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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
3 2 June 2017
Irish infrastructure used
in US Drone strikes
by David Waldron
Technology
neutralises our
Neutrality
MEDIA
M
rgre D’Arcy found herself
jiled in Jnury on he
bck of proes she mouned
Shnnon Airpor in .
Wh ws she proesing bou? US roop
ircrf using Shnnon s sopover on
heir journey o he wrzones of Irq nd
Afghnisn mong oher hings. D’Arcy is
rre slewr gins he sedy erosion
of Irelnd’s vgue undersnding of is
declred neurliy.
June 2017 3 3
The New Battlefields
Unfortunately, in our increasingly connected
technological world she was fighting the right
battle on the wrong battlefield. Troops landing
on the ground have increasingly been replaced
by drones in the sky commanded by the video-
game generation from air-conditioned facilities
in the comfort of their own country. This arms-
length war is conducted in part through the use
of the numerous transatlantic cables that criss
-
cross the seabed, many of which land in Ireland
before continuing on their journey to the United
Kingdom and the rest of Europe. As to the
number of deaths that can be attributed to com-
mands that were routed through cables that land
in Ireland we can only speculate, but as the
Galway Alliance Against War statement asserted
on the occasion of the conviction of Margaretta
D’Arcy:
“By allowing the US Military to use Irish air-
space and Shannon airport to wage these wars
we have become a willing accessory to mass
murder. We have blood on our hands…”.
By logical extension, by allowing the com-
mand and control systems to communicate
across infrastructure that connects through Ire-
land we continue to support these military
operations in opposition to the basic principles
of our perceived neutrality.
Not a New Problem
The first transatlantic communications cable
was laid between Newfoundland and Ireland in
1866. One of the first communications transmit
-
ted across that cable was from Queen Victoria to
then President James Buchanan:
“A treaty of peace has been signed between
Austria and Prussia”.
The cost of transmitting messages across the
transatlantic cable was prohibitive, limiting its
usefulness to the affluent, wealthy organisa-
tions and of course governments.
The strategic value of the cable was further
emphasised in the explicit agreement for the UK
to retain the right to determine control of it after
the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1922.
We might like to think that in the intervening
years Ireland had grown to the point where it
exercises control over the cables that land here.
In 2014 Edward Snowden’s WikiLeaks revealed
the degree to which the influence of Britain’s
security services and General Communications
Headquarters (GCHQ) has hardly diminished. The
Irish Government has failed to address this issue.
The actual number of cables connecting the
US to its closest strategic partner, the UK, is star-
tlingly few: discounting cables that form loops,
there are seven. Eliminating those that connect
through the rest of Europe, such as France or
Denmark, the number reduces to four. Of those
four three are routed through Ireland.
The relevance of these connections can be
easily understood when one looks at what traf-
fic is going through these cables.
Nippers and Slippers
The United States Military operates a number of
private networks, that are not connected to the
public Internet. They have fantastic names such
as JWICS (Joint Worldwide Intelligence Commu
-
nications System), Secure/Secret Internet
Protocol Router Network (SPIRNet or slipper),
Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network
(NIPRNet or nipper) and National Security
Agency Network (NSANet). These networks all
fall under the umbrella of the Defence Informa-
tion System Network (DISN), a worldwide system
that connects US interests. These interests
include in this case: command and control cen-
tres, intelligence agencies, embassies all the
way out to Joint Task Force/Coalition Task Force
troops on the ground. Included in the numerous
global points to which slipper and nipper con-
nect is the US Embassy in Dublin.
You may wonder how the US Military managed
to get access to all of the required jurisdictions
to lay a private network of cables across the
globe. The answer, unsurprisingly, is that they
didn’t. Instead they purchase services from pri-
vate infrastructure companies which have
already laid the required cables. Companies like
those which land in the likes of Dublin, Cork or
Sligo.
These networks are designed to be ‘Air-
gapped’ i.e. they are intended to operate
physically isolated from each other and physi-
cally separated from the public Internet.
According to protocol, any device connected to
slipper for example, is supposed to automati-
cally fall under the control of the slipper
protocols and by extension the DISN protocols.
The allegations against Hillary Clinton during the
2016 elections specifically relating to the han-
dling of secret information are based on her
having access to information from slipper but
using an insecure device.
Slipper, nipper, JWICS and the rest leverage
private infrastructure but are supposedly sepa-
rated from the rest of the Internet, but there is
some evidence to suggest that this isn’t entirely
the case.
