• Israel starts building new barrier along Gaza Strip border

    Israel on Sunday it had started to build a new barrier along the country’s border with the Gaza Strip in order to prevent terrorists from entering Israeli territory. The barrier will be 65 kilometers long and six meters high. The Defense Ministry said that the above-ground barrier would work in conjunction with an underground wall, currently under construction, which aims to neutralize the possibility of cross-border tunnels built by Hamas militants.

  • Is your VPN secure?

    About a quarter of internet users use a virtual private network, a software setup that creates a secure, encrypted data connection between their own computer and another one elsewhere on the internet. Many people use them to protect their privacy when using Wi-Fi hotspots, or to connect securely to workplace networks while traveling. Other users are concerned about surveillance from governments and internet providers. However, most people – including VPN customers – don’t have the skills to double-check that they’re getting what they paid for. A group of researchers I was part of do have those skills, and our examination of the services provided by 200 VPN companies found that many of them mislead customers about key aspects of their user protections.

  • Qatar plays key role for peace in the Horn of Africa

    The past year’s unexpected outbreak of peace between former rivals Ethiopia and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa was the result of a decade of patient diplomacy, investment, and military peacekeeping by several regional states, most notably Qatar. The small, oil-rich Emirate in the Persian Gulf has now emerged as a significant regional power.

  • Using social science to combat human trafficking

    Worldwide, an estimated 20.9 million people are victims of sex trafficking, forced labor, and domestic servitude, collectively known as human trafficking. It is estimated that human trafficking generates billions of dollars in illegal profits annually, making it second only to drug trafficking as the most profitable form of transnational crime. Human trafficking doesn’t only happen abroad; it occurs throughout the U.S., including in urban, suburban, and rural areas. DHS launches a campaign to combat human trafficking.

  • Review of the “Digitization of WMD” symposium

    The digitization of biological and medical science is providing exciting and promising new pathways for improving health and daily life for mankind and our environment. The possibilities for new treatments, better fitness, and less prevalence of genetic diseases are numerous. However, these technologies and the information associated with emerging techniques carry certain risks and vulnerabilities. It is through understanding these risks and continuing to develop mitigation strategies for them, especially during the technology conceptualization and development phases, that we can continue to build promising new tools to improve life with confidence while addressing how they should be properly used.

  • FBI: No discernible motive in Las Vegas mass shooting

    The shooter who perpetrated the 2017 Las Vegas massacre – the deadliest in U.S. history — was no different from many other mass shooters, in that he was apparently driven by a complex mix of developmental issues, rather than by one, overriding morive. The FBI’s report, published after a year-long FBI investigation, suggests that Stephen Paddock may have tried to emulate his father’s criminal conduct. His father was a bank robber who was once on the FBI’s most wanted list.

  • U.S. intel chiefs warn Washington risks losing friends, influence

    U.S. intelligence chiefs are sounding alarms about an ever more perilous future for the United States, one in which the country is in danger of seeing its influence wane, its allies waiver, and key adversaries team up to erode norms that once kept the country safe and the world more stable. “It is increasingly a challenge to prioritize which threats are of greatest importance,” Dan Coats, Director of National Intelligence, said, sharing testimony that often and repeatedly contradicted past assertions by President Donald Trump. “During my tenure as DNI now two years and I have told our workforce over and over that our mission was to seek the truth and speak the truth,” Coats pointedly stated. Driving many of the concerns, according to intelligence officials, is a growing alliance between Russia and China competing against the U.S. not just for military and technological superiority, but for global influence.

  • Russia’s hostile measures threaten Europe: Report

    A new RAND report examines current Russian hostile measures in Europe and forecasts how Russia might threaten Europe using these measures over the next few years. “Whatever the U.S. response, preparation for involvement in a wide range of conflicts can help reduce the risk of mismanagement, miscalculation, and escalation,” the report’s authos say.

  • Trump-Putin G20 chat had no U.S. oversight

    The White House acknowledged last month that President Trump did have an informal conversation with Vladimir Putin at the G20 in Buenos Aires in late November, but now the Financial Times reports the two men met without a U.S. translator, note-taker, or even administration aide present. Former US national security officials have said that while it would be unusual for U.S. presidents to be accompanied by a translator or aide while meeting allies, standard practice while meeting US adversaries would be to engage in discussions with staff on hand.

  • Modeling terrorist behavior with Sandia social-cultural assessments

    Part of what makes terrorists so frightening is their penchant for unpredictable, indiscriminate violence. One day they could attack a global financial center. And the next they could hit a neighborhood bike path. A team of social-behavioral scientists and computational modelers at Sandia National Lab recently completed a two-year effort, dubbed “Mustang,” to assess interactions and behaviors of two extremist groups. The purpose was to inform U.S. and U.K. decision-makers about the groups’ possible reactions to specific communications. The model suggested several communication options that are most likely to reduce the recruitment and violence of the extremist groups over time.

  • New computing architectures to deliver verifiable data assurances

    Whether a piece of information is private, proprietary, or sensitive to national security, systems owners and users have little guarantees about where their information resides or of its movements between systems. As is the case with consumers, the national defense and security communities similarly have only few options when it comes to ensuring that sensitive information is appropriately isolated, particularly when it’s loaded to an internet-connected system. A new program seeks to create new software and hardware architectures that provide physically provable assurances around data security and privacy.

  • Kansas anti-Muslim bomb plotters sentenced to long prison terms

    Three members of a far-right militia, who were convicted of plotting to massacre Muslims in southwest Kansas immediately after the November 2016 election, were sentenced Friday to decades in prison. The terrorist plot was foiled after another militia member informed the police. Defense attorneys, in their sentencing memo, vigorously presented what came to be known as The Trump Defense: They argued that Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric during the 2016 election made attacks against Muslims appear legitimate. The defense attorneys also argued that the plot architect had been “immersed” in Russian disinformation and far-right propaganda, leading him to believe that if Donald Trump won the election, then-President Barack Obama would declare martial law and not recognize the validity of the election — forcing armed militias to step in to ensure that Trump became president.

  • Understudied terrorists put under a microscope

    Bombs exploding, hostages taken and masked gunmen firing machine guns are all types of terrorist attacks we’ve seen. According to a new study, it’s the attacks we don’t see – cyberattacks – that happen more often and can cause greater destruction. “Little work has been done around the use of the internet as an attack space,” said Thomas Holt, Michigan State University professor of criminal justice and lead author. “The bottom line is that these attacks are happening and they’re overlooked. If we don’t get a handle understanding them now, we won’t fully understand the scope of the threats today and how to prevent larger mobilization efforts in the future.”

  • NRC weakens a critical safety regulation, ignoring Fukushima disaster lessons

    The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC), in a 3-2 vote, approved a stripped-down version of a rule originally intended to protect U.S. nuclear plants against extreme natural events, such as the massive earthquake and tsunami that triggered meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan in March 2011. The decision will leave U.S. nuclear plants dangerously vulnerable to major floods and earthquakes.

  • Kremlin dispatches Russian security personnel to protect Venezuela’s Maduro

    Private Russian military contractors have been dispatched by the Kremlin to Venezuela in the past few days to shore up security for President Nicolas Maduro. The Russian move appears to be in response to the recognition by the United States and most of Latin America’s countries of Juan Guaido, who declares himself as Venezuela’s interm president earlier this week. Russian sources told Reuters that the Russian contingent sent to protect Maduro is about 400 strong.