As the US-led campaign against the Islamic State grinds on, China has unexpectedly offered to help in the war effort, Najmeh Bozorgmehr and Lucy Hornby report for the Financial Times. 

Wang Yi, China's foreign minister, has offered to help the Iraqi military defeat the militant group by providing support for ongoing air strikes. However, Chinese assistance would come unilaterally and outside of the framework of the US-led coalition against the Islamic State. 

“[Mr Wang] said, our policy does not allow us to get involved in the international coalition,” Ibrahim Jafari, Iraq's foreign minister who was in talks with Yi, told the Financial Times.

China's unwillingness to join the coalition may make its military contributions to the war effort similar to Iran's. Iran has started conducting airstrikes against the Islamic State along the Iraq-Iran border without membership in or even clear coordination with the US-led coalition. 

China's interest in Iraq is largely driven by Beijing's investment in the Iraqi oil industry. According to the Financial Times, China is the largest foreign investor in Iraq's oil sector. Beijing draws one-fifth of its oil from the country and about 10,000 Chinese nationals were working in Iraqi oil fields before the Islamic State's blitz across the country this past summer.

Chinese intervention in Iraq would further demonstrate Beijing's willingness to flex its military muscle in order to shield its economic interests abroad. In September, China announced it would deploy 700 infantry soldiers to aid the United Nations mission in war-torn South Sudan. It is suspected that China has sent the soldiers to protect oil interests, as China receives 5% of its crude oil from South Sudan. 

China is also becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the Islamic State's existence and may view the group as a national-security treat. An estimated 300 Chinese nationals, largely from the country's Uighur minority, are believed to be fighting alongside the militants.

The 300 extremists are thought to have been members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a group based in China's Xinjiang province that has carried out attacks throughout China. 

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A former CIA spy has written a commentary for Politico in which she slams the agency for being dysfunctional and lying to the public about the war in Iraq.

Lindsay Moran, who left the CIA in 2003 after five years there and later wrote a book about her experiences, wrote that she wishes she'd "written a braver kind of book" that exposed the wrongdoing she saw at the agency.

One interesting tidbit from her article describes what she learned from Iraqi experts when she was transferred into Iraqi Operations at CIA headquarters.

She writes:

1)  We didn’t have any viable recruited human sources in Iraq, or even Iraqi agents elsewhere, as we led up to the invasion.

2)  We had no evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

3)  There was no link whatsoever between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were both evil, maniacal men, yes, but there was no love lost between them. And of the two, bin Laden, whom we had yet to find, posed the far graver threat to America.

Moran accuses the government of "lying to the American public about Iraq," and she has a strong point. 

In the leadup to the 2003 invasion, the American people were led to believe that the US found evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

And President George W. Bush linked Hussein to Al Qaeda, telling Americans that "you can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." These factors were billed as the entire premise of the US going to war.

The war on terror eventually devolved into what now seems like an unwinnable conflict, hobbled in large part by the agency's lack of human intelligence (HUMIT) on the ground.

CIA agents have reportedly been discouraged from speaking out about apparent wrongdoings at the agency, according to Moran.

She wrote that a certain passage of the US Senate report on the CIA torturing detainees "saddened me as it reminded me of the many dedicated professionals at the Agency, some who no doubt tried to question the efficacy, morality and/or legality of the program, but who were cowed into silence."

"It also brought to mind an occasion when the person who recruited me to join the CIA said: 'If you ever see anything you think is just plain wrong, you need to tell your superiors,'" she wrote. "He should have added: 'So that we can make sure the Office of Security has its eye on you.'"

Moran eventually became disillusioned and left the CIA. She wrote, "I knew that to stay with the Agency would be to end up on the wrong side of history."

Read her full account at Politico >

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During the US campaign in Vietnam, over a thousand service members were classified as prisoners or war (POW) or missing in action (MIA). Generally, those who went missing were killed or captured by the North Vietnamese.

But in a few instances, as Robert Beckhusen recounts at War is Boring, Americans were captured or went MIA when their planes were shot down in or near Chinese airspace. Beijing's role in the conflict is becoming increasingly apparent as the NSA releases signals intelligence (SIGINT) documents from Vietnam and Southeast Asia. 

For instance, on September 2o, 1965, US Air Force Captain Philip E. Smith accidentally flew over the Chinese island of Hainan after his navigation equipment stopped working and he became lost in heavy cloud cover. A Chinese MiG-19 intercepted and shot down Philips due to his violation of Chinese territory. 

According to NSA SIGINT reports, intercepted Chinese communications indicated that Beijing knew the identity of the plane that had been shot down and even recovered its pilot. One Chinese message stated that "On 20 September 1965, the Chinese Naval Air Force brought down a US imperialist F-104 fighter plane at one stroke over Haikou area of Hainan Island, capturing alive the pilot, a US captain."

In another incident, Chinese MiGs were credited with the downing of a US aircraft, leading to the capture of Lt. Junior Grade Terrence M. Murphy and a second pilot whose name is redacted. The US aircraft downed one Chinese MiG before crashing into an unidentified body of water with both pilots' fates unknown. 

At the time, Communist China and the US did not have diplomatic relations since the US considered nationalist Taiwan to be China's sole legitimate government. This may have made these confrontations more likely and made it harder for the US to negotiate for captured personnel by keeping the US and China on a mutually hostile footing.

