Mark Hertsgaard: The Military Takes on Climate Change Deniers

by Mark Hertsgaard, Business Week, October 22, 2014

Photograph by Robert Stolarik/The New York Times/Redux

On patrol in Brooklyn during Hurricane Sandy in October 2012

The idea that climate change poses serious risks to U.S. national security, long contested in conservative circles, is now an integral part of Pentagon planning. On Oct. 13, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel made it official with the release of the Pentagon’s 2014 Climate Change Adaptation Roadmap, a 16-page document that lays out the effects of extreme weather events and rising temperatures on military training, operations, acquisitions, and infrastructure. Two previous editions, issued in 2012 and 2013, treated climate change as a future threat, but this year’s cast it as a reality that must be dealt with quickly. “Climate change will affect the Department of Defense’s ability to defend the Nation and poses immediate risks,” the document begins.

The Pentagon’s move sets up a showdown between the military, a cautious institution run by some of the most conservative people in the U.S. government, and congressional Republicans, who continue to deny that climate change is real, let alone that it requires action. In May, House Republicans passed an amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act forbidding the Defense Department from spending money on any climate-related initiatives, including planning programs. “This amendment will ensure we maximize our military might without diverting funds for a politically motivated agenda,” Representative David McKinley of West Virginia, who sponsored the amendment, wrote in a letter to members of Congress asking for a yes vote. The amendment failed in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

“Climate change is a threat multiplier because it has the potential to exacerbate many of the challenges we already confront.”—Chuck Hagel

Hagel, a former Republican senator from Nebraska, moved to counter that argument in his foreword to the new road map. “Politics or ideology must not get in the way of sound planning,” he wrote. Hagel is backed by 16 retired generals and admirals who sit on the military advisory board of the CNA Corp., a government-funded nonprofit military research organization. A CNA report issued in May called climate change a “catalyst for conflict,” arguing that the civil war in Syria was rooted in part in a record drought that drove peasants off the land and into cities, where they were susceptible to being recruited by extremist groups. “People are going to have less water, less food,” says Ron Keys, a retired four-star general who commanded all Air Force aircraft and personnel worldwide and now serves on CNA’s military advisory board. “There are going to be huge regional wars around those issues.”

STORY: How Climate Change Is Fueling the Miami Real Estate Boom

Pentagon planners have sounded alarms about their climate concerns for at least a decade. In 2004, Fortune reported the existence of a secret document that warned climate change could push powers such as China, India, and Pakistan into nuclear war over fresh water supplies. Until now the military has been relatively quiet about its climate concerns, partly “because the Department of Defense gets its money from Congress, and we know where the House is on this issue,” says David Titley, a retired rear admiral and member of CNA’s military advisory board. Hagel’s personal involvement in releasing the 2014 road map suggests the Pentagon has decided it can’t wait any longer.

Photograph by Gabriella Demczuk/The New York Times/ReduxChuck Hagel

Not all Republicans are as wedded to climate-change denial as their public statements suggest, according to retired military officials and Republican Hill staff. “If you talk with them privately, without any media around, the vast majority of congressional Republicans know perfectly well that climate change is real,” Titley says. “But they won’t say so publicly because they don’t want to end up like Bob Inglis.”

Inglis, a Republican, represented South Carolina’s 4th congressional district for six terms, amassing a perfect voting record in the eyes of the National Rifle Association and other conservative groups. In 2010, a Tea Party challenger ousted him after seizing on what Inglis has half-jokingly referred to in the press as his “heresy”: insisting that climate change is real. He’s now executive director of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative, a nonprofit based at George Mason University that advocates a free-market approach to addressing climate change. “A lot of people on Capitol Hill are down in their foxholes” on the climate issue, Inglis says. “They’re afraid of getting their heads blown off if they head up the hill.”

STORY: Shell's Jekyll and Hyde Approach to Climate Change

To provide political cover, Keys, Titley, and other retired military brass have been traveling the country to explain to ordinary Americans why the military cares about climate change and what extreme weather will mean for their communities. The goal is to shift the political conversation in Washington by changing what voters are willing to hear their leaders say. Since August, Keys has visited Iowa, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Hampshire, and North Carolina to take his message to local Rotary Clubs and businesses, such as a solar electrical co-op run out of a hog house in Dubuque, Iowa. Keys, who says he is “politically very conservative, just to the right of Genghis Khan,” meets with state legislators, mayors, business leaders, civic groups, and “mom and pop on Main Street.” His pitch is simple: Ignoring climate change means leaving Americans exposed to danger. “If I were a bad guy,” Keys says, “I’d look at a moment like Hurricane Katrina as a good time to sneak into the U.S. and try something.”

Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe, a leading denier of climate change, has dismissed CNA’s effort. “There is no one more in pursuit of publicity than a retired military officer,” Inhofe told the New York Times after CNA issued its report in May. Keys says he won’t be deterred. “I spent 40 years as a fighter pilot,” he says. “You’re going to have to come at me with facts.”

