• What the Wildfires Tell Us about the Shortcomings of California’s Electric Grid

    In addition to the vast destruction they have caused, the wildfires that have engulfed California in recent weeks have laid bare serious concerns about the state’s electric grid. UCLA’s expert Eric Fournier explains why the architecture of California’s grid isn’t well suited for such extreme conditions and what it would take to improve it.

  • TikTok and WeChat: Curating and Controlling Global Information Flows

    “The Chinese state has demonstrated a propensity for controlling and shaping the information environment of the Chinese diaspora—including via WeChat,” three researchers at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) in a new report. “The meteoric growth of TikTok has now put the CCP in a position from which it can shape the information environment on a largely non-Chinese-speaking platform—with the help of the highest valued start-up in the world and its opaque advanced AI-powered algorithm”: Excerpts from the report.

  • Russia Is Back, Wilier Than Ever — and It’s Not Alone

    Moscow’s hacking and disinformation tactics have evolved since 2016, while Americans help spread doubts about the November election. Russian operatives are using a sneakier, more sophisticated version of their 2016 playbook to undermine the November election — and this time, Mark Scott writes, groups inside and outside the U.S. are furthering their goal of sowing chaos.

  • Are Counter Violent Extremism Interventions Effective?

    Government efforts to counter the propaganda and radicalization that lead to violent extremism are becoming more common around the world, but there’s little research on whether such programs work. RAND conducted three randomized controlled trials of what are called countering violent extremism (CVE) interventions. The results were mixed, but one conclusion was inescapable: countering violent extremism is not an easy task, and programmers should not always assume their content will be successful.

  • The Genetic Engineering Genie Is Out of the Bottle

    Usually good for a conspiracy theory or two, President Donald Trump has suggested that the virus causing COVID-19 was either intentionally engineered or resulted from a lab accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. Scientists have now conclusively proved that the virus was not designed in a lab, but Vivek Wadhwa writes that if “genetic engineering wasn’t behind this pandemic, it could very well unleash the next one. With COVID-19 bringing Western economies to their knees, all the world’s dictators now know that pathogens can be as destructive as nuclear missiles.”

  • Captivating Conflagration: Arson as a Terrorist Tactic

    The 2018 Camp Fire in California and the 2019 bushfires in Australia killed dozens of people, destroyed thousands of homes, and scorched millions of acres, inflicting widespread pain and steep economic costs. The most extreme terrorist groups aspire to achieve this level of death and destruction. It therefore comes as no surprise that the use of arson for terrorist purposes is not a new phenomenon. Jihadists; extremists on the far right and the far left; as well as special interest extremists, have used arson to send political messages for years.

  • Defending the 2020 Election against Hacking: 5 Questions Answered

    Journalist Bob Woodward reports in his new book, Rage, that the NSA and CIA have classified evidence that the Russian intelligence services placed malware in the election registration systems of at least two Florida counties in 2016, and that the malware was sophisticated and could erase voters. This appears to confirm earlier reports. Meanwhile, Russian intelligence agents and other foreign players are already at work interfering in the 2020 presidential election. Douglas W. Jones, a computer science professor and author of Broken Ballots: Will Your Vote Count?, writes that the list of things keeping him awake at night about the November election is long – violence; refusal to accept results if the in-person and mail-in votes differ; machine malfunction; human error, and more – but when you “add in the possibility of hacked central tabulating software in key counties, and there’s plenty to lose sleep over.”

  • Germany: Two Independent Foreign Labs Confirm Navalny Poisoned with Novichok

    Germany says independent reviews by laboratories in France and Sweden have confirmed evidence that Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent from the Novichok group. German experts say the 44-year-old anti-corruption campaigner and Russian opposition leader was poisoned with a Soviet-style military nerve agent from the Novichok group, prompting international calls on Russia to swiftly investigate the case.

  • History of Nerve Agent Assassinations

    Poisoning political opponents or enemies is not new. Reviews of chemical and biological weapons (CBW) usage through the 20th century similarly list successful and attempted assassinations with mineral poisons or animal and plant toxins in and outside of war. Modern chemical weapons (CW) – typically human-made toxic compounds standardized for use on battlefields – have rarely been selected to target individuals – but a spate of recent political poisonings indicate that this may be changing.

  • Refocusing DHS to Address Today’s Threats to the Homeland

    DHS was created in 2003 to make sure that the United States does not again experience 9/11-like attack, in which nonmilitary means—four passenger aircraft— killed more Americans than died in the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The security challenges have changed since 2001. One example: As of August 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic was killing as many Americans as died on 9/11— every four days. In addition to pandemics, the long-term threat to U.S. infrastructure from climate and weather changes and the increasing non-kinetic actions by nation-state adversaries seeking to undermine U.S. power, “all point to the need for the United States to make another fundamental change in how the U.S. government defends the nation and keeps the American people safe,” the authors on a new report say.

  • Reforming DHS

    The arrests of U.S. citizens on the streets of Portland, Oregon, by unidentified DHS personnel have raised concerns about the department, its mission, and its focus. These concerns were expressed, among others, by former DHS secretaries. Michael Chertoff, Tom Ridge, and Jeh Johnson. A new report published the Center for American Progress (CAP) recommends five immediate steps that the next administration and Congress should take to begin to refocus the department and prevent its personnel from being used in the future as federal police force.

  • 19 Years after 9/11, Americans Continue to Fear Foreign Extremists and Underplay the Dangers of Domestic Terrorism

    Nineteen years after the 9/11 attacks, Americans’ ideas of what terrorism is remain tied to that morning. But focusing solely on Islamist extremism groups like al-Qaeda when investigating, researching and developing counterterrorism policies does not necessarily align with what the numbers tell us. Homegrown far-right extremism also poses a persistent and lethal threat to the lives and well-being of Americans. This risk is often underestimated because of the devastating impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It is imperative to support policies, programs and research aimed at countering all forms of violent extremism.

  • On 9/11, Interrogating the Assumptions that Undergird the “Forever War”

    For nearly two decades, the 11th of September has been a solemn one, dedicated to remembering those lost in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Luke Hartig, who served as Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council (NSC), writes that“as the pain and trauma of that day has receded in recent years, the anniversary of 9/11 has also become a reminder of a fact we would have found inconceivable at the time: that we continue to wage war some two decades later.” It is, therefore, time to interrogate the assumptions which have undergirded the War on Terror.

  • U.S. Revokes Visas of 1,000 Chinese Students Considered “High Risk”

    The U.S. says it has revoked the visas of more than 1,000 Chinese citizens considered “high risk” to U.S. security because of alleged ties with the Chinese military. The Trump administration has charged that Chinese students have come to the United States to steal intellectual property to advance China’s economic and military sectors.  

  • How China Ramped Up Disinformation Efforts During the Pandemic

    China once shied away from the aggressive, conspiratorial type of disinformation favored by Russia, but Beijing has increased its manipulation of information as well as disinformation efforts around COVID-19. The goal of manipulating factual information and spreading disinformation—or willfully false information— is to distract from the origins of the virus, highlight the failures of the United States, damage democracies, and promote China as a global leader. But its strategies have had mixed results.