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Russian HackingEU: Russia Involved in “Ghostwriter” Cyberattacks
The European Union has warned the Kremlin that it could “consider taking further steps” over Moscow’s complicity in recent cyberattacks targeting the bloc’s members.
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Public Health PreparednessTwo Decades After 9/11: What We’ve Learned About Public Health Preparedness and Leadership
In the United States, 743,452 “excess” (potentially preventable) deaths occurred from COVID-19 between February 2020 and September 4th, 2021, according to the CDC National Center for Health Statistics. This figure exceeds the number of excess deaths that occurred during the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, which was caused by an even deadlier virus.
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TerrorismTerrorist Attacks Against Vaccinators
Since 2010, Islamist terrorists have increased their attacks on vaccinators in the Middle East, south Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Pakistan has seen the most attacks on vaccinators.
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ExtremismU.S. Domestic Terrorism Caseload “Exploding”
U.S. national security and law enforcement agencies are battling what they describe as a “significant jump” in threats from domestic terrorists, many of whom are acting on their own and motivated by racial animosity or anti-government ideology.
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ExtremismThe Role of Trust in Deciding Which Terrorist Faction to Join
Research based on interviews with Irish Republican activists has shown that trust plays a greater role than ideology in how members pick sides when terrorist groups splinter. If commitment is primarily social rather than ideological, then counter-narrative or ideological “deprogramming” strategies may not help lure someone away from a group of individuals with whom he or she feels a close personal bond of trust.
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ARGUMENT: Nuclear threshold stateIrreversible: Iran’s Nukes
In 2018 the Trump administration withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran, which the Obama administration had signed in 2015. David Albright and Sarah Burkhard of Institute for Science and International Security write that Iran’s nuclear capabilities now greatly exceed their status in early 2016, when the nuclear deal was implemented. Iran’s breakout time, namely the time needed to produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon or explosive device, is on order of one month, which was Iran’s breakout time in late 2014, before the nuclear deal was signed.
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Iran’s nukesAs the West Watches, Iran Enriches Uranium
Iran may now be capable of producing enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear warhead within just a month. While Iran continues to make progress enriching uranium, nuclear diplomacy seems to be stalled.
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TerrorismAl-Qaida, Islamic State Group Struggle for Recruits
As strange as it may sound, revolutionary Islamist groups suffer from recruitment problems as any other organization does. My research on Islamist terrorism has found that al-Qaida and its rival offshoot, the Islamic State group, have long had chronic difficulties replenishing their ranks.
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ExtremismPsychological Assessment of Individuals Linked to Radicalization, Lone-Wolf Terrorism
In recent times, the phenomenon of lone wolf terrorism has been observed with the social assumption that a radicalized individual is only guided by personal, social, and ethnic reasons to commit an extremist act. But there is still much to understand about this phenomenon and improve the methods of investigation or psychiatric interventions.
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Iran’s nukesIAEA Monitors Allowed to Service Cameras at Sensitive Nuclear Sites
An agreement has been reached between Iran and the IAEA to allow international inspectors to service surveillance cameras at Iran’s sensitive nuclear sites and to continue filming there. The agreement, announced Sunday, averts a diplomatic showdown this week.
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Post-9/11 building codesHow the Terrifying Evacuations from the Twin Towers on 9/11 Helped Make Today's Skyscrapers Safer
One legacy of the 9/11 tragedy and the harrowing experience of those who successfully escaped the Twin Towers – the disaster was the most significant high-rise evacuation in modern times — is that today’s skyscrapers can be emptied much more safely and easily in an emergency.
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PandemicBiden Unveils Plan of Attack for COVID-19
Keep schools open, mandate vaccines for all federal employees, and increase testing—these are three of the goals President Joe Biden outlined Thursday during a briefing on America’s ongoing battle against COVID-19.
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Pandemic preparednessApollo Program-Style Pandemic Preparedness Plan
Last week, the Biden administration announced a new biosecurity plan which it likened to the Apollo program of the late 1960s. This $65 billion proposal would be one of the largest investments in public health in American history and would “remake the nation’s pandemic preparedness infrastructure in the wake of Covid-19.”