The US also entered the war in Vietnam with the partial objective of countering the influence of China in a country that seemed ripe for a communist takeover. The direct confrontations the NSA documents were perhaps a logical consequence of the US's involvement in the conflict at all.

In an analysis of both incidents, the NSA released a report on Dec. 11 titled "Shootdown of US Aircraft Over Hainan Island." The report notes that "as many as ten CHICOM fighters [redacted] reacted to the hostile aircraft over Hainan Island. [redacted] this reaction to have been an aggressive one clearly intent upon downing the hostile intruder." 

The report goes on to mention that the shoot down was a sharp departure from past policy, possibly signaling a more active Chinese policy of engagement against the US in the region. 

As China began to play a more active role against US aircraft in the region, Beijing also captured American ground troops in Laos, according to the report "Communist Chinese Capture American Soldiers in Laos; Laotian Refugee Reports." 

The report states that "[t]he Red Chinese went back to Shwe Hsaing ((B)), Laos and encamped at a site six miles from Shwe Hsaing. It is reported that (B percent Red) Chinese from that encampment (B percent captured) two American soldiers."

The NSA compiled the documents from over 7.5 million reports in the early 1990s in a bid to "assist in resolving the POW/MIA issue." The agency is now releasing a trove of 1,600 of these documents over the coming months and released the first 170 of them on Dec. 11. 

SEE ALSO: The incredible history of the Navy SEALs, America's most elite warriors

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The wildly popular video game "Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare" takes place 40 years in the future but supposedly includes only weapons and gear based on current research.

We called up the developers at Activision's Sledgehammer Games to ask for the details.

"Because the experience would be pushing people's boundaries of what is believable, we wanted to show that the research was real," said Michael Condrey, co-founder and studio head at Sledgehammer.

It became a hard fast rule that if the team couldn't point to R&D, prototypes, or at least concepts for their fictional weapons, the creators wouldn't let it into the game. Their sources included The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an R&D group based out of West Point, university researchers, and even arms vendors.

A popular basic weapon in the game is the TAC-19, a directed-energy, pump-action shotgun that shoots a concussive pulse and is highly effective at short range.

Directed-energy weapons are a category that is getting lots of research right now.

"We know today that they're using compressed sound, compressed air, lots of non-lethal forms of directed energy," Condrey said.

The long range acoustic device, or LRAD, has already been used at least once to deter advancing pirates off the coast of Somalia. The weapon, commissioned after Al Qaeda's attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, can cause permanent damage to the hearing of its targets more than 300 yards away.

Granted, the LRAD doesn't harness sound in a ballistic capacity, but a starting investment (and a working weapon) in sonic energy was enough to justify speculation by the game developers. In fact, said Condrey, they feel they've been a bit conservative with their guesswork.

"Our game is 2054, it's 40 years out. These things are way, way closer than that," he said.

Then there's the railgun, a very powerful turret players take control of aboard an aircraft carrier in one of Call of Duty's single-player set pieces.

This weapon definitely does have a future.

The US Navy currently has a high-speed railgun that fires projectiles at a speed of 5,000 miles an hour. That velocity makes the railgun's projectiles devastating even without the explosives or chemical propellants of conventional weapons. The weapon, which is electric, cuts ammunication costs significantly while also reaching a powerful new kind of destruction.

The current model was tested on land earlier this year and is set for test aboard a cargo ship in 2016.

"Technology is moving hyper fast today, so the stuff we were finding as prototypes three years ago are real today," said Condrey.

Sledgehammer talked with another source about a world in which an occupying force's ammunition would be manufactured or printed in the theater of war rather than shipped overseas.

"The supply chain management of modern military missions is really expensive and arduous," said Condrey.

Indeed, the Defense Logistics Agency — which sources and ships the military's food, fuel, weapons and more — has a multi-billion dollar budget and spends the most in times of war. The department's director once projected that the US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan would be accompanied by a $16 billion dollar drop in its spending, so technology that takes on some of the material burden of war could save a lot of money.

But Call of Duty's IMR (or integrated munitions rifle) goes a step beyond temporary factories that use local resources, like sand, to make bullets. This assault rifle prints its ammunition over time.

"It's happening in the weapon," said Condrey. "There's a raw material canister on the weapon that prints as you need them."

Some of the game's craziest technology isn't found in its guns.

"It's not just the weapons and the bullets and the grenades," said Condrey. "The vehicle technology that we show, like the hovercraft technology, the augmented reality ... [it] was all driven from this idea that we wanted to see the research today."

One of the features standing front and center in the game's commercials is the the pair of mag (or magnetic) gloves that allow players to stick to metal surfaces and scale buildings.

"We were talking to one of the local university programs here, and they weren't developing a military application, but they were developing this concept," said Condrey. "They were studying geckos and crickets and cockroaches to figure out: how do things scale vertical?"

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst explored the gecko's case (and DARPA has funded some of the team's research into synthetic adhesives). Applying what they've learned — the lizard sticks thanks to millions of splitting, microscopic hairs under its feet — they've made a grippy wonder material called Geckskin.

Skip to the video's 2:20 mark and you won't have trouble picturing the potential of Geckskin gloves (or socks).

Naturally, Call of Duty's gloves aren't surface-agnostic — since they leverage magnetic force, its wearers can only stick to metals.

