WORLD ROUNDUPChinese Bankers Are at the Center of Global Crime | The Philippines Is a Petri Dish for Chinese Disinformation | I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It., and more
· Chinese Bankers Are at the Center of Global Crime
· I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It.
· Former Mexican President Investigated Over Allegedly Taking Bribes from Spyware Industry
· Iranian Ransomware Group Offers Bigger Payouts for Attacks on Israel, US
· Delisting Hayat Tahrir al-Sham: Implications for U.S. Counterterrorism and Syria Policy
· Too Young to Drive, Old Enough for Extremism: Youth Radicalization’s New Reality
· Rich Countries Stockpiling Critical Minerals Is Not a Plan
· The Philippines Is a Petri Dish for Chinese Disinformation
Chinese Bankers Are at the Center of Global Crime (Giovanni Legorano, Foreign Policy)
China’s underground financiers have specialized in international money laundering.
I’m a Genocide Scholar. I Know It When I See It. (Omer Bartov, New York Times)
My inescapable conclusion has become that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Having grown up in a Zionist home, lived the first half of my life in Israel, served in the I.D.F. as a soldier and officer and spent most of my career researching and writing on war crimes and the Holocaust, this was a painful conclusion to reach, and one that I resisted as long as I could. But I have been teaching classes on genocide for a quarter of a century. I can recognize one when I see one.
This is not just my conclusion. A growing number of experts in genocide studies and international law have concluded that Israel’s actions in Gaza can only be defined as genocide.
Former Mexican President Investigated Over Allegedly Taking Bribes from Spyware Industry (Suzanne Smalley, The Record)
Mexican Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero announced Tuesday that he has launched a probe into allegations that former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto took bribes from Israeli businessmen who allegedly paid him as much as $25 million to secure government contracts for spyware and other technology.
The investigation comes in response to an account in the Israeli business publication TheMarker, which reported that the contracts included a deal to buy Pegasus — the powerful spyware manufactured by Israel-based NSO Group.
Iranian Ransomware Group Offers Bigger Payouts for Attacks on Israel, US (Daryna Antoniuk, The Record)
An Iranian ransomware gang has ramped up operations amid heightened tensions in the Middle East, offering larger profit shares to affiliates who carry out cyberattacks against Israel and the U.S., researchers said.
The group, known as Pay2Key.I2P, is believed to be a successor to the original Pay2Key operation, which has been linked to Iran’s state-backed Fox Kitten hacking group. Fox Kitten has previously carried out cyber-espionage campaigns targeting Israeli and U.S. organizations.
According to a new report from cybersecurity firm Morphisec, Pay2Key.I2P has adopted a ransomware-as-a-service model and claims to have collected more than $4 million in payments over the past four months.
Delisting Hayat Tahrir al-Sham: Implications for U.S. Counterterrorism and Syria Policy (Aaron Y. Zelin, Washington Institute)
More such announcements can be expected in the months ahead as officials continue implementing Trump’s policy, likely including eventual congressional revocation of the Caesar sanctions. The FTO news is also historic because it represents the first time since the September 11 attacks that a jihadist organization was taken off the FTO list without being fully defunct—rather, the group’s fighters and governance apparatus have become key parts of Syria’s transitional government.
Too Young to Drive, Old Enough for Extremism: Youth Radicalization’s New Reality (Megan Norris, HSToday)
The counterterrorism landscape has undergone a fundamental shift in recent years, with one trend emerging as particularly alarming to practitioners and researchers alike: the dramatic increase in youth radicalization. This phenomenon, spanning from pre-teens to young adults, represents a paradigm shift that challenges traditional assumptions about terrorist recruitment and demands urgent attention from policymakers, security professionals, and communities worldwide.
Rich Countries Stockpiling Critical Minerals Is Not a Plan (Patrick Schröder, Foreign Policy)
Remember the 1973 oil shock?
The Philippines Is a Petri Dish for Chinese Disinformation (Nick Aspinwall, Foreign Policy)
Inauthentic accounts linked to China are seizing on local political feuds.
