• RUSSIAN DISINFORMATIONRussia Accuses Ukrainian Energy Company Linked to Hunter Biden of Financing Terror

    Russia’s top investigative body said it had opened a probe into a Ukrainian company that formerly had ties to the son of U.S. President Joe Biden, in what likely is an effort to spread disinformation in the midst of the heated U.S. presidential election campaign.

  • ARGUMENT: RUSSIAN DISINFORMATIONDon’t Buy Moscow’s Shameless Campaign Tying Biden to Its Terrorist Attack

    Russia has offered many different explanations to the ISIS-K’s 22 March 2024 terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow, but the most recent explanation offered by Russia is the most audacious yet: Russia now charges that the Ukrainian energy company Burisma financed the attack. Burisma is at the center of an effort by a congressional committee to impeach President Biden, but the case has all but collapsed. Hunter Stoll writes that Russia’s disinformation and propaganda apparatus appears to be searching for ways to keep Burisma in the news ahead of the U.S. presidential election.

  • ESPIONGAEIs the EU Ready to Ward Off Spies and Foreign-Influence Peddlers?

    By Ella Joyner

    After a spate of foreign influence scandals at the European Parliament and in national capitals, EU officials are scrambling to get a handle on suspected Russian and Chinese espionage ahead of the June elections.

  • CHINA WATCHAfD's EU Election Ticket Unchanged Despite China’s Spying Scandal

    Maximilian Krah, the candidate of the far-right, populist AfD in June’s European elections, will stay on as candidate even though, on Tuesday, his senior aide was charged with spying for China. As is the case with other European far-right populist parties, the AfD is critical of NATO and the EU, and supports many of the policies of Russia and China.

  • CHINA WATCHChinese Government Poses 'Bold and Unrelenting' Threat to U.S. Critical Infrastructure: FBI

    FBI Director Christopher Wray on 18 April warned that risks the government of China poses to U.S. national and economic security are “upon us now”—and that U.S. critical infrastructure is a prime target. He said that partnerships, joint operations, and private sector vigilance can help us fight back.

  • CHINA WATCHSpyware as Service: What the i-Soon Files Reveal About China’s Targeting of the Tibetan Diaspora

    Governments are increasingly incorporating cyber operations into the arsenal of statecraft. This sophisticated integration combines open-source intelligence, geospatial intelligence, human intelligence, and cyber espionage with artificial intelligence, allowing for the gathering and analysis of ever-expanding data sets. Increasingly, such operations are being outsourced.

  • ELECTION SECURITYSecurity Agencies Warn Election Officials to Brace for Attacks on U.S. Presidential Race

    By Jeff Seldin

    U.S. intelligence and security agencies are trying to prepare election officials across the United States for a wave of new attacks aiming to destroy voter confidence in November’s presidential election, just as a series of reports warn that familiar adversaries – Russia, China, and Iran — are starting to ramp up their efforts.

  • CHINA WATCHESChinese Nationalist Trolls Pretend to Be Trump Supporters Ahead of U.S. Elections

    By Lin Yang

    Chinese nationalist trolls have been posing as American supporters of former President Donald Trump on X to try to exploit domestic divisions ahead of the U.S. election. China’s so-called Spamouflage troll network mimics Russia’s playbook during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when Moscow used information warfare to damage the Clinton campaign, boost Trump’s chances and sow distrust in American democracy.

  • DISINFORMATIONRussia's Disinformation Campaign Seeps into U.S. Views

    By Tatiana Vorozhko

    The Washington Post recently published an investigation into an extensive and coordinated Russian campaign to influence U.S. public opinion to deny Ukraine the aid. The investigation exposed a Kremlin-linked campaign in which “political strategists and trolls have written thousands of fabricated news articles, social media posts and comments that promote American isolationism, stir fear over the United States’ border security and attempt to amplify U.S. economic and racial tensions,” the Post reported.

  • DISINFORMATIONFrance Fights Disinformation as Olympics, Elections Loom

    By Lisa Louis

    With the Paris Olympics and Paralympics approaching — not to mention the European elections in June — France is ramping up its fight against information manipulation. EU officials are also on guard.

  • IRAN’S THREATMemo: The Reported Destruction of Secret Workshop in 2020

    By David Albright, Sarah Burkhard, Spencer Faragasso, and Mohammadreza Giveh

    On March 24, 2024, Iran International reported that an “industrial production workshop […] belonging to the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) was deliberately set on fire” in the summer of 2020. 1 The incident was not reported publicly at the time, and Iran International cites judicial and intelligence documents provided by a hacking group as their source. Iran alleged that the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, hired a group of nine Iranians to destroy the facility.

  • CHINA WATCHBiden to Xi: Stay Out of U.S. Elections

    By Patsy Widakuswara

    President Joe Biden again warned Chinese President Xi Jinping against meddling in the November U.S. presidential election during the two leaders’ phone call Tuesday. Covert Chinese accounts are masquerading online as American supporters of former President Donald Trump, promoting conspiracy theories, stoking domestic divisions, and attacking President Biden ahead of the election in November, according to researchers and government officials.

  • BIOSECURITYCanada’s Biosecurity Scandal: The Risks of Foreign Interference in Life Sciences

    By Brendan Walker-Munro

    In July 2019, world-renowned biological researchers Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng were quietly walked out of the Canadian government’s National Microbiology Lab (NML). The original allegation against them was that Qiu had authorized a shipment to China of some of the deadliest viruses on the planet, including Ebola and Nipah. Then the story seemed to go away—until now.

  • HAVANA SYNDROMEU.S. Unpersuaded by Report Blaming Russia for ‘Havana Syndrome’

    By Jeff Seldin

    The United States is backing a year-old intelligence assessment that health problems affecting, and in some cases incapacitating, hundreds of American personnel around the world are not the result of a weapon wielded by a U.S. adversary. The White House, the Pentagon and the State Department Monday stood by a March 2023 report by the National Intelligence Council that concluded it is “very unlikely” the adverse symptoms known as Havana Syndrome were caused by enemy operatives.

  • CHINA WATCHWhat Is Volt Typhoon? A Cybersecurity Expert Explains the Chinese Hackers Targeting U.S. Critical Infrastructure

    By Richard Forno

    Volt Typhoon is a Chinese state-sponsored hacker group. The United States government and its primary global intelligence partners, known as the Five Eyes, issued a warning on March 19, 2024, about the group’s activity targeting critical infrastructure. The warning echoes analyses by the cybersecurity community about Chinese state-sponsored hacking in recent years.