-
Pandemic responseExpert Panel: Current Global Alert System “Clearly Unfit” to Prevent Another Pandemic
An independent report by experts offers a scathing assessment of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The current system—at both national and international levels— was not adequate to protect people from COVID-19,” the report says. The current pandemic alert system is too slow, and it lost precious time “when many more countries could have taken steps to contain the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and forestall the global health, social, and economic catastrophe that continues its grip. The Panel finds that the system as it stands now is clearly unfit to prevent another novel and highly infectious pathogen, which could emerge at any time, from developing into a pandemic.”
-
-
DronesTracking Drones in Urban Settings
As drones become more popular and more worrisome from a security standpoint, many projects have sought to engineer systems to spot them. Engineers are using machine learning and radar to detect drones in complicated urban settings.
-
-
Power grid resilienceRenewable Energy Will Enhance Power Grid's Resilience
A new study shows that integrating renewable energy into the American Electric Power System (AEPS) would enhance the grid’s resilience, meaning a highly resilient and decarbonized energy system is possible. The researchers’ analysis is based upon the incremental incorporation of architectural changes that would be required to integrate renewable energy into AEPS.
-
-
Infrastructure securityThe TSA Should Regulate Pipeline Cybersecurity
Fuel deliveries to the east coast of the United States have been brought to a standstill by cybercriminals that have gained access to Colonial Pipelines’ networks and forced the company to shut down its distribution system. After two decades of trying to make a voluntary partnership with industry work, this incident demonstrates that neither thoughts, prayers, nor information sharing is sufficient. It is time for the federal government to exercise its existing authority to regulate the cybersecurity of pipelines.
-
-
CybercrimeCybercrime a Booming Business — Thanks to COVID
The coronavirus pandemic has given a huge boost to internet crime. The number of offenses is on the rise while the number of successfully solved cases is stagnating in Germany. Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) registered 108,474 cybercrimes in its latest annual report. That is an increase of nearly 8% on the previous year.
-
-
Truth decayDetecting Conspiracy Theories on Social Media
Conspiracy theories circulated online via social media contribute to a shift in public discourse away from facts and analysis and can contribute to direct public harm. Social media platforms face a difficult technical and policy challenge in trying to mitigate harm from online conspiracy theory language. Researchers are working to improvemachine learning to detect and understand online conspiracy theories.
-
-
Hostage videosVideos: Proof of Life or Death?
Can the fate of hostages be determined from proof-of-life video messages? While terrorist hostage-taking is uncommon, ideologically motivated hostage-takers often provide a video demonstrating proof of control and proof of life (POL). These videos establish that a hostage is alive at the time the video was made, and hence provide valuable information for families and governments charged with their safe recovery. What they don’t reveal, however, is the likely fate of hostages.
-
-
ARGUMENT: Microwave weaponsClaims of Microwave Attacks Are Scientifically Implausible
Allegations about microwave attacks on U.S. personnel have been reported regularly, some going back decades. The recent wave of reports started in 2016, with reports from the American and Canadian diplomatic missions in Havana, hence the name “Havana syndrome.” “Here’s the problem,” Cheryl Rofer writes. “Aside from the reported syndromes, there’s no evidence that a microwave weapon exists—and all the available science suggests that any such weapon would be wildly impractical. It’s possible that the symptoms of all the sufferers of Havana syndrome share a single, as yet unknown, cause; it’s also possible that multiple real health problems have been amalgamated into a single syndrome.”
-
-
Coastal challengesSeeking Inclusive Strategies to Help Coastal Communities Adjust, Plan for Sea-Level Rise
Recurring flood damage to homes and powerful storms that threaten infrastructure are realities facing many coastal North Carolina communities. However, for three predominately African-American, rural communities near the coast, NC State researchers documented additional injustices that threaten the communities’ ability to adapt to a changing climate.
-
-
Coastal challengesAntarctica Remains the Wild Card for Sea-Level Rise Estimates
Estimates show that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial temperatures would cut projected 21st century sea-level rise from land ice in half, relative to currently pledged emissions reductions.
