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TerrorismThe Violent Extremist Lifecycle: Lessons from Northern Ireland
A new guide, released by CREST, draws on a reanalysis of interview data from the 1980s and 1990s that explored the lifecycle phases among loyalist and republican paramilitaries from across Northern Ireland. It offers twelve lessons that are relevant not only to those working within the Northern Ireland context today but also to those working to reduce the threat from violent extremists elsewhere.
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Our picksThe Tree That Could Help Stop the Pandemic | “Machines Set Loose to Slaughter” | Overestimating Earthquake Dangers
· The Tree That Could Help Stop the Pandemic
· In Michigan Plot to Kidnap Governor, Informants Were Key
· The All-American Mind of a Militia Member
· U.S. Diplomats and Spies Battle Trump Administration Over Suspected
· “Machines Set Loose to Slaughter”: The Dangerous Rise of Military AI
· The Newly Legal Process for Turning Human Corpses to Soil
· The Nuclear Arsenal Problem You Never Saw Coming
· The West Coast Wildfires Are Apocalypse, Again
· Earthquake Hazard Maps May Overestimate Shaking Dangers
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MigrantsParents of 545 Migrant Children Separated from Their Families Cannot Be Found
A court-appointed steering committee has been working to locate the families of about 2,700 children separated by DHS’ Zero Tolerance border policy, which separated children and toddlers from their parents. The policy was overturned in court in mid-2018, but the parents of many of the children have been deported to Guatemala and Honduras, leaving the children behind. The parents of 545 children are yet to be found.
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Election securityAdversaries May Launch Efforts to Undermine Americans’ “Confidence in the Integrity of the Electoral Process”: CISA
“We remain confident that no foreign cyber actor can change your vote, and we still believe that it would be incredibly difficult for them to change the outcome of an election at the national level. But that doesn’t mean various actors won’t try to introduce chaos in our elections and make sensational claims that overstate their capabilities. In fact, the days and weeks just before and after Election Day is the perfect time for our adversaries to launch efforts intended to undermine your confidence in the integrity of the electoral process”: Christopher Krebs, director of CISA.
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Election securityKathleen Hall Jamieson on the 2020 Election
Professor Kathleen Hall Jamieson discusses what we learned from the election four years ago plus how journalists can responsibly share hacked content and what role the public at large can play. She says that in some ways, the country is better prepared today than during the 2016 election cycle, which was fraught with cybertrolls, hacked emails, and leaked content. In other ways, the United States hasn’t learned much from that experience.
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The Russia connectionRussia Launches Disinformation Campaign to Undermine Public Confidence in Oxford University’s COVID Vaccine
The U.K. government said it condemned as “utterly deplorable” a Russia disinformation campaign to undermine public confidence in a coronavirus vaccine currently under development by Oxford University scientists. The Times reported on Friday that Russian government officials have been using social media and Russian state media to depict the vaccine as dangerous – going as far as claiming that the vaccine would turn people into monkeys or chimpanzees.
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The Russia connectionDetails of Russia’s Cyberattacks against Olympic, Paralympic Games Revealed
The U.K. On Monday (19 October) exposed malicious cyberactivity from Russia’s GRU military intelligence service against organizations involved in the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games before they were postponed. The U.K. National Cyber Security Center (NCSC) said that the incident was intended to sabotage the running of the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, as the malware was designed to wipe data from and disable computers and networks.
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Guns68 Percent of Firearm Deaths Are from Self-Harm, Majority in Older Men in Rural Regions
A new study of gun injuries and deaths in Ontario found that 68 percent of firearm-related deaths were from self-harm, and they most often occurred in older men living in rural regions, pointing to the need for targeted prevention efforts.
