and tensions have reached a boiling point in syria where the country's opposition is beating the drums of war so with the gunfire growing louder is there any chance to resolve this peacefully. it's tuesday december twentieth four pm in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching r t well from down drones to hacked computers the u.s. has suffered some major technological blows recently this is the u.s. splurges on military spending and often touts being the best when it comes to advanced technology but apparently we're not advanced enough for other countries to take down our drones iran claims to have hijacked one of our most advanced spying tools as it was flying over the country the drone which iran says they intercepted was made by lockheed martin one of the one of the world's largest defense

contractors the company advertises being the best when it comes to combat ing cyber threats take a look at their ad. greater . so they claim to protect national security by preventing cyber threats but somehow one of lockheed's drones ended up here in the hands of iran a country claims that hijacked the drones by being technologically savvy hacking into its g.p.s. system and telling it to land exactly where they wanted it to and apparently they did such

a good job that the aircraft appears to be in pristine condition so how can the most militarily advanced country be vulnerable to such a cyber failure to dig deeper into this i am joined by even ilads ivan eland that is fellow at the independent institute so how is it that the u.s. can invest so much money and these drones get there so easily taken down well the u.s. always has a it has a gold plated military and it gets namrud with technical fixes and gee whiz things whereas countries like iran or china that don't have as much money what they tend to do is try to focus on what the military calls asymmetrical threats in other words they don't they want to get our expensive systems and they want to find some easy way to get into them hack into them using cyber methods or you know find some other way to neutralize them that's cheap because they don't have a lot of money and sometimes that can be devastating like in iraq we had the

roadside bomb the low tech grows. created hell out of havoc with that that's another. example of asymmetric threats that the u.s. military faces in this drone was certainly an asymmetric threat being hacked like that and apparently the company at lockheed martin they knew from the beginning that these drones were had the capability of being hacked that they have this collection that they still allowed them to fly given their ability to be hacked as we have seen and iraq is a possible that these drones can can be can pose a danger to the u.s. well the problem with these drones is they're very good at preserving pilots' lives and everything and they were also supposed to be well if they got shot down you know you would have a captive pilot or a dead pilot or whatever which is good but we can still see there's a big ruckus especially when a high tech stealth drone goes down so there's still

a political problem when these spy planes go down whether they're man or not and all of that always be a problem for the united states and you you can't have no risk and they do need to get intelligence from various countries so they're probably still keep using them even if one gets shot down what they're probably doing i think they have lockheed martin is now fixing the problem that he's being paid to fix the problem that they knew was there to begin with so all of this happens a lot in american defense contracting that it's rather slipshod because there's not a whole lot of competition among the companies there are mostly monopolies and that sort of thing so you don't have the market it's not a traditional market based business like you would see two cell phone commune companies competing with each other the defense department like certain contractors and lockheed martin is the one of the biggest ones and so it gets a little sloppy sometimes because there's no competition or not much competition on

these contracts and you bring up another good point is that this company is going to have to fix these drones now that this glitch. has been identified i mean is it possible that these glitches are there to keep on encouraging more military spending upgrade this equipment and to our replace them well i don't think the company probably purposely put these glitches in there because this hurts their reputation and that sort of thing but still they do make additional money in fixing them or adding to them a lot of times they'll identify other things they could add bells and whistles they could add so these could these weapon systems are often years behind and more expensive and there are a lot of technical glitches simply because you're. at the edge of technology and number two there's no competition as i mentioned so you do have a lot of problems in defense contracts things cost. time way behind schedule and these glitches that do come up and another point i wanted to bring up this is iran

that supposedly hijacked this drone and iran is not considered to be technologically savvy so you know if iran can down one of our drones presumably other countries with more sophisticated cyber hacking abilities can do the same thing oh certainly certainly and i think that's a real worry here and i think that's what that's why this is getting so much attention because iran is known for its you know dazzling technical performance especially in nuclear weapons and that sort of thing they've been kind of ham handed in approaching that but i think you have to give the iranians more credit than a lot of people do for what they have done and you know they haven't had much help and in fact the world is you know against them i'm not saying it's good that they're getting a nuclear weapon or even having these capabilities to down u.s. drones but i think they they do better than than most people think they do exactly