-
-
Domestic Terrorism Warning System for DHS | Immigration-Related Biometrics Collection | U.S. Gov. Advisories Help Russian Hackers, and more
· DHS Launches Warning System to Find Domestic Terrorism Threats on Public Social Media
· Ransomware Attacks Like the One that Hit Colonial Pipeline Are Increasingly Common
· US, UK Agencies Warn Russian Hackers Are Adapting Based on Government Advisories
· Your Old Mobile Phone Number Could Compromise Your Cybersecurity
· Israel’s Version of Moving Fast and Breaking Things: The New Cybersecurity Bill
· What We Know about the Pipeline Ransomware Attack: How It Happened, Who Is Responsible and More
· Boko Haram Boosts Plans to Have Separate Islamic Country, Lures Borno, Yobe Residents
· Far-Right Using COVID Conspiracy Theories to Lure Young - UK Police
· French Military Leader Asserts Islamic State Is ‘Regenerating’ Underground
· DHS Drops Proposal to Expand Immigration-Related Biometrics Collection
-
-
Energy securityCriminals Carried out Cyberattack on U.S. Pipeline
Security experts say that DarkSide, a group of veteran cybercriminals, is responsible for the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, the worst cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure to date. The cyberattack forced Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline to shut a critical fuel network that serves populous states on the East Coast.
-
-
Energy securityProtecting Critical Energy Infrastructure
Increasingly, both Israel and the U.S. face costly cyberattacks that can cause severe damage to critical energy infrastructure. A new consortium will develop, integrate, and test technologies, and demonstrate high value cyberattack mitigation technologies on the energy infrastructure, using data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.
-
-
UnrestSecond Open Letter by French Soldiers Warns of Civil Insurrection
Disquiet is growing within France’s military ranks, with the publication of a second open letter — this time by serving soldiers — warning growing Islamism, delinquency and violence threaten the country’s very survival.
-
-
China watchHuawei’s Ability to Eavesdrop on Dutch Mobile Users Is a Wake-up Call for the Telecoms Industry
Chinese technology provider Huawei was recently accused of being able to monitor all calls made using Dutch mobile operator KPN. While the full report on the issue has not been made public, journalists reporting on the story have outlined specific concerns that Huawei personnel in the Netherlands and China had access to security-essential parts of KPN’s network – including the call data of millions of Dutch citizens – and that a lack of records meant KPN couldn’t establish how often this happened.
-
-
Critical materialsE-Waste and National Security
End-of-life circuit boards, certain magnets in disc drives and electric vehicles, EV and other special battery types, and fluorescent lamps are among several electrical and electronic products containing critical raw materials (CRMs), the recycling of which should be made law, says a new report.
-
-
FloodsCoral Reefs Prevent More than $5.3 Billion in Potential Flood Damage for U.S. Property Owners
Coral reefs provide many services to coastal communities, including critical protection from flood damage. A new study reveals how valuable coral reefs are in protecting people, structures, and economic activity in the United States from coastal flooding during storms.
-
-
Planetary securityExperts Evaluate Planetary Defense Methods
Scientists are working to develop methods to prevent asteroids from wreaking havoc on Earth. “We know that currently, the U.S. has many knowledge and capability gaps for planetary defense readiness,” says one expert.. “The work we are doing today, and the opportunity to discuss that work with the broader international community at venues like the IAA Planetary Defense Conference (PDC), is helping to close these gaps.”
-
-
Our picksWinning War on COVID Vaccine Lies | Deported Veterans | Bizarre Election Audit, and more
· U.S. Government Working to Help Top Fuel Pipeline Operator after Cyberattack
· Facebook Winning War on COVID Vaccine Lies, Hoaxes and Conspiracies. Twitter and TikTok? Not So Much, Report Says
· Permitless-Carry Gun Laws Are Misguided and Should Be Scrapped
· In Arizona’s Bizarre Election Audit, Ballots Are Being Checked for Bamboo and Election Chief Has Been Assigned Protection
· Regulator Shares Discredited Conspiracy Theories about COVID
· Deported Veterans Ask Biden to Bring Them Home
· U.S. Joins Christchurch Call to Action to Eliminate Terrorist and Violent Extremist Content Online
· Former Neo-Nazi Terror Leader Turns Self in after Bond Revoked
· Counter-Terror Expert Urges Media to Stop ‘Celebrisiting’ British ISIS Volunteers
· France to Expel Refugees If They Commit Crimes or Are Flagged for Extremism
-
-
Political crimesGermany Sees Spike in Politically Motivated Crimes
German interior minister Horst Seehofer has warned of what he called an alarming rise in politically motivated crime last year, particularly among far-right groups.