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Perspective: Supply chainsSecuring the Critical Minerals Supply Chain
From the military to the technology sector, various American institutions and industries play a role in maintaining U.S. economic and national security. While the finished products associated with defense and technology, like aircraft engines and LED TVs, capture the public eye, the supply chains for the materials needed to produce these goods often garner little attention. Eli Nachmany writes that a set of minerals, known as critical minerals, constitute a key part of the supply chains for these important sectors. In recent years, however, U.S. competitors such as China have come to control supply chains for the critical minerals themselves—raising questions about the effects of critical mineral supply chain insecurity on U.S. national security.
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PreparednessDisaster Preparedness in the Palm of Your Hand
Natural disasters like tornadoes and earthquakes can devastate communities and bring uncertainty in their aftermath when it comes to safely accessing buildings or homes. When an EF-3 tornado struck Jefferson City, Missouri, in May 2019, it killed three people and left over 600 buildings damaged, presenting first responders with an overwhelming response challenge.In tragic situations like this, facility owners and emergency planners play a key role in taking swift action to evaluate the damage done.
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Our picksChina a “Safe Haven” for Cybercriminals | Challenging New H-1B Visa Rules | Biometrics Systems on Amazon Cloud, and more
· DHS Led the Way on Past Health Crises, but It Has Been Less Visible During the Coronavirus Outbreak
· Cyberspace Solarium Commission Proposes Strategy to Create Trusted ICT Supply Chains
· Pentagon Will Move Primary Biometrics Systems to Amazon Cloud
· Business Groups, Universities File Lawsuit over New Rules Targeting H-1B Visas
· ICAM, CDM Put Identity-Based Security Front and Center
· Facing a Deluge of Misinformation, Colorado Takes the Offensive Against It
· Justice Department Official Accuses China of Acting as “Safe Haven” for Cybercriminals
· Justice Department Official Accuses China of Acting as “Safe Haven” for Cybercriminals
· Security Pros’ Vital Role in Thwarting Election Disinformation
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CompetitivenessProposed Student Visa Policy Could Hinder U.S. Competitiveness
In an effort to crack down on international students and scholars who overstay their visas, the administration is seeking to implement a new set of rules that would make it more difficult for them to remain in the U.S. One of the rules requires foreign students to leave the United States after two or four years, regardless of whether they have completed they degree or research work. The rule comes with a steep price tag. It would also undermine America’s interest in attracting talent from abroad and, ironically, it would do little to actually curtail the problem of visa overstays that it purports to solve.
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FloodsOne in Six Historic Resources in Colorado Is in a Floodplain
Colorado has lost several of its important historic landmarks to disasters. The 2013 floods, for instance, destroyed a WPA-era shelter in Lyons and severely damaged the town’s historic library. A new study reaches a sobering conclusion, that one in six historic resources in Colorado is at risk from a flood disaster, yet few communities proactively plan for their protection.
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ExtremismFacebook Ran Recruitment Ads for Militia Groups
A new report shows that Facebook for years allowed militia groups to recruit new members via paid advertisements on the platform. The review — which followed news of the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, which played out on Facebook and other social media — also found more than 50 militia pages and groups that are still active on Facebook.
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TerrorismVictims of Terror Attacks Reject US Deal to Delist Sudan
One of the attorneys representing victims of the 1998 terror attacks on U.S. embassies in East Africa and their families says the majority of his clients reject the deal that would result in President Donald Trump removing Sudan from the U.S. State Sponsors of Terrorism list.
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GunsThe Case That Could Topple the Gun Industry’s Special Legal Protections
An opinion handed down in a Pennsylvania appeals court threatens a law that gunmakers have long used as a shield against wrongful-death suits. The court’s opinion quashes an attempt by the Illinois-based gun manufacturer Springfield Armory to dismiss a suit brought by the family of a Pennsylvania teenager killed with one of its guns.
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5G5G: New Benefits, Cybersecurity Risks
5G builds upon existing telecommunication infrastructure to improve bandwidth and capabilities and reduce network-generated delays. However, 5G also carries over and introduces new risks that must be addressed to ensure its secure and safe use by the government and private sectors, including everyday citizens.