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-23/the-military-takes-on-climate-change-deniers/

Nestlé: How climate change is affecting the world’s biggest food company

by Roberto A. Fernman, The Washington Post, September 6, 2014

I sat down with Nestle S.A.'s vice president and global head of operations José Lopez, who's also often described as the company's head of sustainability, even though the company doesn't technically have someone with that title. We discussed how climate change is affecting the company, how the company is working to affect climate change, what sustainability means in the corporate food world, and the company's responsibility to the people who eat its food, especially given its size.

José Lopez, the Executive Vice President and Head of Global Operations for Nestlé S.A., is pictured. Source: Nestlé S.A.

Why doesn't Nestlé have a head of sustainability? 

I am seen by the outside world as the head of sustainability here, because I do attend to issues of sustainability, but in essence we don't have one. The problem is that these positions are often part of public affairs or corporate affairs, or corporate communications, but the story shouldn't be how we talk about sustainability—it should be about what we do about sustainability. So for us, operations comes first and talking comes next.

For some time this was actually a little frustrating to some of our management members, because people didn't know what we were doing behind the scenes. But you cannot work to tell people; you have to work to do the right thing.

What then does sustainability mean for Nestlé?

Sustainability is not only making sure that our business model is able to survive but that we live in a society that is in harmony with what we want our business to be in the future. You have to be relevant, you have to be in tune with what society needs, so that your business can continue to work over the long term.

We are a very long-term oriented company. There was a time when our company decided to take its stock from all trading stock markets aside from the one in Zurich. The reason was that we no longer wanted to do quarterly reporting, because we found that this was nonsense for a company like ours. To change your decision-making on numbers you're going to have to give each quarter, when it takes years to put products in place, build factories, find distribution, and bring forward a brand, doesn't make sense.

But sustainability isn't a static term. It has a very different meaning today than it did, say, 150 years ago, when Nestlé was founded. How has its meaning changed?

On one side of the equation, you have technology, and access to technology. This has a big and positive impact. Society now demands more transparency, because we're able to provide more transparency. Corporations have received a renewed mandate by society. We have to take responsibility for things that in the past we didn't feel we had the legitimacy to. The role that we are given by society is changing, and rapidly, and, in my mind, in a very positive manner.

But we also now know a lot more about what can be done. The science and technology that we already know, and information that we already have, is sufficient to tackle the very pressing issues that the planet, the earth, is facing. We know how to achieve sustainable farming, we know how to achieve sustainable harvesting of many of our key ingredients, but when you look around, you realize that this is just a drop in the ocean. It's just starting.

So the question is how can we scale this up. For that we need to engage everyone, including the media.

What about specific sustainability issues, like climate change. How is climate change affecting Nestlé on the back end, and behind the scenes?

Climate change has many impacts on the value chain. We source a tremendous amount of raw materials, as you can imagine. We are the biggest buyer of cocoa in the world, and one of the biggest buyers of coffee in the world. Both of those commodities have gotten more expensive as a result of climate change.

Are those prices reflected in profit margins for farmers?

They are, and they must be. Otherwise this whole thing will become unsustainable. If there isn't a means for farmers to adapt to climate change, as we see it, then the children of today's farmers will not become farmers.

Farming has to become a different player in the eyes of the consumer. I am convinced that consumers will accept and understand that food cannot be the place where you save most of your money. It has to be the place where you have to have a value understanding. We need to educate everyone about the real value of their purchasing activities.

But what if everyone simply can't afford more expensive food? How do we feed a growing population, given the amount of hunger and poverty that already persists in the world?

The first thing is we need to stop waste. Food waste is an incredible and absurd issue for the world today. The numbers that come around are always in the neighborhood of 30-35% -- meaning that a third of what is produced is wasted, which also has an environmental impact. But beyond that environmental impact is the impact on soil, on water, on the resources and our natural capital that we impose for the benefit of no one.

Unfortunately what happens is poorer countries can't afford to waste food, because it's such a large part of their disposable income, while in the Western world, it is such a small part of disposable income that it's okay to waste from an economic standpoint. Because of that waste, you have to raise prices, which the people in those poorer countries, the ones who don't have the money, then have to pay. You see this happening with all kinds of goods around the world.

What is important for companies like ours is to make sure that we don't participate in processes that produce unintended consequences that go against our interests in the long term. That is a perfect example. And we are not going to sacrifice the long-term sustainability of our business for short-term gains.

There's another form of sustainability that more directly affects consumers: Health. We don't know a lot about how foodstuffs affect people, because the narrative is constantly changing. How does a company like Nestlé reconcile that, and deal with those violent swings?

When people talk about the food industry and food companies, they are intuitively referring to packaged goods, and, specifically, branded packaged goods. When you look at the amount of food a human being ingests, the part that is branded packaged goods is actually a very small part. But in terms of total calories or total nutrients, it happens to be the most attractive part, partly because they have been adapted using science to make them taste better.

