January 17, 2017—Tiger Rag and a New Day!

“I’m a proud Clemson alum, I’m a proud governor, and I’m a proud South Carolinian . . . Clemson showed their heart and humility throughout the entire season, and in an unforgettable national championship victory, they reminded us that, with faith and hard work, anything is possible. That’s what defines South Carolina.” SC Governor and future UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, as she ordered the Clemson colors to fly above the state capitol.

It was also a proud day for yours truly (Class of 1958) when Clemson Head Coach Dabo Swinney won his second National Championship ring. Ironically, the first came in 1992 as a senior and walk-on wide receiver three-year letterman, at Alabama — his home state. How sweet it is!!! (Click here for more Dabo history.)

Click here for an ESPN review of that great game for the record books. And Click here for an ESPN review of the crowd of 70,000 who subsequently celebrated the win in a parade and in the Clemson stadium, “Where the Blue Ridge yawns its greatness; where the Tigers play!”

Enough with the bragging …

Now a few thoughts about this week’s pending events and the quadrennial potential transfer of political power as we approach Friday’s inauguration of Donald J. Trump to become the 45^th President of the United States. Three brief points:

Continuing misplaced media focus on Russia’s hacking that allegedly cost Hillary Clinton the election — wrong focus regarding a very real and serious future problem.
Our world is the most dangerous it has been in decades — arguably since before World War II.
One national security objective needing emphasis and programs for a major needed renovation — space defense.

On the Hacking/Cyber Threat.

My last three messages have emphasized that being shocked that Russia tried to influence our election is like being shocked that there is gambling in a casino. Check www.highfrontier.org to link to my last three messages.

This fixation is also like “the pot calling the kettle black” — if my readers remember what a pot and kettle are. Click here for Cal Thomas’ informative discussion of this point. His title describes the metaphor directly: “Politicians’ hypocritical response to Russian hacking and their own fragile glass houses.”

Thomas listed some of the ways both our political parties have sought to influence our and other nations’ politics, but omitted the one mentioned in my previous messages, which reminded the reader of Senator Ted Kennedy’s failed attempts to gain Soviet disinformation and propaganda support to defeat Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Cal Thomas also recounted examples of when our leaders lied to the American people — like those who lied about body counts in Viet Nam, and others who recently altered intelligence reports about ISIS to project the White House’s more optimistic line than justified by the facts on the ground. And he pointed out missed opportunities where it would have better served U.S. interests to have sought support for friendly movements — like when we abandoned the 2009 peaceful protesters in Iran seeking to oppose the Ayatollahs and their proxy President Ahmadinejad.

The point is — there will be nothing new if the congressional investigations confirm that the Russians tried to influence our elections. Great powers — including the United States as noted above — seek such objectives all the time.

More important, in my opinion, is that little if any false information was shared with the public because of the WikiLeaks disclosures, whatever their source. To my knowledge, none have been proven false — and many of them paint a very distasteful picture of the Democrats and their failed candidate for the Presidency. Moreover, apparently, the Republicans had better protection against hacking, since both parties were targeted.

(The most outrageous leak occurred with last week’s demonstrably false claims that Russia had obtained “compromising” information that dammed Donald Trump. Imagine that — as President Elect Trump said, “Fake news.”)

And now we have another Democrat gambit intended to discredit or at least to distract from such obvious findings from the WikiLeak releases. The Justice Department Inspector General has recently announced a review of the FBI and its involvement in reviewing Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.

Rather than going through aspects of this review, I encourage you to click here to read Andy McCarthy’s expert National Review assessment of the Democrat strategy to explain Hillary’s failed campaign and to lay that blame on Donald Trump and the Republicans. One more time, they simply can’t accept that it is over!

Much more importantly, these technical-political factors reflect the maturing role of cyber operations that are now evident from this experience — and the broader national security and political implications of that fact.

Hopefully, the congressional reviews will recognize that fact, and consequently recommend high priority for developing our defense and foreign policy cyber security plans and programs — especially in a broader political-military context.

For example, those who wish us ill are fully aware of the potential for cyber operations in what Chinese authors described 17 years ago as “Unrestricted Warfare.” They perhaps described China’s Masterplan to Destroy America. Alternatives to direct military confrontation include international policy, economic warfare, attacks on digital infrastructure and networks, and terrorism.

They considered how even a relatively insignificant state can incapacitate a far more powerful enemy by applying pressure to their economic and political systems and empowering it with modern technology. Click here and here.