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Disaster responseNatural Disaster Preparations May Help Businesses' Pandemic Response
The economic impacts of COVID-19 have battered small and medium-sized enterprises, putting millions of jobs in the U.S. at risk. And a year rife with natural disasters has not done many struggling businesses any favors. ,A new survey found that nearly a quarter of businesses felt natural disaster preparations helped them address COVID-19. They tended to find preparations of broad applicability during natural disasters, such as telework readiness, more useful than hazard-specific measures. The survey also identified areas of hardship for businesses, including uncertainty and a lack of guidance and resources.
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Our picksCyber-Attack Insurance | Islamist Extremists in France | Spotting Misinformation, and more
· FBI: Suspect in Alleged Extremist Plot Deleted Video Made Near Mich. Governor’s Home
· A Trial in Europe Examines Iran’s Terror Ties
· ISIS Attacks Surge in Africa Even as Trump Boasts of a ‘100-Percent’ Defeated Caliphate
· Review of Security around Terrorist Prisoners after First Isis-inspired attack in UK jail
· Root Out Islamist Extremism After Beheading of Teacher Samuel Paty
· COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Is Associated with Beliefs on the Origin of the Novel Coronavirus in the U.K. and Turkey
· Home Working to Boost Cyber-Attack Insurance: Munich Re
· College Students Struggle to Spot Misinformation Online as 2020 Election Approaches
· Tracking the Shifting Shape of Far-Right Political Violence
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TerrorismFrench Mosque Closed as Part of a Crackdown on Islamist Extremists
The French minister of the interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced the closure of the Pantin mosque in Seine-Saint-Denis. Darmanin said the closure was a response to the beheading Friday of Samuel Paty, a history and geography professor, near the college of Conflans-saint-Honorine where he was a teacher. Paty, teaching a course on the freedom of expression, showed caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in class. A Muslin student complained to his parents, and the parents persuaded a preacher to issue a “fatwa” calling for the killing of Paty.
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Muslins in EuropeMan Denied German Citizenship for Refusing to Shake Woman's Hand
The application of a Lebanese doctor for German citizenship was denied after he refused to shake a woman’s hand. The doctor passed the German naturalization test, but refused to shake hands with the official – a woman — who handed him his citizenship certificate. The court ruled that a refusal to shake a woman’s hand indicates that the man rejected “integration into German living conditions.”
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Argument: Lockdowns killCovid-19 Kills – but So Does Lockdown
Just over six months ago Boris Johnson gave the British people a clear instruction: “You must stay at home.” Professor Karl Sikora writes that it was impossible for anybody to anticipate the unintended consequences of those five words and quite how much pain and anguish they would unleash. “No computer model nor brilliant epidemiologist can fully estimate the sheer long-term destruction lockdowns have caused,” Sikora says, adding: “This is not an argument for a fundamental shift in strategy, those debates have been had. “This is a plea for more balance.”
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More headlines
The long view
TerrorismHow Do Terrorists Make Decisions?
A new guide, released by CREST, focuses on the insights criminology can provide into terrorist decision-making. It looks at what terrorists do and how they do it. The guide addresses the following questions: How do men and women decide to commit an act of terrorism? Do they plan wisely? How do they choose their targets? How do they evaluate the risk of a single operation? How is decision-making affected by the emotions felt during planning and operational phases? Can law enforcement be usefully informed by what we know about the behaviors of those who commit other kinds of crimes?
ARGUMENT: The “Forever War”On 9/11, Interrogating the Assumptions that Undergird the “Forever War”
For nearly two decades, the 11th of September has been a solemn one, dedicated to remembering those lost in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Luke Hartig, who served as Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council (NSC), writes that“as the pain and trauma of that day has receded in recent years, the anniversary of 9/11 has also become a reminder of a fact we would have found inconceivable at the time: that we continue to wage war some two decades later.” It is, therefore, time to interrogate the assumptions which have undergirded the War on Terror.