As in the case of directed energy, the game makers took imaginitive license from the starting point of a general research path rather than a specific precursor.

The source material provided stronger groundwork in the case of hoverbikes. A longtime staple of science fiction franchises (and the new Star Wars trailer), vehicles that float above the ground instead of using traction mechanisms like tires and treads have a few working prototypes.  

Chris Malloy, an engineer, is behind one of the more exciting ones, simply named the Hoverbike. Malloy is transferring some of the technology from a smaller, working drone he's also created.

Saddled with a test dummy of sorts, a small-scale prototype of the Hoverbike clears some serious height, as opposed to staying aloft just above the ground.

In fact, the vehicle's site bills the Hoverbike as a suitable replacement for one-man helicopters and cites interest from the US Army and Lockheed Martin.

The fact that the game's fiction was based on reality isn't just a way to help those who play the game suspend their disbelief; it also gave Sledgehammer Games a narrative thread to present to franchise fans while they were hyping the game.

Among a series of "developer diary" videos ahead of its release was one on the game's depiction of future technology.

"It's got to be relatable, got to be believable, but we are taking it to an extent that makes it also fun and new," said Glen Schofield, general manager and co-founder of Sledgehammer Games.

At the same time, Call of Duty's fanbase is so loyal that the developers might be able to throw them just about anything. Competitive players don't pick up the game for the storyline, they do it for the twitchy action the shooter presents them with. Fortunately, futuristic technology — making everything on the battlefield faster, stronger, and hyper-connected — only multiplies that appeal.

SEE ALSO: 15 ways video games make you smarter and healthier

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Despite the heartbreak and gruesomeness that often accompanies war, there's no doubt that the subject is fascinating to read about.

Michael Inman, Curator of Rare Books at The New York Public Library, and curator of the current exhibition Over Here: WWI and the Fight for the American Mind, picked out the best nonfiction books about war.

These books are a selection of scholarly histories, journalism, first-hand accounts, and works on the tactics and theory of warfare from the crusades to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land" by Thomas Asbridge

The battle for the holy land launched in 1095, and pinned Catholics and Muslims against each other for the next almost 200 years. Asbridge puts the conflict in context, from Pope Urban II's call upon "Latin Europe" to take a stand against the Muslims to the Muslim reclamation of the holy land.

Asbridge lays out a clear timeline of events, and offers a compelling retelling of the crusades that reads nothing like a history textbook.

Buy the book here »

"This Kind of War" by T. R. Fehrenbach

Taking place in part along the 38th parallel where American and North Korean troops faced off, "This Kind of War" is a profound portrayal of the Korean War which includes maps and photographs to illustrate a human perspective on war.

First published in 1963, "This Kind of War" has become a classic in military history books.

Buy the book here »

"Thank You for Your Service" by David Finkel

A MacArthur fellow and Washington Post journalist, Finkel takes an in-depth look at some of the psychological issues, including PTSD, that plagued many of his fellow battalion members after returning from service in the Iraq war.

A sequel, if you will, to his book "The Good Soldiers,""Thank You for Your Service," presents snapshots of Finkel's battalion mates post-war, and how their service has affected their lives and loved ones.

Buy the book here »

The most devastating cyberattack ever on a US-based company wasn't an act of war, according to established guidelines of cyberwarfare.

NATO's Tallinn Manual defines an act of cyberwar that permits a military response as "a cyber operation, whether offensive or defensive, that is reasonably expected to cause injury or death to persons or damage or destruction to objects."

The world after the Sony Pictures hack may require a new perspective.

Dave Aitel, a former NSA research scientist and CEO of the cybersecurity firm Immunity, argues that while the attack "doesn’t meet the threshold for a response by our military," it should still be viewed as an act of war.

"We need to change the way we think about cyberattacks,"Aitel told Business Insider in an email. "In many cases, these aren’t 'crimes' — they’re acts of war. A non-kinetic attack (i.e., destructive malware, destructive computer network attack) that causes just as much damage as a kinetic attack (i.e., a missile or bomb) should be viewed at the same level of urgency and need for US government/military response."

Aitel, one of the preeminent experts on cybersecurity, said "there should at least be firm diplomatic repercussions for these types of attacks. After all, what would we have done if they’d blown up the buildings at Sony Pictures but not caused any casualties? That is the context these attacks need to be put in."

He argues that if the US believes North Korea directed the attack — which he does — then it is critical that policymakers formulate offensive and defensive responses carefully.

"We’re obviously not going to bomb North Korea, but could we launch a cyberattack against their institutions? Could we shut down their Internet access?" Aitel wrote. "From a technical standpoint, we could do all of those things, but it would likely lead to an escalation by both sides."

Many of the offensive options are problematic given "the technical complexities involved, legislative challenges, or the international escalation they will generate," Aitel said.

Nevertheless, one proactive move the US should consider, according to Aitel, is "declaring certain cyberattacks terrorist acts and the groups behind them terrorists," which would "set in motion a wider range of legal authority, US government/military resources, and international options."

The new legal framework "would also make it harder for hacker networks to operate in key international areas, as it would require a greater level of cooperation from US allies, EU members, NATO, G20, etc.," in addition to making it easier "for the US government to target the funding of not only the hacker networks, but any companies or organizations that aid them, even in incidentally or unknowingly."