i mean and if this is true that they were able to intercept one of our drones i mean it shows that they are technologically savvy maybe more so than people what they are. right well you can see these stealth aircraft they down one in the kosovo war an f one seventeen it was a plane and everyone was surprised that they could do it there's always some vulnerability that even these style systems have and we've seen that it's the g. global positioning system in this one i think so there may be other glitches in it too but there are vulnerabilities even with very sophisticated weapons and if the other side knows how to bring them down in this case they discovered how to do it of course you can have a real big problem on your hands ok i wanted to bring something else up perhaps another example of technology gone wrong are not advanced enough this whole case of bradley manning he is accused of hacking into a computer and exposing hundreds of thousands of documents in cables and supposedly

he did this by downloading these files are transferring these files on to lady gaga c.d.'s and i mean how is it possible that with our advanced technology that something like this. hack you know a hacker can can go into these computers and. get these documents such of such important magnitude shouldn't there be protections in place to prevent something like that from happening in the first place well they do have protections i think in many cases the government's excessive security in some cases impedes the technological solutions that the private computer companies could bring in to do some of this these things so actually their security requirements are kind of security requirements and if they would let the. competition i think among more competition among private companies and reducing some of these restrictions and everything would probably get them better systems than they're having so i think

there's an opportunity for increased competition especially in computers you can make an argument in military aircraft that you can't get that many people that want to make it. kind of an arcane thing but computers and that's one thing and safeguards computer security certainly many companies do that in the private sector and i think the government needs to deregulate that and make it increase the competition and i think they would have a lot better safeguards in the end if they had actually fewer security requirements and last i just want to ask you after looking at these examples i mean do you think that this exemplifies the fact that there are holes in it in u.s. security and despite spending all this money on this technology that there we all we are that this kind of reveals some of our vulnerability as well i think every country has vulnerabilities the iranians had vulnerabilities they had that computer virus that the u.s. and israel presumably put in there so all countries have vulnerabilities but i

think the problem with the u.s. is we pay exorbitant prices for this equipment is supposed to be the best in the world and you see these basic glitches and we just you know you can't have a perfect system but on the other hand we're paying so much for the stuff and they have such a poor performance and defense contracting on you know being delayed cost overrunning and then these problems that come up that we just. the twenty two aircraft which is a aircraft that goes up and down that had countless failures before they spent a lot of money that's another example of where they really you know that's why people get so disturbed about this because the u.s. is the cadillac military if you will or porsche or military even and compared to other militaries and the taxpayer expects to get for spending all this money expect to get system that work better on time and that don't cost a lot but it doesn't do that certainly raises

a lot of questions ivan thank you so much for weighing in on this that was senior fellow at the end the pendant institute ivan eland. well still ahead on our tape from bradley manning to julian a song which whistleblowers are being hunted down and punished for shining the spotlight on american military misdeeds will speak to see x. cia asset susan longer about why people are less inclined to step forward and speak out. with the us it is always with the un with what it was nobody seems to know. but never a pepper spray to face quite hard the argument that they're being overly dramatic.

to the capital and now because lord mr. well as president obama waging a war against whistleblowers under his administration there has been more prosecutions of whistleblowers than all previous presidents combined pretrial hearings are under way for one of them weekly leaks whistleblower bradley manning the army private is regarded as a hero for releasing a video which showed a u.s. apache helicopter shooting and killing iraqi civilians and two journalists but

manning now faces a slew of charges including aiding the enemy if convicted he faces a life sentence of life behind bars meanwhile wiki leaks editor in chief julian us songe is fighting his extradition amid all this are whistleblowers being silenced in the u.s. and what's the future of whistleblowing in the federal government joining me now to talk more about this is susan lindauer she's a former cia asset and a whistleblower herself welcome susan want to ask you is a whistleblower and being criminalized in the us they are trying to but it's going to fail because the truth truth will out there's no way to suppress the truth the internet is so strong that even if the corporate media will not cover stories it is possible now to get information directly from the net and that is why we keep leaks is being threatened and and prosecuted persecuted so badly because they're trying to scare the internet out of telling these stories and it's not going to work we