We have to take responsibility for that. I will be the first one to say that we have done a very poor job explaining to the world why we exist as an industry, what we bring to society, and what the world would look like if we didn't exist.

It's like speaking about packaging. Packaging is a huge source of littering and other negative environmental impact. But can we take packaging away from food? You know what will happen, and immediately? The amount of waste will multiply by who knows how much if we take away packaging from our food system.

Instead we need to sit back and understand that we have an issue with packaging, agree that we have an issue with caloric intake, especially attractive caloric intake because of branding, and take responsibility for improving the health status down the road.

We need to lower the amount of sugar and sodium we have in our food. We also have to apply a better understanding of nutrition and portion control. We have done a terrible job explaining to consumers why we existed, because we were too busy competing with each other.

So, why then does Nestlé exist?

Because it would be impossible to feed 7 billion people, let alone billions more to come, without it. Because we need to preserve food, and safely, so consumers can eat and drink under any condition and in any season. The reason why we exist, primarily, is that human beings decided to live together, because of urbanization.

Today there is a very close relationship between urbanization and the food industry. We have to provide food all the time, during every season, and it needs to be safe, affordable, and so on and so forth. That's our job.

Now, in order to do that job, you shouldn't hurt anybody. You shouldn't hurt the people who produce the food or the people that consume the food. That's what we need to work on.

How far is Nestlé willing to go to achieve that? If there were a product that wasn't good for people to consume, would the company stop selling it?

I don't think there are any products that aren't good for people to consume. There are substances that aren't good for people to consume, and there is always the notion of quantity and portion control. Human beings are able to process a lot of things, and we have the mechanism to live in an environment that isn't always friendly, but we adapt.

What we need is to understand [food] microbiology better. That's where science needs to go. We need to have a better understanding of how food interacts with out health. If we found that something was toxic, we would stop using it. No question.

Every time there is a concern that surfaces from a study, we investigate. The health and safety of our consumers has to be our primary concern, but once we fail that, we're gone.

How can Nestlé and other major food companies ensure that developing countries like India and China don't suffer the same sort of health issues, such as obesity, that are crippling developed countries like the U.S.?

We have to find solutions.

Knowing what we know, we have to make sure that the products we sell are formulated in a way that will not induce excessive consumption or will not imply strict replacement of healthy food by less healthy food. We know how to make a more balanced food, and also a more balanced diet.

The most important thing, though, is education.

When you go to a medical school and ask how many hours students spend on nutrition, it's incredible, because it's so few. When you know that the number one medicine for human beings is food, and yet doctors spend so little time learning what is the right nutrition, that's baffling.

The whole system requires a reset—from health professionals, from food companies, from the producers, but also from the marketers, from the media, and from all the other stakeholders—because, the reality is that population will continue to increase, demands on the food system will continue to stress the system, and our collective lifestyles are driving climate change, which is putting even more stress on producing food.

There is a real sense of urgency here on the need to align the positive impact that every stakeholder can have on this process.

Roberto A. Ferdman is a reporter for Wonkblog covering food policy, consumer business, and Latin American economics. He was previously a staff writer at Quartz.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/09/05/how-climate-change-is-affecting-the-worlds-biggest-food-company/

Invaluable briefing series unpacks climate change impacts for business

from Climate Nexus, September 4, 2014

Scientists, corporate leaders, military strategists, financial analysts, and sustainability and conservation experts have all hailed a Cambridge-backed briefing series on the implications of climate change for business as a vital resource for companies wanting to plan for the future.

Rajendra K. Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, said: “I applaud this initiative. Spelling out the implications of climate change for different sectors, on the basis of the work of the IPCC, will allow businesses to adapt to the challenges they face and understand the role they are able to play in reducing their climate impact.”

The thirteen briefings are based on the Fifth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and compiled by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL), and Judge Business School, in partnership with the European Climate Foundation and sector-specific organisations. Their publication comes ahead of the UN Climate Change summit in New York, hosted by UN Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, which many of the world’s business and political leaders will attend.

The series includes innovative and easily understandable infographics and key facts, and summarises the likely impacts of climate change on agriculture, buildings, cities, defence, employment, energy, investment, fisheries, primary industries, tourism, and transport. It also looks at the capacity for these sectors to adapt to climate change and to contribute to emissions reductions.

Álvaro Echániz, Chief Executive Officer of Ferrovial FISA, said: “Science on climate change is key for the business community, particularly concerning climate scenarios that we will face in the medium and long term. We cannot understand a long term business strategy without taking into consideration the findings of the IPCC, as a reliable input for identifying the risks and, of course, business opportunities behind those trends.”

Among the findings highlighted and explained in the series are:

·     The significant impact of climate change on agriculture, including reduced crop yields, and predicted food price rises of 37% (rice), 55% (maize), and 11% (wheat) by 2050.

