• Is It Time for a U.S. Cyber Academy?

    Cybersecurity is a critical threat to national security. American is one of the most technologically advanced, and technologically dependent, nations on Earth. Gregory Conti writes that our adversaries know and exploit this. “To change the tide, we need to create a service academy dedicated to cybersecurity and cyber operations. This idea isn’t new, but the need is critical,” he writes.

  • What Trump Really Wanted from Ukraine Was Not about Enemies

    What President Donald Trump wanted most from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had les to do with Joe Biden and everything to do with exonerating Russia from 2016 election meddling and pinning the blame on the Democrats and Ukraine, the historian Allan Lichtman writes in The Hill. “This conspiracy theory would serve the dual purpose of clearing Russian President Vladimir Putin from responsibility for intervening in the 2016 election and proving that Trump won the White House without Russia.”

  • FCC Bans Use of Federal Funds in Purchases of Chinese Telecom

    The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on 22 November blocked U.S. telecommunications providers from using an $8.5 billion subsidy fund – the FCC’s Universal Service Fund (USF) — to buy Chinese-made telecommunications gear deemed a national security threat to critical infrastructure. The U.S. said that given Huawei and ZTE’s close relationship and legal obligations to the Chinese government, their gear poses a threat to telecommunications critical infrastructure, as well as to national security.

  • The Case That Could Hand the Future to China

    What would the future look like if China leads 5G technology? We should contemplate this question because, as Mercy Kuo writes, fifth-generation cellular network technology, or 5G, will transform our daily lives with such inventions as autonomous-driving vehicles, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and smart cities. If we want to maintain U.S. technology leadership and protect our values, we should be clear-eyed about the perilous consequences that could come with losing our unique lead.”

  • It’s Not Only Jeremy Corbyn’s Mob that Welcomes Anti-Semites. It’s the Whole Bourgeois Left

    “On a scale of one to 10, how much would it surprise you that the Labour Party’s new poster boy, the young activist featured prominently in its election campaign material, is a semi-literate anti-Semite?” Rod Liddle asks in The Times. “I think, if you’ve been watching carefully these past few years, the score is probably around the two to three area.”

  • Nazi Symbols and Racist Memes: Combating School Intolerance

    The number of Americans between the ages of 15 and 21 who saw extremist content online jumped by about 20 percent, to 70.2 percent from 58.3 percent, between 2013 and 2016, according to a new study. As more such material spills from the web to young people and into classrooms nationwide, educators increasingly find themselves under pressure to combat this new front of hate. Many educators say they feel ill-equipped to recognize what students absorb from the web, much less to address it.

  • Earthquake Conspiracy Theorists Are Wreaking Havoc During Emergencies

    Scientists have been trying hard to be able to predict earthquakes, because accurately predicting an earthquake would save lives, decrease property damage, and allow people to have some measure of control over one of nature’s most frightening and unpredictable events. Scientific predictions of the location and time of specific tremors are modest in scope – which have created an opening for earthquake conspiracy theorists who “claim that they have discovered the key to accurate quake prediction, as well as the hidden secrets behind why these tremors happen,” Anna Merlan writes.

  • The “fictional narrative” that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 U.S. election “advance[s] Russian interests”: Fiona Hill

    Fiona Hill, who until July this year was the National Security Council’s top Russia adviser, on Thursday told the House Intelligence Committee that it is a “fictional narrative” that Ukraine, and not Russia, meddled in the 2016 U.S. election that Trump won. “The unfortunate truth is that Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016,” Hill said. “It is beyond dispute, even if some of the underlying details must remain classified.” Hill pleaded with the Intelligence panel, “In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.”

  • Flaw in iVote System Used in Australian Election

    Flaws in the iVote internet and telephone voting system used in the 2019 New South Wales election could have made it vulnerable to undetectable voter fraud, a new report has revealed. A new report has shown how the iVote system suffers from an error in its verification process that could allow the verification of votes to be “tricked”, meaning some valid votes could be converted into invalid ones, and not counted.

  • Who's Responsible When Your Car Gets Hacked?

    In the future, when cars can drive themselves, grand theft auto might involve a few keystrokes and a well-placed patch of bad computer code. At that point, who will be liable for the damages caused by a hacker with remote control of a 3,000-pound vehicle?

  • Secure Data Transmission with Ultrasound

    Due to the Internet of Things (IoT), an increasing number of devices have learned to communicate with each other. Ultrasound communication is an entirely new method for data exchange between IoT devices and mobile phones. Researchers have now developed a first open communication protocol including an open-source development kit for ultrasound communication which makes near-field communication safer.

  • Online Disinformation and Emerging Tech: Are Democracies at Risk?

    Online disinformation campaigns supported by fundamental changes in military and geopolitical strategies of major players such as Russia and China harden tribal factions and undermine the security of infrastructure systems in targets such as the United States, as state and non-state actors mount increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks on democratic institutions, Brad Allenby writes. Whether the United States and other democracies are up to this challenge remains to be seen, he says.

  • White Supremacists Embrace "Accelerationism"

    Accelerationism is a term white supremacists have assigned to their desire to hasten the collapse of society as we know it. The term is widely used by those on the fringes of the movement, who employ it openly and enthusiastically on mainstream platforms, as well as in the shadows of private, encrypted chat rooms. 

  • UAH to Offer H4Di Cybersecurity Course

    The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) says it will be the first in the state to offer the Hacking for Defense (H4Di) cybersecurity class beginning in spring semester 2020. H4Di teaches students to work with the defense and intelligence communities to rapidly address the nation’s emerging threats and security challenges.

  • Russian Hackers Attacked Me and Other Military Spouses. Why Can’t We Sue?

    In a systematic campaign aiming to sow panic and confusion, Russian government hackers, masquerading as ISIS fighters, have been hacking computers and smartphones of spouses of U.S. military personnel, stealing and distributing their personal and financial information, and spreading lies about the on the dark web. “Almost as astonishing as the discovery that Russia was behind the attacks was finding out that U.S. citizens have no legal recourse against foreign governments that target them online,” writes Lorri Volkman, whose husband serves in the military, and was attacked by Russian hackers four years ago.