Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) Google goes where the U.S. government has feared to tread,

2) Computers must take over counter-terrorism analysis.

Google goes where the U.S. government has feared to tread

In a dramatic statement posted on the company's official blog this week, Google sparked a confrontation with the Chinese government that will likely end with the company exiting the Chinese market. Google's statement all but accuses the Chinese government of "a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure." The Chinese government has long been suspected of directly performing, or facilitating proxies to perform, a wide range of cyberwarfare activities. Google's forceful response against the Chinese government has gone further than the U.S. government, a daily large-scale victim of cyberattacks, has ever gone. The Pentagon's forthcoming Quadrennial Defense Review will likely feature discussions concerning "high-end asymmetric threats" such as cyberwarfare; but ironically it is a private company that is taking action against the Chinese government, a leading high- end asymmetric threat. Finally, Google's decision to likely abandon China could reveal a major crack in China's authoritarian model for economic growth and development.

Google stated that the attacks targeted at least 20 other large companies and the email accounts used by prominent Chinese human rights activists. The company did not directly accuse the Chinese government of these attacks, but its response indicates that it believes the Chinese government is responsible. If Google thought the culprits were lone-wolf Chinese computer hobbyists or cybercriminals, one would think that their response would have called on the Chinese government to police lawless behavior. In this case, it has obviously concluded that it is the government itself that is lawless.

Google has shown the courage to name the villain and accept the consequences for doing so. This is more than the U.S. government has ever done, in spite of many years of regular cyberattacks from China and Russia. Belatedly, and only after Google had acted, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a four-sentence statement calling on the Chinese government to explain its actions.

I agree with my FP colleague Blake Hounshell that this story will have long-lasting ramifications. Google's break with the Chinese government exposes a crack in the Chinese government's model for development. Western multinational corporations are the intermediaries through which China (like the other Asian successes) has obtained access to export markets.

Google had accepted the Chinese government's terms regarding censorship. But this week, it decided that it would not be a branch of the regime's internal security apparatus, a conduit for its global cyberwarfare operations, or a victim of its theft of intellectual property. Google's management has apparently decided that such complicity would be too damaging to its reputation elsewhere in the world and that its reputation was more valuable than future profits from the Chinese market.

Google is walking away from a Chinese government whose business practices it considers out of control. This will show the way for other Western multinationals to stand up against the Chinese government's social coercion, frequent non-protection of property rights, and outright theft of intellectual property. Following Google's action, those Western firms that do business with the Chinese government will have to respond to tougher questions from their shareholders.

China's future economic growth is dependent on the health of its relationships with Western firms, especially those with high intellectual property content. Google's decision may show that China's authoritarian growth model has reached a limit. And it may show the U.S. government how to get some courage of its own to fight the cyberwar, a war that is already underway.

Computers must take over counter-terrorism analysis

National Security Advisor James Jones predicted that the White House report on the Christmas Day attempt to bomb a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit would "shock" its readers. Jones was presumably referring to the report's conclusion that U.S. counterterrorism analysts had access to all of the information they needed to prevent the suspect, Omar Farouk Abdulmutallab, from boarding the flight, but failed to search enough of the databases to which they had access and link together the information that would have revealed the threat.

Maybe what was really shocking to Jones was his discovery that the U.S. intelligence community's computer software was not performing the "data mining" for terrorism threats that he assumed it was. The "Key Findings" from the White House report stated:

"Information sharing" does not appear to have contributed to this intelligence failure; relevant all-source analysts as well as watchlisting personnel who needed this information were not prevented from accessing it.

Information technology within the CT community did not sufficiently enable the correlation of data that would have enabled analysts to highlight the relevant threat information.

There was not a comprehensive or functioning process for tracking terrorist threat reporting and actions taken such that departments and agencies are held accountable for running down all leads associated with high visibility and high priority plotting efforts undertaken by alQa'ida and its allies, in particular against the U.S. Homeland.

In a Jan. 7 interview on the PBS Newshour, former White House counterterrorism officials Richard Clarke and Juan Carlos Zarate confirmed that the U.S. intelligence community still does not have computer software that comprehensively searches and correlates data from all of the relevant U.S. government terrorism databases.