Since 9/11, the US has officially considered acts of terrorism to be acts of war. Aitel's suggestion is to update this understanding so that it includes what would be "cyberterrorists" committing cyber acts of war, like the one that hit Sony.

"Frankly, we need to start talking about what role and responsibility the US government should have in securing US companies from cyberattacks," Aitel said.

One way to bolster US cyber defenses, according to Aitel, would be for the government to provide companies "with the option to have their web hosting and security provided by the federal government itself."

And even though turning over the "IT keys" to the government would be an unpopular idea — especially after the revelations by Edward Snowden — Aitel calls it "the most effective model the cybersecurity industry would have to protect against state-sponsored attacks like the one that hit Sony or the millions of cyber-espionage attacks that occur yearly against other key US entities."

That's because a critical attack on a US-based company would be treated, legally and politically, as an attack on the US itself.

"In this scenario, the full resources and capabilities of the US government’s intelligence, law enforcement and military apparatuses would be leveraged to protect US companies from overseas attacks," Aitel said. "The US government doesn’t want to share classified information with companies directly; but it could use this information to protect them. Hosting providers like Amazon, Microsoft, Rackspace, Google, etc., would basically become the new defense contractor."

An Unprecedented Attack

The Sony hack is "the first major attack on a US company to use a highly destructive class of malicious software that is designed to make computer networks unable to operate."

An estimated 11 terabytes of information was taken, revealing information including scripts, unreleased movies, actor compensation, and off-the-cuff conversations among high-level Sony executives.

The attack's political motives, along with Sony's public humiliation, raise the specter of an entirely new phenomena: hacks that combine "national rivalry, hacker ideology, performance art, ritual humiliation and data combustion, culminating in complete corporate chaos," as John Gapper explained in the Financial Times.

The malware used reportedly bore traces of Korean language packs and resembled software deployed during previous attacks against South Korean targets. This reinforces the idea that North Korea or its supporters hacked Sony as retribution for the release of "The Interview," a film in which James Franco and Seth Rogen play talk-show hosts sent into the country to assassinate Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un.

"It is extremely likely that North Korea is pretending to be an 'Anonymous'-like group, which is what nation-states tend to do to obfuscate their role in an attack," Aitel said, adding that analysis by the FBI and the US intelligence community to identify the source of attacks "is not based on court of law facts, but intelligence they've collected over a number of years."

Further, it makes complete sense for North Korea to use proxies.

"If North Korea was to come out and state that it was them, they would be able to sued in international court," Aitel explained, "but because they know the US isn't going to burn its sources and methods, as long as they pretend to be an Anonymous-like group they can maintain a veneer of innocence. This is also something Iran does, with #OpIsrael Anonymous campaigns and the Syrian Electronic Army. These are both operated out of Tehran."

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Competition in the Arctic is heating up as Denmark has laid claim to the North Pole.

Copenhagen is citing scientific data showing Greenland, which is an autonomous country within Denmark, sits atop a continental shelf connected to a ridge beneath the Arctic Circle. Danish Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard said this new information provides the country with a claim to the region and, more critically, the energy resources thought to be in the Arctic, the Associated Press reports. 

Lidegaard said Denmark will take its claim to the UN for an eventual decision on the control of the area. 

"This is a historical milestone for Denmark and many others as the area has an impact on the lives of lot of people. After the UN panel had taken a decision based on scientific data, comes a political process," Lidegaard told the AP on Friday. "I expect this to take some time. An answer will come in a few decades."

The US currently estimates that the Arctic sea bed could contain 15% of the earth's remaining oil, along with 30% of the planet's natural gas and 20% of its liquefied natural gas. Whichever country is able to successfully claim the Arctic would have the right to extract these resources. 

Currently, five countries lay competing claims to the Arctic: the US, Canada, Russia, Norway, and Denmark. Each of these nations border the Arctic Ocean and are free to pursue their own policies within their declared Arctic boundaries. 

By claiming that a ridge connects Greenland to the Arctic sea bed, Denmark could hypothetically lay complete claim to any mineral and petroleum wealth that could be discovered on the ocean floor. 

Beyond natural wealth, whichever country controls the Arctic can claim control over the Northern Sea Route. Once more of the polar sea ice melts, shipping over the top of the world will become the quickest way to move goods around the world. The route, which Russia wants to control, would take only 35 days to ship from Europe to Asia compared to the 48-day journey between the continents via the Suez Canal. 

In trying to lay claim to the Arctic, Denmark will likely find itself butting heads with Russia.

Moscow has also claimed that, based on scientific research, a Russian continental shelf extends further below the pole than previously contended. Russia's natural resources minister said that Moscow would seek to expand its Arctic borders by 1.2 million square kilometers through the United Nations. 

Russia is simultaneously embarking upon a rapid militarization of its Arctic coast. Moscow has opened its third military port, out of a proposed 16, along the Arctic and by 2025, Russia hopes to also have 13 airfields and ten air-defense radar stations in the region. 

SEE ALSO: The most isolated US military base could get a lot more important

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President Barack Obama joked on Monday that US troops are essentially "Santa in fatigues" because of their dedication to serving their country.

"We're free and safe and secure over here because you're willing to serve over there. ... You never stop serving. You never stop giving," Obama said before quipping, "You guys are like Santa in fatigues."