·     The potential for more energy efficient buildings to play a big part in reducing emissions

·     The particular impact on cities of climate change, and the urgency of acting to protect people in urban areas (predicted to be 64% of the world’s population by 2050)

·     The significant potential for the energy sector to reduce emissions, including by switching to lower-carbon fuels, improving energy efficiency, and introducing carbon capture and storage

·     The disruptive impacts climate change will have on the stability of the financial system 

·     The potential for losses to global fisheries of up to $40bn by 2050

·     The way climate change acts as a ‘threat multiplier’, driving involuntary migration and indirectly increasing the risks of violent conflict  

·     The need for additional energy supply investments of between $190-900bn per year from now until 2050, in order to meet the 2°C target.

Polly Courtice, LVO, Director of CISL, said: “Climate change affects us all, and understanding the science is absolutely vital. This series does a remarkable job of taking the hugely-complex and technical findings of the IPCC report and translating them for business.”

For more information or to arrange interview contact: Eliot Whittington, Climate Change Director at CISL. Email: eliot.whittington@cisl.cam.ac.uk Tel: +44 1223 76 68 19 Mobile: +44 7703 77 00 24.

The briefings can be downloaded at: www.cisl.cam.ac.uk/ipcc. They will also be featured on the UN Foundation’s Climasphere site on September 4: http://www.climasphere.org/#!General-Secretary-Summit

Other partners: BSR, Buildings Performance Institute Europe (BPIE), the Global Buildings Performance Network (GBPN), Global Military Advisory Council on Climate Change (GMACCC), ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, the Institute for Environmental Security (IES), Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), World Energy Council, UNEP Finance Initiative (UNEP FI)  

Selected quotes from other stakeholders and experts:

·     Harry Verhaar, Head of Global Public & Government Affairs at Philips Lighting: “Any business leader knows that climate change will have a huge impact on the bottom line. These briefings are an invaluable resource for us all as we seek to map and respond to the inevitable impacts. They should also help us to step up to our responsibility to contribute to emissions reductions.”

·     Philippe Joubert, CISL Advisory Board Member, Executive Chair of the WEC’s Global Electricity Initiative, and former President of Alstom Power: “The latest climate science is clear about the reality and impacts of climate change. This summary report helps business to understand the scale and urgency of the issues involved for the energy sector and should be seen as a call to action.”

·     “This guide is an important aid for financial institutions […] to understand the complexities and implications of climate change so that informed action can be taken." - Karin Ireton, Chair of UNEP FI’s Climate Change Advisory Group, and Director, Group Sustainability Management, Standard Bank

·     “This briefing […] should be required reading for anyone interested in national security planning.”– Dr Emily Shuckburgh, Head of Open Oceans, British Antarctic Survey, Member of the University of Cambridge Centre for Climate Science

·     “This report is a timely reminder of the pace of change in the oceans and the need for those of us with direct and indirect stakes in the seafood industry to promote action at every level.” Chris Brown, Sustainability Director, ASDA

·      “This publication clearly highlights the stress that climate change will place on supply chains and food security.” - Stuart Lendrum, Head of Sustainable and Ethical Sourcing, Sainsbury’s.

As Keystone XL Dominoes Fall, Time to Arrest Tar Sands Industry

by Tom Weis, EcoWatch, July 31, 2014

We’ve got this.

Thanks to the courageous and indefatigable efforts of pipeline fighters everywhere, the tide has finally turned on Keystone XL. As it becomes increasingly clear that Keystone XL’s northern leg is not going through, it is time to set our sights on ending all tar sands exploitation.

The Obama administration’s latest election year delay on Keystone North is not a victory, but the dominoes continue to fall. Earlier this year, a citizen lawsuit denied TransCanada a route through Nebraska. Last month, it lost its permit through South Dakota. Now it faces a gauntlet of “Cowboys and Indians” vowing to stop it in its tracks.

We cannot let up until Keystone North is vanquished, but all signs point to President Obama nixing TransCanada’s cross-border permit after the November elections. Don’t just take my word for it.

On April 23, Rolling Stone contributing editor Jeff Goodell wrote: “I was told recently by members of the administration that the pipeline would, in fact, be rejected.” On June 18, former Vice President Al Gore wrote in this same magazine: “[Obama] has signaled that he is likely to reject the absurdly reckless Keystone XL-pipeline proposal.”

Both pronouncements come on the heels of former President Jimmy Carter pointedly warning the president that Keystone XL ”will define your legacy on one of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced—climate change.”

For a president who has suddenly decided to stake so much of his legacy on addressing the climate crisis, approving Keystone North would destroy any shred of credibility on this issue. It would also put an administration that prides itself on outreach to Native American communities in the position of violating the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.

Tom Weis, David Lautenberger, Shane Red Hawk and members of his family and tiyospaye (Lakota for “extended family”) viewing the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie in the National Archives vault in Washington, DC.

