Ukraine Is a Showroom for Modern Weaponry | China’s Digital Yuan Comes with Added Surveillance | Quantifying Cyber Conflict, and more

Ukraine Is Becoming a Showroom for Modern Weaponry  (Mark Galeotti, The Spectator)
he war in Ukraine has become a testing ground for new technology, an opportunity to develop weapons and find different ways of fighting. Nations that are supposedly neutral have been sending weapons to the front line to find out just how they work in the heat of battle.
This is a relatively new trend in the history of warfare, one that first emerged in the 1936-39 Spanish Civil War. The backers of both sides treated the war not just as a testing range but also a showroom. The Germans, supporting Franco’s nationalists, first tried Blitzkrieg on the Spanish peninsula. Hermann Göring saw the civil war as a chance ‘to test my young Luftwaffe’. The German Condor Legion fielded Messerschmitt fighters and Heinkel medium-range bombers, later used by the Germans in the Blitz attacks on London.
Since Vladimir Putin’s invasion, Ukraine has become a similar showcase for arms exporters as well as something of a proxy war between international rivals. From the very start of the war, Ukraine’s so-called ‘Alibaba army’ of commercial, off-the-shelf drones bought from the Chinese wholesaler offered it an unexpected edge. The drones were first used for surveillance but were soon modified to drop grenades or be packed with explosives to slam into Russian targets.

U.S. Calls Out Japan and Netherlands Over China Chip Curbs  (Rintaro Tobita, Nikkei)
U.S. President Joe Biden appears ready to pressure Japan and the Netherlands even more to join efforts to block the flow of advanced chip technology to China, where it could be used to develop cutting-edge weapons.

Bomb Attack on U.K. Migrant Center Fueled by Extreme-Right Motive, Police Say  (Ellen Francis, Washington Post)
British police said Saturday that evidence revealed “an extreme right wing motivation” behind an attack last week at an immigration center on the English coast, describing it as “a terrorist incident.” A 66-year-old man threw at least two gasoline bombs at the walls of a migrant center on Oct. 30 near the port town of Dover, a point of arrival for many who attempt the perilous journey to Britain across the English Channel in small boats. The assailant was later found dead. Authorities identified him as Andrew Leak. British counterterrorism police said they found evidence indicating the man who arrived alone in a car and hurled “a number of crude incendiary devices” outside was “motivated by a terrorist ideology.” While the agency said the probe continues, it added there were no signs he had accomplices. Saturday’s statement said investigators spoke to witnesses and recovered items including digital devices. “Examining these items suggests there was an extreme right wing motivation behind the attack,” it said, without elaborating further on the evidence. Two people suffered minor injuries and around 700 migrants had to be relocated to Manston in southeast England, where another migrant center came under fresh scrutiny this week. A girl’s call for help, tossed from the overcrowded center at Manston, became the latest flash point in the heated debate over Britain’s immigration policies. “Please help us,” the letter read.

China’s Digital Yuan Works Just Like Cash—with Added Surveillance  (Jennifer Conrad, Wired)
Government officials are urging citizens to adopt the official digital currency in a bid to gain more control over the economy.

Quantifying Cyber Conflict: Introducing the European Repository on Cyber Incidents  (Matthias Schulze, Lawfare)
Is cyberwar getting better or worse? Are cyber operations increasing or decreasing? This basic fact of cyber conflict (the total number of operations) is often hard to grasp. Depending on whom a curious individual chooses to listen to, estimates to quantify cyber conflict range from thousands to billions of incidents each year. Various stakeholders offer different views on the cyber threat landscape, some of which are classified and some of which are open to the general public. Because most quantifiable data on cyber conflict is shrouded in secrecy within intelligence agencies and military cyber commands, civilians lack a shared, informed cyber situational awareness.