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U.K.'s Johnson says Putin probably behind ex-spy attack; Kremlin lashes out
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has said it is “overwhelmingly likely” that Russian President Vladimir Putin made the decision to use a highly toxic chemical against a former double agent in England. “We have nothing against the Russians themselves. There is to be no Russophobia as a result of what is happening,” Johnson said on 16 March6, nearly two weeks after former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were exposed to what British authorities say was a potent nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union. “Our quarrel is with Putin’s Kremlin, and with his decision — and we think it overwhelmingly likely that it was his decision — to direct the use of a nerve agent on the streets of the U.K., on the streets of Europe for the first time since the Second World War,” Johnson said.
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Seeking clarity: Making gray-zone activity more black and white
An emergent type of conflict in recent years has been coined “gray zone,” because it sits in a nebulous area between peace and conventional warfare. Gray-zone action is not openly declared or defined, it’s slower, and is prosecuted more subtly—using social, psychological, religious, information, cyber and other means to achieve physical or cognitive objectives with or without violence. The lack of clarity of intent—the grayness—makes it challenging to detect, characterize, and counter an enemy fighting this way. DARPA launches a new program called COMPASS, to develop software that would help clarify enemy intent by gauging an adversary’s responses to various stimuli.
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New U.S. sanctions on Russia for election interference, infrastructure cyberattacks, NoPetya
The U.S. Treasury has issued its strongest sanctions yet against Russia in response to what it called “ongoing nefarious attacks.” The move targets five entities and nineteen individuals. Among the institutions targeted in the new sanctions for election meddling were Russia’s top intelligence services, Federal Security Service (FSB) and Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU), the two organizations whose hackers, disinformation specialists, and outside contractors such as the Internet Research Agency (IRA) troll farm were behind — and are still engaged in — a broad and sustained campaign to undermine U.S. democracy.
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Skripal case: Johnson says U.K. may target “corrupt” Putin allies
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson has said that the country’s law enforcement agencies were investigating rich Russian individuals with assets in Britain, and suggested that those who owe their wealth to their ties with President Vladimir Putin could be brought to justice. Allies have expressed support for Britain’s assessment that Russia was behind the attack, with French President Emmanuel Macron saying that he would announce unspecified “measures” in the coming days. And NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the “unacceptable” attack was part of “a reckless pattern of Russian behavior over many years.”
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French expert says novichok toxin is “clearly a direct link to Russia”
Novichok, the toxic nerve agent that British authorities believe was used in the near-fatal poisoning of former spy and retired Russian military intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, is a powerful substance that is exceedingly difficult to manufacture. This is why a growing number of chemical weapons experts say it is highly likely that only a government could have the technology and infrastructure to make it. And given that the Soviet Union, in the 1980s, was the only state known to have produced it, that has led many experts to conclude that Russian intelligence was behind Skripal’s poisoning.
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Appellate court issues encouraging border search opinion
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in U.S. v. Molina-Isidoro recently issued an encouraging opinion related to the digital privacy of travelers crossing the U.S. border. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed an amicus brief last year in the case, arguing that the Supreme Court’s decision in Riley v. California (2014) supports the conclusion that border agents need a probable cause warrant before searching electronic devices because of the unprecedented and significant privacy interests travelers have in their digital data. In Riley, the Supreme Court followed similar reasoning and held that police must obtain a warrant to search the cell phone of an arrestee.
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Police investigating death of Russian businessman in London
A lawyer says a Russian businessman who associated with a prominent critic of the Kremlin has died in London. Nikolai Glushkov, 68, was found dead at his home in southwest London. Glushkov was friends with Boris Berezovsky, a Russian oligarch who died at his home in Berkshire, England, in 2013. In 2011, Glushkov gave evidence at the court case brought by Berezovsky against Kremlin-friendly oligarch Roman Abramovich. Besides Berezovsky and Glushkov, two other prominent Russian exiles — Aleksandr Litvinenko and Aleksandr Perepilichny — died in Britain in recent years.
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Iran has at least 10 military bases in Syria
Iran has a network of 10-13 military bases in Syria according to a new study. The study includes a map of Iranian bases, details of each base and an analysis of the strength of the main Shia militias operating in Syria. The bases have tens of thousands of troops from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), as well as missiles and transfer facilities to support Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia militia.
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Deadly nerve agent novichok is a decades-old Cold War foe
Novichok, the powerful nerve agent that British Prime Minister Theresa May says was used in the attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, means “newcomer” in Russian. But the military grade chemical is anything but. Developed in the former Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, novichoks are a group of advanced nerve agents designed to circumvent chemical weapons treaties and penetrate protective gear used by NATO forces.
