Contest in Cyberspace | Defusing Risk | Combatting Domestic Extremism, and more

None of it appeared to hint at what he would do next. On Friday afternoon, law enforcement officials said, Mr. Green, 25, drove a dark blue Nissan sedan from nearby Virginia to the United States Capitol and plowed into two police officers protecting the grounds, killing one and injuring another. He then got out of the car brandishing a knife and lunged at officers. Police shot and mortally wounded him.

Two Yemenis on Terror Watchlist Arrested Trying to Cross U.S.-Mexico Border  (Reuters / VOA)
U.S. border agents in recent months arrested two Yemeni men on a terror watchlist in separate incidents as they crossed the border with Mexico illegally, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced Monday. The men, arrested in January and March near a port of entry in California, were on a U.S. government watchlist for terrorism suspects and a no-fly list, CBP said in a press release. A group of Republican lawmakers that visited the border in El Paso, Texas, in March said border agents told them during the trip that some people caught crossing the border were on a U.S. terrorism watchlist. Republicans have criticized President Joe Biden for easing some restrictions put in place by former President Donald Trump as the number of border crossings has risen in recent months. One of the men, age 33, was arrested January 29 after allegedly attempting to cross the border illegally near a port of entry in Calexico, California, CBP said. Border agents found a mobile phone SIM card beneath the insole of the man’s shoe, the agency said. The second man, age 26, was arrested March 30 in the same vicinity. A CBP spokesman said in a written statement that it is very uncommon for border agents to encounter people suspected of terrorism at U.S. borders and that the arrests underscore the agency’s critical vetting efforts.

After a Career Shaped by Extremist Violence, Philly’s Acting U.S. Attorney Launches Network to Defuse Risk  (Jeremy Roebuck, Philadelphia Inquirer)
The threat of extremist violence has shaped Jennifer Arbittier Williams’ life more than most. When she was 15, a great-uncle, Leon Klinghoffer, was killed by Palestinian hijackers aboard the Mediterranean cruise ship the Achille Lauro in 1985. At 30, she watched in horror from the patio of the Manhattan law firm where she was working as a young associate as al-Qaeda plotters flew planes into the World Trade Center. She moved back to Philadelphia shortly after for a job at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, where she became the go-to prosecutor for terrorism cases and eventually chief of its national security unit. And so, when she was tapped earlier this year to lead the office as acting U.S. attorney for Philadelphia and the surrounding counties — two weeks after the deadly insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol — it was only natural that she would choose a program aimed at defusing extremist threats as the signature focus of her tenure. Last month, Williams — who succeeds U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain — launched the Threat Intervention and Prevention (TIP) Network, a collaboration among more than a dozen regional law enforcement offices and local businesses, nonprofits, schools, and community groups.

Ivory Trade and Diamonds Funding ISIS Rise in Africa  (Tom Collins, The Times)
Islamic State is using ivory smuggling and illegal trade in wildlife, sugar and diamonds to finance its expansion in Africa, according to a new report. Last week Islamist fighters killed scores of people and displaced hundreds more as they stormed the town of Palma in Mozambique, raising fears that the region will be unable to contain the rapidly expanding insurgency. “Illicit trade is the lifeblood which sustains extremist groups operating in East Africa,” wrote Sir Ivor Roberts, a former British ambassador to Yugoslavia, Ireland and Italy, in a report for the Counter Extremism Project.

Spate of Islamist Attacks Puts Sahel on Track for Deadliest Year  (Katarina Hoije, Samuel Dodge, and Jeremy Diamond, Bloomberg)
West Africa’s Sahel region is headed for its deadliest year of Islamist-militant violence. Insurgents have killed at least 450 civilians in the region this year, Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project data shows, compared with 401 last year. The first three months of 2021 have seen more non-combatant deaths blamed on jihadist groups than the same period last year, according to statistics analyzed by Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development data analyst Jose Luengo-Cabrera. At least 1,000 people overall have died in attacks this year, including soldiers and militants. The highest-casualty attack occurred on March 21, when militants killed 137 people in coordinated strikes on communities in and around the western Nigerien town of Tillia. Violence has persisted despite a multinational effort to quell the insurgency, which surged in Mali in 2012 and later spread to regional neighbors. The inability to curb the violence “is the failure of all of us and the failure of the whole coalition,” Nigerien President Mohamed Bazoum told a France 24 interviewer days before his April 2 inauguration.

Army Begins Clinical Trials on Vaccine That May Be Effective Against All Coronaviruses  (Patricia Kime, Military.com)
Fifteen months after launching an effort to develop a vaccine against COVID-19, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research is preparing for a clinical trial, seeking volunteers for a small safety study.
The Army’s vaccine candidate uses a new technology involving a Spike Ferritin Nanoparticle, or SpFN, that researchers hope can be adapted to protect against any coronavirus, including those that cause the common cold or deadly diseases such as COVID-19, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, MERS.

Covert Action, Espionage, and the Intelligence Contest in Cyberspace  (Michael Poznansky, War on the Rocks)

·  “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. The attacks raise important questions about how best to characterize these and other kinds of disruptive cyber events. One perspective that has gained considerable traction is that cyberspace is not primarily a warfighting domain … but rather an intelligence contest centered on spies and spycraft.”

·  “The variety of Russian operations against the United States in recent months clearly illustrates the need for a more refined framework. The hack against SolarWinds … appears to be a work of espionage. Their continued efforts to sow disinformation during U.S. elections … was a work of covert action. While both are intelligence activities, the U.S. response should be tailored.”

·  “Cyberspace was firmly established as a warfighting domain … a little over a decade ago. In a recent article in War on the Rocks, however, Josh Rovner argues that cyber is really more of an intelligence contest. Making this conceptual shift has significant implications for how we understand this space. … In practice, the lines between espionage and covert action may be somewhat blurry.”

·  “Cyberspace may be an intelligence contest among rivals, but all intelligence operations are not created equal. While cyber-enabled espionage and covert cyber operations both qualify as intelligence activities given their reliance on secrecy, and are therefore distinct from conventional warfare or diplomacy, they are also distinct in key ways from one another.”

·  “Going forward, appreciating this nuance will be important for several reasons. … First, … having a clear sense of how to think about the variety of operations in cyberspace is critical. In many cases, cyber activity approximates an intelligence contest in which states jockey for information and influence. … Second, assessing the wisdom of the previous administration’s decision to give Cyber Command more latitude in conducting operations … requires clear metrics of what has worked and what has not. Covert cyber operations may provide a more useful benchmark than espionage operations.”

Countering Foreign Interference in U.S. Elections  (Marek N. Posard, Hilary Reininger and Todd C. Helmus, RAND Corporation)

·  “Russian information efforts are recycling U.S. partisanship at scale. … Russia identifies who dislikes whom within the United States and then floods the information space with content to amplify these cleavages.”

·  “Most participants in focus groups and interviews mistakenly assumed that Russian content was sourced by Americans.”

·  “Most of these participants held a positive view of a PSA (public service announcement) on foreign election interference that provided a nonpartisan, general warning created by an authoritative source: the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.”

·  “After interviewers told participants that the content they viewed was from Russia, the PSA appeared to be particularly relevant to them.”