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9/11: 20 years onAmerica Marks 20 Years Since 9/11 Attacks as Biden Searches for Closure
The 9/11 terrorist attacks unfolded in less than two hours, killing 2,996 people. The war in Afghanistan, launched a month after the 9/11 attacks lasted 19 years, 10 months, three weeks and two days, with DOD counting 2.325 American military deaths. On Saturday, 11 September, President Biden will try to draw a line under these events, saying that a new era in American foreign and defense policy has begun. “But we will also see, as we always do, that one era does not end when a new era begins,” notes one historian.
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9/11: 20 years onLessons from 9/11
Beyond their painful human toll, the 9/11 terrorist attacks changed and continue to influence life in America in many ways. Harvard professors detail how the tragedy reshaped U.S. homeland security and foreign policy, study and treatment of PTSD, and crisis planning and management.
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The long view
ARGUMENT: Cyber retaliationU.S. Leads Coalition Accusing China of Hacking
On 19 July, the United States joined other countries in condemning the hacking by Chinee government hackers of Microsoft Exchange email server software. Despite the condemnations, there have not been any sanctions against China for its role in the breach, leading critics to charge that the Biden’s response was weak and “not proportionate to the severity of the breach.” Abby Lemert and Eleanor Runde write that “Part of the problem is that escalatory retaliation carries special risks to a highly digitized society like the United States. Accordingly, some commentators assess that Biden’s response is properly calibrated to the risks.”
ARGUMENT: Cyber offenseResponsible Cyber Offense
There is responsible conduct in cyberspace, and there is irresponsible conduct. Perri Adams, Dave Aitel, George Perkovich, and JD Work write that “If the SolarWinds operation was a case of somewhat responsible hacking within the bounds of acceptable state action (even if Russia is far from a responsible actor in cyberspace), the Exchange operation, by contrast, demonstrates how an irresponsibly conducted espionage operation can escalate into collateral damage and instability.” They write that, despite critical preventive efforts, “offensive operations will continue apace in the foreseeable future—conducted by the United States, its allies and its adversaries. The choice is whether and how to engage in them responsibly and minimize cost to societies.”
ARGUMENT: Cyber workforceU.S. Gov. Facing a Severe Cyber Workers Shortage When They Are Needed the Most
The U.S. government is struggling to find and hire cybersecurity workers precisely at the time it needs such workers most in order to protect the government and its cyber systems from an unprecedented, and ever-more-menacing, wave of cyberattacks.
ARGUMENT: Precautionary principle Ban Use of Affective Computing in Federal Law Enforcement
Affective computing uses algorithms to analyze bodies, faces, and voices to infer human emotion and state of mind. Even though there clearly needs to be more research done on this technology, law enforcement agencies are starting to experiment with it to extract information, detect deception, and identify criminal behavior. Alex Engler says that President Biden should ban affective computing before it starts to threaten civil liberties.
ARGUMENT: Strengthening cybersecurityThe Van Buren Decision Is Good News for Cybersecurity
In June, after years of uncertainty, the Supreme Court finally shed some light on the meaning of a notoriously vague law, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). Timothy Edgar writes that one problem with CFAA was that some courts had interpreted the CFAA’s language so broadly. Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s technically informed opinion, which narrowed the scope of CFAA, was a win for civil liberties — and also a victory — not a loss — for cybersecurity. Moreover, Barrett’s opinion “offers a model for how to interpret computer crime laws.”
ARGUMENT: Afghanistan failureWhat Went Wrong for the U.S. in Afghanistan
The Biden administration’s decision to withdraw American troops from Afghanistan is an admission that the United States has failed in its costly war in Afghanistan. Why has the United States failed? Jason K. Dempsey, who was deployed to Afghanistan as part of the 2009 “surge,” writes that “Luckily for those…. wondering how all the heroism [of American soldiers in Afghanistan] led to an overall outcome in Afghanistan that fell far short of U.S. aspirations, there are two new books that seek to make sense of the war.”