Obama's humor earned some polite chuckles from the audience at the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey.

His next joke, however, earned a much more enthusiastic response. 

"Although I'll bet one of those C-130's is a little more efficient than Santa's sleigh," he added.

View video of Obama's full speech, via ABC News.

(via Breitbart)

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) is suspending its investigation into the conflict in Darfur in western Sudan, which has killed 300,000 and displaced some 2.3 million more. 

As The Guardian reported, ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced on Dec. 12 that "she was halting investigations to 'shift resources to other urgent cases,'" and "criticized the UN security council" for failing to push for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

Bashir's indictment for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity at the ICC in 2009 was a watershed moment in international politics. The indictment was the court's first of a sitting head of state. As far as the court was now concerned, no individual was beyond the reach of international law. Accountability for human rights abuses couldn't wait until a war's conclusion.

The move was politically consequential as well. The indictment obligated 122 ICC member states to arrest Bashir if he ever set foot on their territory. It also meant the ICC saw its role as going far beyond the retrospective application of justice. In ordering Bashir's arrest, the court took an outwardly activist role in a simmering conflict with international dimensions, establishing a precedent wherein a nascent global legal system could be used as an instrument to end atrocities as they unfolded and deter atrocities before they began.

But the legacy of the indictment has been far different from what the Court and its supporters imagined.

Bashir's indictment rallied portions of Sudan's population around him and made him a focal point for leaders who bristled at the idea of a distant, Europe-based institution infringing on the sovereignty of African states.

A series of countries failed to arrest Bashir when he visited, including Kenya, Qatar, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Every visit to an ICC member state weakened the indictment and with it the authority of the court. Ironically, the indictment proved the court wasn't practically capable of enforcing its orders and that some of its membership did not want to enforce them at all.

The indictment did impose strict limits on Bashir's travel. It managed to keep up Khartoum's isolation and might have served as a source of international leverage over the regime when it decided to allow the country's oil-rich southern third to peacefully secede in July 2011, creating the independent state of South Sudan. But the indictment didn't end the war in Darfur or change the regime's behavior in the region. The conflict continues to this day, with 400,000 people displaced by violence in 2013 alone.

The Bashir indictment eroded the ICC's authority while yielding few tangible benefits in return. If the Court demonstrated that any sitting head of state was subject to its orders, Bashir countered with an example of how time and stubbornness and the international community's actual priorities could completely negate that authority. The countries that allowed Bashir to visit didn't arrest him because they didn't believe it was in their interest to do so — regardless of the commands emanating from a courtroom in another continent.

The end of the ICC's Darfur investigation should dispel the fantasy that wars can be settled by a distant collection of jurists, or that even the boldest of moral statements can be a replacement for coherent policy. Reducing the Darfur conflict to a narrowly legalistic formula may actually have made it more difficult for international actors to pursue a peace process in good faith. And the fact that the indictment meant that Bashir would face charges regardless of how the conflict's resolution might have skewed the regime's incentives and made a resolution less likely.

Bashir is deserving of sanction — he's been in power for a quarter-century and has one of the longest rap-sheets of any dictator alive.

But the solutions to the problems his regime poses don't reside in any existing legal system. And the cause of peace in his troubled country was hardly aided by delusions to the contrary.

SEE ALSO: The world's worst dictator came to power 25 years ago today

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President Barack Obama suggested the US military's C-130 transport aircraft is "a little more efficient than Santa's sleigh" in a speech at the the Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey on Monday. However, according to data provided to Business Insider by the North American Aerospace Defense Command's Santa tracking program, Obama's assessment of Santa's technical capabilities was clearly incorrect. 

Business Insider reached out to NORAD, which is a bi-national program run by the US and Canadian governments, shortly after the president's speech. A spokesperson provided us with this statement on his remarks. 

"We really don't want to compare Santa's sleigh to a C-130, but what we can confirm is that Santa's sleigh is a versatile, all weather, multi-purpose, vertical short-take-off and landing vehicle," the spokesperson said. "It is capable of traveling vast distances without refueling and is deployed, as far as we know, only on December 24th (and sometimes briefly for a test flight about a month before Christmas)."

Though the spokesperson declined to provide their own comparison of the C-130 and Santa's sleigh, they gave us all of their "technical data" on the sleigh. Based on this information, it's abundantly clear Santa's sleigh is far faster and capable of carrying a much larger payload.

According to NORAD's fact sheet, the top speed of Santa's sleigh is "faster than starlight." NASA lists the speed of light as approximately 186,000 miles per second. On the other hand, the Air Force fact sheet on the C-130 notes its maximum speed is just 417 miles per hour. NORAD also said Santa's sleigh can carry about 60,000 tons while the maximum allowable payload of a C-130 is 44,000 pounds. The White House did not respond to a request from Business Insider about the president's incorrect claims about the sleigh.

NORAD's technical data on Santa's sleigh contains several other interesting tidbits. It notes the sleigh is armed with "purely defensive" antlers. NORAD also claims Santa weighs 260 pounds at the beginning of his annual mission and gains 1,000 pounds during his flight.

Read NORAD's complete "technical data" on Santa's sleigh below. 

SEE ALSO: Here's how much Santa should be paid for his work this year

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Over the course of a career, military pilots can spend several thousand hours in the cockpit.

