The following thesis outlines the state of inter-service rivalry between the Mexican army and the navy. This thesis discusses both the technical and philosophical reasons as to why the two services are so competitive and explains some reasons as to why the two services cannot seem to work together in any capacity. My findings suggest that in order for Mexico to overcome this inter-service rivalry within their armed forces, they must increase civilian oversight and create a unifying civilian institution that promotes and fosters collaboration and accountability.

With the substantial growth of cloud computing over the past decade, microservices has gained significant popularity in the industry as a new architectural pattern. It promises a cloud-native architecture that breaks large applications into a collection of small, independent, and distributed packages. Since microservices-based applications are distributed, one of the key challenges when designing an application is the choice of mechanism by which services communicate with each other. There are several approaches for implementing Interprocess communication (IPC) in microservices, and each comes with different advantages and trade-offs. While theoretical and informal comparison exists between them, this thesis has taken an experimental approach to compare and contrast common forms of IPC communications. In this the- sis, IPC methods have been categorized into Synchronous and Asynchronous categories. The Synchronous type consists of REST API and Google gRPC, while the Asynchronous type is using a message broker known as RabbitMQ. Further, a collection of microservices for an e-commerce scenario has been designed and developed using all the three IPC methods. A load test has been executed against each model to obtain quantitative data related to Performance Efficiency, and Availability of every method. Developing the same set of functionalities using different IPC methods has offered a qualitative data related to Scalability, and Complexity of each IPC model. The evaluation of the experiment indicates that, although there is no universal IPC solution that can be applied in all cases, Asynchronous IPC patterns shall be the preferred option when designing the system. Nevertheless, the findings of this work also suggest there exist scenarios where Synchronous patterns can be more suitable. / Med den kraftiga tillväxten av molntjänster under det senaste decenniet har mikrotjänster fått en betydande popularitet i branschen som ett nytt arkitektoniskt mönster. Det erbjuder en moln-baserad arkitektur som delar stora applikationer i en samling små, oberoende och distribuerade paket. Eftersom microservicebaserade applikationer distribueras och körs på olika maskiner, är en av de viktigaste utmaningarna när man utformar en applikation valet av mekanism med vilken tjänster kommunicerar med varandra. Det finns flera metoder för att implementera Interprocess-kommunikation (IPC) i mikrotjänster och var och en har olika fördelar och nackdelar. Medan det finns teoretisk och in- formell jämförelse mellan dem, har denna avhandling tagit ett experimentellt synsätt för att jämföra och kontrastera vanliga former av IPC-kommunikation. I denna avhandling har IPC-metoder kategoriserats i synkrona och asynkrona kategorier. Den synkrona typen består av REST API och Google gRPC, medan asynkron typ använder en meddelandemäklare känd som RabbitMQ. Dessutom har en samling mikroservice för ett e-handelsscenario utformats och utvecklats med alla de tre olika IPC-metoderna. Ett lasttest har utförts mot var- je modell för att erhålla kvantitativa data relaterade till prestandaeffektivitet, och tillgänglighet för varje metod. Att utveckla samma uppsättning funktionaliteter med olika IPC-metoder har erbjudit en kvalitativ data relaterad till skalbarhet och komplexitet för varje IPC-modell. Utvärderingen av experimentet indikerar att även om det inte finns någon universell IPC-lösning som kan tillämpas i alla fall, ska asynkrona IPC-mönster vara det föredragna alternativet vid utformningen av systemet. Ändå tyder resultaten från detta arbete också på att det finns scenarier där synkrona mönster är mer lämpliga.

No / Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Service Intelligence [ISI] plays an ambiguous role in the War on Terrorism. An important ally for Western intelligence with whom it has very close links, the ISI also has a long history of involvement in supporting and promoting terrorism in the name of Pakistan's geostrategic interests. This article explores the nature of the ISI and its aims and objectives in the post-9/11 era. It argues that the focus of the ISI's actions are to shore up Pakistan's ruling elite and to destabilize Pakistan's enemies by the promotion of Sunni Islamism at home and of pan-Islamist jihad abroad. The ISI's strategy, however, deeply conflicts with that of the West, a point underlined by the resurgence of Al Qaeda and the Taliban almost six years after the War on Terrorism began. With grave new trends evident in Pakistan, reliance on the ISI is failing and a Western rethink of its intelligence strategy toward Pakistan is now imperative.