I recently had the honor of viewing the Fort Laramie Treaty with Shane Red Hawk and his family in the National Archives vault. There wasn’t time to read every word of the hand-written document, but there was time to absorb the meaning of the “bad man” clause in Article I on the faded first page:

If bad men among the whites, or among other people subject to the authority of the United States, shall commit any wrong upon the person or property of the Indians, the United States will, upon proof made to the agent, and forwarded to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington city, proceed at once to cause the offender to be arrested and punished according to the laws of the United States.

Tribal leaders mounted on horseback in front of the Capitol Building en route to the “Reject and Protect” tipi encampment in Washington, DC.

Because Keystone North would cross treaty territory, its construction would blatantly violate the “bad man” clause, an arrestable offense the Great Sioux Nation will not abide. President Obama knows this because the presidents of the Oglala Sioux and Rosebud Sioux tribes declared on national television their people are “willing to die” to stop it. He also knows this because his senior counselor, John Podesta, visited the “Reject and Protect” tipi encampment on the National Mall in April where this declaration of nonviolent civil resistance was made.

As fate would have it, I found myself standing next to Mr. Podesta at this historic event. I thanked him for his public opposition to Keystone, then asked him to urge the president to use his bully pulpit to speak out against all tar sands exploitation (this includes preventing the tar sands barons from gaining a foothold in Utah’s pristine red rocks country).

We should not be doing business with a misanthropic industry that knowingly poisons First Nations communities in Canada, with immoral disregard for its climate impacts on humanity. Fortunately, the U.S. is in a strong position to help starve Alberta’s landlocked tar sands beast by stopping the flow of tar sands crossing our border.

Last month, retired Navy SEAL Team 6 Commander David Cooper provided powerful ammunition for doing just that with his warning to the State Department that the Keystone pipeline is highly vulnerable to attack: “We need a serious national conversation about what we do to head off an attack. Until then, I’d offer a saying we used on the SEAL teams: ‘If you cannot defend a position, you shouldn’t take it.’ ” His threat assessment described as “the most likely scenario” a spill of more than 1 million gallons of “highly toxic” Keystone tar sands oil.

Caution demands that beyond rejecting the Keystone permit, President Obama order national security assessments on all tar sands pipelines crossing our border, and an immediate shutdown of the built-to-spill southern leg of Keystone XL in Texas and Oklahoma.

We need to heed the indictment of the tar sands industry issued by Ponca Nation matriarch and grandmother Casey Camp-Horinek of Oklahoma: “We’re suffering from environmental genocide from this extractive industry.” The closing ceremony she led on the final day of the “Reject and Protect” tipi encampment was soul searing. Gathered near the White House, we looked on as she knelt in the grass to pour some sacred water. What poured were her tears. We watched in reverent silence as she cried, and cried. The tears she shed were for all who weep for what is happening to our precious Mother Earth.

No more grandmothers must be made to cry. No more First Nations people must be made to die. The tar sand industry’s brutal assault on the human family—and all our relations—must be arrested.

http://ecowatch.com/2014/07/31/keystone-xl-dominoes-fall-arrest-tar-sands-industry/

China's People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398 hacker UglyGorilla invaded utility networks, practicing for a cyberattack

Press materials are displayed on a table of the Justice Department in Washington, DC. Photographer: Charles Dharapak via AP Photo

Related: Spy Dispute: China Said to Push Banks to Remove IBM

by Michael Riley and Jordan Robertson, Bloomberg News, June 13, 2014 

[This blog is inaccessible from China -- blocked, in other words.]

Somewhere in China, a man typed his user name, “ghost,” and password, “hijack,” and proceeded to rifle the computers of a utility in the Northeastern U.S.

He plucked schematics of its pipelines. He copied security-guard patrol memos. He sought access to systems that regulate the flow of natural gas. He cruised channels where keystrokes could cut off a city’s heat, or make a pipeline explode.

That didn’t appear to be his intention, and neither was economic espionage. While he was one of the Chinese officers the U.S. charged last month with infiltrating computers to steal corporate secrets, this raid was different. The hacker called UglyGorilla invaded the utility on what was probably a scouting mission, looking for information China could use to wage war.

UglyGorilla is one of many hackers the FBI has watched. Agents have recorded raids by other operatives in China and in Russia and Iran, all apparently looking for security weaknesses that could be employed to disrupt the delivery of water and electricity and impede other functions critical to the economy, according to former intelligence officials with knowledge of the investigation. The incursions spurred a debate in the Obama administration over whether and how to respond, and raised alarms among lawmakers briefed on the incidents.

Related:

• China’s Clock-Punching Hackers Show Spying as Routine Job
• Cybercrime Remains Growth Industry With $445 Billion Lost
• Chinese Military Shows New Capabilities, Pentagon Says

“This is as big a national security threat as I have ever seen in the history of this country that we are not prepared for,” said Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican and chairman of the House intelligence committee, who agreed to talk about the attacks in general terms but declined to discuss specific incidents. “Your palms get a little sweaty thinking about what the outcome of those attacks might have been and how close they actually came.”