In my view, this is the correct context for considering the alleged Russian “hacking” of our political systems — as well as all the other associated political noise associated with finding excuses for the Democrat’s political losses at the ballot box.

President Trump Needs Effective Defenses in a Very Dangerous World.

It is almost trite to restate that today, “Our enemies no longer fear us and our friends no longer trust us,” especially in the context of the past eight years.

The conditions that existed since World War II, initiated by the “Wise Men” of that time, are fast disappearing, if they are not completely gone.

While geographic alliances still matter they are somewhat less dominant in determining how we can be threatened. In particular, they are complicated by rapidly advancing and spreading technology, no longer dominated by American knowhow.

For example, China is emerging as a major potential “space power” in both “civil space” of NASA’s world and the “national defense” space world, where we are fast moving from conditions where space has been exploited only to support terrestrial operations to a world where space may be an integral part of the battle space.

This constrained condition was set in place during the Eisenhower-Kennedy era, which ushered in the world of intercontinental ballistic missiles and otherwise sought to keep space “pristine,” free from so-called “weapons in space.” Never mind that ballistic missiles carry nuclear weapons through space on their way to their terrestrial targets — opponents sought to ban the means to shoot them down in space.

That capability has now proliferated — most recently the news has been filled with Kim Jong Un’s pronouncements about North Korea’s testing of its Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). And it conducted two underground nuclear tests last year in a nuclear and ballistic missile development program that has steadily advanced since the late 1990s in spite of numerous diplomatic attempts to stop them.

And thanks to the Obama administration’s terrible Iran Deal, Iran now has plenty of money to purchase whatever it needs from its ally North Korea to gain comparable capability. Some of us believe we should assume for planning purposes that Iran already has nuclear weapons.

As I have written repeatedly, both nations have launched satellites that can carry nuclear weapons on trajectories to attack the United States from our undefended south.

A detonation above the atmosphere over the central United States will produce an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that could cause a continental loss of electricity, leading within a few months to the death of most Americans. Such EMP attacks are included in the military doctrine of North Korea and Iran — as well as Russia and China.

We need effective defenses against this all too real prospect — and we need them now!

But the Cold War anti-ballistic missile defense legacy — especially regarding space-based defenses — still imposes political constraints preventing us from fully exploiting our technological advantages to build such defenses.

Thus, we have not built the most cost-effective defenses of the American people against the growing threat of nuclear armed ballistic missiles, even though we knew how to do so over two decades ago. We have not even continued our research on such systems.

At least now our military leaders are beginning to realize the cost-disadvantage of the systems we have developed and deployed under this shortsighted constraint. Perhaps the “powers that be” will reinvent the system concepts pioneered by President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

Click here for my November 30 discussion of what I’d urge President Trump to do as quickly as possible to rectify this disadvantage. We urgently need to revive the SDI vision.

Like during the Reagan era, Russia can be expected to oppose this approach — as will China. Nevertheless, President Trump should follow President Reagan’s example in insisting on pursuing space-based defenses, whatever opposition may develop from Russia, China and others who can be expected again to pursue propaganda and other measures to stall the needed development efforts.

These are only a few of the needed initiatives to restore our atrophying military capabilities … a major overhaul is needed and modernization is needed. Hopefully, President Trump will truly “drain the swamp” and restore our capabilities to underwrite a “Peace through Strength” posture.

For example, nowhere is this more important than in dealing with the instabilities of the Middle East. Like many others at this writing, I am apprehensive about United Nations conferences this week in the waning days of the Obama administration, given how the Obama administration betrayed Israel in not vetoing UN Resolution 2334 that called for Israel to abandon the most sacred sites of Judaism, among other non-starter provisions among parties that continue to refuse even to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist.

We definitely need a change. Only then can we expect to restore our previous recognized position among the nations — again “feared by our enemies and respected by our friends.”

Hopefully, President Trump will empower today’s “Wise Men” and they will chart a new course. Stay tuned!

What can you do?

Join us in praying for our nation, and for a rebirth of the freedom sought, achieved and passed to us by those who came before us.

Help us to spread our message to the grass roots and to encourage all “powers that be” to provide for the common defense as they are sworn to do.

Begin by passing this message to your friends and suggest they visit our webpage www.highfrontier.org for more information. Also, please encourage your sphere of influence to sign up for our weekly e-newsletter.

Encourage them to review our past email messages, posted on www.highfrontier.org, to learn about many details related to the existential manmade and natural EMP threats and how we can protect America against them.

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