PERSPECTIVE: Intelligence mattersSupport for U.S. Intelligence Continues, Despite Presidential Attacks and Concerns Over Transparency
Here is good news: The American public supports; has confidence in; and appreciates the contribution to homeland security of the U.S. intelligence community. Steve Slick and Joshua Busby write that these high levels of support and confidence are striking against the background of the relentless, and unprecedented, attacks by President Trump on the intelligence community and his denigration of intelligence professionals. “Indeed, even among survey respondents of the President’s party who are presumably sympathetic to his views, support for the IC increased from 59% to 74% over the three-year period of this project,” Slick and Busby note.
Argument: Chemical weaponsHow Putin Borrowed a Page from Assad’s Chemical Weapon Playbook
Russia use of Novichock to poison opposition leader Alexei Navalny highlights a problem against which Western countries have not yet been able to devise an effective policy: the use of chemical weapons by authoritarian regimes against domestic regime critics. Preventing Russia, or any other autocratic ruler, from using poisons against domestic opponents is a tall order, Gregory D. Koblentz writes, but “Understanding the motivations of authoritarian leaders, and the intensity of their concerns about regime security, however, is the first step towards devising an effective strategy for deterring their use of chemical, and possibly someday biological, weapons against their own people.”
PERSPECTIVE: Catastrophes50,000 Benghazis, 109 Katrinas: U.S. COVID-19 Death in Perspective
The United States now counts over 200,000 dead in direct connection with the novel coronavirus. Elizabeth Hunt Brockway writes that to grasp the enormity of this figure, we need to see how this massive number stacks up to Pearl Harbor, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and other iconic events of mass death, suffering, and pain seared into the American collective conscience.
PERSPECTIVE: Rural insurgencyIs the United States Heading for a Rural Insurgency?
The intrusions of white supremacist militias into cities to intimidate, and at times attack, protestors from the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement highlights the possibility of rural insurgency, Vasabjit Banerjee writes. Does the United States face a rural insurgency? Mao Zedong allegedly remarked that rebels should inhabit their environment as fish in the sea, which was the case in mid-20th Century China with its rural hinterland where the vast majority of the population resided.Banerjee notes that the political geography of the United States — withless than 2 percent of the American population living in 100 percent rural countries – means that the “sea” for rural rebels is small. But the grievances, resources, and opportunities which typically undergird rural insurgencies are present. “Consequently, militia groups deserve more scrutiny from security forces and a unified political consensus to deter and suppress them in order to maintain peace and stability.”
PERSPECTIVE: Toxic mediaMichigan Kidnapping Plot, Like So Many Other Extremist Crimes, Foreshadowed on Social Media
More and more, far-right extremist violence is preceded by online declarations on social media. Craig Timberg and Isaac Stanley-Becker write that “such online declarations, brimming with anger and potentially violent intent, have become staples of extremism-fueled crime news in recent years,” and that “Before [such crimes] become real, [discussions of them] percolate online, courtesy of a social media ecosystem that is ubiquitous, barely moderated and well suited to helping aggrieved people find each other.” The plot by extremist Michigan militias to abduct Governor Gretchen Whitmer was no exception.
PERSPECTIVE: ExtremismEmboldened Far-Right Groups Challenge Cities, States
Last month, when wildfires threatened rural Oregon communities, another unwelcome phenomenon accompanied them: armed vigilantes blocking entry to outsiders, based on false rumors that protesters had not only started the fires, but also were there to loot the evacuated homes. White supremacists represent the top and most lethal domestic terror threat to Americans, the Department of Homeland Security said Oct. 6, when it released its first-ever Homeland Threat Assessment. “I am particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years,” wrote Chad Wolf, the acting homeland security secretary, in the introduction to the assessment.