Preparing Battlefields

UglyGorilla’s surveillance sortie was one of dozens conducted on natural gas pipelines and electric utilities by People’s Liberation Army Unit 61398 over at least 14 months in 2012 and 2013, according to documents obtained by Bloomberg News and people involved in the investigations but who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Unit members appeared to be performing the digital equivalent of mapping the dams or airfields or fuel routes of a potential enemy, what’s known in military jargon as preparation of the battlefield. While that kind of spying has been standard practice for centuries, technology is scrambling traditional rules of war, blurring the distinction between intelligence-gathering and aggression.

A satellite capturing images from 600 miles above Earth doesn’t cross the line; a navy vessel that sails into another country’s waters does. Hackers scanning infrastructure from inside computers that control it are both gathering knowledge for use in combat and moving into a potential battlefield.

‘They’re Practicing’

Operatives vacuumed up caches of e-mails, engineering PDFs and other documents, but it was their focus on supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, systems in industrial computers that most concerned U.S. officials, according to people familiar with the incidents. Attackers could use SCADA systems to manipulate valves to build up pressure and burst pipes or shut down a power plant.

“They’re practicing,” is how retired Army General Keith Alexander, then head of the National Security Agency, put it to lawmakers in 2012, according to a U.S. official who was present but asked not to be identified because the briefing was private.

In many cases, by the time outside forces have breached a computer system, “they’ve already done everything they need to attack you,” said Michael Hayden, a former director of the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency. “In addition to doing reconnaissance, and maybe being accepted intelligence practice, they’ve got a gun at your head.”

‘Different Threat’

The prevailing theory, according to two former senior national security officials, is that the hackers were only testing their skills and stockpiling data, preparing for a war their bosses may never wage, much as the U.S. and Soviet Union built nuclear weapons inventories during the Cold War.

What concerns U.S. defense officials is that while nuclear weapons are so destructive they haven’t been used in warfare since 1945, cyberweapons are alluring because they’re versatile. An adversary could be tempted by a menu of options, from a subtle disruption of communications systems to the chaos that would result if the power were shut down in Manhattan.

Cyberweapons are far easier and cheaper to obtain than nuclear materials, and so is data about the vulnerabilities in industrial control systems that run the electrical grid and water purification plants. The data could be used to develop and experiment with more sophisticated attacks, according to people familiar with the operations.

Remote Access

Nation-state hackers are also often freelancers, and the U.S. has identified cases where some employed by Russia and China provided their services to others for a price, according to intelligence officials. The data hackers collect isn’t difficult to sell to others either, as it’s simple to transfer electronically or on a pocket-size storage device.

“Five guys wearing flip-flops with the right capabilities in the basement with enough juice, and you got a real problem,” said Rogers, the House intelligence panel chairman. “That’s a very different threat now than we’ve ever really faced before.”

The Chinese hackers targeted 23 natural gas pipeline companies over seven months beginning in December 2011, and breached at least 10, according to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security presentation to the energy industry at a conference the following year; 10 of the remaining 13 were still being investigated at the time of that event. The Christian Science Monitor previously reported some information from the presentation, including the number of targets, and cited a possible link to the People’s Liberation Army.

‘Serious Attack’

FBI surveillance transcripts of the PLA unit and other documents related to the investigation obtained by Bloomberg News show the attacks continued for at least eight more months and ranged more widely, including gas and electrical utilities, which would be of little interest for economic espionage.

What alarmed DHS officials was the information seized, people who attended the conference said. According to the DHS presentation and slides, the unit stole lists of field sites, such as block valve stations and compressors, that could be manipulated remotely, as well as SCADA log-ons and user manuals for servers.

S. Y. Lee, a DHS spokesman, referred questions about the attacks to the U.S. Department of Justice. “Cyberthreats to our nation’s critical infrastructure, most of which is within the private sector, are a significant concern,” said Marc Raimondi, a Justice Department spokesman. “The U.S. government will continue to use all the tools at our disposal to disrupt and deter malicious activity.”

Fake Plant

They were “preparing a scenario where they might be able to perform a very serious attack,” said Jaime Blasco, a researcher for AlienVault LLC who as a consultant aided the investigation into some of natural gas sector breaches.

Hackers are keenly interested in the U.S. utility infrastructure, as Kyle Wilhoit, a threat researcher at the security firm FireEye, Inc. (FEYE), discovered in an experiment last year when he worked for TrendMicro, Inc. Wilhoit replicated the network of a municipal water system by using specialized software and real industrial controllers. He built the system in his basement in St. Louis, but from the Internet it looked like a water plant in Ashburn,Virginia, population 44,000.

The virtual utility was cased and raided within weeks by what Wilhoit said he believes was PLA Unit 61398, based on the custom code used and other evidence. The intruders stole passwords, engineering PDFs and data that would let them back into the computers through a remote access system for employees.

