Naval Postgraduate School

This book considers distributed capability systems as a potential solution to securing data in cloud environments. The U. S. Navy, Intelligence Community and Department of Defense have begun a significant investment to leverage scalable, distributed cloud-based solutions for information sharing. We believe capability systems suggest a promising direction for new platforms, a bold approach drawing directly from mature ideas first explored in the 60s and 70s. We survey the properties and limits of existing distributedcapability file systems, as a step toward understanding how capability-based designs might serve cloud-scale systems. We highlight some lessons learned in our observations and find that, while no existing capability-based distributed file system demonstrates all of the desirable security traits observed of smaller-scale capability systems, it should be possible to define and create one that does, using capabilities carefully designed to obey a set of known properties.

A nuclear threshold state is one that could quickly operationalize its "peaceful" nuclear program into one capable of producing a nuclear weapon. This book compares two known threshold states, Japan and Brazil, with Iran to determine if the Islamic Republic could also be labeled a threshold state. Furthermore, it highlights the implicationssuch a status could have on U. S. nonproliferation policy. Although Iran's nuclear program is mired in controversy, it relates to those of Japan and Brazil. While not maintaining as robust of a program and often conflicting with theinternational community, Iran has the capabilities to produce weapons grade material and could be considered a nuclear threshold state. Dozens of countries in the world have similar nuclear capabilities and maintain the NuclearNon-Proliferation Treaty rights to advance their nuclear programs so long as they are peacefully applied. Unfortunately for nonproliferation advocates, these capabilities make fuel for both energy and weapons. To prevent proliferation and eliminate the world's nuclear weapons arsenal, the United States will need to alter its policy andconvince the world that nuclear weapons should be abolished. Although this task includes a multitude of variables, incremental steps can be taken toward the administration's final goal.

This book uses a grounded theory approach to study the phenomenon of hacktivism and seeks to understand how the Internet has evolved to become a disproportionate and significant platform for disruption. Technologicaladvancements involving the Internet, such as social media, have provided a significant advantage for social activists to advance their causes and enables them to recruit large masses with little effort. This platform also provides thedistinct advantage of anonymity and increased availability of malicious tools and malware that, if directed toward U. S. critical infrastructure, could potentially cause severe economic and physical harm to the homeland. This book will also provide readers an in-depth analysis of three well-known social movements that have revealed the potential for increasing violence and/or disruption. The civil rights movements of the 1960s and the environmentalist movements of the 1980s are examples of activist movements that quickly evolved into direct action networks. Suchhistorical context, when compared to current hacktivist collectives like Anonymous, suggests that social activist movements, regardless of venue, possess the cognitive praxis to cause injury or harm in furtherance of a social cause.

This book determines how to invest limited resources to increase the resilience of an infrastructure system against both non-deliberate and deliberate events. We propose an optimization model that seeks the best defensive investment for a weighted combination of deliberate and non-deliberate events. We formulate the general problem and conductnumerical analysis using a specific infrastructure system as a concrete example. We perform parametric analysis on the combined model in order to explore the way in which different solutions depend on the distributed weights andyield insight into the best investment decisions.

Latin America's renewed interest in nuclear energy thus presents challenges to the "new nuclear age." The latter is a term used to characterize a milieu dominated by nuclear anxiety about horizontal nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, the desire to prevent nuclear terrorism (post-9/11), and the need to avert future nuclear accidents (post-Fukushima Daichi incident).4 This project report focuses on four Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico) and highlights two important findings. First, the U. S. has sought to diminish the appeal of nuclear weapons by relying on a plethora of strategies, involving unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral instruments (dialogues, treaties, and regimes); softer measures (norms, economic incentives, and rewards); and coercive means (sanctions and direct pressures).5 Interestingly enough, Latin America has reacted in different ways to these strategies. Bilateral, unilateral, and even coercive means have been historically ineffective at dissuading Latin American states from changing or adjusting their nuclear policies. Argentina and Brazil, specifically, have not been particularly responsive to U. S. bilateral pressures. By contrast, the most successful efforts at achieving nuclear cooperation with Chile and Mexico have been dealt mostly by relying on multilateral strategies, involving technical and scientific assistance from the IAEA. Hence, multilateralism is most effective at persuading Latin American states to comply with nonproliferation norms. This seems ironic since the Western Hemisphere is the area where the U. S. exerts the most influence; however, sovereignty and domestic intervention concerns in Latin America indicate that Washington must cautiously approach its regional counterparts without appearing too intrusive or demanding. Multilateralism accomplishes this by diffusing sovereignty concerns, allowing international legitimate and recognized bodies to implement agreements, while providing Latin American states with a forum in which they can express their views and engage in global affairs. The report first presents the project research design and methods. The second and third sections discuss the background leading to Latin America's increased interest in nuclear power and the efforts undertaken to denuclearize the region. Section four examines the main security challenges and the sources of tension for U. S.-Latin American relations. Section five examines the areas of increased regional cooperation, with a special focus on Chile and Mexico. The final section summarizes the project's findings and identifies avenues for future research.