-
-
PandemicsHow Can Scientists Predict a COVID-19 Outbreak? There Is an App for That
A mobile app that uses crowd-sourced data on COVID-19 symptoms can accurately identify where local coronavirus outbreaks will appear, according to scientists who developed the app. “COVID Control” using self-reported virus symptom information could predict next outbreak.
-
-
Human traffickingTurning Technology against Human Traffickers
Last October, the White House released the National Action Plan to Combat Human Trafficking. The plan was motivated, in part, by a greater understanding of the pervasiveness of the crime. This increasing awareness has also motivated MIT Lincoln Laboratory to harness its technological expertise toward combating human trafficking.
-
More headlines
The long view
Military reformU.K. Launches Military Revolution
The British government has unveiled its new, post-Brexit military strategy on Monday, highlighting a major reform of the British armed forces which aims to adapt the British military employ new tools to face new threats. The number of soldiers will be reduced – making the post-reform military the smallest British army in 300 years – with hundreds of tanks, armored troops carriers, and jet fighters mothballed. Money will go toward developing and deploying innovative capabilities, including satellites, electronic warfare, cyber, drones, and robots.
ARGUMENT: Overhauling cybersecurityThe U.S. Government Needs to Overhaul Cybersecurity. Here’s How.
After the 2015 hack of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, the SolarWinds breach, and—just weeks after SolarWinds—the latest Microsoft breach, it is by now clear that the U.S. federal government is woefully unprepared in matters of cybersecurity. Jonathan Reiber and Matt Glenn write that “it is time for a different model for cybersecurity. U.S. military bases have layers of walls, guards, badge readers, and authentication measures to control access. The United States needs the same mindset for its cybersecurity.”
ARGUMENT: CyberthreatsWhat Would Happen If States Started Looking at Cyber Operations as a “Threat” to Use Force?
How are threats of force conveyed in cyberspace? Duncan B. Hollis and Tsvetelina van Benthem write that when, in the spring of 2020, hackers compromised the SolarWinds Orion software by “trojanizing” the so-called Sunburst backdoor, they raised a question: “If the presence of backdoors in a victim’s network allows for future exploits capable of causing functionality losses generating destruction (or even deaths), could their presence be seen as threatening such results? More broadly, when does a cyber operation that does not itself constitute a use of force threaten force?”
ARGUMENT: Cyberspace spooksCovert Action, Espionage, and the Intelligence Contest in Cyberspace
In recent months, the world learned that China carried out an indiscriminate hack against Microsoft Exchange, while Russia hacked U.S. information technology firm SolarWinds and used cyber capabilities in an attempt to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Michael Poznansky writes that the attacks raise important questions about how best to characterize these and other kinds of disruptive cyber events. Cyber-enabled espionage and covert cyber operations both qualify as intelligence activities, but they are also distinct in key ways from one another. “Failing to appreciate these differences impedes our ability to understand the richness of cyber operations, underlying motivations, the prospect for signaling, and metrics of success,” he writes.
ARGUMENT: Countering extremistsThe International Far-Right Terrorist Threat Requires a Multilateral Response
Right-wing violence is a global phenomenon. The United Nations Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) illuminated this global challenge in 2020 when it issued an alert that cited “a 320 percent increase in terrorist attacks by groups or individuals affiliated” with right-wing extremism. Jason M. Blazakis and Naureen Chowdhury Fink write that a U.S.-only focus to countering far-right terrorism will not curb this growing threat to international peace and stability. “The frameworks established to address the terrorist threat posed by al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and their affiliates can be adapted to manage far-right violence.”
ExtremismThink Global, Act Local: Reconfiguring Siege Culture
It is not an easy time to be in a branded neo-Nazi group. Some groups have dissolved themselves, other groups have been proscribed by different governments, while group members of some groups have been arrested for a variety of offenses across the U.S., U.K., Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries. Societal attitudes towards the broader extreme-right are hardening, and for the most extreme right-wingers, the future may be less digital, more local, and harder to police.
