• Walking the Artificial Intelligence and National Security Tightrope

    Artificial intelligence (AI) presents nations’ security as many challenges as it does opportunities. While it could create mass-produced malware, lethal autonomous weapons systems, or engineered pathogens, AI solutions could also prove the counter to these threats. Regulating AI to maximize national security capabilities and minimize the risks presented to them will require focus, caution and intent.

  • Deepfake Threats Advisory from NSA, U.S. Federal Agencies

    The National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. federal agency partners have issued new advice on a synthetic media threat known as deepfakes. This emerging threat could present a cybersecurity challenge for National Security Systems (NSS), the Department of Defense (DoD), and DIB organizations.

  • Apple and Google Are Introducing New Ways to Defeat Cell Site Simulators, But Is it Enough?

    Cell-site simulators (CSS)—also known as IMSI Catchers and Stingrays—are a tool that law enforcement and governments use to track the location of phones, intercept or disrupt communications, spy on foreign governments, or even install malware.

  • Do Gulf States Investments in the West Pose a Threat?

    From football clubs to phone companies, Gulf Arab states are on an investment binge in the West, thanks to high oil prices. Several analysts have warned that the pervasiveness of Chinese snooping technology in the Middle East will likely pose additional security concerns for the West.

  • The Scourge of Commercial Spyware—and How to Stop It

    Years of public revelations have spotlighted a shadowy set of spyware companies selling and servicing deeply intrusive surveillance technologies that are used against journalists, activists, lawyers, politicians, diplomats, and others. Democratic nations (thus far) lag behind the United States in executing spyware-related policy commitments.

  • Who Killed Yevgeny Prigozhin?

    Numerous competing theories are likely to surface about the demise of the Russian paramilitary commander—all of which help explain Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

  • Yevgeny Prigozhin: Wagner Group Boss Joins Long List of Those Who Challenged Vladimir Putin and Paid the Price

    It is unlikely that we will ever know for sure how, why and on whose orders Prigozhin might have been killed, but it is far less difficult to imagine that he finally paid the price for his march on Moscow at the head of a column of his Wagner Group troops at the end of June 2023. Though abrupt, his death is not unexpected. Under Putin, a former KGB operative himself, Russia has carried out several high-profile assassinations and assassination attempts to go after alleged traitors and Putin critics.

  • Putin’s Victims: A Long List Getting Longer

    Vladimir Putin’s intelligence operatives have killed many critics of the regime, both in Russia and abroad — among them opposition politicians, journalists, academics, artists, former spies, oligarchs, and businesspeople. Russian intelligence operatives, however, have also killed Russians who were not outspoken critics of the regime, leading Russia experts to speculate that Putin has adopted a milder version of Stalin’s tactics of random killings in order to instill a generalized sense of fear and insecurity among members of the Russian elite. The article offers a list of 175 dead Russians — 30 businesspeople; 23 politicians, diplomats, academics, and senior military officers; and 122 journalists —  who were killed, or who died under mysterious, often exceedingly implausible, circumstances, since Putin came to power.

  • Poisoning Critics: The Kremlin's Preferred Method of Dealing with Dissidents By Monir Ghaedi

    A recent report indicates the Kremlin might be responsible for the poisoning of Russian journalists in exile. The cases appear to fit into a broader pattern of targeting dissidents: these recent poisonings are but the latest in a series of poisonings targeting Kremlin opponents and critics. Poison has long been a weapon used by security services in Russia to silence prominent political dissidents.

  • Cyber-Attacks Against the U.K. Electoral Commission Reveal an Ongoing Threat to Democracy

    The revelations this month that data on 40 million UK voters had been exposed to hackers came as no surprise to many cybersecurity experts, who have long pointed out the vulnerability of democracies to malicious online interference. The attack reflects the serious and ongoing threat to democracies posed by cyber-interference from foreign nations and criminal organizations.

  • What Is Most Likely Going on in Area 51? A National Security Historian Explains Why You Won’t Find Aliens There

    One of the reasons people can never be entirely sure about what is going on at Area 51 is that it is a highly classified secret military facility. It was not until 2013 that the U.S. government even acknowledged the existence and name “Area 51.” As a national security historian, I know there’s a long history of secrets at Area 51. I also know that none of those secrets have anything to do with space aliens.

  • China Courts Germany's Far-Right Populist AfD, Now Polling at Above 20%

    As is the case with other far-right populist parties in Europe, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party rejects a values-based foreign policy, just as much as it opposes NATO and the U.S. That approach has attracted the attention of Beijing.

  • Lessons for Today’s Cold War 2.0 with Russia, China

    The decades-long battle between Western intelligence services and the Soviet Union offers important lessons for the ongoing national security threat posed by Russia and China. Intelligence expert says both seek to topple U.S. from atop world stage, with Beijing’s blend of money, influence, all-hands-on-deck approach posing bigger threat.

  • New Cipher System Protects Computers Against Spy Programs

    Researchers have achieved a breakthrough in computer security with the development of a new and highly efficient cipher for cache randomization. The innovative cipher addresses the threat of cache side-channel attacks, offering enhanced security and exceptional performance.

  • Crashed UFOs? Non-Human “Biologics”? Professor Asks: Where’s the Evidence?

    Congressional testimony this week about reverse engineering from crashed UFOs and the recovery of non-human “biologics” sounds like science fiction. And that’s the realm in which it will remain unless scientific and other hard evidence enters the picture, says an expert.