• Austria Calls for European Register of Muslim Imams

    Since the start of 2021, Austria has required the registration of all imams in the country. Now Austria is calling for the European Union to adopt the registration of imams, the worship leaders of Mosques in Muslim communities.

  • The Nashville Bombing and Threats to Critical Infrastructure: We Saw This Coming

    If fear of 5G technology proves to be the motive for the Christmas-Day bombing in Nashville, Tennessee, no one should be surprised. Audrey Kurth Cronin writes that if [Nashville bomber] Anthony Warner was indeed protesting 5G networks, it shines a light on the long-standing need for U.S. intelligence and law enforcement to meld global and local efforts to get ahead of cyber-driven threats to critical infrastructure. “Authorities need to strengthen their ability to meet anti-technology attacks on our vulnerable critical infrastructure, especially by looking close to home.”

  • The Sunburst Hack Was Massive and Devastating – 5 Observations from a Cybersecurity Expert

    So much remains unknown about what is now being called the Sunburst hack, the cyberattack against U.S. government agencies and corporations. U.S. officials widely believe that Russian state-sponsored hackers are responsible. The attack gave the perpetrators access to numerous key American business and government organizations. The immediate effects will be difficult to judge, and a complete accounting of the damage is unlikely. However, the nature of the affected organizations alone makes it clear that this is perhaps the most consequential cyberattack against the U.S. to date.

  • Homeland Security and the China Challenge

    On 21 December, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad F. Wolf delivered remarks at a virtual event hosted by the Heritage Foundation detailing the enduring threat from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and DHS’s strategy to confront it. “Today, the threats to our peace and prosperity emanate largely from China,” Wolf said. “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) picked up the mantle of Communist ideology and has adapted it to our times. Today, the ideology that fueled the Soviet Union is alive and well in China.”

  • Uighur Diaspora Hails Removal of ETIM from U.S. Terror List

    Uighur activists and experts alike welcomed the removal of the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) from the U.S. terrorist list, saying the move by Washington last month helps the religious minority fight more effectively for its rights, while making it harder for China to portray its crackdown in Xinjiang as a counterterrorism measure.

  • Revelations of Cyberattacks on U.S. Likely Just “Tip of the Iceberg”

    Russian government hackers have infiltrated the computer networks of some of the nation’s biggest corporations, leading defense contractors, and top U.S. government agencies, including those in national security branches, in what security analysts believe is a “very significant” breach. The Russian espionage campaign was “sustained, targeted, far-reaching,” analysts say.

  • Congress’s Spending Bill Protects a Mysterious Island for Studying Diseases from the Auction Block

    For decades, Plum Island, off the northeast edge of Long Island, has been the subject of the kind of conspiracy theories the Internet loves. The truth is more prosaic: By order of Congress, the Plum Island Animal Disease Laboratory opened in 1956 to study how to combat dangerous foreign animal pathogens, such as foot-and-mouth disease. A dozen years ago, Congress approved a plan to move the animal research facility to Manhattan, Kansas. The move was to be followed by auctioning Plum Island to the highest bidder. A coalition consisting of environmental groups, Native American nations, local businesses, and other organizations was formed to block any such sale. James Bennet writes that “deep within the 5,000-plus pages of the spending bill awaiting President Trump’s signature… is a terse provision that saves Plum Island from the auction block.”

  • Terrorist Groups Using COVID-19 to Reinforce Power and Influence: INTERPOL

    A new report issued by INTERPOL assesses the impact of COVID-19 on global terrorism, trends and potential risks related to attacks on vulnerable targets and bioterrorism is the focus of. As COVID-19 cases subside in some regions and surge in others, the report underlines the critical need to monitor the reaction and response by terrorist networks, violent extremist groups, and other potentially dangerous non-state actors.

  • Argentina: 1994 AMIA Jewish Center Bombing Still Shrouded in Mystery

    It has been 26 years since the bloody attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association in Buenos Aires which left 85 people dead. So far, nobody has been convicted of the truck bombing — but that could soon change.

  • Election security It’s Official: The Election Was Secure

    Election officials and election security experts have long been clear: voter fraud is extraordinarily rare and the U.S. system has strong checks in place to protect the integrity of our voting process. “These are the facts,” says the Brennan Center for Justice. “But the facts have not stopped bad actors from trotting out baseless claims of ‘systemic voter fraud’ to suppress votes and undermine trust in our democracy for political gain.” Government officials, judges, and elected leaders, overwhelmingly Republican —and, in the executive branch and the judiciary, mostly Trump appointees — have publicly acknowledged confidence in the November election.

  • Invoking Martial Law to Reverse the 2020 Election Could be Criminal Sedition

    In his increasingly desperate bid to hang on to the White House, President Trump is reportedly contemplating invoking martial law to force the invalidation of the results of the election in four swing states, apparently inspired by remarks of the former and recently-pardoned National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Law professors Claire O. Finkelstein and Richard W Painter write that “While we deem the chances that Trump will actually follow through with the attempt to spark a military coup between now and January 20th extremely low, Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen should be prepared for such a contingency and play out the legal and enforcement implications in advance. Shocking and unprecedented though it would be, Rosen should be ready to go so far as to order federal law enforcement officers to arrest anyone, including, if necessary, the president, who has conspired to carry out this illegal plan.”

  • Online Users Manipulated into Sharing Private Information Online

    Online users are more likely to reveal private information based on how website forms are structured to elicit data, BGU researchers have determined.

  • U.S. Charges New Suspect In 1988 Pan Am Bombing

    DOJ on Monday announced criminal charges against a new suspect in the 1988 terrorist bombing of a Pan Am airliner that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland. The charges against Abu Agela Masud, a Libyan bombing expert, came on the 32nd anniversary of the deadly bombing and two days before Barr steps down as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

  • The Strategic Implications of SolarWinds

    Recent reports of a broad Russian cyber infiltration across U.S. government networks are a sign of how great-power competition will play out in the twenty-first century. Benjamin Jensen, Brandon Valeriano, and Mark Montgomery write that the SolarWinds operation demonstrates that U.S. Cyber Command’s vision of persistent engagement, which calls for preventively imposing costs as adversaries to shape competition in cyberspace, appears not to have worked as expected. “In the future, what is required is a deeper focus on denial-based approaches: How can the U.S. limit the attack surfaces available to the opposition and harden targets to ensure resilience?” they write.

  • Pandemic Consequences: The Acceleration of Confrontational Politics

    Soon after the coronavirus began spreading widely around the world, a dominant narrative emerged about its likely effect on global politics: the pandemic would reinforce autocratic governance. Thomas Carothers and Benjamin Press write in Just Security that, indeed, dozens of authoritarian or authoritarian-leaning leaders, from Cambodia to Hungary, quickly seized the moment to amass more power, undercut institutional checks and balances, and restrict citizen freedoms in ways that exceeded public-health necessity. But “almost a year in, another critical trend has become apparent: contrary to the hopes of some observers, the pandemic is also fueling the longer-term ascendancy of confrontational politics,” they write.