• From Visits to Vaccines: The Evolving Nature of China’s Military Diplomacy

    A new report details the growing role of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) military-to-military cooperation in response to the global coronavirus pandemic – a move which signals the greater involvement of the PLA in China’s diplomatic activities.

  • At the Critical Intersection of Public Health and Homeland Security

    Promoting wellbeing of “communities and families” makes the nation safer, says the new chief medical officer for DHS. “I think what this pandemic has shown us is that if we think about the need to build systems that promote the health and wellbeing of communities and families, we’re going to be better off as a nation,” he says. “We’re going to be safer.”

  • Family De-Planning: The Coercive Campaign to Drive Down Indigenous Birth-Rates in Xinjiang

    Beginning in April 2017, Chinese Communist Party authorities in Xinjiang launched a series of “strike-hard” campaigns against “illegal births” with the explicit aim to “reduce and stabilize a moderate birth level” and decrease the birth-rate in southern Xinjiang by at least 4.00 per thousand from 2016 levels. This followed years of preferential exceptions from family-planning rules for indigenous nationalities. The crackdown has led to an unprecedented and precipitous drop in official birth-rates in Xinjiang since 2017. The birth-rate across the region fell by nearly half (48.74 percent) in the two years between 2017 and 2019.

  • “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists” Pose “Most Lethal” Threat to Homeland: DHS, FBI

    A joint report from the FBI and the DHS  on domestic violent extremism (DVE) warns that lone wolf attackers, who have ready access to weapons, pose the most serious terrorism threat to the United States. The report notes that the number of people killed by racially motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) has been on the rise every year since 2017.

  • Can the West Devise an Alternative to China's Belt and Road?

    Since it was announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has channeled hundreds of billions of dollars into foreign infrastructure, boosting trade, and clearing the way for China to forge political and economic links around the world. But a combination of growing disillusionment among partner countries with the resulting projects, room for more investment, and increased unease about the strategic implications of the BRI might have opened the door for an alternative to emerge.

  • Informant Motivation

    The effective recruitment and deployment of informants is critical to law enforcement and intelligence agencies being able to identify and manage threats. Accurately identifying a source’s motivation for providing information enables an informant handler to better influence the informant’s behavior. A new framework has been devised to help informant handlers better identify motivations.

  • Agreement Reached for Bipartisan Probe into U.S. Capitol Riot

    The House Homeland Security Committee announced a bipartisan agreement Friday to form a panel to conduct an investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. A bill will be introduced for House consideration as early as next week. The measure will call for an investigative commission similar to the one that probed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S. 

  • Cyberspace Is Neither Just an Intelligence Contest, nor a Domain of Military Conflict; SolarWinds Shows Us Why It’s Both

    Operations in cyberspace—at least those perpetrated by nation-state actors and their proxies—reflect the geopolitical calculations of the actors who carry them out. Erica D. Borghard writes that cyberspace is sometimes an intelligence contest, and other times a domain of conflict, depending on the strategic approaches and priorities of particular actors at a given moment in time. The SolarWinds campaign shows that “Future conversation needs to move beyond the military versus intelligence contest binary construct to more meaningfully explore how states may seek to use cyberspace for multiple objectives, either in sequence or in parallel,” she writes.

  • Al Qaeda, Supporters Advocate for Lone Actor Attacks in the West

    A pro al-Qaeda digital propaganda group has released digital articles which call on Americans to engage in lone-wolf terror attacks against fellow Americans. Because American counterterrorism pressure has severely degraded its capabilities, Al Qaeda appears to believe its best hope of achieving a terrorist attack against the West is to inspire domestic extremists.

  • France, Britain Fearful of Resurgent Jihadist Threat After Lockdown

    Nearly 200 jihadists imprisoned in France are due to be released over the next two years and French security officials are pressing French lawmakers to approve fresh antiterrorist measures to impose enhanced restrictions on those freed and to give police new legal powers to fight terrorism.

  • The TSA Should Regulate Pipeline Cybersecurity

    Fuel deliveries to the east coast of the United States have been brought to a standstill by cybercriminals that have gained access to Colonial Pipelines’ networks and forced the company to shut down its distribution system. After two decades of trying to make a voluntary partnership with industry work, this incident demonstrates that neither thoughts, prayers, nor information sharing is sufficient. It is time for the federal government to exercise its existing authority to regulate the cybersecurity of pipelines.

  • Videos: Proof of Life or Death?

    Can the fate of hostages be determined from proof-of-life video messages? While terrorist hostage-taking is uncommon, ideologically motivated hostage-takers often provide a video demonstrating proof of control and proof of life (POL). These videos establish that a hostage is alive at the time the video was made, and hence provide valuable information for families and governments charged with their safe recovery. What they don’t reveal, however, is the likely fate of hostages.

  • Second Open Letter by French Soldiers Warns of Civil Insurrection

    Disquiet is growing within France’s military ranks, with the publication of a second open letter — this time by serving soldiers — warning growing Islamism, delinquency and violence threaten the country’s very survival.

  • Huawei’s Ability to Eavesdrop on Dutch Mobile Users Is a Wake-up Call for the Telecoms Industry

    Chinese technology provider Huawei was recently accused of being able to monitor all calls made using Dutch mobile operator KPN. While the full report on the issue has not been made public, journalists reporting on the story have outlined specific concerns that Huawei personnel in the Netherlands and China had access to security-essential parts of KPN’s network – including the call data of millions of Dutch citizens – and that a lack of records meant KPN couldn’t establish how often this happened.

  • Germany Sees Spike in Politically Motivated Crimes

    German interior minister Horst Seehofer has warned of what he called an alarming rise in politically motivated crime last year, particularly among far-right groups.