are not going to back down i want to ask you because we are seeing kind of a trend the obama administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any other president why do you think that there seems to be this increased push to crack down well i was one of the very first whistleblowers prosecuted i was the second non arab american ever indicted on the patriot act i was indicted after i approached the offices of senator trent lott and john mccain requesting to testify on capitol hill through proper to. anil's about what i knew about iraqi pre-war intelligence i was the chief us asset covering the iraqi embassy at the united nations for about eight years and i knew every detail what i knew was that there was a comprehensive peace framework on the table that would have addressed all of the complaints of the united states and europe and would have given the united states a tremendous peace dividend with preferential contracts for rebuilding iraq after

the sanctions and in all areas and cooperation with anti-terrorism. i knew that we tried to let the f.b.i. come into baghdad and tried to give financial documents on al qaeda to the united states and we wouldn't take it when i requested to testify thirty days later the f.b.i. shows up at my door with an arrest warrant subsequently i was held under indictment for five years and denied the right to a trial i was demonized accused of incompetence on the allegation that i had a deep religious faith which was i do believe in god but it is i have no lunar michele bachmann or rick perry at all but they pretended that i was so that they could escape a trial which would have brought out these facts. and in my experience this is a long term problem the government is using secrecy to protect politicians in power

and they are trying to stop the american people and the world community from having accountability from the leaders and that is the a wrongful use of secrecy. people are much better capable of making better choices and decisions and guiding policy decisions if they have more information sitting on this idea of secrecy want to ask you do you think that the government now eight is growing more secretive and do you think that the government is increasingly becoming less transfer. aaron yes the government is very frightened of the people and they are definitely pursuing their labeling things secrecy under secrecy laws that should never be considered classified at all and if i were bradley manning's defense team i would be arguing that one of the key points is that intelligence is never supposed to protect politicians from exposure of their human failings

foibles mistakes embarrassments that is not what intelligence secrecy is for it is intended to protect existing operations and to stop violence if bradley manning and someone with all due respect to bradley manning supporters sometimes they go a little far when they try to give him credit for the arab spring when they do that they are in fact damning him in the eyes of the military intelligence and i would urge them to stop it is not true it is not accurate and it is causing him problems because if he is provoking violence then they then the military intelligence does have the right to shut him down and to prosecute him however if he is exposing war crimes by american soldiers let's be honest the iraqi people already knew that american soldiers were doing these things they're living through it their families their friends their neighbors they're all suffering these consequences every day

this is a true case of blowback whereby there are consequences for american intel for american soldiers in american military operations and the american people can see that the patient of iraq was going badly but because they were kept in ignorance of the real facts they did not know why so he has not never the argument should be accurately that he did not abet the enemy he was not aiding and abetting the enemy by providing any intelligence to them that they did not already know he. giving power to the american people so that we would understand what why the occupation had failed so badly and by making by bringing us into the full scale scope of knowledge we are then able to give better instructions to our leaders and to demand that we get out of iraq i want to ask you susan because you are a whistleblower yourself. how easy is it for someone to blow the

whistle anonymously in the government if someone does know about wrongdoing and wants to report it wants to take action how can they disclose this information but at the same time protect themselves or is even possible to do that or are media outlets like wiki leaks one of the only venues to do this these days i will tell you that i believe deeply that if i had had we keep the leaks before the war we could have stopped the iraq war i had information about the comprehensive peace framework that the public still to this day does not know about we did know about nine eleven and that's a whole nother subject we but there was a comprehensive peace framework and if i had been able to give that to wiki leaks the whole public whole international community would have been. would have had arguments for stopping it and could have we could have we could have prevented the whole thing we need. the problem is is that we are. we

