• U.S. to Make Intelligence on COVID-19 Origins Public

    By Jeff Seldin

    The United States will share the results of a new deep-dive by its top intelligence agencies into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic that has killed millions of people across the globe. Top U.S. intelligence agencies said last year that their information supported “the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified” but that they would “continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence” to determine whether the outbreak began after the virus was transmitted to humans from animals in nature or as the result of a laboratory accident.

  • China’s Determined Effort to Build an S&T Infrastructure

    For half a century, China, with dogged determination, has pursued its effort to build an S&T infrastructure. A new report from the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) notes that foreign technology acquisition continues to play a large role in this effort, with commercial technology products becoming increasingly attractive targets. Beijing’s “hybrid innovation system” blends forms of academic collaboration, industry partnerships, cyber espionage, direct investment, and influence operations to enhance China’s comprehensive national power.

  • Why a Commission Should Investigate the U.S. Capitol Attack

    By Bruce Hoffman

    Far too little is known about how the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol happened. A bipartisan investigation should address this, to dispel falsehoods and to help prevent such an assault from happening again.

  • Cyber Attacks Can Shut Down Critical Infrastructure. It’s Time to Make Cyber Security Compulsory

    By Richard Oloruntoba and Nik Thompson

    The 7 May attack on the Colonial Pipeline highlights how vulnerable critical infrastructure such as fuel pipelines are in an era of growing cyber security threats. In Australia, we believe the time has come to make it compulsory for critical infrastructure companies to implement serious cyber security measures.

  • DHS Awards $4.2 Million to U.S. Small Business for Homeland Security R&D

    DHS S&T announced the award of 29 competitive research contracts to 25 small businesses across the United States to participate in Phase I of the DHS Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. Each project will receive up to $150,000 from the DHS SBIR Program to conduct proof-of-concept research over a five-month period to address specific homeland security technology needs.

  • Privacy Activists Challenge Clearview AI in EU

    European privacy groups accuse the facial scan company of stockpiling biometric data on billions of people without their permission. The firm’s database contains images “scraped” from websites, including social media.

  • Airlines Shun Belarusian Airspace as Calls for Sanctions over Plane Diversion Grow

    The global aviation industry has moved to isolate Belarus as the leader of the country’s opposition called for the international community to act in concert to stop authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka from continuing to act with “impunity” following the diversion of a commercial airline to Minsk, where one of the passengers, an opposition journalist, was arrested.

  • Belarus Kidnapping: What International Law Says about Capture of Dissident journalist Roman Protasevich

    By Kanstantsin Dzehtsiarou and Arman Sarvarian

    The full details of what happened with the plane which flew from Athens in Greece to Vilnius in Lithuania on May 23, and which was forced, by the Belarus air force, to land in Minsk, remain a matter of dispute. But even if Belarus can show that its diversion of the plane was lawful, the detention by the Belarus police of opposition blogger Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend is another question entirely. Under the ICAO treaties, Flight FR4978 was under the jurisdiction of Poland as the country of registration of the aircraft. The aircraft was still “in flight,” even when diverted to Minsk. No country has the right to detain suspects on a civil aircraft for crimes that were not committed on board that aircraft.

  • Evil Eye Gazes Beyond China’s Borders: Troubling Trends in Chinese Cyber Campaigns

    By Eli Clemens

    On March 24, 2021, Facebook announced they had taken actions against an advanced persistent threat (APT) group located in China, previously monikered as Evil Eye. Evil Eye’s campaign was clearly motivated by a political goal that China frequently uses a blend of information operations (IO) and cyber means to accomplish: the disruption of dissidents, especially those who raise awareness of China’s human rights violations against its ethnic minorities.

  • The Case for a “Disinformation CERN”

    By Anastasia Kapetas

    Democracies around the world are struggling with various forms of disinformation afflictions. But the current suite of policy prescriptions will fail because governments simply don’t know enough about the emerging digital information environment.

  • Iran Nuclear Inspection Deal with UN Watchdog Extended by One Month

    Iran and the UN’s nuclear watchdog say they have agreed to extend by one month an agreement to monitor Tehran’s nuclear activities, a move that will give more time for ongoing diplomatic efforts to salvage the country’s tattered nuclear deal with world powers.

  • Prominent Voices Demonize Israel Regarding the Conflict

    In response to the recent conflict in Israel and Gaza, prominent voices, including among NGOs and activists, have engaged in problematic rhetoric about Israel. Such harsh criticism, especially when it goes beyond criticizing Israel’s policies to a denunciation of the entire entity of Israel and its guiding ideology of Zionism, may not always cross the line into antisemitism, but it enables an environment in which hateful actions against Jews and supporters of Israel are accepted more freely, and in which anti-Jewish tropes may be normalized. We are already seeing too many examples of Jews and Jewish institutions being targeted in the guise of opposition to Israel and its policies.

  • On Christchurch Call Anniversary, a Step Closer to Eradicating Terrorism Online?

    Is it possible to eradicate terrorism and violent extremism from the internet? To prevent videos and livestreams of terrorist attacks from going viral, and maybe even prevent them from being shared or uploaded in the first place? Courtney C. Radsch writes that the governments and tech companies involved in the Christchurch Call are dealing with a difficult issue: “The big question is whether the twin imperatives of eradicating TVEC while protecting the internet’s openness and freedom of expression are compatible,” Radsch writes.

  • It’s Time to Surge Resources into Prosecuting Ransomware Gangs

    In the popular imagination, hacking is committed by lone wolves with exceptional computer skills. But in reality, the vast majority of hackers do not have the technical sophistication to create the malicious tools that are essential to their trade. Kellen Dwyer writes that hacking has exploded in recent years because criminals have specialized and subspecialized so that each one can concentrate on facilitating just a single phase of a successful data breach. This is known as cybercrime-as-a-service and it is a massive business. This intricate cybercrime ecosystem offers the key to fighting it: “While organization and specialization are strengths of cybercriminals, they are also weaknesses. That means there are organizations that can be infiltrated and exploited.”

  • U.S. Anti-Hate Crime Law Provides New Enforcement Tools, but Will It Work?

    By Masood Farivar

    A bill that President Joe Biden signed into law Thursday gives local and federal officials new tools and resources to combat hate crimes, while putting the spotlight on a surge in anti-Asian hate during the COVID-19 pandemic. The impetus for the new law was a dramatic increase in attacks on Asian Americans since the start of the pandemic in Wuhan, China, more than a year ago.