• THE RUSSIA CONNECTIONRussia Steps Up Spy War on West

    By Henry Ridgwell

    Russia has successfully relaunched its spy operations against the West after hundreds of its operatives were ejected following Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, according to analysts. They warn that the Kremlin is using a network of proxies to infiltrate European nations and carry out a range of intelligence operations.

  • ELECTION INTERFERENCEArtificial Intelligence Is Game Changer for Election Interference: FBI

    By Jeff Seldin

    U.S. security officials are bracing for an onslaught of fast-paced influence operations, from a wide range of adversaries, aimed at impacting the country’s coming presidential election. FBI Director Christopher Wray issued the latest warning in a meeting with security professional Thursday, saying that technologies such as artificial intelligence are already altering the threat landscape.

  • ESPIONAGELast of the ‘True Believers’ or Harbinger? Ana Montes and the Future of Espionage Against the West

    By Chris Taylor

    Ana Montes was U.S. Intelligence’s ‘Queen of Cuba’. The Defense Intelligence Agency’s leading Central America analyst; go-to voice on Cuban intentions and capabilities; eldest daughter of a family dedicated to U.S. government service. She was also a Cuban spy her entire professional life. She was a ’True Believer’ –motivated not by material rewards but by commitment to Castro’s revolution and opposition to U.S. policy in Latin America.

  • ESPIONAGEResearch Espionage Is a Real Threat – but a Drastic Crackdown Could Stifle Vital International Collaboration

    By James Laurenceson

    In 2024, China is a peer of the US in research and knowledge creation. We must be clear-eyed about threats to “research security”. But a one-eyed focus on China, and adopting a simplistic and heavy-handed approach to managing these threats, will only leave us worse off.

  • PROPAGANDAHow You Can Tell Propaganda from Journalism − Let’s Look at Tucker Carlson’s Visit to Russia

    By Michael J. Socolow

    In the 1930s, the New York Times’s Moscow bureau chief Walter Duranty wrote glowing reports about the achievements of the Soviet state while ignoring the Stalin dictatorship’s starvation of millions of Ukrainians. These days, conservative TV personality and former Fox News star Tucker Carlson is providing Vladimir Putin and his regime propaganda services similar to those Duranty offered Stalin – except that Carlson goes farther: narrating a series of reports extolling the glories of Russian society, culture, and governance under Putin, Carlson said that these achievements “radicalized” him “against our American leaders.”

  • SATELLITE SECURITYCybersecurity for Satellites Is a Growing challenge, as Threats to Space-Based Infrastructure Grow

    By Sylvester Kaczmarek

    In today’s interconnected world, space technology forms the backbone of our global communication, navigation and security systems. As our dependency on these celestial guardians escalates, so too does their allure to adversaries who may seek to compromise their functionality through cyber means.

  • THE RUSSIA CONNECTIONThe List Is Long: Russians Who Have Died After Running Afoul of the Kremlin

    By Steve Gutterman

    The list of influential Russians who have been killed or died in murky circumstances after opposing, criticizing, or crossing Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin, or the state is long. It has just gotten longer.

  • INTELLIGENCEHas Trust in the U.S. Intelligence Community Eroded?

    Has trust in intelligence predictions and national estimates been degraded over time? If so, to what degree has trust been degraded? What internal and external factors have driven perceived or real changes in the relationship between policymakers and the IC?

  • ELECTION SECURITYFeds Deliver Stark Warnings to State Election Officials Ahead of November

    By Matt Vasilogambros

    Federal law enforcement and cybersecurity officials are warning the nation’s state election administrators that they face serious threats ahead of November’s presidential election, as AI, ransomware attacks, and malicious mail could disrupt voting.

  • TRUTH DECAYSocial Media Posts Have Power, and So Do You

    By Alice Huguet, Julia H. Kaufman, and Melissa Kay Diliberti

    In a healthy democracy, having accurate information is crucial for making informed decisions about voting and civic engagement. False and misleading information can lead to knowledge that is inaccurate, incomplete, or manipulated. Such knowledge can erode trust in democratic institutions and contribute to divisions within society. Fortunately, the ability to identify and resist false and misleading information is not static, because this ability relies on skills that can be learned.

  • CHINA WATCHU.S. Disrupts Botnet China Used to Conceal Hacking of Critical Infrastructure

    In December 2023, the FBI disrupted a botnet of hundreds of U.S.-based small office/home office (SOHO) routers hijacked by People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored hackers. The Chinese government hackers used privately-owned SOHO routers infected with the “KV Botnet” malware to conceal the PRC origin of further hacking activities directed against U.S. critical infrastructure and the critical infrastructure of other foreign victims.

  • DEEPFAKESFake Biden Robocall to New Hampshire Voters Highlights How Easy It Is to Make Deepfakes − and How Hard It Is to Defend Against AI-Generated Disinformation

    By Joan Donovan

    Robocalls in elections are nothing new and not illegal; many are simply efforts to get out the vote. But they have also been used in voter suppression campaigns. Compounding this problem in this case is what I believe to be the application of AI to clone Biden’s voice.

  • CLOAK & DAGGERThe Spies Should Go Back into the Cold

    By Robert Wihtol

    Recent Russian efforts to interfere in US elections, track down and eliminate defectors and other ‘disloyal elements’, and plant disinformation using social media are nothing new. Rather, they are the continuation by modern means of an intelligence war that has been going on since 1917. Following the end of the two world wars and the Cold War, the US and the UK reduced their intelligence capacity when they should have been countercyclical, gearing up for the inevitable next intelligence challenge.

  • ATTACK ATTRIBUTIONFifty-Five Hours of Risk: The Dangerous Implications of Slow Attack Attribution

    By J. D. Maddox

    Assuming that its foreign adversaries’ recent violent threats are to be taken seriously, and that the likelihood of a direct attack against the United States is, if not on the rise, at least significant enough to warrant serious attention, the United States has an urgent mandate to prepare effective cognitive defenses. Foremost among these is the ability to quickly and accurately attribute attacks to their originators, and to deliver that information to the public through a trustworthy vehicle.

  • CHINA WATCHCyber 'Kidnapping' Scams Target Chinese Students Around the World

    By Liam Scott and Tracy Liu

    A recent cyber kidnapping incident involving a Chinese exchange student in Utah appears to be part of an international pattern in which unknown perpetrators, often masquerading as Chinese police or government officials, target Chinese students around the world and extort their families for upwards of tens of thousands of dollars.