‘Red Line’

During an expanded version of the exercise, Wilhoit said, hackers, most of them from China, overrode controls in fake water plants in Europe and Asia. If a military performed those sorts of hacks, “that certainly would be crossing a red line in anybody’s book,” said Michael Assante, a former researcher at the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls who specializes in control system attacks.

The government’s indictment of UglyGorilla, whose real name is Wang Dong, and four other PLA hackers charges them with with stealing economic secrets from six U.S. companies, incidents unrelated to the utility hacks. The Chinese government denied engaging in economic espionage and a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington called the accusations against the officers absurd.

The charges may in fact have been a way of alerting China that the U.S. knows everything Unit 61398 is up to, said Chris Blask, chairman of the Industrial Control System Information Sharing and Analysis Center, a nonprofit in Orlando, Florida, that coordinates dissemination of cybersecurity threat data to critical-infrastructure operators.

Raiding Parties

“There are code messages nations send each other all the time,” Blask said. “We want them to do those subtle things that allow both sides to save face.”

While Unit 61398 was at work, White House national security officials huddled with cybersecurity experts from across the government to consider options they could present to President Barack Obama. The team included representatives from the State Department, NSA, FBI and Pentagon, directed by National Security Council staff.

Sensitive facilities could be put under the protection of the NSA, whose own hackers could disrupt the digital raiding parties, but that would be a significant escalation and require changes to U.S. law. Instead, the officials considered ways to draw a red line around critical infrastructure, according to three people briefed on the discussions.

Pentagon Veto

None of the options was good. The U.S. could enter into treaties prohibiting such activity, but signatories could simply continue the activity through black operations. Sanctions were unenforceable, and the source of attacks hard to prove.

“‘Trust but verify’ was a phrase made popular under Reagan. We’re worse off here. It’s more like ‘don’t trust and can’t verify,’” said Steven Chabinsky, a former deputy assistant director in the FBI’s cyber division who is now general counsel and chief risk officer at CrowdStrike Inc. “We need to move past that to de-escalate growing cyber tensions.”

As the discussions continued, a hurdle emerged from within the group’s own ranks. Proscribing cyber incursions would require the U.S. to forgo such activities, putting a potential adversary’s ports, communication networks and transportation facilities off limits. The Pentagon vetoed such proposals, the three people said, and no plan for responding to the hacks made it to Obama’s desk. Laura Lucas Magnuson, a White House spokeswoman, declined to comment.

Classified Setting

An effort to require utilities, chemical refineries, water plants and stock exchanges to improve security also failed. Lobbying by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce helped kill a Senate cybersecurity bill in August 2012 by casting it as a regulatory burden because it would have forced some companies to install anti-hacking protections. Supporters couldn’t overcome a Republican-led filibuster against the measure, falling 8 votes short.

The briefing on Capitol Hill that summer by then-NSA chief Alexander was part of a push by the administration to persuade Congress to pass the legislation. It appears to have been the first notification to lawmakers outside of a classified setting that foreign hackers had penetrated sensitive U.S. infrastructure, the official familiar with the event said.

The U.S. has few alternatives, said James Lewis, a cybersecurity fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “You can engage intelligence operations to try to judge their capabilities and intent, or fall upon your knees and beg critical infrastructure to make themselves a harder target, and we’re doing both.”

SCADA Subfolder

Documents obtained by Bloomberg News show how deeply U.S. investigators burrowed into foreign hackers’ organizations. In the case of Unit 61398, hackers typically used U.S. servers as staging points, which worked to the FBI’s advantage.

The agents issued subpoenas to tap those servers, including some of those used by UglyGorilla to hack a natural gas utility in the Northeast, according to people familiar with the investigation. Using specialized software, the FBI was able to record the commands going back and forth between his computer and his victim.

It was like peering over UglyGorilla’s shoulder, watching, keystroke by keystroke, as he snaked through the utility’s computer banks, according to transcripts of the surveillance session. The FBI scooped up his passwords as he typed them, and agents watched as he transferred data back to his computer.

He dropped one set of files into a folder on his desktop labeled “SCADA,” inside a subfolder with a utility’s initials, part of his method for keeping his multiple victims straight, the transcripts show.

Industry Quarries

While UglyGorilla accessed a gateway to systems that regulate the flow of natural gas, it wasn’t clear if he was probing the security of the system or trying to gain control of it, according to a person briefed on the investigation. Allison Mahan, a spokeswoman for the FBI, declined to comment on the agency’s surveillance of Unit 61398.

Pipelines are perfect targets, according to security experts. The latticework of lines that deliver gas are at capacity and loaded with choke points, said Saxon Burke, a former U.S. Department of Energy intelligence analyst. “There just aren’t many workarounds when it comes to these pipelines.”

Among UglyGorilla’s many energy industry quarries in 2012 were the e-mail accounts of executives and managers at utilities in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Georgia, according to the documents. Among those on the list was Ray Codey, the administrator of the small borough of Madison, New Jersey, a bedroom community an hour’s train ride from New York City.

