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ARGUMENT: Think smallThink Small: Why the Intelligence Community Should Do Less about New Threats
A week into his administration, President Joe Biden announced that he was “putting the climate crisis at the center of United States foreign policy and national security. Joshua Rovner writes that, in so doing, the president injected new urgency into an old question: What counts as a national security threat?
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ARGUMENT: Rare Earths rivalryRare Earth Metals at the Heart of China’s Rivalry with U.S., Europe
What if China were to cut off the United States and Europe from access to Rare Earth Elements (REEs), 17 minerals with unique characteristics which are essential to electric vehicles, wind turbines, drones, batteries, sophisticated military gear, and much more? This is a time of growing geopolitical friction among these three, and the United States and Europe want to change the current dependence on China, where, today, these minerals are largely extracted and refined.
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Rare Earth elements (REEs)The Geopolitics of Rare Earth Elements
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed fragility in the global supply chains for not only pharmaceuticals and crucial medical supplies but also some critical minerals. Chief among them are rare Earth elements (REEs), which are necessary for clean energy equipment, advanced military gear, and consumer goods. About 80 percent of the world’s REEs are produced and refined in China.
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Solar geoengineeringExploring the Possible Risks, Benefits of Geoengineering
Climate change is creating impacts that are widespread and severe — and in many cases irreversible — for individuals, communities, economies, and ecosystems around the world. 2020 was one of the three warmest years on record, bringing with it a number of costly climate disasters, including the worst wildfire season ever recorded in the Western U.S., historic flooding in China and other parts of Asia, and severe droughts in South America. One of the approaches to avoid the most serious, possibly catastrophic impacts, of climate change is solar geoengineering.
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ExtremismAdministration Strategy Seeks to Confront Domestic Terrorism
The administration on Tuesday released its long-awaited strategy for countering domestic terrorism, a comprehensive plan that calls for both short- and long-term measures to confront the growing threat of attacks from militant violent extremists. The strategy focuses on enhancing and sharing information about domestic terrorism, preventing terror recruitment, disrupting and thwarting attacks, and confronting the long-term drivers of domestic terrorism.
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ARGUMENT: 6 January & prosecutorial discretionDrop the Charges Against Minor Capitol Hill Defendants
Rioter who assaulted police or vandalized the Capitol should be prosecuted. But the majority of those who came to the Capitol on 6 January were “gawkers” who just wanted to see the spectacle, or to non-violently express their political opinion, and merely walked through a public office building, The charges against them should be dropped.
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Pandemic & extremismCOVID Gives Rise to Extremism and Violence
Both right- and left-wing extremism flourished during the pandemic year, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency said in its latest report. Most alarmingly, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said that 40 percent of the 33,300 far-right extremists in the country were categorized as “violence-oriented,” the highest proportion ever. And Germany’s security forces have themselves come under new scrutiny.
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Risky bioresearchFifty-Nine Labs around World Handle the Deadliest Pathogens – Only a Quarter Score High on Safety
The focal point of this lab-leak discussion is the Wuhan Institute of Virology, nestled in the hilly outskirts of Wuhan. It is just one of 59 maximum containment labs in operation, under construction or planned around the world. Known as biosafety level 4 (BSL4) labs, these are designed and built so that researchers can safely work with the most dangerous pathogens on the planet – ones that can cause serious disease and for which no treatment or vaccines exist. Far from all of these labs score well on safety and security.
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GunsRising Trends in Suicide by Firearms in Young Americans
Deaths from suicide are rising in the United States. These rising trends are especially alarming because global trends in suicide are on a downward trajectory. Moreover, in the U.S., the major mode of suicide among young Americans is by firearms.
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Nuclear powerSmall Modular Reactors Competitive in Washington’s Clean Energy Future
As the Clean Energy Transformation Act drives Washington state toward carbon-free electricity, a new energy landscape is taking shape. Alongside renewable energy sources, a new report finds small modular reactors are poised to play an integral role in the state’s emerging clean energy future.
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Radiological threatsUse of Radioactive Materials in Commercial Applications Has Increased
The use of high-risk radioactive materials in medical, research, and commercial applications has increased by about 30 percent in the U.S. in the last 12 years, and the government should improve security, tracking, and accountability to reduce health and security risks — while also supporting the development of nonradioactive alternatives to replace them — says a new report.