This book describes for the benefits of maintaining United States Naval Forward Presence in the Mediterranean. It encompasses several themes to justify its point of view. It argues that the Mediterranean has been important to the United States for over 200 years. It describes the significant United States political and economic interests in the region. As NATO's strongest member, the United States has a vested interest to ensure that the Mediterranean remains open and accessible. Geographically the "Middle Sea" is an essential link between the Atlantic, the Persian Gulf and beyond. It forms a bridge across which three continents interact. But the Mediterranean's geographic configuration and complex political environment also makes it an operational challenge. Finally, the complexities and acrimony of Mediterranean politics calls for the United States Navy to support a variety of missions from "stability and support" to "Small-Scale Contingencies" (SSCs) or potentially more conventional operations. However, the political, economic and geographic characteristics of the Mediterranean make it very difficult for military forces to operate there.

This book presents an unconventional approach to addressing a threat to homeland security by focusing on complacency through the lens of human factors and complexity. This approach requires a paradigm shift. In addition to focusing on external threats from enemies who wish to do this nation harm, and building capabilities to prepare for disasters, it is also necessary to look internally to the behaviors, attitudes, and states of mind of people within homeland security organizations to optimize the success of this country's efforts. This book draws from human factors science, folk science and folk psychology, complexity theory, homeland security doctrine, psychology and biology reference works, and applied research to develop a concept of complacency for the homeland security discipline. The hypobook is that a clear definition may lead to actionable, observable measures to mitigate it. The research concludes that complacency is more commonly used as a proverbial threat than an actionable threat, but reveals a plethora of future research opportunities for a human-factors approach to addressing threats of this nature.

The U. S. military operates and maintains a vast forward basing infrastructure in countries throughout the world. Periodically, these bases become the central focus of either protest or violence from the citizens of the host nation. Questions have recently surfaced as to whether NAVCENT headquarters in Bahrain is in danger of experiencing protest or violence following the Arab Spring. This book seeks to understand the causes of protest and violence toward U. S. personnel stationed overseas. To answer this question, this book uses case studies from base conflicts in Okinawa, Germany, and Turkey to analyze the friction points between the host nation citizens and the U. S. military base. This book finds that the main friction points for conflict fall into three categories: economic, military, and social. The most common friction point in the three case studies is the impact of U. S. military operations on the host nation, with the exception of Bahrain. Bahrain is unique because military operations have not caused resentment to date within the current government or the opposition movement. Despite this lack of conflict, NAVCENT's position in Bahrain is by no means secure, since economic causes, present in the Bahrain case, have caused the most vociferous protests when present.

As the image of the thermonuclear apocalypse loomed over the early years of the Cold War and technological advancements brought the possibility of such a fate closer to reality, the U. S.-Soviet conflict became increasingly a battle for hearts and minds-on the home front as well as among allied populations. However, public diplomacy in a democracy is more complicated than a public relations campaign, for actions often trump words, particularly in the case of nuclear strategy. This book examines the aims of policy, strategy, and mass persuasion and its civil-military character as manifested in the atomic public diplomacy in the Cold War until the 1980s, but especially of the "classical" period, 1940s-1960s. Specifically, it studies public presentation of nuclear issues through three media: U. S. television, the Soviet peace offensive, and official communiqu s of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In each example, leaders sought to shape citizens' views on warfare in order to garner the support necessary to carry out an expensive strategy that required tremendous faith from the political public. These three examples shed light on the importance of mass politics in the creation and implementation of strategy in an era of high tension and rapid technological innovation.

This book assesses the rise of Brazil as a global power. To examine this, the research takes an international relations approach to measure power in terms of a state's ability to influence other states. Three aspects that this research focuses on are wealth, land power, and international influence. These characteristics separate "hegemons," "global," "middle," and "regional" powers. Brazil's rise to global power started with instituting neoliberal reform, which produced the economic growth over the last 20 years, and has translated into the ability to domestically and globally invest in poverty and disease reduction programs across Latin America and Africa. With the strongest military in Latin America, Brazil has difficulty acquiring new technology and military assets because no direct security threat exists. Foreign policy desires a projection of force, while defense spending limits the military to internal security. Brazil's role in international organizations provides many opportunities to exert leadership, but each organization limits the level of Brazilian influence. This book finds that Brazil, although strong economically, is still a middle power with aspirations of global power, based on a difference in its material capabilities and ability to continually exercise economic and political influence outside the Latin American region.

Despite NATO's long history of close military cooperation and coordination, the Alliance cannot fully support major multinational operations. Tested by conflicts in the 1990s through to the recent war in Libya, NATO capabilities have consistently fallen short. During each conflict, intelligence played a key role in securing victory, but NATO's operational successes were made possible only through substantial U. S. intelligence support. The lack of an independent NATO intelligence capability presents a problem for the United States, which needs a NATO capable of conducting operations in the event of a simultaneous conflict in another region. Given the rise of austerity measures in Europe, it is unlikely that European governments will provide additional funding to establish a comprehensive NATO intelligence capability. Therefore, the U. S. should establish an enhanced intelligence-sharing relationship with NATO to offset the paucity of NATO intelligence support and operational resources. Intelligence sharing can increase international cooperation and allow for greater burden sharing among allies. This is most aptly demonstrated by the United Kingdom-U. S. A. (UKUSA) series of signals intelligence agreements developed during World War II, which arguably provided the foundation for the 'special relationship' between the U. S. and the U. K. today.