Given the flood of "dots" that arrive daily into the intelligence community's databases, computer automation is clearly the answer. The White House report recognized the hard work of the counterterrorism analysts who, the report says, have foiled many plots. But the Abdulmutallab incident shows what happens when a system relies on the endurance and judgment of an army of overworked human analysts -- the bomber eventually gets through.

A software program performing the same routine as the analysts will not be a panacea. Its parameters will require constant adjustment which will cause many to wonder whether data mining is useful. However, 9/11 and the Abdulmutallab incident show that large-scale and systematic data management is very likely the largest part of protecting the homeland from terrorism. It's been nearly nine years since the last catastrophic "connect the dots" failure. The fact that the intelligence community still is not fully cooperating on software solutions reveals an egregious management failure inside the government.

U.S. Approves Training to Expand Afghan Army - Rod Nordland, New York Times.

The Pentagon has authorized a substantial increase in the number of Afghan security forces it plans to train by next year, in time for President Obama's deadline for United States combat forces to begin withdrawing from the country, military officials said Thursday. Meanwhile, a suicide bomber struck a marketplace in southern Afghanistan and killed 20 people, including children, and NATO officials reported that 23 soldiers had died so far this year. The new training goals would increase the size of the Afghan Army from its present 102,400 personnel to 171,600 by October 2011, according to Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the American officer who leads NATO's training mission in Afghanistan.

Addressing a group of Afghan National Army cadets on Thursday, General Caldwell said the Pentagon had made the decision to increase its training commitments at a meeting the night before in Washington. "The coalition forces want to grow the Afghan forces," General Caldwell told the cadets, in response to a question from one about whether the coalition should not give more responsibility to Afghan forces. "We want to do just what you're saying," he answered. "We are here as guests of Afghanistan. We want to support your army to take control." ...

More at The New York Times.

The State of State: A Proposal for Reorganization at Foggy Bottom - Matt Armstrong, Progressive Fix.

The past decade has seen the U.S. government expand its activities around the globe in response to complex and stateless threats. In the face of these challenges, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, and members of Congress have all called for increasing the resources and capabilities of the State Department to roll back what Gates has termed the "creeping militarization" of foreign policy. But efforts at reform are hindered by an institutional structure rooted in a 19th-century view of the world.

The days of traditional diplomacy conducted behind closed doors are over. The democratization of information and means of destruction makes a kid with a keyboard potentially more dangerous than an F-22. Addressing poverty, pandemics, resource security, and terrorism requires multilateral and dynamic partnerships with governments and publics. But the State Department has yet to adapt to the new context of global engagement. The diverse threats that confront the U.S. and our allies cannot be managed through a country-centric approach. For State to be effective and relevant, it needs to evolve and become both a Department of State and Non-State.

Currently, State's structure impedes its efforts to develop coherent responses to pressing threats. The vesting of authority in U.S. embassies too often complicates interagency and pan-regional coordination and inhibits the effective request for and distribution of resources. No less significant, the structure also implicitly empowers the Defense Department's regionally focused combatant commands, like Central Command, as alternatives to the State Department. Compounded by years of managerial neglect, and a lack of long-term vision, strategic planning, and budgeting, the State Department requires high-level patches and workarounds to do its job adequately.

State's ineffectiveness has created voids filled by other agencies, notably the Pentagon. The Department of Agriculture (USDA) has also sought to move in on the space left by State. USDA in late 2009 asked that funds be transferred from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and State Department for projects in Afghanistan. Such a move would further dilute State's efficacy, sow confusion, and widen gaps between requirements and actions in foreign policy...

Much more at Progressive Fix.

Generals Should be Guided by Truth, Not Politics - Lawrence J. Korb, Washington Post opinion.

In his Dec. 27 column, ["An admiral who found the center," op-ed], David Ignatius distorts the proper role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He glosses over Adm. Mike Mullen's professional failures, particularly on Afghanistan and his handling of the firing of Gen. David McKiernan. Ignatius is wrong to argue that any military officer, especially a member of the Joint Chiefs, is supposed to find the center of the political spectrum. An officer has a responsibility to give the president and Congress his or her best military advice, whether that is embraced by the right or the left, whether it is popular or unpopular...

