• 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.”

  • Putin “Playing Poker Rather Than Chess”: Former U.K. Spy Chief

    In an interview Tuesday with the BBC, former head of Britain’s MI6 external intelligence agency, Alex Younger, said he cannot see how the Russian leader can back down as fears mount that Putin is poised to order a Russian invasion of Ukraine, a former Soviet republic.

  • Why NATO Has Become a Flash Point with Russia in Ukraine

    Russian leaders have watched with mounting resentment as the transatlantic alliance has nearly doubled its membership since the end of the Cold War. President Vladimir Putin has drawn a red line in Ukraine.

  • U.S. Still Searching for “Havana Syndrome” Answers

    The CIA has concluded a mysterious illness plaguing American diplomats and other officials around the world is not nearly as widespread as initially feared and is most likely not the work of a foreign adversary. But the agency also cautioned that a smaller number of cases continue to defy explanation.

  • How the U.S. Is Making Gains in an Uphill Battle Against Russian Hackers

    U.S. policy and actions in response to cyberattacks connected to Russia have changed distinctly since the Biden administration took office. The Biden administration has taken unprecedented steps to impose costs on Russian cyber criminals and frustrate their efforts, but we should be realistic about what national cyber defense can and can’t do.

  • Threats to the U.S. Jewish Community: The Facts

    According to the FBI’s annual data on hate crimes, defined as criminal offenses which are motivated by bias, crimes targeting the Jewish community consistently constitute more than half of all religion-based crimes.

  • What Does the Seditious Conspiracy Indictment Mean for the Oath Keepers?

    The Justice Department has raised the stakes with the seditious conspiracy charges filed on Jan. 12 against the Oath Keepers founder, Stewart Rhodes. Jon Lewis and Seamus Hughes write that “The anti-government movement in America is not based on one man or even one organization. There will be more extremist leaders like Stewart Rhodes in the future. However, the most recent prosecution may set the precedent of how to handle those who come after him.”

  • China’s Long-Arm Policing Overseas

    Just around Christmas last year, China’s global hunt for “fugitives” hit a new milestone. Since its launch in 2014 as part of Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, 10,000 are claimed to have been successfully returned from over 120 countries around the globe under Sky Net (and junior partner Fox Hunt) operations.

  • How to Support a Globally Connected Counter-Disinformation Network

    From undermining democracy to inciting genocide, the global dangers of disinformation on social media are now well known. Kevin Sheives writes that despite countless calls for better legal regulation or intensified content moderation, the efforts of governments and social media companies to combat this threat have proven either woefully inadequate or dangerous to democratic practice. “Civil society, not governments or social media companies, can best diminish disinformation,” he writes.

  • Polarization: Parties Lead and Voters Follow

    Party polarization tends to come before voter polarization, according to new research. “People often rely on political parties as a source of information, so it makes sense to expect them to follow the lead of parties and other political elites,” says one researcher.

  • Security Flaws in China’s Mandatory Olympics App for Athletes

    Athletes arriving at the Winter Olympics in China will have to install a Chinese-made app, called MY2022, on their smartphones, and fill in detailed information about themselves. China says that app, which the athletes will have to carry with them and periodically update, will be used to report health and travel data when they are in China. Athletes who fail to install the app, or who fail to fill in and update the information, will be sent home. Cyber analysts have found serious security and privacy flaws in the app.

  • Envisioning the Overthrow of China’s Xi Jinping

    On 14 October 1964, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was deposed. Members of the Politburo, led by Leonid Breshnev and Alexei Kosygin, informed Khrushchev that he was being replaced, and he was escorted to a villa in a secluded area on the shores of the Black Sea, where he lived comfortably, if modestly, until he died on 11 September 1971. Is this scenario possible in today’s China? Could the fate of Chinese president Xi Jinping be similar to that of Khrushchev? One expert says the answer is “Yes” to both questions.

     

  • Home for the Holidays? The Global Implications of a State-Level Cyberattack

    The 4 December 2021 cyberattack on the Maryland Department of Health (MDH) appeared, at first blush to be a local-to-Maryland problem. Maggie Smith writes, however, that “the MDH hack points to a concerning development at the nexus of cybercrime and data supply chains,” as it “shows how fragile data supply chains can be and signals how easy it is to disrupt even the most critical data flows by stopping the upstream flow of data that provides the insights and statistics on which the nations’ decision-makers rely.”  

  • Warnings of “Civil War” Risk Harming Efforts Against Political Violence

    A year on from the Jan. 6 riots, experts warn of catastrophic political violence, while political commentators invoke the specter of the 1860s. Anjali Dayal, Alexandra Stark, and Megan A. Stewart write that the emerging cottage industry of speculation and alarm specifically about a civil war in the United States worries them. “The shape and content of this debate … risks mis-framing an urgent problem for non-specialist audiences.”

  • Hostage Situation Continuing in Texas

    The FBI joined local and state police to surround a synagogue in Coleville, Texas, a city of about 26,000 residents about 15 miles northeast of Fort Worth, where a man has been holding the rabbi and four other people hostage since late morning. A few minutes ago, the hostage taker released a man who was suffering from a medical condition.