Our picksWhy Is Russia Not Using Pegasus Spyware? | Pandemic & Political Discontent | Securing Cyberspace, and more

The Pandemic Has Exacerbated Existing Political Discontent  (Economist)
The problem is worst in middle-income countries.

America’s Vaccination Woes Cannot Be Blamed Only on Politics  (Economist)
Surging covid infections and slow vaccinations in some states are caused by health illiteracy, not just partisanship.

Updating Space Doctrine: How to Avoid World War III (Jim Cooper, War on the Rocks)

·  “First, the United States should create deterrence in space that the world knows and respects, not just reiterate empty and sometimes misleading space doctrines. America needs the will, the technology, and, yes, the publicity, to make deterrence real to potential adversaries.”

·  “Establishing space deterrence will be made easier by the fact that any nation initiating a space attack would be transgressing a deep taboo, like dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.”

·  “Another source of deterrence comes from fully understanding the space environment and its current players. Space wars are, by definition, remote-controlled robot wars….Fortunately, the United States has a substantial advantage in virtually every field of space machinery. That alone should sober up an attacker.”

·  “Other ways of promoting deterrence include warning of denial of U.S. space discrimination capabilities—the ability to identify and track ‘space junk’—to any nation that crosses red lines, leaving their satellites more vulnerable to space debris.”

·  “Another is to have legions of replacement satellites ready for launch, like modern terra-cotta warriors, rendering anti-satellite weapons useless. Impossible? That’s what was said about SpaceX’s reusable rockets.”

·  “Another fundamental of space is the recognition that no one should die for a robot. The laws of war haven’t caught up to this idea yet, but they will. This isn’t self-righteousness. It’s realism. The United States would have a hard time persuading a skeptical global public that it really knows why a U.S. satellite died without divulging national technical means.”

Why Is Russia Not Using Pegasus Spyware? (Andrei Soldatov, Moscow Times)

·  “When a group of international investigative journalists and researchers broke the news that spyware called Pegasus, produced by the Israeli NSO Group, had helped repressive governments across the world spy on journalists, activists and lawyers on an unprecedented scale, the question emerged: Where was Russia?” (Cont.)