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Today's Topics:
1. Fw: Defense One: The D Brief (Stephen Loosley)
2. Academic peer-review publishing .. publish first, then review
online? (Stephen Loosley)
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Message: 1
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2024 15:47:21 +1030
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Fw: Defense One: The D Brief
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Defense One: The D Brief
November 15, 2024
https://link.defenseone.com/view/6113c21b7b4f8433b557a7dcmbmig.162w/77fa11a1
Welcome to this Friday edition of The D Brief, brought to you by Ben Watson,
Patrick Tucker and Bradley Peniston. Share your newsletter tips, reading
recommendations, or feedback here. And if you?re not already subscribed, you
can do that here.
Asia-Pacific
SecDef Austin: last Pacific swing. Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin took off this
morning for his 12th and presumably final trip as U.S. defense secretary to the
Asia-Pacific region.
It starts with a visit to Darwin, Australia, for a trilateral meeting with
Australian and Japanese officials?the latter of whom is expected to announce
that Japan will start to integrate forces into U.S.-Australian exercises held
by Marine Rotational Force-Darwin, senior defense officials said.
Then it?s over to the Philippines to meet President Bongbong Marcos and
Secretary of National Defense Gilbert Teodoro and mark the opening of a new
U.S.-funded intel fusion center.
Next is a visit to Laos for the ASEAN Defense Ministers? Meeting Plus, a
meeting that every U.S. defense secretary has attended since its inception in
2010, and finally to Fiji, to kick off negotiations for a status-of-forces
agreement intended to lay the foundation for more defense cooperation. D
Brief-er Bradley Peniston is traveling with the SecDef; stay tuned for more
coverage.
North Korea has ordered ?full-scale mass production? of so-called ?suicide
attack drones,? state run media KCNA reported Friday. The country's dictator
Kim Jong-un called the drones ?an essential requirement in military aspects?
and said North Korean production facilities have the ?potentiality to produce
and introduce various types of drones? in the months ahead.
At least three different kinds of North Korean drones were demonstrated
Thursday, according to selectively blurry photos posted at the Pyongyang Times.
One was a smaller fixed-wing drone; another was a larger model similar in
appearance to Russia?s Ranchet 3; and the third, larger one was reportedly
designed for long-range strikes, one South Korea-based analyst told the Wall
Street Journal.
Rewind: ?In July 2023, North Korea unveiled two types of new reconnaissance and
multi-purpose attack drones at an arms exhibition and a military parade,? South
Korea?s Yonhap news agency reports. ?The North also sent five drones across the
border with South Korea in December 2022, with one of them penetrating a no-fly
zone close to Seoul's presidential office.?
>From the region:
?Taiwan president plans Hawaii visit on sensitive trip to Pacific, sources
say,? Reuters reported Friday;
?Beijing is already preparing to retaliate in a second Trump era,? the
Washington Post reported Friday;
?China Coped With Trump?s First Trade War. A Second One Will Be Tougher,? the
Wall Street Journal reported Friday;
?Trump?s ?America First? foreign policy will accelerate China?s push for global
leadership,? William Matthews of Chatham House argued in an essay published
Thursday;
And ?Ex-Trump envoy on N. Korea says Kim Jong-un won't negotiate
denuclearization,? Yonhap reported Friday from Seoul.
And ICYMI: U.S. authorities uncovered ?a broad and significant cyber espionage
campaign? carried out by China-affiliated actors, the FBI and the Cybersecurity
and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a statement Wednesday.
The operation hit ?multiple telecommunications companies? and ?enable[d] the
theft of customer call records data, the compromise of private communications
of a limited number of individuals who are primarily involved in government or
political activity, and the copying of certain information that was subject to
U.S. law enforcement requests pursuant to court orders,? according to the
statement. That latter detail could refer to the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, or FISA, which allows U.S. authorities to spy on the
communications of individuals suspected of working for a foreign country.
?We expect our understanding of these compromises to grow as the investigation
continues,? the FBI and CISA said.
Developing: CISA is under threat under new Republican leadership. Sen. Rand
Paul, R-Ky, who is about to take over as the Chair of the Homeland Security
Committee, which oversees CISA, told Politico he would like to ?eliminate? it
due to the work they do calling out foreign election interference particularly
from Russia.
You may recall President-elect Donald Trump clashed with CISA over its
monitoring of the 2020 election. (CISA has said both the 2020 and 2024
elections were secure, despite foreign influence efforts.) While Trump can?t
just close CISA outright, Democratic lawmakers are reportedly worried he could
weaken it through staffing decisions.