Those that do so in a specific model earn embroidered patches to honor their milestones: 1,000 hours, 2,000 hours,etc.

In the case of the F-16 Fighting Falcon, it's likely that only around 50 pilots have ever flown beyond the 4,000 mark.

F-16.net is a popular website in the F-16 community that keeps track of who these people are. "Is our list of about 50 pilots over 4,000 hours complete? Probably not," one of F-16.net's editors, Jon Somerville, wrote in an email to Business Insider. Many pilots simply don't file their hours.

Still, he thinks 50 pilots sounds about right for the size of the F-16's 4,000 hour club.

Jack Stewart is a pilot for an Air Force reserve squadron. He's reached nearly 2,000 in an F-18 Hornet, and wrote that getting there takes "at least three or four tours"– which aren't necessarily combat tours — or around 10 years in the cockpit. Only one of his squadron's pilots has logged over 4,000 hours, but a patch for any milestone is something pilots wear with pride.

CW Lemoine, a part-time reserve pilot, took three years and a tour in Iraq to clear 1,000 hours in an F-16, "and that was just flying my butt off. Iraq alone was like 60, 70 hours in two months. The average sortie is anywhere from four to eight hours."

During those long sorties, Lemoine said he had to get refueled in flight just about every hour.

But in his opinion, the raw number of hours a pilot has spent in flight isn't the best indicator of skill. "A thousand hours could mean you were doing cross countries every other week," he said. "The credibility becomes knowledge in the aircraft; being an astute tactician; being able to perform." Rank — whether a pilot is a flight lead or a wingman — is what carries the real weight.

That said, Lemoine added that no one logs several thousand hours on one type of aircraft without serious proficiency and years on the job.

"These were the guys who flew the F-16 back when it was brand new, back in the early '80s," Lemoine said. "And that's kinda how they did it. They stayed in the F-16 their entire career."

As for Lemoine, he recently switched over to the F-18, so his next patch may be a few years off. "I've got 250 hours in the Hornet. It's pretty much like starting over," he says as he laughs.

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Iranian hackers were behind the shutdown of a major Las Vegas casino in February, wiping hard drives clean and stealing some customers' Social Security and driver's license numbers in the process, Businessweek reported on Thursday.

The casino's websites were also defaced with images condemning Las Vegas Sand Corp. owner, billionaire Sheldon Adelson, in retaliation to comments he had made about using nuclear weapons on Iran, NBC reported.

Businessweek notes that the incident was likely the first time hackers had targeted American corporate infrastructure on a large scale with the primary goal of destroying it (as opposed to stealing from it or spying on it). The only other comparable incident is the recent hack of Sony Pictures, which at least one expert argues was an act of war.

Las Vegas Sands Corp. is just one of many corporations to suffer a major data breach at the hands of cyber criminals. Target, Neiman Marcus, and Home Depot were all attacked this year, as were Snapchat and Dropbox.

According to a reportreleased by US cyber security firm Cylance entitled "Operation Cleaver," Iran has been developing its cyber technology for the sake of military readiness, so that in the event of a conflict it has the ability to shut down core facilities around the world.

The FBI recently warned US businesses to be wary of Iran's sophisticated hacking operations, which have targeted defense contractors, energy firms, educational institutions and other critical infrastructure organizations in 16 countries.

Check out the report at BusinessWeek >

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Taliban gunmen in Peshawar, Pakistan took hundreds of students and teachers hostage on Tuesday in a school in the northwestern city of Peshawar, military officials said.

At least 126 people, mostly students, children, and teachers from the school, have been killed in the attack, a Pakistan official told the Associated Press.

Dozens more have reportedly been wounded.

A Reuters journalist at the scene heard heavy gunfire from inside the school as soldiers surrounded it. Helicopters swooped overhead and a fleet of ambulances ferried wounded children to hospital.

The Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar said the hospital had received the bodies of three students and was treating 28 injured students and two male teachers.

"Many are in the operation theater now in critical condition, undergoing treatment," said hospital official Ejaz Khan.

Military officials at the scene said at least six armed men had entered the military-run Army Public School. About 500 students and teachers were believed to be inside.

The armed men were reportedly wearing security uniforms, according to BBC.

"We were standing outside the school and firing suddenly started and there was chaos everywhere and the screams of children and teachers," said Jamshed Khan, a school bus driver.

A teacher said that the attackers targeted the school while exams were taking place.

"After half an hour of the attack, the army came and sealed the school," a teacher told a private television channel outside the besieged school.

"We were in the examination hall when the attack took place," he said. "Now the army men are clearing the classes one by one."

A police officer told The New York Times that the gunmen came into the school and started shooting at random.

Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani told Reuters his group was responsible for the attack.

"Our suicide bombers have entered the school, they have instructions not to harm the children, but to target the army personnel," he said.

"It's a revenge attack for the army offensive in North Waziristan," he said, referring to an anti-Taliban military offensive that began in June.

A wounded student told the Times that a group of students in the school were receiving first-aid training from Pakistani army medics when the attack began.

(Reuters Reporting by Jibran Ahmad; Writing by Katharine Houreld; Editing by Robert Birsel and Mike Collett-White)

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Vladimir Putin has been named Russia's "Man Of The Year" for the 15th time in a row, Interfax news agency reports.