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Electric gridResearchers Study Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic Grid-Tied System in Texas
Scientists are continuously looking for alternatives to fossil fuel-based power plants to diminish the adverse effects of fossil energy sources on the environment and build reliability. Researchers are studying the viability of solar photovoltaic (PV) grid-tied systems on rooftops to fill that need.
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Our picksThe Critical in Critical Infrastructure | What If the Threat Comes from Within? | Reporting Foreign Cyberattacks, and more
· Protecting the Critical of Critical: What Is Systemically Important Critical Infrastructure?
· US Intel Report Warns of More Violence by QAnon Followers
· New Pentagon Watchdog Facing ‘Significant Challenges’ in Internal Anti-Extremism Effort
· Trump, Allies Pressured DOJ to Back Election Claims, Documents Show
· Police Issue Warning over Terrorist Use of 3D-Printed Guns as UK Neo-Nazi Jailed
· Congress Has Already Authorized the President to Require Reporting of Foreign Cyberattacks
· A Pandemic Isn’t the Only Kind of “Catastrophic Risk.” It’s Time to Prepare More Seriously for the Next.
· Recent Cyberattacks Reveal US Utilities’ Extreme Vulnerability
· What If the Threat Comes from Within? Federal Agencies Must Address the Risk
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Nuclear weaponsGlobal Nuclear Arsenals Grow as States Continue to Modernize
A new report finds that despite an overall decrease in the number of nuclear warheads in 2020, more have been deployed with operational forces. The nine nuclear-armed states together possessed an estimated 13 080 nuclear weapons at the start of 2021, a decrease from the 13 400 at the beginning of 2020, but the estimated number of nuclear weapons currently deployed with operational forces increased to 3825, an increase from 3720 last year.
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BiolabsHere’s What Scientists Learn from Studying Dangerous Pathogens in Secure Labs
There are about 1,400 known human pathogens – viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa and helminths that can cause a person’s injury or death. But in a world with a trillion individual species of microorganisms, where scientists have counted only one one-thousandth of one percent, how likely is it researchers have discovered and characterized everything that might threaten people? Not very likely at all. And there’s a lot to be gained from knowing these microscopic enemies better.
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Mass shootingsUnmedicated, Untreated Brain Illness is Likely in Mass Shooters: Study
The first analysis of medical evidence on domestic mass shooters in the U.S. finds that a large majority of perpetrators have psychiatric disorders for which they have received no medication or other treatment.
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Mass shootingsThe Many Ways Domestic Violence Foreshadows Mass Shootings
The San Jose transit shooting is the latest to illustrate the deadly connection between intimate partner violence and mass murder. How are these seemingly separate issues intertwined, and what can be done to save lives?
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ARGUMENT: Countering domestic terroristsA Sea Change in Counterterrorism
Even before the attempted insurrection at the Capitol on 6 January, the threat of domestic extremism was clear, with terrorist attacks by racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) eclipsing the threat posed by jihadist groups such as the Islamic State. The Biden administration will soon release a new strategy document for fighting domestic terrorism.
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CybersecurityDefending against Smudge Attacks
Many modern devices that hold our personal and business information are touchscreen and hackers and thieves are always resourceful. The smudges left by your fingertips remain on the screen, marking out the likely numbers from the virtual keypad on your phone that you used to tap in your PIN. Soon after, the phone is lost or stolen and that malicious third party carries out a “smudge attack” – they look at the screen and can have a good guess at the digits in your PIN.
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First respondersDrone with 3D Mapping Tech Gives First Responders Near Real-Time Data
ResponDrone’s new precision mapping abilities enable rescue teams to better understand their working environment in emergency situations such as fire, flood or any other natural disaster.