Marines Building Tunnels
In 2002, as the US was starting to land troops on
their way to Afghanistan and the Middle East, in
Shannon Airport, a resourceful team of Marines
developed a new mechanism for accessing the
nipper and slipper networks. In consultation
with a private contractor, the Marines built a
‘tunnel’ that allowed a secure channel to be
established to slipper from a lower classified
The allegations
against Hillary
Clinton during the
2016 elections are based on her
having access to information
from slipper but using an
insecure device
Cables connecting the UK to the US and Europe
3 4 June 2017
network – lower classified networks include
nipper of course but also the public internet. The
tunnels are now understood to be Virtual Private
Networks (VPNs) that are in daily use by private
industry. The implication of this ostensibly
innocuous development is that the military
themselves have transcended the security of
their own private network using what is now off-
the-shelf technology.
Did You Lose Control
of the Drones?
At the intersection of the video-games universe
and the US military is Creech Air Force Base, just
outside Las Vegas, Nevada. From there Air Force
pilots remotely control the surveillance, informa-
tion-gathering and ‘targeted killing’ Drone
operations. Among the many different forms of
information communicated to and from Creech
is target-designation information – focusing on
who is to be killed. This information is commu
-
nicated via our now familiar slipper network.
On 9 September 2016 the network at Creech
crashed, affecting ‘critical services’. Services fell
back to less powerful devices which temporarily
stabilised operations but it was stated at the time
that there was no backup if that solution failed
under load. The US Air Force has been somewhat
tight-lipped regarding the root cause of the
outage, whether it was a crash or a cyber attack
but what is not disputed is that one of the critical
services that was affected, however briefly, was
control of Drones - Drones with weapons.
It is unclear whether what followed was a
direct result of the crash or unrelated. Within
weeks of the crash, a series of Drone related air-
strikes went badly wrong. The litany of errors
included:
•
September 17: 62 Syrian Soldiers accidentally
killed by US airstrike during a ceasefire
•
September 18: 15 civilians killed in Afghani-
stan by Drone strike
•
September 18: 22 Somali soldiers killed by US
Drone strike
So far, no explanation for these failures has
been forthcoming, but on October 7 2016 the Air
Force announced that Creech would be subject
to a surprise cyber security inspection.
Surprise Security Checks
When I think of the US cyber command I always
have a soundtrack that combines Darth Vader’s
march with the tempo of the Start Spangled
Banner. The razzmatazz that we associate with
the general US way of life does not escape the
military it appears. The surprise inspection was
heralded by a poster on the Nellis Air Force base
website.
The rest of the page highlights the imperatives
that personnel should be aware of including not
sharing secret information via, amongst other
things, social media.
Other areas that personnel, including the
Drone ‘pilots’, were encouraged to consider
include:
“Exercising your mental skills by memorizing
login credentials is also vital. Stay away from
writing them down”. And perhaps even more
alarming:
“Continue to be wary of phishing attempts;
each and every day people fall victim to cyber
hacks conducted via adversary phishing tactics,
techniques and procedures”.
In summary: don’t share secrets on Facebook,
try to remember your password, presumably
including the codes that allow Drones to fire on
targets, and finally don’t trust everything you
read in your email.
But if slipper is ‘Airgapped’ as stated, how is
the system vulnerable to leaks via social
networks?
Of course Cyber Command came into exist-
ence as a result of a previous hack – Operation
Buckshot Yankee – where a USB drive was
apparently left in the parking lot of a Defence
Department facility. That USB was subsequently
attached to a laptop computer releasing mali-
cious code dubbed agent.btz on the military
networks taking 14 months to eradicate.
Can Ireland Be Neutral?
Putting all of the pieces together, we know that
private networks are utilised by the US Military
to connect its various operations, some diplo-
matic and some offensive military operations.
We know that GCHQ in the UK has maintained
access to this infrastructure, including transat-
lantic cables that terminate or land in Ireland.
Questions should be raised at Government
level to determine what if anything has been
done to ensure that military traffic, particularly
that used in offensive operations, does not pass
through Irish infrastructure. Is this challenge to
our neutrality deliberate or a blind spot as a
result of ignorance of the technology?
