• CYBERSECURITYA Little-Known Microsoft Program Could Expose the Defense Department to Chinese Hackers

    By Renee Dudley, with research by Doris Burke

    Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems —with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel. Digital escorts often lack the technical expertise to police foreign engineers with far more advanced skills, leaving highly sensitive data vulnerable to hacking. Microsoft has been warned that the arrangement is inherently risky, but the company launched and expanded it anyway.

  • THE RUSSIA CONNECTIONRussian Imperial Movement: How a Far-Right Group Outlawed by the U.K. Is Spreading Terror Across Europe

    By Dale Pankhurst

    The decision by the British government to proscribe the RIM indicates concern that the far-right group is increasing its operational capacity both in Ukraine and throughout Europe. With its extensive network, the movement will become an increasing threat to security if it is allowed to continue acting as a proxy for Putin’s foreign policy objectives.

  • THE RUSSIA CONNECTIONCountering Russia’s Cognitive Warfare Against the United States

    China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea increasingly use cognitive warfare against the United States in order to shape U.S. decision-making.

  • DEEPFKESMarco Rubio Impersonator Contacted Officials Using AI Voice Deepfakes – Computer Security Experts Explain What They Are and How to Avoid Getting Fooled

    By Matthew Wright

    Ongoing advances in deep-learning algorithms, audio editing and engineering, and synthetic voice generation have meant that it is increasingly possible to convincingly simulate a person’s voice. Even worse, chatbots like ChatGPT are capable of generating realistic scripts with adaptive real-time responses.

  • CYBERFEARS, TRUST & DEMOCRACYCyber Attacks Shake Voters’ Trust in Elections, Regardless of Party

    By Ryan Shandler, Anthony J. DeMattee, and Bruce Schneier

    American democracy runs on trust, and that trust is cracking. In recent years, authoritarian regimes have refined a chillingly effective strategy to chip away at Americans’ faith in democracy by relentlessly sowing doubt about the tools U.S. states use to conduct elections. It’s a sustained campaign to fracture civic faith and make Americans believe that democracy is rigged, especially when their side loses.

  • CONSPIRACY THEORYOctopus Maps Encourage Conspiratorial Thinking, Research Shows

    By Cyrus Moulton

    Octopuses have been one of mapmakers’ favorite symbols for hundreds of years — used primarily to portray threats of political movements, financial systems, warring empires and the unknown.

  • SURVEILLANCEPervasive Surveillance of People Is Being Used to Access, Monetize, Coerce, and Control

    New research has underlined the surprising extent to which pervasive surveillance of people and their habits is powered by computer vision research – and shone a spotlight on how vulnerable individuals and communities are at risk.

  • QUICK TAKES // By Ben FrankelTargeting Nuclear Scientists

    The killing of Iranian nuclear scientists has been an integral part of Israel’s campaign, stretching back more than two decades, to disrupt and derail Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The 14 Iranian scientists killed on and since 13 June were all leading members of the Iran’s nuclear weaponization group.

  • CLOAK & DAGGERNuclear Scientists  Have Long Been Targets in Covert Ops – Israel Has Brought That Policy Out of the Shadows

    By Jenna Jordan and Rachel Whitlark

    Since 1944, there have been at least 100 instances of what researchers call nuclear “scientist targeting.” The most recent example are the 14 senior Iranian nuclear scientists Israel killed on 13 June as part of the opening move of its surprise attack on Iran, in which Israel has also decapitated the Iranian military, intelligence services, and Revolutionary Guard by killing practically all of these organizations’ leaders and senior officers – several dozen in all. In the week since the attack was launched, Israel has killed three more Iranian nuclear scientists.

  • SECRET SERVICESThe Shadow Architects of Power

    By Leda Zimmerman

    Intelligence agencies in authoritarian regimes have distinct foreign policy preferences and actively work to advance them. MIT Ph.D. candidate Suzanne Freeman reveals how these intelligence agencies do it.

  • SECRET SERVICESThe Hole in Canada’s Intelligence System Is ASIS-shaped

    By Linus Cohen

    A hardy perennial in Ottawa politics is whether Canada should create a foreign intelligence service equivalent to the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, aka MI6).

  • ESPIONAGEHow Digital Identities Challenge Traditional Espionage

    By Kyle McCurdy

    It used to be so simple. An intelligence officer could fly to a country, change passports and, with a false identity, emerge as a completely different person. But those days are long since over.

  • DEMOCRACY WATCHEurope’s Moment of Truth: A Democracy Shield for Today and Tomorrow

    Democracy in Europe is under growing pressure. Authoritarian regimes like Russia and the People’s Republic of China are conducting increasingly sophisticated foreign interference campaigns. Internally, illiberal actors – who are often the beneficiaries of this foreign interference — are eroding the rule of law and civic freedoms as democratic norms deteriorate in the EU’s immediate neighborhood. The EU’s European Democracy Shield, announced in 2024 and expected in 2025, aims to counter these threats to democracy.

  • ACADEMIC ENTANGLEMENTSA British University’s Technology Entanglements with Russia and China

    By Bethany Allen, Danielle Cave, and Adam Ziogas

    A major British research university’s joint venture campus in China maintains partnerships and close links with entities sanctioned by Britain, the US, EU and others for supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and assisting China’s military modernization and human rights violations. The links to sanctions highlight the risks posed by foreign science, technology and academic partnerships in China in a period of heightened geopolitical rivalry, intensifying technological competition and deepening China-Russia cooperation.

  • HARDWARE SECURITYCircuit Boards Must Be Trusted. So We’d Better Make Them in Australia

    While national security debates have focused on chips and microelectronics, the role of printed circuit board (PCBs) in underpinning system trust has gone largely unexamined. In today’s contested environment, that carries strategic consequences.