GunsGun Violence Rises in TV Dramas over Two Decades, Paralleling U.S. Gun Homicide Tends
Gun violence in popular prime-time broadcast television dramas has increased steadily over almost two decades, a trend that parallels the rise in U.S. homicide deaths attributable to firearms, according to new research. Overall gun violence on popular prime-time dramas doubled from 2000 through 2018. More important, gun violence as a proportion of the violence depicted in the shows rose significantly as well.
ARGUMENT: PathogensPathogens Have the World’s Attention
The novel coronavirus has demonstrated just how devastating a transmissible pathogen can be—and just how difficult to contain. Nathan Levine and Chris Li write that “the sobering truth is that, as deadly diseases go, the world got lucky. The global case fatality rate of COVID-19 is around 2 percent. One need only compare this to SARS (10 percent), smallpox (30 percent), pulmonary anthrax (80 percent), or Ebola (90 percent) to consider that the coronavirus could easily have been much, much worse.”
ManufacturingExpanding Domestic Manufacturing of Secure, Custom Chips for Defense Needs
DARPA announced the Structured Array Hardware for Automatically Realized Applications (SAHARA) program, which aims to expand access to domestic manufacturing capabilities to tackle challenges hampering the secure development of custom chips for defense systems. DARPA selected Intel and university researchers to automate conversion of Structured ASICs with leading-edge, domestic foundry capabilities for defense electronic systems.
Grid securityRapidly Restoring the Electrical Grid after Cyberattack
Some 330 million Americans rely on the nation’s critical infrastructure to keep the country humming. Disruptions to electrical grids, communications systems, and supply chains can be catastrophic, yet all of these are vulnerable to cyberattack. RADICS program delivers novel technologies, custom testbed, and evaluation exercises to enable utilities and first responders to quickly restore critical infrastructure amidst a cyberattack.
Grid securityReducing Risk and Avoiding Disaster – Creating Grid 2.0
It’s hard to imagine a world without electricity. But as demand increases, so do the assaults to the system that delivers that energy — the power grid. Severe weather is a primary driver of power outages. Aging infrastructure is also a problem for the electric system.
DetectionHarnessing Earth’s Magnetic Field to Detect Chemicals
A newly designed spectroscopy instrument allows scientists, industry, and governments to decipher even trace amounts of chemicals using the Earth’s own magnetic field. The portable tool will help scientists, industry, and governments easily detect and identify trace amounts of chemicals.
BOOKSHELF : Nerve agentsToxic: A History of Nerve Agents, from Nazi Germany to Putin’s Russia
Nerve agents are very much in the news these days. Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria repeatedly used Sarin against its own people during that country’s civil war. The Putin regime employed Novichoks in both Russia and the United Kingdom against citizens it deemed insufficiently loyal to Moscow. North Korea’s Kim Jong Un utilized VX in the assassination of his brother at an airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Across the globe, the use of nerve agents is challenging the international nonproliferation regime in numerous ways.
ARGUMENT: Water crisisThe U.S. Water and Wastewater Crisis – How Many Wake-up Calls Are Enough?
In February, much of Texas plunged into darkness when the state’s electricity grid failed due to extreme cold weather conditions. What started as a foreseeable blackout quickly became a life-threatening calamity. “This catastrophe illustrates what happens when aging and inadequate infrastructure is hit by extreme rain or snow—an increasingly regular occurrence due to climate change,” Lucía Falcón Palomar, Obinna Maduka, and JoAnn Kamuf Ward write. “And, the matter extends well beyond Texas. It is easy to forget that, within U.S. borders, communities have long endured the conditions seen in Texas in February.”
GeoengineeringResponding to Climate Change: U.S. Should Cautiously Pursue Solar Geoengineering
Given the urgency of the risks posed by climate change, the U.S. should pursue a research program for solar geoengineering — in coordination with other nations, subject to governance, and alongside a robust portfolio of climate mitigation and adaptation policies, says a new report. The report emphasizes that solar geoengineering is not a substitute for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Doomsday insuranceSolar-Powered Lunar Ark as “Modern Global Insurance Policy”
Researchers are taking scientific inspiration from an unlikely source: the biblical tale of Noah’s Ark. Rather than two of every animal, however, their solar-powered ark on the moon would store cryogenically frozen seed, spore, sperm and egg samples from 6.7 million Earth species. The ambitious project proposed by a University of Arizona team aims to preserve humankind - and animal-kind, plant-kind and fungi-kind - in the event of a global crisis.