The Russian president won by a landslide, claiming 68% of votes. The runner-up got only 4% of votes. The poll was conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation and included 1,500 respondents in 43 regions of Russia, according to Interfax.

The propaganda channel Russia Today said of the poll: "The public affirmation about Vladimir Putin's major role in the life of the country looks even more decisive considering researchers within the same poll asked who among scientists and artists was worthy of the mantle. Some 75 percent of Russians said they had no answer to this question."

RT also notes that Putin's approval rating reached a record high this year.

Meanwhile, the Russian economy is in crisis as oil and the ruble crash.

Putin invaded the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in March and blamed Ukraine for a commercial airline crash in July that was caused by Russian-backed rebels mistakenly shooting down the plane.

Putin has won the "Man Of The Year" title every year since he rose to power in 1999, when he was appointed prime minister.

RT cites an earlier interview with Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov in which he says people's love for Putin is a manifestation of their love for Russia.

NOW WATCH: This Animated Map Shows How European Languages Evolved

SEE ALSO: VLADIMIR'S EMPIRE: A Look At Back At Putin's Rise To Power

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The ruble is in crisis less than a day after a shocking Russian central-bank rate hike. And Russian President Vladimir Putin has to find a way to explain the mess.

"Putin now needs scapegoats: external and internal," geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer told Business Insider over email. "Everything from the US and Europe for sanctions, Ukraine for the fight against Russia, 'speculators' for the run on the Russian economy, ineffectual policymakers — PM Medvedev surely at risk here too."

Bremmer noted that Russian media tends to parrot Putin's narrative, which helps maintain the president's high popularity at home. As a result, he says, "there's no chance you see serious discussion of mistakes made by Putin that helped cause this crisis."

In March, Putin annexed Crimea and incited a war by giving support to pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of Ukraine. After the West brought sanctions, Putin doubled down by sending more men and weapons into eastern Ukraine while saying the sanctions were a plot to oust him from power.

In the meantime, more than $85 billion in capital and droves of talented people have left Russia this year, and the country's economy is headed for a prolonged recession. 

Russia officially a submerging market.

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) December 16, 2014

Bremmer said that capital controls — i.e., protections against Russian citizens and businesses withdrawing money from banks — are "looking more likely in this environment."

In any case, the simultaneous crashes of oil prices and the ruble have challenged Putin to either back down to get some relief, or double down again.

"The best thing for the economy — short of an oil price rise, which the Kremlin has no influence over — would be to negotiate a settlement with Ukraine and climbdown the escalation," Bremmer said. "But that flies against what's actually sustained Putin's popularity ... and the primary driver of his entire strategy for the past year."

Bremmer doesn't see Putin changing his ways.

"That's why this is a geopolitical problem more than an economic one," he said. "Oil at $50 is a serious problem for Putin; oil at $50 & sanctions is a better narrative. And Putin's response is likely to geopolitical as well ..."

By far the biggest geopolitical downside of oil prices tanking: pushing Putin into a corner.

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) December 16, 2014

Bremmer noted that Putin's options include more cyberattacks, "more aggression/incursion around NATO borders, excuses found for expansion of military engagement beyond present zone in Russia, [and] closer ties/integration with China."

Russian planes have been very active in the Baltic region in the past few months and are regularly intercepted by NATO planes. The Russian military also just carried out snap drills in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which borders Lithuania and Poland.

"Potential for 'accidents' [is] going way up," Bremmer added.

This post has been updated.

NOW WATCH: This Animated Map Shows How European Languages Evolved

SEE ALSO: Russian Bank Manager: 'This Is The End Of The Banking System'

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For the first time, a laser weapon system (LaWS) was successfully operated aboard a US Navy ship.

A demonstration of LaWS took place in November aboard the USS Ponce while it was deployed to the Arabian Gulf. It struck targets aboard a small speeding boat, shot down an unmanned drone and destroyed other moving targets.

Produced by Alex Kuzoian. Video courtesy of the Associated Press. 

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The US Naval Academy and US Military Academy football teams faced off in their 115th meeting on Saturday.

The schools' rivalry is one of the most unique in college sports. Though fiercely competitive, Army Cadets and Navy Midshipmen understand they're playing for the same team: Team USA.

Midshipman Second Class Jeffrey Martino, a junior at the Naval Academy, took photos at last weekend's game. We've republished them with his permission.

The Army-Navy game is the hallmark of one of the longest, most heated rivalries in college football. The U.S. Naval Academy and U.S. Military Academy football teams have played each other since 1890.

2014 was Navy's year to host the game, and they threw down at M&T Bank Stadium. Both Academies make the transportation arrangements to get each of their more than 4,400 student bodies to the game.

A Naval Academy midshipman finds his bus and prepares to make the early morning ride to Baltimore, Maryland. Attendance is required of all students.

A majority of Americans polled recently by the Pew Research Center were okay with the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques," which are widely considered to amount to torture.

Of those polled, 51% said the CIA was justified in using these techniques, 29% said it was not, and 20% said they didn't know.

An even larger majority of those surveyed (56%) said they believed the torture provided intelligence that prevented terrorist attacks — an assertion the Senate's report on CIA torture largely disputes.

Pew's poll includes 1000 adults from across the country. The poll was conducted between Dec. 11 and Dec. 14, right around the time the Senate report was released. The report notes that the CIA used "rectal rehydration" and waterboarding as means of extracting information from detainees after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

A minority of those Pew surveyed (41%) thought the decision to release the Senate Intelligence Committee's report was the right one. A larger proportion (43%) said it was the wrong decision.