Around the services
The long-rumored prospect of a future U.S.-China war has prompted Air Force
officials to change how they buy weapons, and that is driving defense companies
to pursue new ways of making money, Defense One?s Audrey Decker reported
Thursday. Since the U.S. military will need to operate thousands of connected
systems across vast distances in a Pacific conflict, those dynamics are posing
new challenges for the Pentagon?s acquisition community, Andrew Hunter, the
service?s acquisition chief, said at an event hosted Wednesday by Defense One
in Washington.
For example, the service is investing in the mission systems of an aircraft or
platform first, and building direct relationships with suppliers instead of
working through the major defense companies to manage suppliers. This means
prime contractors, who have historically profited from controlling the entire
architecture, are having to relinquish some control, Decker writes.
Consider: Every time we persuade ourselves that, Hey, we found a program
[where] the risk is actually so small that we can probably use fixed price
contracting here, even during the development phase, we end up finding risks we
didn't appreciate, Hunter said. He pointed to two Boeing programs where the
service massively underestimated development risks: the T-7 trainer and the
KC-46 tanker. Both fixed-price contracts resulted in huge losses for Boeing and
delayed capability for the Air Force. Continue reading, here.
Suicides across the Army, Navy, and Air Force continued to rise in 2023,
according to the latest annual report (PDF) published Thursday by the Defense
Department. During that 12-month period, 523 Service members died by suicide,
which is more than the previous year (493), the Pentagon said. That included
363 on the active duty side; 69 in the Reserves; and 91 among the National
Guard.
Young enlisted males accounted for the largest number of suicide deaths, and
they most often used a firearm in the completed act, which is consistent with
prior years, according to the report (poisoning is the most common way service
members attempt suicide). The highest rates were among men under the age of 30;
and overall, more than 9 out of 10 who died from suicide were men compared to
less than 7% for females.
While the Marine Corps suicide rate did not rise in 2023, the service still has
the highest rate among all the branches, U.S. Naval Institute News reports with
accompanying slide data. However, In short-term comparisons, between 2023 and
2022, no service was found to have had a statistically significant difference
in suicide rates, the report authors write. The Associated Press has more.
Additional reading:
?Air Force Silver Star recipients among those honored for repulsing Iranian
missile and drone attack,? Stars and Stripes reported Friday;
?Immigration sting nets 10 suspected of working illegally at Camp Humphreys,?
Stripes reported separately Friday from South Korea;
?Norwegian Fishermen Hunting for Halibut Caught a US Nuclear Sub,? Vice
reported Thursday;
?Trump Picks Doug Collins, Ex-Congressman and Impeachment Defender, to Lead
V.A.,? the New York Times reported Thursday.
Etc.
Report: Israeli forces struck an Iranian nuclear weapons research facility in
October. Sources within the Israeli military told Axios that they hit the
Taleghan 2 facility, some 20 miles south Tehran, during the October 25 strike
on Iranian targets. US and Israeli government sources said that they began
detecting new activity at the site earlier this year and the work ?could lay
the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon.? The program was so secret
that many in the Iranian government didn?t even know about, the officials said.
And lastly, DHS just released guidance for the use of AI in critical
infrastructure. Nextgov/FCW report that the new voluntary guidance helps
infrastructure operators design AI models for security and operation, deploy
them and monitor them safely. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
told reporters the framework provides ?specific recommendations that each
participant in the ecosystem can and should implement to ensure the safe and
secure deployment of AI in critical infrastructure.? More here.
?
Brought to you by Splunk: Solidify bedrock cyber defenses with AI as a force
multiplier
The pace of digital innovation is rapidly increasing, and emerging technologies
powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning are changing the
digital landscape. Alongside advancements, however, come increasingly
sophisticated threats. Public sector organizations face a precarious balancing
act between embracing new capabilities and defending against evolving cyber
threats, all while the nation?s cybersecurity workforce grapples with a
shortage of 500,000 vacancies. Learn more
?
LATEST PODCAST
Ep. 166: The Second Battle of Fallujah, 20 years later
A decorated Marine veteran and a videogame maker revisit one of the bloodiest
battles in U.S. military history.
Listen Here
Today in history:
On this day in 2012, Xi Jinping took office as General Secretary of the Chinese
Communist Party, beginning what has since become at least 12 years of
consecutive rule.
--
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2024 21:20:48 +1030
From: Stephen Loosley <[email protected]>
To: "link" <[email protected]>
Subject: [LINK] Academic peer-review publishing .. publish first, then
review online?
