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Washington Post, 09 May 2016

U.S. IN YEMEN Add one more country to the list of places where U.S. forces are now engaged: The Pentagon said last week that a small contingent of U.S. advisers is in Yemen to help Yemeni and Emirati forces battling al-Qaeda. The operation has been underway for about two weeks, and officials are calling the effort “limited,” “short-term” and “way small” — but it is nonetheless a turnaround in U.S. policy. U.S. Special Operations forces left Yemen a year and a half ago, and since then, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has gained strength in the region as Saudi-backed forces fight Iranian-allied Houthi rebels. The United Nations continues to try to broker a peace agreement.

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U.S. FORCES IN COMBAT IN AFGHANISTAN The New York Times has a story that makes the case for why U.S. forces in Afghanistan, despite official statements to the contrary, are engaged in combat. The report stems from an investigation into an October airstrike that killed dozens in a Kunduz hospital run by Doctors Without Borders — an airstrike called in by Green Berets already heavily engaged in the fighting in the area. The picture revealed appears to be a mess of crossed signals, poor relaying of information and confusion that might be expected in a war zone — but it also shows U.S. forces caught in a legal gray area where they appear to be operating in combat, going well beyond their official mandate.

NO TWITTER DATA FOR INTEL AGENCIES Twitter has blocked intelligence agencies from having access to an analytic service that lets agencies sift through social media postings, the Wall Street Journal reports, in what appears to be the latest marker in the ongoing tug-of-war between the tech community and the government for where the balance between intelligence-gathering and privacy lies. The change in policy would prevent the government from using the service Dataminr, which sorts through social media to discern patterns and tipped off the intel community to the Paris terror attacks as they were beginning last fall. Such services are not, however, prevented from marketing their products to the private sector.