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Fake Biden Robocall to New Hampshire Voters Highlights How Easy It Is to Make Deepfakes − and How Hard It Is to Defend Against AI-Generated Disinformation
Robocalls in elections are nothing new and not illegal; many are simply efforts to get out the vote. But they have also been used in voter suppression campaigns. Compounding this problem in this case is what I believe to be the application of AI to clone Biden’s voice.
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The Spies Should Go Back into the Cold
Recent Russian efforts to interfere in US elections, track down and eliminate defectors and other ‘disloyal elements’, and plant disinformation using social media are nothing new. Rather, they are the continuation by modern means of an intelligence war that has been going on since 1917. Following the end of the two world wars and the Cold War, the US and the UK reduced their intelligence capacity when they should have been countercyclical, gearing up for the inevitable next intelligence challenge.
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Fifty-Five Hours of Risk: The Dangerous Implications of Slow Attack Attribution
Assuming that its foreign adversaries’ recent violent threats are to be taken seriously, and that the likelihood of a direct attack against the United States is, if not on the rise, at least significant enough to warrant serious attention, the United States has an urgent mandate to prepare effective cognitive defenses. Foremost among these is the ability to quickly and accurately attribute attacks to their originators, and to deliver that information to the public through a trustworthy vehicle.
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Cyber 'Kidnapping' Scams Target Chinese Students Around the World
A recent cyber kidnapping incident involving a Chinese exchange student in Utah appears to be part of an international pattern in which unknown perpetrators, often masquerading as Chinese police or government officials, target Chinese students around the world and extort their families for upwards of tens of thousands of dollars.
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Congress Bans Pentagon from Using Chinese Port Logistics Platform
The U.S. Congress has passed legislation that would ban the Pentagon from using any seaport in the world that relies on a Chinese logistics platform known as LOGINK. LOGINK, by tracking cargo and ship movements, lets Beijing monitor America’s military supply chain, which relies on commercial ports.
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Shadow Play: A Pro-China and Anti-U.S. Influence Operation Thrives on YouTube
Experts have recently observed a coordinated inauthentic influence campaign originating on YouTube that’s promoting pro-China and anti-US narratives in an apparent effort to shift English-speaking audiences’ views of those countries’ roles in international politics, the global economy and strategic technology competition.
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A U.S. Ambassador Working for Cuba? Charges Against Former Diplomat Victor Manuel Rocha Spotlight Havana’s Importance in the World of Spying
The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Dec. 4, 2023, that Victor Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador to Colombia, had been arrested and faced federal charges for secretly acting for decades as an agent of the Cuban government. It remains to be seen what damage Rocha may have done while working as a Cuban spy. His tenure in the U.S. government, however, would place him right up there with the most successful, and thus damaging, spies in modern history.
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Responding to Authoritarian Information Ops in Latin America
The Russian government is currently financing an on-going, well-funded disinformation campaign across Latin America. The Kremlin’s campaign plans to leverage developed media contacts in several Latin American countries in order to carry out an information manipulation campaign designed to surreptitiously exploit the openness of Latin America’s media and information environment.
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No, Japan Is Not Ready for AUKUS
It is a natural strategic choice for Japan to join in advanced military technology cooperation under the trilateral Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) agreement – turning the alliance into “JAUKUS” – but there is a fundamental stumbling block: Japan’s lack of effective counter-espionage laws.
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Former U.S. Ambassador and National Security Council Official Charged with Secretly Acting as an Agent of the Cuban Government
Federal prosecutors have charged Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, of Miami, Florida, a former U.S. Department of State employee who served on the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995 and ultimately as U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002, with committing multiple federal crimes by secretly acting for decades as an agent of the government of the Republic of Cuba.
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British Documentary Alleges China Influences Universities, Spies on Hong Kongers in UK
A BBC Channel 4 documentary claims the Chinese government is interfering with academic freedom and spying on Hong Kong activists in the United Kingdom. The film also alleges that Chinese government agents pretending to be journalists used fake profiles and avatars to target Hong Kong activists now living in the U.K.
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Huawei’s New Mate 60 Phones Are a Lesson in Unintended Consequences
In October 2022, the Commerce Department introduced a set of export-control measures designed to prevent the use of American chip technology for Chinese military purposes. Rules were also imposed that aimed to restrict China’s semiconductor production to older 14-nm technology. These controls have had varying degrees of success, but the 14-nm restriction is one of the more overt failures, as the 7-nm chips in the new Huawei’s Mate 60 phones shows.
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International Partnership Focuses on Insider Threats
Insider threats can take many forms. They are real, and if not identified, they can be costly and damaging.
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Fewer U.S. College Students Are Studying a Foreign Language − and That Spells Trouble for National Security
In 1958, following the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik, the National Defense Education Act authorized funding to strengthen U.S. education in language instruction, in addition to math and science. More than six decades later, a new Modern Language Association report is raising concerns about America’s foreign language capabilities anew. Having fewer U.S. college students who learn a foreign language creates greater risks for national security.
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Want to Prevent Misinformation? Present Data with an Interactive Visual
Getting readers of a news story interested in numbers can be a challenge. But the benefits of engaging readers in data can lead to a better understanding, preventing misinformation, and misrepresentation in the news. New research explores a solution using interactive data visualization to inform and engage readers.
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The long view
Kinetic Operations Bring Authoritarian Violence to Democratic Streets
Foreign interference in democracies has a multifaceted toolkit. In addition to information manipulation, the tactical tools authoritarian actors use to undermine democracy include cyber operations, economic coercion, malign finance, and civil society subversion.
Romania, 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.”