian Assange will be coming to Fort Meade for a military hearing on December 16^th. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning is currently being held at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and, according to this story by Matthew Hay Brown in The Sun, "faces a court-martial on nearly two dozen charges related to the leak of hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks.”

“The primary purpose of the Article 32 hearing is "to evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of the government's case as well as to provide the defense with an opportunity to obtain pretrial discovery," attorney David E. Coombs wrote Monday on his website.”

Of course he has a website. In a free country even someone who breaks his oath and betrays his country gets a website and followers who support him, just like another famous traitor, Jonathan Pollard

The hearing is expected to last five days.

Out With BRAC, In With Base

At this mornings meeting of the BRAC Business Initiative, Kent Menser, the HoCo BRAC coordinator, announced that henceforth the initiative will be re-branded as the Base Business Initiative. This reflects the fact that, although BRAC at Fort Meade is now complete, there are still plenty of opportunities for HoCo businesses to connect with the various agencies now located at the fort.

This isn’t just theoretical either. Kate Hetherington, the president of HCC shared a story about two former students Sean Keyman and Jonathan DeWald. Sean and Jonathan, two Iraqi war vets, met in a class at HCC and went on to start Trifecta Industries in Annapolis Junction. The new company has already tapped into the forts growth.

BRAC Workers in Place

The 4,300 workers that transferred from Northern Virginia to the new DISA campus at Fort Meade are now in place. The bad news is that the lions share of those workers are commuters. According to The Real Estate Wonk blog by Jamie Smith Hopkins in The Sun, many have opted to “commute at first rather than move because it's a tough time to sell a home…”

“That's basically what has happened. “The number of Virginians that have moved is relatively small ... in the overall scheme of things," said David Bullock, DISA’s BRAC executive. "We’re probably looking at less than 1,000 that were actually willing to move."

It’s not all bad though. DISA’s arrival at Fort Meade has been good for Maryland job seekers.

“But about half of DISA's workers now live in Maryland, compared with just 20 percent pre-BRAC. That's because the agency has been doing a lot of hiring the last few years, and a lot of those employees are Marylanders.”

For anyone wanting to know more about BRAC’s impact on the loco economy, there are a couple of upcoming events that you may want to pencil in on your calendar. On Wednesday, September 28^th the HoCo BRAC Business Initiative will include presentations by Congressmen Elijah Cummings, Dutch Ruppersberger, and John Sarbanes along with County Executive Ken Ulman. The meeting will be held at the Other Barn in the Oakland Mills Village Center beginning at 8:00 AM. This event is free and open to the public.

The next day, September 29^th, the 2nd Annual BRAC, Cyber and Fort Meade Summitt will be held at the Hyatt Regency in Baltimore. Brigadier J. Michael Hayes (Ret), the Director of the Office of Military and  Federal Affairs for the State of Maryland will be among the featured speakers. The cost of this event is $44.00 in advance.

Cyber Warriors Deployed to Private ISP’s

Earlier this summer, the Obama administration deployed a new cybersecurity strategy that allows private infrastructure to tap into the cyber expertise of NSA and the Department of Homeland Security. According to this column by David Ignatius in The Washington Post, in a test initiative dubbed DIB Cyber Pilot with 20 defense contractors, “Homeland Security worked with four major Internet service providers, or ISPs, to help them clean malicious software from the Internet feed going to the contractors.”

“The experiment has been running for 90 days now, and officials say that it’s working. The ISPs have blocked hundreds of attempted intrusions before they could get to the defense companies.”

The economic potential of this program for our area is huge. Any expansion of NSA’s cyber mission is likely to mean even more jobs in and around Fort Meade.

“The National Security Council soon will be debating whether to extend this pilot program to other sectors of critical infrastructure. Obvious candidates are the big financial institutions supervised by the Treasury Department and the national laboratories and nuclear-energy facilities overseen by the Energy Department.”

Road Woes

The Department of Defense has identified six road improvements that are “critical and immediate” for the expanding mission at Fort Meade. The estimated price tag for this road work is $671 million. According to this story by Brian M. Rosenthal in The Washington Post “most of those projects have been delayed at least until 2020 because of a lack of funding. Federal and state governments have contributed just $46 million for improvements.”

Traveling east on Route 175 may begin to get a little dicey.

“The numbers of cars using 175 each day is expected to jump dramatically from 2007 to 2015, growing from 26,000 to 45,000, according to the State Highway Administration.”

On the other hand, this could be seen as a small price to pay for an economic windfall.

“Officials predict the Fort Meade expansion will have a $1 billion annual economic impact on the region.”

A HoCo Haven for Hackers

If you want to recruit cyber warriors, the Defcon hackers convention is a good place to start. Last week, at Defcon 19 in Las Vegas, the Department of Defense was actively courting the hacker community for jobs at the National Security Agency and presumably the newly established Cyber Command at Fort Meade. According to this article by Andrew Brandt in PC World, attendees were encouraged to “to put their skills to use defending the country from spies, terrorists, and other criminals.”