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Our picksThe Legal Stakes of a Lab Leak | Power, Water Seen as Targets | Curbing the Rise of Digital Destabilization
· The Legal Stakes of a Lab Leak
· What We Owe to Ransomware Gangs
· Power, Water Seen as Targets
· Lawmakers Press Biden to Give Putin Ultimatum on Ransomware Gangs
· QAnon Follower Tim Stewart’s an Old Friend of Australia’s PM Scott Morrison. His Family Reported Him to the National Security Hotline
· No Easy Way Out for Biden Administration on Migrant Surge, Experts Say
· DHS, DoD Release Plans on What to Do with Border Wall Contracts, Future Projects
· As Ransomware Demands Boom, Insurance Companies Keep Paying Out
· Age of the Cyber-Attack: US Struggles to Curb Rise of Digital Destabilization
· Russia Agrees to Cyber Rules and Violates Them at the Same Time
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CybersecurityCyber Regulation Could Be Coming Following Spate of Hacks, Ransomware Attacks
The United States may soon look to regulate private companies, mandating higher standards for cybersecurity following a series of damaging hacks and ransomware attacks against key firms and critical infrastructure. Cybersecurity experts say that malign actors are currently operating with impunity and that too many private sector organizations have, so far, failed to take the necessary precautions. “Enlightened self-interest, that’s apparently not working,” Chris Inglis, tapped to be the country’s first national cyber director, told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “Market forces, that’s apparently not working.”
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More headlines
The long view
ARGUMENT: Real energy securityPanic at the Pump and the Real Threat to Energy Security
On Friday, May 7, the Colonial Pipeline was taken offline by a cyber attack. A major piece of the national energy infrastructure, the 5,500-mile-long line carries 45% of all the fuel — including gasoline, aviation fuel, and home heating oil — consumed on the East Coast. Gregory Brew writes that “almost immediately, commentators compared the situation to the Arab oil embargo of 1973 to 1974. “Such thinking reflects years of scholarship and public discourse focusing on energy security: the ability of consumers and governments to maintain access to energy flows, at reasonable prices, and handle potential disruptions,” he writes. Such analogies, while tempting, focus attention on mythical dangers at the expense of real ones.
ARGUMENT: Cybersecurity as counterterrorismCybersecurity as Counterterrorism: Seeking a Better Debate
Earlier this month, a senior Justice Department official referred to ransomware as a potential “cyber weapon of mass destruction.” When hackers subsequently disabled the Colonial Pipeline, causing fuel shortages and disruptions along the East Coast, it seemed to validate this warning. Simon Handler, Emma Schroeder, and Trey Herr, however, write that it would be a mistake for the policy establishment to double down on an outdated view of cyber conflict rooted in Cold War analogies. To improve U.S. cybersecurity, policymakers should draw instead on more relevant strategic lessons from the study of terrorism and counterterrorism.
ARGUMENT: Extremism onlineOn Christchurch Call Anniversary, a Step Closer to Eradicating Terrorism Online?
Is it possible to eradicate terrorism and violent extremism from the internet? To prevent videos and livestreams of terrorist attacks from going viral, and maybe even prevent them from being shared or uploaded in the first place? Courtney C. Radsch writes that the governments and tech companies involved in the Christchurch Call are dealing with a difficult issue: “The big question is whether the twin imperatives of eradicating TVEC while protecting the internet’s openness and freedom of expression are compatible,” Radsch writes.
ARGUMENT: Fighting ransomwareIt’s Time to Surge Resources into Prosecuting Ransomware Gangs
In the popular imagination, hacking is committed by lone wolves with exceptional computer skills. But in reality, the vast majority of hackers do not have the technical sophistication to create the malicious tools that are essential to their trade. Kellen Dwyer writes that hacking has exploded in recent years because criminals have specialized and subspecialized so that each one can concentrate on facilitating just a single phase of a successful data breach. This is known as cybercrime-as-a-service and it is a massive business. This intricate cybercrime ecosystem offers the key to fighting it: “While organization and specialization are strengths of cybercriminals, they are also weaknesses. That means there are organizations that can be infiltrated and exploited.”
PERSPECTIVE: Sea wallsA 20-Foot Sea Wall? Miami Faces the Hard Choices of Climate Change.
In Miami, the U.S. metropolitan area that is perhaps most exposed to sea-level rise, the problem is not climate change denialism. Patricia Mazzei writes that “the trouble is that the magnitude of the interconnected obstacles the region faces can feel overwhelming, and none of the possible solutions are cheap, easy or pretty.”
ARGUMENT: Covid-19 origins Is Covid-19 a Bio-Weapon?
The “racial disparity” of the deaths from Covid should raise alarms. Not the relatively small differences between white, black and Hispanic death rates in America, but the massive disparity between death rates of East Asian countries, and everyone else on earth. On a per capita basis, non-East Asians are dying at rates 20 times higher that of East Asians. That is not a statistical “blip.” It screams that the virus has massively unequal kill rates - and kills people of different races very differently. That is the signature of a bio-weapon.