ARGUMENT: Domestic terrorismThe Alleged Plot in Michigan Isn’t an Anomaly. The Domestic Terrorism Threat Is Rising.
Last week’s announcement by federal authorities that six men had been arrested and charged with conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) (seven other individuals were arrested on related state charges) is a chilling example of the evolving domestic terrorist threat facing America. Kevin K. McAleenan, the former acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, and Thomas K. Plofchan III, the former counterterrorism adviser to the secretary, write that the arrests in Michigan represent “one of the most significant incidents highlighting law enforcement concerns that domestic extremists.” They add that “the predominant terrorist threat at home today is increasingly domestic in nature,” and that “Within the domestic terrorist threat landscape, racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists, and specifically white-supremacist extremists, represent the ‘most persistent and lethal threat,’ according to the recent DHS threat assessment.”
Climate threatsThe World's Biggest Waves: How Climate Change Could Trigger Large Landslides and “Mega-Tsunamis”
Natural hazards which are triggered, made more frequent, or exacerbated by climate change can’t be prevented, but damage to infrastructure and populations can be minimized. This can be achieved through scientific understanding of the physical processes, site-specific engineering risk analysis and coastal management of hazard-prone regions.
Nuclear detectionUltrasensitive Measurements Detect Nuclear Explosions
Imagine being able to detect the faintest of radionuclide signals from hundreds of miles away. Scientists have developed a system which constantly collects and analyzes air samples for signals that would indicate a nuclear explosion, perhaps conducted secretly underground. The system can detect just a small number of atoms from nuclear activity anywhere on the planet. In terms of sensitivity, the capability – in place for decades – is analogous to the ability to detect coronavirus from a single cough anywhere on Earth.
GunsRise in Gun Purchases after Mass Shootings Tied to Fear of Firearm Regulations
Surges in firearm acquisition after mass shootings is a well-documented phenomenon, but analytic research into the causes of this behavior — be it driven by a desire for self-protection, or a fear that access to firearms will be curtailed — is sparse. A new is applying a data science methodology to create a model of the “firearms ecosystem” to identify how decisions to buy guns are affected by individual, social network, and state-level factors.
Drones & disastersAmateur Drone to Aid in Natural Disaster Damage Assessment
It wasn’t long after Hurricane Laura hit the Gulf Coast Thursday that people began flying drones to record the damage and posting videos on social media. Those videos are a precious resource, say researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, who are working on ways to use them for rapid damage assessment.
DeepfakesWould You Fall for a Fake Video? Research Suggests You Might
Deepfakes are videos that have been manipulated in some way using algorithms. As concerns about election interference around the globe continue to rise, the phenomenon of deepfakes and their possible impact on democratic processes remains surprisingly understudied.
CybersecuritySecurity Solution Traps Cybercriminals in a Virtual Network
Researchers are developing a new cyber-security deception solution that uses artificial intelligence to lure hackers away and prevent breaches of network systems. The “Lupovis” solution under development by the team at the University of Strathclyde’s Center for Intelligent and Dynamic Communications makes the hunter become the hunted.
PERSPECTIVE: Threats to the HomelandHow Serious Are Threats to the U.S. Homeland?
The 17 September hearing on “Worldwide Threats to the Homeland,” as its title suggests, does not make for happy watching. Daniel Byman and Seamus Hughes write that, indeed, statements by FBI Director Christopher Wray and National Counterterrorism Center Director Christopher Miller duly assess an array of dangers related to national security, including election interference, a more aggressive Russia and China, and emergent technologies. Most of their remarks, however, focused on terrorist groups and networks and the threats they pose. “The biggest danger the directors warned about is from lone actors who self-radicalize and act on their own.” Byman and Hughes write. “Wray warned that the most recent uptick is from anti-government violent extremists, some of whom have white supremacist views but many of whom, like the Three Percenters and boogaloos, see themselves as patriots fighting government ‘tyranny’.”