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British PM says “highly likely” Russia was behind nerve-agent attack
British Prime Minister Theresa May says evidence shows that it is “highly likely” that Russia is behind the nerve-agent attack on a former Russian spy and his daughter in the city of Salisbury despite Kremlin denials that Moscow was involved in the incident. Home Secretary Amber Rudd said police were examining more than 200 pieces of evidence, had identified more than 240 witnesses, and were looking through security camera footage.
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To stop fake news, internet platforms should choose quality over quantity: Study
“Fake news” has made headlines and dominated social media chatter since the 2016 presidential election. It appears to be everywhere, and researchers are still determining the scale of the problem. A new study examines fake news and its prevalence and impact across Google, Facebook, and Twitter. The authors offer recommendations for stemming the flow and influence of fake news, and in particular call for more interdisciplinary research—including more collaboration between internet platforms and academia — “to reduce the spread of fake news and to address the underlying pathologies it has revealed.”
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Former Argentine president to stand trial for covering up terror attack on Jewish center
Argentina’s former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner will go to trial on charges that she participated in the cover-up of Iranian officials involved in the 1994 terror attack in a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. In a 26-page ruling by Judge Claudio Bonadio, the former president and eleven former government officials were ordered to stand trial and were accused of the cover-up and abuse of power. One of those officials is ex-foreign minister Hector Timerman.
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Putin: “Jews” with Russian citizenship may have meddled in U.S. election
In a weekend interview on NBC News, President Vladimir Putin, in an effort to deflect attention from the role the Kremlin’s hackers and disinformation specialists played in meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, said that such meddling was probably the work of “Jews” or other minorities in the Russian Federation. American Jewish organizations criticized Putin for giving voice to conspiracy theories which were at the core of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an anti-Semitic fabricated text, first published in Russia in 1903, purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination.
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Almost no progress on securing U.S. voting machines in last two years
By a number of key metrics, the United States has failed to make significant progress securing voting machines, despite increasing warnings about system vulnerabilities from election officials and national security experts. “The threats of both hacking and foreign interference are undeniable, yet we’re not doing all we can as a country to protect machines or ensure correct vote totals if a successful attack does occur,” says the author of a just-published study.
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Study: On Twitter, false news travels faster than true stories
A new study by three MIT scholars has found that false news spreads more rapidly on the social network Twitter than real news does — and by a substantial margin. “We found that falsehood diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth, in all categories of information, and in many cases by an order of magnitude,” says one researcher. “These findings shed new light on fundamental aspects of our online communication ecosystem,” says another researcher, adding that the researchers were “somewhere between surprised and stunned” at the different trajectories of true and false news on Twitter.
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More headlines
The long view
Preventing Another 'Jan. 6' Starts by Changing How Elections Are Certified, Experts Say
The 2024 presidential election may be a rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, but preventing a repeat of Jan. 6, 2021 — when false claims of a stolen election promoted by Donald Trump and his allies led to an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol —will be top of mind this election year. Research finds broad support among public for nonpartisan certification commissions.
States Rush to Combat AI Threat to Elections
This year’s presidential election will be the first since generative AI became widely available. That’s raising fears that millions of voters could be deceived by a barrage of political deepfakes. Congress has done little to address the issue, but states are moving aggressively to respond — though questions remain about how effective any new measures to combat AI-created disinformation will be.
Chinese Government Hackers Targeted Critics of China, U.S. Businesses and Politicians
An indictment was unsealed Monday charging seven nationals of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) with conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for their involvement in a PRC-based hacking group that spent approximately 14 years targeting U.S. and foreign critics, businesses, and political officials in furtherance of the PRC’s economic espionage and foreign intelligence objectives.
European Arms Imports Nearly Double, U.S. and French Exports Rise, and Russian Exports Fall Sharply
States in Europe almost doubled their imports of major arms (+94 per cent) between 2014–18 and 2019–23. The United States increased its arms exports by 17 per cent between 2014–18 and 2019–23, while Russia’s arms exports halved. Russia was for the first time the third largest arms exporter, falling just behind France.
LNG Exports Have Had No Impact on Domestic Energy Costs: Analysis
U.S. liquified natural gas (LNG) exports have not had any sustained and significant direct impact on U.S. natural gas prices and have, in fact, spurred production and productivity gains, which contribute to downward pressure on domestic prices.
Don’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.