What about Mullen? In late 2007, when Congress asked him about the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, Mullen shrugged it off. "In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must," he told the House Armed Services Committee. Was that his professional opinion, or was it the policy of President George W. Bush, who gave short shrift to Afghanistan because of his obsession with Iraq? Is that what the combatant commanders were telling him? The answer is no...

More at The Washington Post.

What Can Robert Gates Achieve in Extra Year at Pentagon? - Gordon Lubold, Christian Science Monitor.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates's decision to stay on another year allows him to cement many of the policy and budgetary moves that have been the hallmarks of his tenure. Mr. Gates, the only holdover from the Bush administration and an acknowledged Republican, has emerged in the Obama White House as one of the most respected senior advisers. He has long portrayed himself as a reluctant leader —to serve only as long as the president wishes it. But he has also been eager to make a lasting mark on defense policy. Now, having announced that he will stay on for "at least" another year, he may be in a position to secure his reputation as a reformer. "His influence will continue to grow," says Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank. "A lot of the programs and initiatives that he has been pushing will take some time to implement, and the longer he stays around, the better his chances are for them to take hold."

Gates will also be able to oversee the new strategy in Afghanistan of which he was a chief architect, as well the drawdown of forces in Iraq. But his tenure is having a broader reach. Gates has attempted to steer the Pentagon away from expensive programs that are less relevant to today's wars. He was largely successful in canceling or slowing programs that he deemed irrelevant, most notably the F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighter, which was cast as an outdated technology more suitable for a conventional war than for tracking terrorists. The question is whether Gates will simply steward the reforms he put in place last year or seek to expand them. Mr. Harrison believes he will go further...

More at The Christian Science Monitor.

Can Intelligence Be Intelligent? - Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal opinion.

'Intelligence," Daniel Patrick Moynihan once observed, "is not to be confused with intelligence." To read two recent analyses of U.S. intelligence failures is to be reminded of the truth of that statement, albeit in very different ways. Exhibit A is last week's unclassified White House memo on the attempted bombing of Flight 253 over the skies of Detroit. Though billed by National Security Adviser Jim Jones as a bombshell in its own right, the memo reads more like the bureaucratic equivalent of the old doctor joke about the operation succeeding and the patient dying. The counterterrorism system, it tells us, works extremely well and the people who staff it are top-notch. No doubt. It just happens that in this one case, this same terrific system failed comprehensively at the most elementary levels.

For contrast - and intellectual relief - turn to an unsparing new report on the U.S. military's intelligence operations in Afghanistan. "Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy," it begins. "U.S. intelligence officers and analysts can do little but shrug in response to high level decision-makers seeking the knowledge, analysis, and information they need to wage successful counterinsurgency." That's not happy talk, particularly given that it comes from the man who now runs the Army's intelligence efforts in the country, Major General Michael T. Flynn. But Gen. Flynn, along with co-authors Paul Batchelor of the Defense Intelligence Agency and Marine Captain (and former Journal reporter) Matt Pottinger, are just getting warmed up. Current intel products, they write, "tell ground units little they do not already know." The intelligence community is "strangely oblivious of how little its analytical products, as they now exist, actually influence commanders." There is little by way of personal accountability: "Except in rare cases, ineffective intel officers are allowed to stick around...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

Israeli Robots Remake Battlefield - Charles Levinson, Wall Street Journal.

Israel is developing an army of robotic fighting machines that offers a window onto the potential future of warfare. Sixty years of near-constant war, a low tolerance for enduring casualties in conflict, and its high-tech industry have long made Israel one of the world's leading innovators of military robotics. "We're trying to get to unmanned vehicles everywhere on the battlefield for each platoon in the field," says Lt. Col. Oren Berebbi, head of the Israel Defense Forces' technology branch. "We can do more and more missions without putting a soldier at risk."

In 10 to 15 years, one-third of Israel's military machines will be unmanned, predicts Giora Katz, vice president of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., one of Israel's leading weapons manufacturers. "We are moving into the robotic era," says Mr. Katz. Over 40 countries have military-robotics programs today. The U.S. and much of the rest of the world is betting big on the role of aerial drones: Even Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite guerrilla force in Lebanon, flew four Iranian-made drones against Israel during the 2006 Lebanon War...

