• Russia Planning Post-Invasion Arrest and Assassination Campaign in Ukraine: U.S. Officials

    Russia has prepared a detailed list of prominent Ukrainian opponents of Russia ad anti-corruption activists, and of Belarusian and Russian dissidents living in exile in Ukraine, who would be hunted down and killed by Russian special forces should Russia move forward with plans to invade Ukraine.

  • Possible Russian Cyberattacks Could Reverberate Globally: U.S., Allies

    The United States and its Western allies are bracing for the possibility that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would have a ripple effect in cyberspace, even if Western entities are not initially the intended target.

  • China Suspected of Targeting U.S. Organizations with Cyberattacks

    Media giant News Corp is investigating a cyberattack that has accessed the email and documents of some of its employees and journalists. “Mandiant assesses that those behind this activity have a China nexus, and we believe they are likely involved in espionage activities to collect intelligence to benefit China’s interests,” Dave Wong, Mandiant vice president and incident responder, said.

  • The U.S. Warning of a Fake Russian Video Isn’t Alex Jones Territory

    The U.S. claim that Russia was planning to release a fake film showing a Ukrainian attack, which the Kremlin would then use to justify further invading the country. The accusation is consistent with Russia’s current disinformation campaigns and its past use of fabricated evidence. Calling out the potential fake video also limits Moscow’s ability to credibly rationalize war based on similar lies.

  • Africa embraces Huawei technology despite security concerns

    Shunned in the Global North due to privacy and security issues, Huawei is a front-runner in Africa. But the Chinese giant’s data collection methods may also appeal to authoritarian regimes as a way to cling to power.

  • NSA Releases 2021 Cybersecurity Year in Review

    The NSA last week released its 2021 NSA Cybersecurity Year in Review which highlights how the agency continues to address threats to the U.S. most critical systems.

  • Broad, and Likely Unauthorized, Use of Pegasus Spyware by Israel's Police Shocks Israel

    Since 2015, Israel’s police has employed the intrusive Pegasus spyware to spy on businesspeople, journalists and editors, senior managers of government ministries and agencies, leaders of protest movements, and more – and it appears that in many, if not most, of these cases, the spying was done without judicial approval or after judges were misled by the police about the nature of the monitoring technology. The Pegasus software has been used by authoritarian governments around the world to spy on political opponents, human rights activist, journalists – and in at least one case, to spy on U.S. diplomats. The U.S. has blacklisted the Israeli company NSO, Pegasus maker, and American companies are not allowed to sell their technology to NSO or do business with it

  • Energy Weapon Only 'Plausible' Explanation for Some Cases of Havana Syndrome

    U.S. intelligence agencies may have ruled out the idea that a rash of mysterious illnesses plaguing American diplomats and other officials is part of a sustained campaign by one of Washington’s adversaries, but they now say that in a small number of cases the only likely explanation is the use of some sort of weapon.

  • Experts Suggest U.S. Embassies Were Hit with High-Power Microwaves – Here’s How the Weapons Work

    The technology behind the suspected weapons is well understood and dates back to the Cold War arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. High-power microwave weapons are generally designed to disable electronic equipment. But as the Havana syndrome reports show, these pulses of energy can harm people, as well.

  • Are Russia and China Teaming Up Against America in a Global Information War? Yes and No.

    Are Russia and China coordinating information campaigns, or is their symbiotic relationship merely reflective of messaging opportunism and interest alignment? The Kremlin is the unquestioned leader in the dissemination of global propaganda and disinformation, both on traditional and social media channels. Much of Moscow’s approach has been adopted by Beijing, China is authoring its own authoritarian influence playbook backed by financial and technological resources that Russia simply cannot match.

  • Cyber Activists Confront Russian Information Operations

    Russian information operations against the Western democracies will grow in number, scale, and sophistication in the coming years. A new study examines the role of cyber activists in Western societies in fighting back against the growing problem of Russian disinformation.

  • Two Things to Know about the U.S.-China Competition

    A debate about China’s “inexorable” rise has been occupying the op-ed pages of leading newspapers and the conference rooms of leading think tanks for some time now. China’s rise is real, but the U.S. has the means to keep it in check. The U.S. boasts 24 percent of global GDP and almost half of business worldwide. It is already the leading power by these metrics alone. Two more data points demonstrate the United States has an opportunity to keep its competitive advantage provided Congress is willing to reduce defense procurement regulations.  

  • Russia Could Unleash Disruptive Cyberattacks Against the U.S. – but Efforts to Sow Confusion and Division Are More Likely

    As tensions mount between Russia and the West over Ukraine, the threat of Russian cyberattacks against the U.S. increases. Cybersecurity experts are concerned that in the wake of recent cyberattacks by hackers affiliated with Russia, the Russian government has the capability to carry out disruptive and destructive attacks against targets in the U.S. the Russian government is likely to think twice before unleashing highly disruptive attacks against the U.S., because the U.S. government could interpret such attacks, particularly those targeting critical infrastructure, as acts of war.

  • Israeli Police: From Warrantless Cellphone Searches to Controversial Misuse of Spyware

    Israel’s rules governing privacy and related laws have experienced a dramatic past few weeks, capped by an explosive journalistic expose revealing that Israeli police have been using NSO Group spyware allegedly without warrants or explicit statutory authorization.

  • Ukraine: Russian Hand Behind Spate of Bomb Scares at Schools Nationwide

    As tensions mount between Ukraine and Russia amid an alarming buildup of Russian forces near the border, Ukraine’s schoolchildren, their families, and their communities have already found themselves on the front line of what Kyiv’s intelligence service, the SBU, describes as a “hybrid war.”