• State Department Releases the 2019 Country Reports on Terrorism

    The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Counterterrorism releases an annual report on terrorism across the globe. The 2019 report begins with a discussion of notable successes in the counterterrorism landscape, and then identifies the persistent terrorist threats that will dominate counterterrorism policy in 2020.

  • U.K. Will Not Be Able to Prevent “Misuse of Data” by China if Huawei Deal Goes Ahead: U.S. Ambassador

    Robert Wood Johnson, the U.S. ambassador to the U.K., warned that if the U.K. allowed Huawei access to the U.K. 5G communication infrastructure, there would be no way for the U.K. to prevent Chinese intelligence agencies from misusing the data collected by Huawei in the course of the company’s operations. Experts say that even more worryingly, if Huawei is allowed access to the nascent U.K. 5G infrastructure, the company, with a flip of a switch, could take down the entire U.K. communication system when ordered to do so by the Chinese government.

  • U.S. Seeks to Seize Iran’s Gasoline Shipments Heading to Venezuela

    U.S. prosecutors have filed a lawsuit to seize the gasoline aboard four tankers that Iran is currently shipping to Venezuela, the latest attempt to increase pressure on the two sanctioned anti-American allies. The civil-forfeiture complaint filed in the District of Columbia federal court late on 1 July claims the sale was arranged by an Iranian businessman with ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization.

  • Setback for Iran’s Nuclear Program after Mystery Fire at Centrifuge Assembly Site

    New details of an Iranian nuclear facility damaged in a mysterious fire suggest Thursday’s incident is a much greater setback to Iran’s nuclear ambitions than Tehran has publicly admitted. The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security identified the facility as a centrifuge assembly workshop at the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant in central Iran’s Isfahan province.

  • Democracy under Threat from “Pandemic of Misinformation” Online: Lords Committee

    The U.K. government should act immediately to deal with a “pandemic of misinformation” that poses an existential threat to our democracy and way of life. The stark warning comes in a report published Monday by the House of Lords’ Committee on Democracy and Digital Technologies.

  • Boogaloo Followers Charged with Seeking to Exploit Protests in Las Vegas to Incite Violence

    The District of Nevada’s U.S. Attorney’s Office announced charges against three followers of the far-right, anti-government Boogaloo movement for trying to use the Floyd protests in Las Vegas as cover for inciting violence and causing destruction with improvised incendiary devices. The prosecutors said that the goal of the three was similar to other instances of Boogaloo followers’ provocations in other cities: “hijacked peaceful protests and demonstrations across the country, including Nevada, exploiting the real and legitimate outrage over Mr. Floyd’s death for their own radical agendas.”

  • Germany: Elite Army Unit Has Until October to Purge Far-Right Soldiers – or Be Disbanded

    Germany’s Special Forces Command (KSK) will not be immediately disbanded over ties of several officers and soldiers to far-right, neo-Nazi groups. Instead, German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer announced on Wednesday, the unit will be given three months to prove it can change from within. If KSK fails to do so, it will be disbanded.

  • China’s Campaign Forcibly to Reduce Uighur Births May Amount to Genocide: Reports

    Four years ago, China has launched a broad campaign to reduce birth rates among Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other Turkic Muslim populations in Xinjiang province in western China. The Chinese authorities have implemented various population control measures in Xinjiang, including mandatory pregnancy checks and forced insertion of intrauterine devices. Officials and armed police conducted night raids to look for hidden children and pregnant women, fining and detaining parents of three or more children and forcing abortions and sterilizations on women.

  • U.S. Facing Growing Terrorism Problem, with White Supremacists the “Most Significant Threat”: Report

    A new report by terrorism experts at the conservative-leaning CSIS thinktank says that the United States faces a growing terrorism problem which will likely worsen over the next year. The most significant threat likely comes from white supremacists, though anarchists and religious extremists inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda could present a potential threat as well. Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years. Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between 1 January and 8 May 2020. Over the rest of 2020, the terrorist threat in the United States will likely rise based on several factors, including the November 2020 presidential election.

  • U.S. Government, Statutes, Terminology Not Prepared for Growing Threat of Domestic Terrorism: NCTC-led Panel

    The National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), together with FBI and DHS, held a conference to examine the U.S. government’s approach to confronting the threat of domestic terrorism (DT) and to inform future DT policy. The conference explored four themes: Terminology, Authorities, Operations, and Expanding Partnerships.

  • Chinese, Russian COVID-19 Disinformation More Influential than Domestic European News Sources

    Chinese, Russia, Turkish, and Iranian state-backed propaganda outlets disseminate COVID-19-related disinformation throughout Europe in French, German, and Spanish, and this professionally presented disinformation is generating greater engagement across Facebook and Twitter than prominent domestic news media such as Le Monde in France or El Pais in Spain. Russian outlets producing fake coronavirus content in French and German consistently emphasized weak democratic institutions and civil disorder in Europe.

  • Congress Calls for Probe into Reported Russian Bounties on U.S. Troops

    As members of Congress called for an investigation, President Donald Trump said Sunday he was not briefed on reports that a Russian military intelligence unit offered bounties to Taliban militants in Afghanistan to kill U.S. soldiers because U.S. intelligence officials did not deem them credible. But U.S. intelligence officials had concluded months ago that a Russian covert operations unit, which has been linked to assassination attempts and covert operations in Europe aimed at destabilizing the West, had carried out the mission in Afghanistan last year and that Trump had been briefed about it in late March.

  • Russia’s Kleptocracy Is a Tool for Undermining the West

    The West misread Russian corruption, such as the money laundering revealed by the case against the Bank of New York and the release of the Panama Papers. The money was seen only as stolen cash, not as a vast slush fund to be used to buy influence and threaten the West. Belton’s book could not be more timely: She offers a treasure trove of details about a network of Russian intelligence operatives, tycoons, and organized crime associates who, beginning in the 1990s, ingratiate themselves with an indebted, not-yet-a-politician Trump. With U.S. banks cracking down on money laundering, they put their cash into real estate and paid Trump handsomely for the privilege of using his name. The Obama administration was slow to grasp the Russia’s interference intents and capabilities, but within the administration, Vice President Joe Biden was one of the most vocal in warning of the Kremlin’s ability to direct loyal oligarchs to carry out strategic operations and its use of corruption to undermine democratic governments. Trump and Biden will face each other in November.

  • COVID-19 Pandemic Has Unleashed Wave of Anti-Semitism

    The coronavirus epidemic has been accompanied by what the WHO described as “infodemic” – an avalanche of conspiracy theories and disinformation which has spread on social networks. As is often the case, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are prominent in this infodemic, and a new report offers an analysis of the phenomenon.

  • Extremism Rising in Canada

    Acts of terrorism committed by the far-right have increased by 320 percent over the past five years, supported by an increasingly connected and internationalist community of right-wing extremism. Canada has not been isolated from this trend and in recent years the number of hate groups operating in the country has tripled.