-
Report: Hamas spends $100 million annually to build up its military infrastructure
Hamas spends an annual $100 million on its military infrastructure in order to prepare for its next war against Israel. Roughly $40 million is spent on employing around 1,500 diggers to build the Iran-backed terror organization’s network of tunnels. Despite the financial hardships experienced by Gaza residents, Hamas, which in 2014 had a budget of around $530 million, is intent on increasing its military spending. In addition to digging tunnels, it hopes to upgrade its capabilities, which were degraded during its war with Israel two years ago, and is seeking to develop more precise rockets that could evade Israel’s Iron Dome defensive shield.
-
-
Israel building underground wall around Gaza to foil Hamas’s tunnel digging
Israel has begun work on a deep underground wall along its border with the Gaza Strip in order to prevent Hamas from digging cross-border tunnels into Israel. The barrier will run about 37 miles along the border with Gaza, and be equipped with sensors. The Gaza Strip, where about 1.8 million Palestinians live, is already surrounded by a sophisticated system of walls, fences, sensors, and a military patrol road – and the new structure will extends these barriers underground.
-
-
Car filled with gas cylinders near Notre Dame cathedral part of a terror plot
The French security services are looking for a young woman after a car carrying seven gas cylinders was discovered Saturday parking near Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris. The car was found on a Seine riverside stretch called the Quai de Montebello, only meters from the cathedral. The father of the missing 19-year old – himself on the French intelligence services’ terror watch list – informed the police that his daughter, who was being monitored by the police for expressing her desire to go to Syria to join ISIS, had disappeared with his car.
-
-
Growing concern about amateur “biohackers” creating biological weapons
American and European security agencies have been increasingly focusing on the risk that “biohackers” – scientists who use genome-editing techniques to change life forms by increasing or decreasing the function of genes — could develop biological weapons or other dangerous biological substances. The problem is not only – or even mostly – with the work of professional scientists. Rather, the real danger lies with amateur scientists around the world who have started to use gene-editing techniques after the tools became cheap and readily available.
-
-
FBI’s WMD Directorate marks its first decade
If you can imagine a disaster involving explosives or the release of nuclear, biological, chemical, or radioactive material, there is a pretty good chance a group of subject-matter experts within the FBI has built an elaborate scenario around it and tested how well emergency responders face up to it. It is the main jobs of the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Directorate — to imagine worst-case scenarios and then devise ways to prevent and prepare for them. The Directorate was created ten years ago, on 26 July 2006.
-
-
World’s largest regional security group turns to Israel in fight against cyber terror
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), an umbrella body for fifty-seven European, North American, and Central Asian nations in the security field, has chosen an Israeli professor to plan and establish a new teaching and research framework concerning online terror. “Online incitement, radicalization, and recruitment have had a significant impact on the recent waves of terror around the world,” Prof. Gabi Weimann, the author of Terrorism in Cyberspace, said. “This has raised awareness of the importance of research and academic knowledge in this field.”
-
-
Rules governing targeted killing by U.S. drones need clarifying
Since the beginning of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has dramatically increased use of unmanned drones, developing technology to target and kill those identified as being terrorist leaders. Current U.S. policies on using drones for targeted killing are characterized by ambiguities in interpretations of international law and too many generalities, despite recent efforts by the Obama administration to clarify the policies, a new report finds.
-
-
ISIS new publication shows the terror group is struggling to regain its footing
ISIS’s new publication, called Rumiyah (Arabic for Rome) appears to be yet another typical ISIS media product, combining glossy pictures with Islamist propaganda. A terrorism expert says, however, that the publication suggests that the organization may be struggling to cope with the mounting pressures of unrelenting airstrikes and increasingly more effective Turkish, Kurdish, and Iraqi military offensives on the ground.
-
-
U.S. violating nonproliferation agreement: Nuclear experts
More than two dozen nuclear experts, including former U.S. officials under the six preceding presidents of both parties, accused the Obama administration of violating a 2012 nonproliferation agreement to end exports to Europe of bomb-grade, highly enriched uranium (HEU) for production of medical isotopes. The administration proposes to export sixteen pounds of nuclear weapons-grade uranium metal to France to produce medical isotopes in Belgium and the Netherlands.
-
-
U.S. has killed 45,000 ISIS militants since September 2014; 3 U.S. soldiers killed by ISIS
The U.S.-to-ISIS “kill ratio,” that is, the number of American soldiers killed relative to the number of killed ISIS militants, is a staggering, and unprecedented, 15,000-to-1. The U.S. military claims to have killed 45,000 militants, including a number of senior leaders, since the September 2014 launching of the U.S.-led coalition campaign against ISIS. Only three U.S. troops have been killed in the campaign. The U.S. killed 6,000 militants between September and December 2014, and 39,000 between January 2015 and July 2016.
-
-
White Nationalist groups growing much faster than ISIS on Twitter
The number of White Nationalists and self-identified Nazi sympathizers on Twiter had multiplied more than 600 percent in the last four years — outpacing ISIS in all social media aspects, from the number of follower counts to the number of daily tweets, a new study found. The study’s author notes that ISIS has gained a reputation for effectively using Twitter for propaganda and recruitment, but that White Nationalist groups have excelled even more in exploiting the medium. The report says that unlike the campaign Twitter has been conducting against ISIS, White Nationalists are continuing to use the service with “relative impunity.”
-
-
Muslim women in the West wear a veil to signal they are integrating into a modern, secular world: Study
Researchers have studied why young, highly educated Muslim women who live in modern urban environments may be choosing to wear the veil and have uncovered a paradox. Their study, which drew on data of thousands of women living in Belgium, Turkey, and twenty-five Muslim countries, suggests that women who cover their head this way are often doing so because they are engaging with a modern, secular world.
-
-
Solar-powered Ring Garden combines desalination, agriculture for drought-stricken California
With roughly 80 percent of California’s already-scarce water supply going to agriculture, it is crucial for the state to embrace new technologies that shrink the amount of water required to grow food. Alexandru Predonu has designed an elegant solution which uses solar energy to power a rotating desalination plant and farm that not only produces clean drinking water for the city of Santa Monica, but also food crops — including algae.
-
-
Solar-powered Pipe desalinizes 1.5 billion gallons of drinking water for California
The infrastructure California needs to generate energy for electricity and clean water, which will be significant, need not blight the landscape. Designs like The Pipe demonstrate how the provision of public services like these can be knitted into every day life in a healthy, aesthetically pleasing way.
-
-
Iran received secret exemptions from complying with some facets of nuclear deal
The nuclear deal between the P5+1 powers and Iran – the official named is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — placed detailed limitations on facets of Iran’s nuclear program that needed to be met by Implementation Day, which took place on 16 January 2016. Most of the conditions were met by Iran, but some nuclear stocks and facilities were not in accordance with JCPOA limits on Implementation Day. In anticipation, the Joint Commission had earlier and secretly exempted them from the JCPOA limits. “Since the JCPOA is public, any rationale for keeping these exemptions secret appears unjustified,” say two experts. “Moreover, the Joint Commission’s secretive decision making process risks advantaging Iran by allowing it to try to systematically weaken the JCPOA. It appears to be succeeding in several key areas.”
-
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.