Afterthought -
The Future of Drones
The US and its military are facing a crisis con-
cerning its Drones. Pilots are leaving in
significant numbers, citing Post Traumatic Stress
Disorder (PTSD). While we may struggle to sym-
pathise with the pilots who leave their
comfortable facility in Nevada to travel home to
their well-appointed houses in Las Vegas having
wiped innocent people from existence, we
should be deeply concerned by the proposals to
deal with the problem. The US Air Force is
attempting to leverage Artificial Intelligence
technologies to allow Drones to designate their
own targets. In effect they are proposing the
development of an autonomous fleet of armed
robots. It all evokes the ‘Hunter Killer’ in the Ter-
minator series – a flying, autonomous, armed
military robot.
Stephen Hawking has been quite clear on his
concerns relating to Artificial Intelligence, which
I’ll explore in a future article, and that is in the
absence of arming an artificially intelligent
robot. We should all be fearful.
Slipper, nipper, JWICS and
so on all leverage private
infrastructure but are
supposedly separated from the
rest of the Internet, but there is
some evidence to suggest that
this isn’t entirely the case
MEDIA
‘Hunter Killer’ from Terminator
June 2017 3 5
2017 promises to be a challenging year for Irish
SMEs. The uncertainty of what Brexit will bring, as well
as native matters of rising insurance costs, what the
next budget has in store, and changes to commercial
rates all have Irish entrepreneurs looking to the future
and wondering how it will affect their stability and
growth.
In the Irish independent vaping industry, which is
largely made up of retail, distribution and a small
amount of manufacturing (none of which is owned or
operated by tobacco or pharmaceutical companies)
businesses have all this to contend with, and more.
Firstly, is the uncertainty of how implementation of
the EU tobacco products directive and will affect them
and their customers. As responsible companies look to
safeguarding their costly investment in compliance,
they are still left unsure as to how the directive will be
enforced.
In our opinion, a tobacco-style regulation for these
consumer products was ill judged from the beginning.
The EU moved to regulate vaping without due care as
to the negative consequences the regulation would
have on public health, or the independent companies
serving the market. The tagline may have been regulat-
ing the tobacco companies, and while that may have
sounded like a laudable aim, it is happening at the
expense of the consumer led, independent companies
who founded and developed these products to be the
success they are today.
Nonetheless, independent vape companies have
been rising to the challenge of meeting compliance
deadlines and are hopeful that through an interplay of
innovation and standardisation, there will remain a
range of products available to satisfy their customers’
needs for alternatives to smoking.
But at the time of writing, with a little over 6 weeks
until the final deadline of May 19th, the competitive-
ness of Irish independent vape businesses is at a
disadvantage because of the lack of action on the part
of the regulators.
Over four months after putting products through an
expensive testing and notification process, independ
-
ent companies have no indication of whether they can
be sold after May 19th. To put this in perspective, UK
companies are being informed by their regulators
within two to three weeks. This is compounded by the
fact that after May 20th, UK companies can put new
products on the market after the 2-3 week processing
time. Irish companies will have to wait a full 6 months.
Secondly, there is the prospect of yet another tobacco-
style regulation on the product – that of excise duties.
The proposed changes to the EU directive on manufac
-
tured tobacco would apply a tobacco-style ‘’sin tax’’ on
a product that contains no tobacco. Its introduction is
opposed by many in public health who recognise that
such a tax would negatively impact on the opportunity
that smokers switching to vaping represents. Those of
us in the independent industry are only too aware of
the detrimental consequences it would have on smaller
companies versus the large tobacco company
operators.
For all this looming negativity the industry faces
however, there is hope that the government and regu-
lators recognise the value of the independent vape
industry and work with us to get regulation and enforce-
ment right - for the sake of consumer safety as well as
for the longevity of the independent businesses.
This week at a global public health conference in
Australia, a Canadian public health expert in the area
of policy on obesity, Catherine Mah, makes the case for
smaller companies in the food sector; ‘’entrepreneurial
actors are practical innovators, and this is an important
asset for social change in public health’’.
Entrepreneurs who want to grow their companies,
employ more people and contribute more to the excheq-
uer, all by providing adult smokers with safer
alternatives to lit tobacco, are the exact same ‘social
change in public health’ proposition. If a viable, inde-
pendent, vaping industry can be allowed to survive
regulatory interventions, it can act as a significant dis-
ruptor to the incumbent tobacco industry.
If government and regulators can work with, rather
than against, the independent vape industry, Ireland
can realise the potential gains in public health that a
massive reduction in smoking prevalence would
bring.
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