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Will Chinese scientists make or break the uprising in academic peer-review
publishing?
A new publishing model is causing ructions in academia, and it could be China
who decides the winner
[A battle is under way in the acedemic publishing world after a journal
database delisted a well-known life sciences journal over its new publishing
model. Photo: Shutterstock]
by Zhang Tongin Beijing Published: 11 Nov 2024
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3285814/will-chinese-scientists-make-or-break-uprising-academic-peer-review-publishing
Over the past year, a revolution has been quietly brewing in the world of
academic publishing. But in the past two weeks, things have become a lot
noisier.
That was when major journal database Web of Science delisted well-known life
sciences journal eLife over its unique publishing model. So far, neither side
has backed down.
The battle has caused a rift in academic publishing ? and with many Chinese
scientists now deserting eLife, it could inadvertently end up being China that
decides the outcome.
Founded in 2012, eLife is a multidisciplinary biology journal that positions
itself alongside leading publications such as Cell, Nature and Science.
But in January 2023, eLife adopted a new policy: all submissions deemed
suitable by the editorial board would be published and peer-reviewed in public
on the eLife website, regardless of the reviewers? recommendations.
In most journals, papers are peer reviewed first and not published if they do
not pass the peer-review process. Now, eLife?s upheaval of the publishing model
has redefined the standards for academic publication.
On October 23, Clarivate, the company behind Web of Science, marked eLife ?on
hold? on its database. According to Web of Science, eLife is being re-evaluated
due to ?concerns about the quality of the content published in this journal?.
During this reassessment period, the database will no longer include any new
articles published in the journal.
The Chinese academic community was the quickest to respond ? seen most clearly
through the large drop in the number of Chinese submissions.
Papers submitted to the journal from China have halved since the delisting,
according to Detlef Weigel, eLife co-editor-in-chief, in a letter to Chinese
neurobiologist and Capital Medical University president Rao Yi ? despite
contributions from Europe and North America remaining steady.
Weigel stressed that the observed drop in submission numbers was only based on
a few days of data, encompassing just dozens of papers.
?We?ll need more time to determine if this trend is temporary or ongoing, and
whether the average quality of submissions has changed,? he said on November 1.
The main reason behind this drop could be a fear among Chinese researchers that
publishing in eLife will no longer help in their career evaluations, as new
content in the journal will not be indexed while it is ?on hold?.
The journal has been ranked first tier by the Chinese Academy of Sciences
(CAS), with around 12 per cent of its submissions coming from China last year,
according to public data.
Some see the shift in its peer-review process, which redefines communication
between authors and reviewers, as a positive step ? one that encourages healthy
scientific discussion.
Other Chinese journals had been considering adopting a similar publishing model.
?We had been planning to adopt this open publishing model for an environmental
journal, but seeing eLife under review has made us cautious,? a Chinese
publisher said, declining to be named.
Weigel criticised the move by Web of Science. He questioned the reliance on a
rating system managed by a ?British-American multibillion-dollar company? to
define scientific value through impact factors. For China?s scientific
assessment framework to depend heavily on such a system would be troubling, he
said.
Under its existing publishing model, eLife does not guarantee that every
submission will be accepted. Articles must pass an initial editorial screening
before they reach the peer-review stage. Plus, while authors can revise their
work based on feedback from reviewers, they can also dispute suggestions or
withdraw their paper from publication.
?This model promotes a more transparent and robust dialogue between authors and
reviewers,? one publishing insider said, declining to be named.
In the comments on a statement by Rao, another professor said they received
valuable feedback through eLife?s new system.
Their submission underwent a three-month revision to meet journal standards,
followed by external peer-review.
Each review cycle, including editor and peer comments, was published online and
synchronised with preprint platforms, providing transparent feedback and
rigorous academic discussion.
For well-established scientists, Web of Science?s metrics may be less important
to their work, and eLife?s approach may help lift academic quality overall.
Rao commended eLife?s position, suggesting that the lower submission volume
reflected the journal?s success in filtering out low-quality papers from China.
In an article he posted on his account, he speculated that the drop in
submissions might be linked to researchers focused solely on journal ranking
metrics rather than scientific value.
Such contributors, he suggested, often submitted lower-quality work and were
more likely to engage in practices such as selective data presentation or even
fraud.
Despite the new publishing model ? and despite the delisting ? eLife remains
classified by CAS as a top-tier journal.
By Zhang Tong:
Tong earned his Bachelor's degree from Tianjin University and Master's degree
from the University of Washington. His major was Chemical Engineering and Data
Science. He used to work as an editor ..
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