• 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.

  • CHINA WATCHIt’s Not Just Software. Physical Critical Equipment Can’t Be Trusted, Either

    By Jason Van der Schyff

    Just auditing the software in critical equipment isn’t enough. We must assume that adversaries, especially China, will also exploit the hardware if they can.

  • DEMOCRACY WATCHRomania at the Crossroads as Europe Watches On

    By Alexandru Damian

    George Simion and Nicușor Dan will contest the second round of Romania’s presidential election on 18 May. The election could have profound implications for both Romania and Europe.

  • ARGUMENT: TACKLING ELECTION INTERFERENCERomania, Foreign Election Interference, and a Dangerous U.S. Retreat

    The Romanian election is but one example of recent foreign election interference incidents. The Russian interference in 2016 U.S. election led Congress, on bipartisan basis, and the relevant agencies in the executive branch, to make many changes to address this threat, but under the new administration, “the U.S. is now moving full steam ahead to completely destroy its defenses against that threat,” Katie Kedian writes. All of the positive U.S. government developments “have been dismantled or severely downgraded,” leaving “the U.S. public less informed and less safe from foreign interference.”