Killing Power

The FBI didn’t tell him he was targeted by a Chinese cyberspy, Codey said, and it’s not known whether the hacker successfully breached the municipality’s network. Codey said it wouldn’t be hard to guess why Madison was a target, because it’s one of just nine towns in New Jersey that operates its own electric utility.

Madison’s electricity comes through two feeder lines owned by Jersey Central Power and Light. If the hackers figured out how to shut them down, they could kill power to Madison’s 16,000 residents in an instant, a feat, Codey said, “that not even Hurricane Sandy had managed.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-13/uglygorilla-hack-of-u-s-utility-exposes-cyberwar-threat.html

Marine veteran "mad as hell": GOP climate-science deniers threaten national defense

by Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch, May 29, 2014

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. — I’m mad as hell. The GOP used to be the party of national defense. No more. What happened? In 2003 Bush launched the Iraq War to “defend our freedom.” Flash forward: Last week 227 of 231 GOP members of the House voted to turn the Pentagon into climate-science deniers, a decision certain to weaken national security. That’s about as absurd as telling Silicon Valley they can’t use technology.

AFP/Getty Images. The Pentagon building in Washington.

Seriously, the Republicans just passed an amendment to the $607 billion National Defense Authorization Act funding the Pentagon in 2014. Yes, 227 members of the GOP-dominated House just voted to limit the Pentagon’s ability to defend America, by preventing military planners from using any strategic research the military’s been gathering for years about threats to national security. Listen:

“None of the funds authorized to be appropriated or otherwise made available by this act may be used to implement the U.S. Global Change Research Program National Climate Assessment, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report, the United Nation’s Agenda 21 sustainable development plan, or the May 2013 Technical Update of the Social Cost of Carbon for Regulatory Impact Analysis Under Executive Order.”

Get it? The Republican Party is now officially on record as the party of climate-science denialism. These research programs, ongoing and widely used by the Pentagon in strategic national defense planning for many years, could, if the Senate agrees, become illegal to use.

Yes, this Marine veteran is mad as hell. GOP science deniers have “crossed the line,” they’re now messing with national security. America is now under attack from an enemy within, irrational science denialism, a toxic mind-set, a spreading, self-destructive mental virus. Yes, this is a “War on America.” The military has been using climate-science research for decades. This vote is self-destructive. These research studies are essential in our national defense.

If you’re at all concerned about the safety of your family and our nation, you’ll be mad as hell, too, about this new “War on America.” All 227 Republicans are on record as science deniers, a real dumb message to send to our allies worldwide. Why? If the GOP regains the Senate in November, it may become the law of the land.

For the Democrats, this should be the last straw. These 227 GOP science deniers exposed a dangerous mind-set that’s more than just part of an attack sabotaging our national defense, but a deep attack on America’s moral conscience. This vote exposes a toxic virus spreading nationally. In fact, the GOP’s science denialism is now so self-destructive even the Koch Bros. should be embarrassed for no other reason than that the military is the world’s largest consumer of oil.

Pentagon’s historic use of climate-science research in defense planning

What if the GOP regains control of the Senate? Ask the CNA Corporation Military Advisory Board, a longtime Pentagon consultant that includes 16 retired generals and admirals. They just updated a report that earlier “described projected climate change as a threat multiplier.”

Get it? The Pentagon has seen climate change as a threat to our national defense for over seven years. Their updated report “drills down on the new vulnerabilities created and tensions amplified due to climate change, which it deems a catalyst for conflict.” No wonder the Dems warned GOP leaders before that radical amendment to the budget vote: “That’s science denial at its worst and it fails our moral obligation to our children and grandchildren.”

So here’s the likely scenario if the GOP takes back the Senate. The senator most likely to head the Senate Armed Services Committee is ranking GOP Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, “a vocal skeptic of the established science that greenhouse-gas emissions contribute to global warming.” Inhofe “scoffed at the idea that climate change is linked to national security threats.”

Inhofe dismissed the updated Pentagon report by personally attacking retired Air Force Gen. Charles Wald, one of the 16 contributors. “There is no one in more pursuit of publicity than a retired military officer,” said Inhofe. “I look back wistfully at the days of the Cold War. Now you have people who are mentally unbalanced, with the ability to deploy a nuclear weapon. For anyone to say that any type of global warming is anywhere close to the threat that we have with crazy people running around with nuclear weapons, it shows how desperate they are to get the public to buy this.”

When the report was first released, Secretary of State John Kerry said that for years climate-science research has alerted the U.S military to hot spots and increasing regional conflicts: “Tribes are killing each other over water today. Think of what happens if you have massive dislocation, or the drying up of the waters of the Nile, of the major rivers in China and India. The intelligence community takes it seriously, and it’s translated into action.”

Now imagine Inhofe chairing the Senate Armed Services Committee enforcing the GOP’s climate-science-denialism amendment, warning Pentagon generals never to use climate science in national defense planning.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/gop-science-deniers-threaten-us-national-defense-2014-05-28