Of course some of the more intrepid hackers attending the convention could be already be considered the enemy.

“The DOD's Christy and Tim Huff, a special agent with the FBI's Computer Analysis Response Team, fielded questions about so-called gray-hat hackers, who sometimes break the law but aren't charged. Christy and Huff made it clear that cybercriminals--even those who haven't been caught--are not likely to be invited to join the ranks of cybercops.”

Then again, the government stressed that a little youthful indiscretion in your past will not necessarily disqualify a hacker from serving their country.

"Everyone's broken the law at some time in their life, so it depends on when you did it," Christy answered. "If you were breaking the law yesterday and want to come work for the government tomorrow, the chances are we aren't going to select you, because there are a whole lot of talented people that haven't crossed over that line for seven or eight years."

The Anatomy of the Stuxnet Virus

I ran across this video about the Stuxnet computer virus that shut down (temporarily at least) Iran’s nuclear research. This is one of the reasons why cyber security is such a big deal and the work that is being done around here so important.

Stuxnet: Anatomy of a Computer Virus from Patrick Clair on Vimeo.

COPT Projects Cybersecurity Growth

Corporate Office Propeties Trust (COPT), the largest office developer in and around Fort Meade, expects the defense budget for cybersecurity to grow 9% annually for the next five years. According to this story from Citybiz Real Estate, COPT recently “updated its investor presentation to address how its tenant base will be affected by the cuts, and how its recent acquisitions fit into its growth strategies.”

They also expect “up to 10 million square feet of BRAC-related demand over the next 3-5 years.”

Of course all of this is moot unless Congress can pass a budget.

The BRAC Billions

Fort Meade is inarguably the most significant economic engine for HoCo. According to this story by Elizabeth Janney in Elkridge Patch “it is difficult to picture the amount of money the fort brings to Maryland each year, because the number is so large: $18 billion.”

And that is before we take into account the additional growth coming to the fort as a result of BRAC and after five years of talking about it, BRAC has arrived. The first employees of the relocated Defense Information Systems Agency began moving into their new million square foot campus at Fort Meade in October. All 4,300 employees of the agency should be in place by September.

Helping HoCo to cope with this growth is Kent Menser, the HoCo BRAC Director. Until 1993 he was the garrison commander of Fort Meade when he retired from the military. On our podcast he shared his outlook on the transportation challenges associated with this growth. “We have a plan,” he told us.

We also asked Kate Essing, the general manager of The Mall to join us to discuss the newspaper story about the Malls alleged hostility to certain homeless people. She denied that the mall singles out any classification of people and insisted that the banning of an individual is behavior based.

That’s a tough call and I can easily understand that it is a nuanced approached that can sometimes be unfairly applied. On the other hand, the mall is private property. It depends on people feeling comfortable to shop and not being accosted.

Dave Bittner, our producer, also shared some great news with us this week. Each episode of the podcast now gets an average of 10,000 downloads. Thanks to all those who tune in.

You can listen to the 35^th episode of “and then there’s that…” here.

Clearance Logjam Broken

It wasn’t that long ago that it could take up to a year for a private contractor to get a security clearance. It wasn’t that much faster for potential Department of Defense hires either. This resulted in a significant backlog in staffing and in some cases caused potential employees to seek work elsewhere instead of waiting. According to this story by Lisa Rein in The Washington Post after September 11^th the “need for clearances for civilians, contractors and service members grew, but the Defense Department was ill-equipped to handle the surge, and it persisted for years.”

‘The clearance wait grew so long by 2005 - to an average of 200 days for Defense Department applicants and 325 days for contractors - that the Government Accountability Office put the program on its high-risk list, a scarlet letter for federal agencies that raised concerns about mismanagement and a big need for change. Congress stepped in, passing legislation that set targets to clean up the problem and requiring the agencies responsible for it to work together.”

Apparently that worked. The wait has now been reduced to an average of 63 days for private contractors. Now if Congress could just pass the Defense budget... 

An Impending Traffic Tsunami

The wave of new jobs coming into Fort Meade as a result of BRAC is a double edged sword. While the expansion of the mission at the fort is a an economic boon for the area it also threatens to overwhelm an already overburdened transportation network. According to this story by Ashley Halsey III in The Washington Post, “about $786 million in highway projects is needed to accommodate workers arriving at Fort Meade by September and the adjacent National Security Agency.”

Given a projected budget deficit of $1.3 billion, the state doesn’t exactly have a spare $800 million lying around. Maryland, along with Virginia, is looking to the Pentagon for an assist.

The article cites a congressionally mandated report by the National Academy of Sciences that found that the Department of Defense has “shirked responsibility to pay for hundreds of millions of dollars in transportation improvements…”

“Predicting a "near perfect storm of problems," the report chastises the Pentagon for focusing primarily on problems within its bases without sufficient regard for the effects of decisions on surrounding areas.”

