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NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

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Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#191

Post by dredmorbius »

lurchpop wrote: post #132
narrator wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We invaded and occupied Iraq and didn't even get any oil, just a trillion or so in national debt. At least in the time of Rome citizen soldiers were titled large swaths of land in the conquered territories. The trillions in national debt benefits somebody. Somebody somewhere gets those interest payments and they wouldn't have if the U.S had not borrowed from them.

...and the point wasn't to "get the oil" necessarily, but to take control of it so Hussein wouldn't flood the market and make the price go down .

There's also the theory suggested by some (I've just watched Robert Newberg's "History of Oil" though I've seen the point made elsewhere) that it was the move by Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela to move oil sales from dollars to Euros which had something to do with the war.

Truth is the story's likely complicated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DCwafIntj0

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#192

Post by dredmorbius »

gallerytungsten wrote: post #158
foobarqux wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Control of the oil in Iraq is more strategically important than in the one scenario you describe. As an aside I never read that Hussein had threatened to flood the market, I read that he threatened, as a negotiating tactic, to withhold oil. Do you have a source for the "flooding the market" claim?

It wasn't about flooding the market, it was about pricing in Euros, thus taking aim at the dollar as the sole reserve currency. (Among other things.) Example: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,998512,00.h...

(I'd just posted a related item on this)

For values of "for other things" of creating a massive flood of dollars on the world financial markets, undercutting its value, and precipitating a financial crisis the likes of which the US still hasn't seen.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#193

Post by stevenrace »

rinon wrote: post #119

Video seems to be up at https://www.blackhat.com/us-13/archives.html#Alexander

*Note the above links to an MP4.

The 2013 Keynote is now on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvVIZ4OyGnQ&t=5m

-- Alexander begins at 5 minutes in

-- no slides visible in video

-- 'heckling' @ 39minutes in)

-- TLDR: One cropped screenshot of 'telephone metadata', assurances of internal audits, a thumbup from a Senate sub-committee.

Slides: https://media.blackhat.com/us-13/us-13-Alexander-keynote.pdf

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#194

Post by jaekwon »

tlrobinson wrote: post #186
jaekwon wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you there? That would be a terrible reporting job by Andy Greenberg.

You be the judge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvVIZ4OyGnQ&feature=youtu.be...

Sounds like they were applauding Alexander.

I'm not liking the vibe of the audience there.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#196

Post by andy_ppp »

astrange wrote: post #145
andy_ppp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given what we know about the NSA, the heckler was probably a plant.

Which things we know about the NSA lead to that?

To be fair security services are planting troublemakers into organisations for a while now to justify themselves:

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/06/23/police-infiltration-of...

I'm certain that this infiltration will be a pretty standard play; you can bet the security services also have people who get extra money at Google, Amazon, Facebook, Skype etc.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#197

Post by b1daly »

mikeash wrote: post #161
narrator wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We invaded and occupied Iraq and didn't even get any oil, just a trillion or so in national debt. At least in the time of Rome citizen soldiers were titled large swaths of land in the conquered territories. The trillions in national debt benefits somebody. Somebody somewhere gets those interest payments and they wouldn't have if the U.S had not borrowed from them.

Yes, but the cost far outweighs the benefits. The world (and the economy) is not a zero-sum game. People usually say that when they want to state that value can be created, but it cuts both ways. The fact that it's not a zero-sum game means that value can be destroyed. We blew a trillion bucks on nothing useful. That's destroyed value. That somebody is benefitting in some small way from the side effects of this doesn…

This is an interesting question, what is value? What I took away from my econ classes long ago is that it's hard to determine the value of something outside of price (objectively). So if the hypothetical US taxpayer is satisfied with the perceived security they got from building expensive machines, transporting them to the other side of the world, and blowing them up, then it's hard to argue with him.

This perspective, horribly, leans towards moving the large bulk of defense spending into the category of non-essential goods like cable tv, or beer, football, shopping at pottery barn. This is spending with a focus on the psychological state the good induces.

On the other hand, a true believer in the project of us military probably really feels that resources spent on war are actually essential to survival and should be categorized with spending on food, shelter,medical care, insurance.

There's a profound paradox here.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#198

Post by chopin »

tptacek wrote: post #160
chris_wot wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an Australian. Obama is the most disappointing politician I've ever seen. He talks of Hope, then he takes it away. He talks of Freedom, but doesn't allow it. That's very sad.

Australia has significantly worse Internet regulation than the US.

With ubiquitous surveillance, there is only little need for regulation.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#199

Post by northwest »

whiddershins wrote: post #181
mpyne wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked he wasn't James Clapper (they guy who lied to Congress). But maybe I'm wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYNXVgYhPOc#at=61

Just watched it again - it's so instructive to see how Keith Alexander is well equipped to function and lie like probably only psychopaths can.

And then, is Obama part of the same category? The contrast between how he's been selling to us and what's really happening is just too much.

Re: NSA director heckled on stage at Black Hat security conference

#200

Post by [deleted] »

mikeash wrote: post #167
adammichaelc wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument only works if the cost and the benefit are to the same entity. In this case of a trillion dollar war, the cost is to the US taxpayer, and the soldiers who fight the war. The economic benefits go to military contractors, the various war departments of the USG who need reasons to keep their budgets intact, and holders of the US Government's debt ( http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/politicalcalculatio…

I don't understand. My argument is simply that value can be destroyed, and that people can still benefit during this process even when the value being destroyed greatly dwarfs the benefit. There's nothing about that which requires the cost and benefit to go to the same place.

[deleted]
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