Civilian Cyber Defense | China’s Biomedical Data Hacking Threat | Cislunar Security, and more

Man Who Says He Was Assaulted by Extremist Marchers Speaks Out  (Kiara Alfonseca, ABC News)
Boston officials are responding to the growing threat of racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs), just days after Patriot Front members marched through the city and reportedly assaulted a Black man. “We know these threats are continuing to escalate across the country, and that Boston must be the leading light in how we are acting in a coordinated way and tackling and supporting our community members,” said Mayor Michelle Wu Tuesday. She joined officials from the local and state police departments, the FBI and the attorney general’s office to discuss impending actions of known extremist groups. The Anti-Defamation League, which tracks hate groups nationwide, has called Patriot Front an RMVE group that spreads racism, antisemitism, and other forms of hate online. The ADL says the group is focused on “preserving America’s identity as a European-American one.” The group marched in Boston on Saturday with concealed faces and flags, wearing shirts that read “Reclaim America.” U.S. District Attorney Rachael Rollins said officials “are working hard to make sure that if there are any federal charges we can bring or if there are any state charges that can be brought — we will be looking at this. We don’t want to wait until there’s violence. If there are threats we will charge those as well.

Do More to Counter Violent Extremism in Canada, MPs Recommend  (Elizabeth Thompson, CBC)
The federal government has to do more to counter the threat of ideologically motivated violent extremism in Canada, including strengthening terrorist financing laws to counter it, the House of Commons public safety committee has recommended. In a report tabled before the House of Commons rose for the summer, the committee also recommended the federal government work with provinces to prevent what it described as a rising threat in Canada and to take steps to hold online companies more accountable for extremist or hateful content circulating on their platforms. However, the committee also acknowledged that there are issues surrounding any move to limit free speech. “Each member of this committee is sensitive to the charter issues that are implicated in responding to the threat of [ideologically motivated violent extremism], IMVE,” the committee wrote. “Any limitations on freedom of expression must be reasonable and justified in a free and democratic society.” The committee report comes after Canada saw a number of ideologically motivated violent extremist attacks in recent years — a phenomenon that experts told the committee was on the rise and fueled by pandemic lockdowns that prompted people to spend more time online.

MI5 Warns Chinese Spying Investigations Are Up Sevenfold  (Larisa Brown, The Times)
MI5 is running seven times as many investigations into Chinese espionage activity in Britain as it was four years ago, the head of the Security Service revealed today.
Ken McCallum, the director-general, said MI5 planned to double efforts to stop Beijing’s spies operating in Britain as it faces its most “game-changing challenge” from an increasingly aggressive China.
He was joined by Christopher Wray, head of the FBI, who warned that China was learning lessons from the Ukraine crisis and beefing up its resilience to any future sanctions.

Don’t Delay Getting Serious about Cislunar Security  (Jessy Kate Schingler, Victoria Samson, and Nivedita Raju, War on the Rocks)
Recently, analysts predicted that a rocket stage from a Chinese space mission would crash into the moon. The impact was predicted to happen in March 2022. Did it? The world didn’t know until late June — almost four months later.
More and more space activities are being planned for the moon and the space near it, commonly known as cislunar space. This expansion is being driven by several factors, including the miniaturization of computing technology, decreasing costs of launch and manufacturing, growing maturity of the commercial sector, and renewed geopolitical rivalries motivating the exploitation of space for strategic purposes. But our thinking has not caught up to this changing reality. We lack situational awareness and effective frameworks for reasoning about this domain. We need new tools to help us understand this emerging landscape, lest perceptions become distorted, increasing the risk of conflict.