ARGUMENT: Covid-19 originsThe Origins of Covid-19 and Preventing the Next Pandemic
Did COVID-19 originate with bats or scientists? Amanda Moodie and Nicholas Evans write that the desire to identify the origins of the novel coronavirus is perfectly understandable, but that “while answering the question of where the novel coronavirus came from is important, many of the most important policy decisions the United States needs to make to prevent future pandemics do not depend on viral origins.” “there is one important scenario in which it would be absolutely vital to know the origins of COVID-19: If “the pandemic stemmed from a deliberate attempt to develop a biological warfare agent, this would have serious implications for the Biological Weapons Convention and the broader norm against the use of disease as a weapon.”
ARGUMENT: Lab-leak theoryThe Lab-Leak Theory: Evidence Beyond a Reasonable Doubt
In the justice system, where the most exacting evidentiary standards are applied, Andrew McCarthy writes, the requirement is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, not proof beyond all possible doubt. “There is no proof beyond all possible doubt.” And investigative journalists have chronicled for months what must be considered “proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the coronavirus pandemic was generated by an accident — a lab leak, a not-uncommon mishap in medical research conducted by fallible human beings — at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” He adds: “Unless and until China comes forward with convincing evidence that the lab-leak theory is wrong, the position of the United States and the world must be that China is culpable.”
Energy securityHydropower’s Evolving Value to the Grid and Energy Storage
Across the United States, hydroelectric dams are capturing energy from river water to create electricity that powers everything from street lights to mega industrial plants. Hydropower represents 41 percent of all renewable energy generated across the nation and is a key element of a flexible, resilient electric grid. But in some parts of the country, operations at dams are changing.
Food securitySolar Geoengineering May Alleviate Impacts of Global Warming on Crops
Solar geoengineering — putting aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and reduce global warming — is not a fix-all for climate change but it could be one of several tools to manage climate risks. A growing body of research has explored the ability of solar geoengineering to reduce physical climate changes. But much less is known about how solar geoengineering could affect the ecosystem and, particularly, agriculture.
Pandemic preparationsWhat Do We Need to Do to Get Ready for the Next Global Pandemic?
“Pandemics are going to happen, but we can absolutely prevent the devastation that occurs from a pandemic. We can act now to put us in a position so that when the next pandemic does happen, we don’t have to allow it to get out of control. We can build tools to find it quickly and to act fast. We can build up new public health infrastructure to tackle it once it starts spreading,” says Harvard’s expert Michael Mina.
Nuclear powerImproving the Safety of Next-Generation Reactors
On 11 March 2011, in response to a massive earthquake, the nuclear reactors at Fukushima-Daiichi automatically shut down, as designed. The emergency systems, which would have helped maintain the necessary cooling of the core, were destroyed by the subsequent tsunami. Because the reactor could no longer cool itself, the core overheated, resulting in a severe nuclear meltdown. Since then, reactors have improved exponentially in terms of safety, sustainability and efficiency. Unlike the light-water reactors at Fukushima, which had liquid coolant and uranium fuel, the current generation of reactors has a variety of coolant options, including molten-salt mixtures, supercritical water and even gases like helium.
TsunamisPreviously Unrecognized Tsunami Hazard to Coastal Cities Identified
A new study found overlooked tsunami hazards related to undersea, near-shore strike-slip faults, especially for coastal cities adjacent to faults that traverse inland bays. Several areas around the world may fall into this category, including the San Francisco Bay Area, Izmit Bay in Turkey and the Gulf of Aqaba in Egypt.
Food securityProtecting the U.S. Food Supply Chain
An attack on our food supply—whether from intentional tampering, or due to contagious animal disease—could be dangerous to human health and could cause long-lasting economic impacts. DHS S&T is working to protect the U.S. food supply chain – from the farm to the table.
Food securityNew Biodefense Lab to Focus on Food Security
The University of Nebraska has launched a 5-year project to help safeguard the U.S. food supply. The project will address agricultural and natural resources security, defense, and countermeasures; biological defense in support of the U.S. Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security and other government stakeholders; development and deployment of biosurveillance, biodetection and diagnostic tools; and pandemic preparedness related to human, livestock and crop plant diseases that could result in disruptions to the U.S. and global food systems.
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.