This report could cause some workers who are being relocated from jobs in Northern Virginia to Fort Meade to rethink their commuting plans and consider moving to Maryland instead.

31 Seconds of Prime Time

A few readers may recall that last spring I spent some time with investigative reporter Dana Priest showing her around the defense intelligence community in our midst. Dana also bought along Michael Kirk and Jim Gilmore, independent producers of programming for Frontline on PBS.

Yesterday I received a call from Jim giving me a heads up that part of the stuff they filmed with me last May would be on TV last night...in prime time no less. He told me to watch the lead story "Are We Safer"  which was one of three stories in the new Frontline Monthly Magazine Show.

I’m on for about 31 seconds. If you’re just curious to see that part you can find me at 14:50. We're driving around Annapolis Junction.

I was on twice as long in an earlier promotional video. 

No matter, I'm still planning on telling people that I was in story about Homeland Security with the governor.

Tying the Hands of the Cyber Command

The new established Cyber Command at Fort Meade is being asked to defend the nations computer networks with the equivalent of one hand tied behind its back. According to this story by Ellen Nakashima in The Washington Post “senior policymakers and administration lawyers want to limit the military's offensive computer operations to war zones such as Afghanistan, in part because the CIA argues that covert operations outside the battle zone are its responsibility and the State Department is concerned about diplomatic backlash.”

General Keith Alexander, the chief of the Cyber Command wants “maneuvering room” to protect the countries interests globally. In fact, the so called war zone countries are the least of our worries when it comes to cyber attacks. The greatest number of these attacks are currently coming from China and Russia.

According to this artcle by Jay Bavisi and Joseph M. Grimm in The Federal Circle  “The greatest cyber advantage of Russia and China is its wealth of human capital. Both nations have a very high education rate that, when combined with the legacy of emphasizing math and science education, has created a large labor pool of well-educated technology specialists, capable of sophisticated cyber attacks.”

“…it is also important to note that Russia and China also consider us to be their primary cyber foe.”

It doesn't seem to make much sense to go through all the effort of creating a robust cyber command to defend the country and then holding it back from doing its job.

About That Security Clearance...

I had a meeting up in Towson this morning so I got to listen to the Kojo Nnamdi show on WAMU on my way back to HoCo. The second segment of todays program was entitled "The Security Clearance Conundrum." which was all about getting and keeping a security clearance.

This is certainly a timely topic for a large (and growing) portion of the HoCo loco workforce. There are a myriad of ways that an existing clearance can be put in jeopardy including giving your kid a foreign sounding name like Barak. The guests offered tips on what you can do if your clearance is denied or revoked.

Bottom line?

Get a lawyer.

Nice Numbers

The seventeen military installations in Maryland employ over 118,000 people with an in-state payroll of $9 billion. They purchase over $7 billion in goods and services from Maryland companies.

In our backyard, Fort Meade/NSA accounts for "a total of $17.8 billion of economic activity in Maryland and creates or supports an estimated $9.2 billion in employee compensation."

That's billions with a capital "B".

These are some of the findings contained in a report entitled Mission Maryland: Measuring Economic Impact of Maryland's Military Installations. The report was compiled by the Jacob France Institute of the Merrick School of Business at the University of Baltimore.

If you like big numbers this report is chock full of them, breaking down the impact of each of the seventeen facilities.

A Visit to the Inner Sanctum

Last night I attended a State and Local Partner reception at the National Security Agency campus at Fort Meade. The invitation suggested that I arrive at 4:30 PM for the 5:00 PM reception “to pass through the check-in process.”

I needed every bit of those thirty minutes. Guests, who were required to register well in advance and provide some cursory security information, had to pass through three checkpoints with armed guards before parking their cars. Once inside the OPS 2B building we were escorted in groups the short distance to the reception room while even more guards stood at each corridor along the way to keep anyone from wandering off.

The event was put on by the Fort Meade Alliance, a “non-profit independent community membership organization created to promote and support Fort George G. Meade, its 80+ government agencies and organizations and surrounding areas as an economic asset, to promote the well being of the region with programs that support FGGM priorities, and serve as a resource to help facilitate connections that make a difference.”

The event was limited to 400 attendees and was completely sold out within six hours. There were at least another 200 people on the waiting list.

The meeting was largely a networking opportunity for the business community serving NSA but the politicos were there as well. Congressman John Sarbanes, State Senator Jim Robey and Delegate Warren Miller were all in attendance.

General Keith Alexander, the head of NSA and the newly created cyber command welcomed the assembled group and quipped that he was selected to lead the cyber command “because he already had an office.”

He said that when the cyber command “stands up” this fall it will already have 1,100 people in place at the fort and that while much of the mission of the cyber command is classified, he could say that it is “huge.” I wrote that down. It reminded me a business outreach symposium that NSA sponsored about five years ago where they showed an escalating bar graph without data points. We were told those were classified too.