must have public disco disclosure in order to bring this to in order to stop bad policy move and lastly susan want to ask you amid everything that is happening the trials the extradition. what is the future of wesel blowing in the u.s. it's more imperative now than ever because of your previous question the government is afraid of the people we're moving more toward secrecy that does not affect national security it only exists to protect the politicians from. exposure and accountability to the people and if the if you can hide the facts from the people a lot of bad decisions will be protected at exactly a point where if you were exposed were public exposure and public debate and and discussion would what shut them would shut down bad ideas well thank you thank you so much for weighing in on this that was former cia asset susan

lindauer. and we are going to take a short break but coming up syria's opposition is stirring the pot and demanding arab military intervention so are the drums of war once again beating in the middle east are if he is out on the ground now. at first very much is burning gerard's right right i mean it's like a derivative of actual pepper it's a food product essentially. much stronger than anything you buy off. our rules of the arms were stronger than any kind of over put you know. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something

else here's some other part of it and realize that everything. you don't. well syria growing isolated under sanctions from the arab states the us. the same sions our response to syria's crackdown on anti-government protesters the opposition now calling for arab military intervention to protect them from government security forces the violence there is taking a toll holmes is being described as a city on the brink of a civil war where some of syria's fiercest fighting has broken out r.t. sarah ferguson on the ground to bring us the latest we're hearing the city of homs and you can hear heavy gunfire in the background it's really hard to share insurance as the civilian population here lives here as we call it wait

a month often months they've had to endure this conflict. the ongoing violence is taking its toll. there are neighborhoods that are being suffocated it's wrong to by armed groups there are many people who could not have had enough who did we do you to design this homes as being described this is the green incident where some of the series this is fighting his break you know. driving through the streets there are clear signs of conflict and window panes and then. there's a heavy military presence we went to visit some of the areas where clinton traded fighting was continuing to dangerous to visit. those you know the areas of the fifty day. moving the backdrop of those. you can see the children playing in the homes this is the one of the major concerns is as this conflict

continues for the safety of the civilians to continue living here in the situation in homes right now is far more complex than simply one of the opposition against the regime a deep seated sectarian conflicts with their heads. from the very beginning a home. because their numbers. are much more than. the military funeral held yesterday gets under way for five soldiers killed by what the government says is an increase in the militant movement and on the same day the pool's from the opposition the harrowing accounts the civilian deaths around the country. make serious decision to allow the arab league to send observers the more important this is naturally we want. to. and in the same time preserve our sovereignty so really it depends on the intention do they really want

to help syria or corners. with the decision by the main opposition outside the us and see. who in your position inside the country has welcomed in the north. we hope it's going to be implemented on the ground as it stated in the protocol and we remain completely against international intervention it would lead the country into destruction. with a fractious opposition and rising death toll with facts and information still very hard to verify even on the ground the observers arrival here in syria will be an important step but it's going to be just one of many more that we need to follow and seeing the show that no more lies. the city of homs. or the capital account is just minutes away on our team here is lauren lester with a preview of what's coming up. hi lives well i don't know if you talked about this

in your show but we know that the japanese government is going to be buying u.s. f. thirty five that's what they have decided upon for their air defense now the u.s. heralded this we saw the d.o.d. tweeting earlier today how pleased it is because of this now also on the same token we see japan looking at possibly buying chinese debt as a way to improve ties with that country so liz do you see where i'm going with this we are going to take a look at debt and how that's used in diplomacy and weapons how that's used for diplomacy and which one is the better what in this day and age when we see so many people comparing debt to death that's one of the things we're going to tackle today that and weapons that is coming of the capital account all that does it for now for more of the stories we covered go to artsy dot com slash usa and check out our youtube page it's youtube dot com slash r t america you can also follow me on twitter liz wall the capital account with lauren lyster is up next.

wealthy british scientists are. not on the tireless. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cars or there are no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars or report on. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

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good afternoon and welcome to capital account i'm more in lister here in washington d.c. and japan's government will purchase f. thirty five storm u.s. contractor lockheed martin as its new air defense fighter the u.s. is pleased meanwhile japan reportedly mole's buying chinese debt to improve ties with that country so which shows more love in scores more diplomatic points buying debt or buying weapons we'll examine also today the bipolar markets rally reportedly as euro zone tensions ease how is this going for easing though greece's .