More at The Wall Street Journal.

The United States will not succeed in Afghanistan if Afghanistan's own security forces don't eventually secure the country. Few analysts dispute this point. But do the U.S. and Afghan governments have the right plan for building up Afghanistan's security forces? In an essay I wrote for The American, a journal published by the American Enterprise Institute, I assert that the U.S. and Afghan governments can learn a lot by studying how over the past decade Colombia reformed its army and greatly improved its security situation.

An excerpt:

Ten years ago, Colombia faced a security crisis in many ways worse than that which Afghanistan currently faces. But over the past decade, Colombia has sharply reduced its murder and kidnapping rates, crushed the array of insurgent groups fighting against the government, demobilized the paramilitary groups that arose during the power vacuum of the 1990s, and significantly restored the rule of law and the presence of the government throughout the country.

With the assistance of a small team of U.S. advisers, Colombia rebuilt its army. In contrast to [General Stanley] McChrystal's plan for Afghanistan, Colombia focused on quality, not quantity. Colombia's army and other security forces have achieved impressive success against an insurgency in many ways similar to Afghanistan.

I discuss the similarities and differences between the security challenges in Afghanistan and Colombia. I then argue that Colombia's relatively small but elite professional army, its emphasis on helicopter mobility, and its local home-guard program provide a powerful model for reforming Afghanistan's security forces.

Click here to read the essay.

No Exit: America has an impressive record of starting wars but a dismal one of ending them well. - Andrew J. Bacevich, The American Conservative.

President Obama's decision to escalate U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan earned him at most two muted cheers from Washington's warrior-pundits. Sure, the president had acceded to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for more troops. Already in its ninth year, Operation Enduring Freedom was therefore guaranteed to endure for years to come. The Long War begun on George W. Bush's watch with expectations of transforming the Greater Middle East gained a new lease on life, its purpose reduced to the generic one of "keeping America safe."

Yet the Long War's most ardent supporters found fault with Obama's words and demeanor. The president had failed to convey the requisite enthusiasm for sending young Americans to fight and die on the far side of the world while simultaneously increasing by several hundred billion dollars the debt imposed on future generations here at home. "Has there ever been a call to arms more dispiriting, a trumpet more uncertain?" asked a querulous Charles Krauthammer. Obama ought to have demonstrated some of the old "bring 'em on" spirit that served the previous administration so well. "We cannot prevail without a commander in chief committed to success," wrote Krauthammer.

Other observers made it clear that merely prevailing was nowhere near good enough. They took Obama to task for failing to use the V-word. Where was the explicit call for victory? "'Win' is a word that Obama avoided," noted Max Boot with disapproval. The president "spoke of wanting to 'end this war successfully' but said nothing of winning the war." Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard read off the same talking points. "The personal commitment of the president to pursue the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda until they are defeated was not there," he lamented. "...To have rallied the country and the world, Obama needed to indicate he would lead a fight to win in Afghanistan, with the help of allies if possible, but with the armed forces of the U.S. alone if necessary. He didn't say anything like that. He didn't come close." ...

More at The American Conservative.

How the CIA Can Improve its Operations in Afghanistan - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

In terms of loss of life, the bombing of the CIA base in Khost, Afghanistan, may be the most costly mistake in the agency's history. So it's important to look carefully for clues about how it happened and lessons for the future. CIA veterans cite a series of warning signs that the agency wasn't paying enough attention to the counterintelligence threat posed by al-Qaeda. These danger signals weren't addressed because the agency underestimated its adversary and overestimated its own skills and those of its allies. The time to fix these problems is now - not with a spasm of second-guessing that will further weaken the CIA but through the agency's own adaptation to this war zone. As the Khost attack made painfully clear, the CIA needs better tradecraft for this conflict.

By getting a suicide bomber inside a CIA base, the al-Qaeda network showed that it remains a sophisticated adversary, despite intense pressure from CIA Predator attacks. "They didn't get lucky, they got good and we got sloppy all over Afghanistan," says one agency counterterrorism veteran. This shouldn't have been a surprise: CIA sources say that over the past year, two al-Qaeda allies in Afghanistan - the Haqqani and Hekmatyar networks - have run double-agent operations...

More at The Washington Post.