OUR PICKSSchools of Strategy & Iran | A Time Bomb ‘Supercharged’ by the Pandemic | • ISIS Calls for ‘Social Media Warfare’, and more
· How Competing Schools of Grand Strategy Shape America’s Nonproliferation Policy Toward Iran
· As Russia Attacks Ukraine, Experts Weigh European “Renaissance” for Nuclear Energy
· A Time Bomb ‘Supercharged’ by the Pandemic: How White Nationalists Are Using Gaming to Recruit for Terror
· Victims of Extremism Urged to Share Experiences to Help UK Tackle Terror
· German Police Raid Neo-Nazi Cells Across Country
· ISIS Calls for ‘Social Media Warfare’ to Counter ‘Enchanting’ Influencers and Incite
· Risks of a Dirty Bomb Attack Are Increasing
· Putin’s Failed State
· Why Some Far-Right Circles are Contributing to Vladimir Putin’s Disinformation Campaign
· The Terrifying Neo-Nazi Mercenaries Being Deployed in Ukraine
· Vladmir Putin’s War of Delusions
How Competing Schools of Grand Strategy Shape America’s Nonproliferation Policy Toward Iran (Raphael BenLevi, Texas National Security Review)
America’s policy toward Iran’s nuclear program has shifted over the past two decades from an exclusive reliance on coercive measures to an emphasis on diplomatic measures and then back again to coercion. What explains the different policies that the United States adopted during this time? Drawing on interviews with former officials and recently published memoirs, this article disentangles two factors that have influenced policymakers when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program: the objective constraints faced by any administration, and the worldviews embodied in the alternative schools of grand strategy represented in each administration.
As Russia Attacks Ukraine, Experts Weigh European “Renaissance” for Nuclear Energy (Joseph Winters, Grist)
Could nuclear power help break Europe’s dependency on Russian gas?
A Time Bomb ‘Supercharged’ by the Pandemic: How White Nationalists Are Using Gaming to Recruit for Terror (Lo Dodds, Independent)
The player’s profile picture raised no red flags: just the smiling Lego like-face of a typical Roblox avatar, little different from the estimated 220 million people who log in at least once a month to the wildly popular children’s video gaming platform. On closer inspection, however, the player’s “favorites” list had been arranged into an impromptu mosaic with the words: “Patriotic Front. Life, liberty, victory! Reclaim America!” The Patriot Front is an American group of fascist street fighters, who use “reclaim America” as their slogan. The player was also part of an in-game group called Justice 4 Floyd, whose logo appeared to be based on the black shield of Nazi German SS combat divisions in the Second World War. That group was linked by “alliances” to other Roblox groups with names such as the British Nationalist Vanguard, the Condor Division (similar to the Nazis’ Condor Legion), and the New Hampshire 2nd Infantry Platoon, whose description bore references to known neo-Nazi groups. This is just one of the suspicious networks uncovered in popular video games and gaming-related social networks by Alex Newhouse, a researcher at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.
