Short Takes – 2-18-23

Trump-Era Officials Were Aware of Suspected Balloons in U.S. Airspace. WSJ.com article. Pull quote: “Now it appears some intelligence officials at the Pentagon were aware of the incidents and harbored concerns that they were related to China, believing Beijing was using them to test radar-jamming systems over sensitive U.S. military sites. The data collected about the Trump-era incidents was limited to a basic assessment and therefore wasn’t shared more broadly within the government at the time.”

NIST charts proposed updates to SP 800-171 for covering controlled unclassified information. IndustrialCyber.co article. Pull quote: “There was broader stakeholder concern regarding implementation challenges for non-federal systems such as the SP 800-53 controls originally developed for federal systems. It assesses that some controls/elements of controls should not apply outside the US government (federal-centric); some controls are overly granular when applied to an ‘as-built’ contractor system; and many baseline controls are unnecessary for the protection of CUI.”

Who’s Responsible for the Toxic Train Disaster in East Palestine, Ohio? StatusKuo.substack.com blog post. Pull quote: “The scale of the disaster raises important questions about what caused the accident, who is responsible for it, and what should be done to prevent similar or even worse incidents in the future. Republicans are seeking to lay the blame on the new infrastructure bill and the Biden administration, but that’s all a smokescreen for what likely led to the accident. The real answers have big implications for how government ought to respond and act to prevent future tragedies.”

Here’s what the derailed Ohio train was carrying — and what was burned. WashingtonPost.com article (with photos and videos). Pull quote: “A security camera captured the Norfolk Southern train near Salem, Ohio, 20 miles west of the site where it later derailed. What appears to be sparks and flames can be seen underneath one of the cars. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has since said that the derailment appears to have been caused by a mechanical problem on one car, saying a wheel bearing on that car appeared to have overheated.”