ALL THOSE PENTAGON IP ADDRESSES by Joseph P Farrell

 ALL THOSE PENTAGON IP ADDRESSES by Joseph P Farrell

Today's blog is about a story so unusual that I have absolutely no idea what to make of it. That's not to say I don't have plenty of high octane speculations about it, but even then, I'm left with even more uncertainty about my usual uncertainty about my high octane speculations. In fact, I'm so  uncertain I don't even know if the prior sentence even made sense, hence I'm filing this one under "you tell me." That said, the reason I'm blogging about it is because of all the stories and articles I received this past week, this one nearly tied with the story about those strange directed energy-mind manipulation attacks going on in Swampington, D.C., and like that story, this one too originates - in all its fetid curiosity - from the same place. So again, thanks to all of you who shared this story.

And it's a strange one, so I'm going to present three of the versions of it that people sent along, to underscore how strange it is:

The big Pentagon internet mystery now partially solved

The big Pentagon internet mystery now partially solved Daily Mail

Why The Pentagon Handed Control Of Its 175 Million IP Addresses To One Tiny Firm

You'll note the first two articles are the AP version of the story by Frank Bajak. And the story is relatively simple in and of itself: the Pentagon - or Pentagram as we like to call it - has handed over control of a bunch of its internet IP addresses to a very small firm about which virtually nothing is known. Citing the Mr. Bajak's article:

A very strange thing happened on the internet the day President Joe Biden was sworn in. A shadowy company residing at a shared workspace above a Florida bank announced to the world’s computer networks that it was now managing a colossal, previously idle chunk of the internet owned by the U.S. Department of Defense.

That real estate has since more than quadrupled to 175 million addresses — about 1/25th the size of the current internet.

”It is massive. That is the biggest thing in the history of the internet,” said Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik, a network operating company. It’s also more than twice the size of the internet space actually used by the Pentagon.

After weeks of wonder by the networking community, the Pentagon has now provided a very terse explanation for what it’s doing. But it has not answered many basic questions, beginning with why it chose to entrust management of the address space to a company that seems not to have existed until September.

The military hopes to “assess, evaluate and prevent unauthorized use of DoD IP address space,” said a statement issued Friday by Brett Goldstein, chief of the Pentagon’s Defense Digital Service, which is running the project. It also hopes to “identify potential vulnerabilities” as part of efforts to defend against cyber-intrusions by global adversaries, who are consistently infiltrating U.S. networks, sometimes operating from unused internet address blocks.

...

Madory said advertising the address space will make it easier to chase off squatters and allow the U.S. military to “collect a massive amount of background internet traffic for threat intelligence.”

Some cybersecurity experts have speculated that the Pentagon may be using the newly advertised space to create “honeypots,” machines set up with vulnerabilities to draw hackers. Or it could be looking to set up dedicated infrastructure — software and servers — to scour traffic for suspect activity.

OK, that seems clear enough...

... until one probes the massive size of what's involved. Basically, 175,000,000 internet addresses is almost one address for every two people in the whole USA, give or take a few decimals... that's a lot of internet space just to be running threat assessments. In fact, it's more space than all of AT&T or China.  And as the AP article points out, why hand it over to a small company that shares addresses in a post office in a UPS store and that does not return calls.

Which brings us to the third article linked above, and to this little tidbit:

Brett Goldstein, director of the Defense Digital Service (DDS), said the Pentagon had authorized the pilot program to "assess, evaluate, and prevent unauthorized use of DoD [Department of Defense] IP address space," adding that it could help "identify potential vulnerabilities." (Boldface emphasis added)

So what is the "Defense Digital Service" or DDS? Well, L.G.L.R. spotted this article and sent it along:

Defense Digital Service Delivers Mission-Aligned Tech for DOD

DDS has roughly 70 technologists, including 19 active-duty service personnel. The civilians tend to come from private-sector backgrounds and are on two-year term-limited appointments. Goldstein refers to his team, which includes engineers, designers and developers, as a "SWAT team of nerds" that reports to the secretary of defense.

...

DDS experts don't dwell in the office, either. They travel to where service members are to see how DDS can help use technology to address challenges. Goldstein said he's been to Afghanistan three times so far, and that the project pipeline for DDS originates directly through the critical needs of the services and combatant commands.

He also said he's recently been visiting various commands as well, including U.S. Transportation Command, Army Cyber Command, U.S. Central Command, U.S. Special Operations Command, and U.S. Strategic Command as he works to further hone DDS priorities to have the biggest impact possible.

https://gizadeathstar.com/2021/05/all-those-pentagon-ip-addresses/

"Defense Digital Service" = 201 (English Ordinal)

"Jorge Mario Bergoglio" = 201 (English Ordinal)

"Antonio Guterres" = 201 (English Ordinal)