Here's a look at how the survey responses stack up:

Predictably, there's a partisan divide when it comes to whether the torture is justified:

Aaron Blake at The Washington Post offers this theory on why Americans support torture: "They think torture works, period."

He writes:

Many opponents of the program contend not only that the United States should not be torturing people, but also that torturing people simply doesn't work. They say it provides information that is often wrong, because the subject of torture (or "enhanced interrogation techniques," in Bush administration-speak) will say anything to make the treatment stop.

Americans don't believe it.

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SEE ALSO: John McCain: The Brutal CIA Interrogations 'Stained Our National Honor'

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Russia announced on Monday that it believes it has the full right to deploy nuclear weapons in the recently annexed Crimean peninsula. 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told the Interfax news agency that since Crimea was now a part of Russia, Moscow had full rights to deploy nuclear weapons into the region. 

Lavrov argues that Crimea can be treated just like any other part of Russia and can therefore host nuclear infrastructure. "Now Crimea has become part of a state which possesses such weapons in accordance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty," says Lavrov. "In accordance with international law, Russia has every reason to dispose of its nuclear arsenal ... to suit its interests and international legal obligations."

The Russian foreign minister is using "international law" selectively here. After all, only a small handful of countries, including Syria, Venezuela, and Afghanistan, recognize Russia's annexation of the peninsula. The rest consider Russia's seizure of the region to be an illegal act of aggression.

Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine in March following a widely disputed referendum. The vote was carried out after thousands of Russian troops had already entered the peninsula. The validity of the referendum has been called into question following a 97% approval rate for union with Russia. 

In the face of crippling Western sanctions and a crashing ruble, Lavrov likely mentioned Russia's ability to place nuclear weapons in the contested peninsula as a means of rallying the Russian people around Moscow's nationalist policies. 

“Lavrov has brought up this nuclear weapons issue to demonstrate that the Kremlin considers Crimea such an inalienable part of Russia that it may choose to do with it whatever it wants, including the deployment of nukes," Alexander Golts, a deputy editor of Yezhednevny Zhurnal and a Russian political expert, told the Los Angeles Times. 

Lavrov's insistence that Russia has the right to move nuclear weapons into Crimea marks only the latest instance in which Russian officials or pro-government public figures have spoken openly at the country's arsenal. In March, a prominent Russian broadcaster warned that Moscow could turn the US into "radioactive dust." This was followed by a warning from the Russian Pravda that Moscow had a "nuclear surprise" for the West in November. 

Technically, neither the US nor Russia can move strategic nuclear forces without verifying the deployment with the other country due to the 2010 New START treaty, which set a timeline for mutual cuts to the countries' nuclear stockpiles. Any Russian movement of strategic nuclear weapons into Crimea (long-range, high-yield weapons, as opposed to tactical or battlefield nuclear warheads) without prior notification to the US would result in Russia violating the treaty. 

SEE ALSO: Here are 2 ways Russia's provocative stunts could lead to war

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The "architect" of the CIA's interrogation program, James Mitchell, accused Senate Democrats of putting his life in danger last week when they released a report detailing the program's "brutal" abuses.

"They issue this report that essentially stirs up all the crazies and all the jihadists. So now we're getting death threats," Mitchell, a retired Air Force psychologist, said during a Monday night Fox News interview.

Mitchell was one of seven men who owned a company paid millions of dollars by the CIA to devise interrogation techniques for alleged terrorists following the Sept. 11, 2011, attacks on the World Trade Center. The controversial techniques included waterboarding, which President Barack Obama has called torture. 

The Senate report presented even more shocking techniques and previously undisclosed details from the program. Among other things, the report found that forced rectal feeding, diapers, and insects were used against detainees. Additionally, the report said these techniques did not achieve any actionable intelligence in the fight against terror that couldn't be gained through other means.

However, the Republican minority accused the Senate report of having partisan bias against the program. It also said the report did not include enough input from the CIA. Mitchell echoed this criticism on Fox News and said he was not interviewed for the report.

"I'm angry about this. They have a foregone conclusion. They put my life in danger. They put the lives of other CIA personnel ... and our families in danger for some sort of moral high ground?" he said. "You can probably tell I'm a little agitated by this. For me, I don't want to die because the Democrats in the Senate don't have the courtesy to ask the CIA to explain what they view as abuses that occurred."

Directly asked whether he thought his life was in danger, Mitchell replied, "of course." 

"How many times in your life have you had a law enforcement official call you up in the middle of the day and say, 'Leave your house immediately.' That happened to me a couple days ago," he said. "I do not mind giving my life for my country, but I do mind giving my life for a food fight for political reasons between two groups of people that should be able to work it out like adults."

Megyn Kelly, the Fox host interviewing Mitchell, said Mitchell was unable to speak out before because of a CIA non-disclosure agreement that was "loosened" over the weekend after the report's release. During the interview, Mitchell refused to answer questions about how many interrogators were involved in the program or what country he was in while it was underway. He did say, however, that he was proud of the program's accomplishments.

"I'm proud of the work we did," he said. "We saved lives. I don't care what the Senate said."

View part of the interview below.

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