-
The Guyana Election Results: PPP 51%; APNU 47%
On 2 March 2020, Guyana, a small but newly oil-rich country in South America, held national elections. As of now - seven weeks later - the official results have yet to be certified, due to actions by the government party in Guyana to suppress or falsify the actual vote results. By all accounts, the opposition PPP has won the election, but the governing APNU appears determined to stay in power, and has engaged in what international, regional, and local election observers say is election fraud.
-
-
The Totalitarian Temptation Resisted
In Hungary, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Russia, the Philippines, and other countries, strongman leaders are taking advantage of a distracted international community to reinforce authoritarian agendas. Josef Joffe writes that, in contrast, national emergencies in the West do not breed despots, nor the grasping security state. Joffe argues that those who predict that the coronavirus epidemic will facilitate an authoritarian takeover, ignore four critical points – all of which contribute to making Western democracies resilient in the face of challenges such as an epidemic and other crises.
-
-
What to Make of New U.S. Actions Against Foreign Telecoms
Recent moves by the administration mark another concrete step in the U.S. campaign to limit the digital and economic influence of Chinese telecommunications companies both within and outside U.S. borders. Justin Sherman writes that “The moves also demonstrate that current American efforts to limit the influence of the Chinese telecommunications sector are much broader than just the well-publicized targeting of Chinese telecom giant Huawei.”
-
-
The Coronavirus Contact Tracing App Won't Log Your Location, but It Will Reveal Who You Hang Out With
The Australian federal government has announced plans to introduce a contact tracing mobile app to help curb COVID-19’s spread in Australia. Roba Abbas and Katina Michael write in The Conversation that rather than collecting location data directly from mobile operators, the proposed TraceTogether app will use Bluetooth technology to sense whether users who have voluntarily opted-in have come within nine metres of one another. Contact tracing apps generally store 14-21 days of interaction data between participating devices to help monitor the spread of a disease. The TraceTogether app has been available in Singapore since March 20, and its reception there may help shed light on how the new tech will fare in Australia.
-
-
U.S. Says China Conducted Zero-Yield Nuclear Tests
The United States says that China may have secretly conducted low-level underground nuclear tests, even though the country has signed a treaty banning such tests. Zero yield tests are nuclear test in which there is no explosive chain reaction of the type ignited by the detonation of a nuclear warhead.
-
-
How Lasers Can Help with Nuclear Nonproliferation Monitoring
Scientists developed a new method showing that measuring the light produced in plasmas made from a laser can be used to understand uranium oxidation in nuclear fireballs. This capability gives never-before-seen insight into uranium gas-phase oxidation during nuclear explosions. These insights further progress toward a reliable, non-contact method for remote detection of uranium elements and isotopes, with implications for nonproliferation safeguards, explosion monitoring and treaty verification.
-
-
Understanding Hungary’s Authoritarian Response to the Pandemic
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, governments around the world have taken measures — border closures, enhanced surveillance, dramatic speech and media restrictions, election postponements, and shuttering of legislatures and courts – purportedly aimed at containing the spread of the disease. Laura Livingston writes that while some forbearance of civil liberties is reasonable in the face of a grave threat, “the pandemic has already served as an opportunity for would-be authoritarians to consolidate the power they have long coveted.” No other ruler has gone further than Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, who, critics charge, is well on his way to turning Hungary into the EU’s first dictatorship.
-
-
U.K. Coronavirus Antibody Test Validated – but Results Show under-40s May Not Be Immune
Tests aimed at determining whether Britons have recovered from coronavirus may not be useful because younger people do not produce sufficient quantities of antibodies to the virus, early research suggests. Sarah Knapton writes in The Telegraph that it was hoped that antibody tests could help kickstart the economy by allowing those who are immune out of lockdown. The government had been hoping to roll out millions of tests in the coming weeks in the belief that some kind of “immunity certificate” might be possible for those testing positive, but supplies from China have so far failed to pass sensitivity and specificity tests. Professor Karol Sikora, a private oncologist and Dean of Medicine at the University of Buckingham, this week validated a test kit using samples from staff at his clinics, which were then verified by a private lab. Around six per cent of staff were found to have had the virus but, crucially, under-40s who had tested positive came back negative, suggesting the test may not be useful for the wider population.
-
-
Donald Trump Is a Braggart but He Has a Point about China's Role in the Coronavirus Crisis
Were U.S. President Donald Trump a thatch-haired schoolboy, rather than the most powerful man on Earth, Stephen Glover writes in the Daily Mail, “I’ve no doubt he would be the bane of his poor teachers’ lives and attract their ire.” The teachers would note his nasty habit of trying to shift the blame on to others, and his termly reports would be full of reproving remarks about his boastfulness, mendacity, self-righteousness and generally questionable character. And yet a fair-minded teacher would have to concede that, for all his defects, the wayward pupil is sometimes able to extract a nugget of truth which evades the notice of more conventional minds, even if he is then inclined to fly off at a tangent. So it is with the President’s attack on the World Health Organisation (WHO), which Donald Trump accused of being ‘China-centric’ before announcing on Tuesday that he is freezing the funding it receives from Washington. “I [don’t] doubt that part of Trump’s motivation is to deflect some of the fire being directed at him for his flawed management of the crisis towards China and the WHO. This, after all, is election year. The fact remains, however, that the WHO (a United Nations agency) is a very flawed outfit. It has been far too accommodating of Beijing.”
-
-
Trump Is Right to Ditch the West's Frighteningly Naive Stance on China
It’s tricky to get ready for battle when the enemy has a gun to your head, Sherelle Jacobs writes in The Telegraph. Trump’s vow to suspend World Health Organization funding is an attempt to kick the sand of chaos into a situation where its rival has the advantage. Dangerous tactics? Certainly. But Washington is running out of options. This “we are witnessing the fallout of the CCP’s boldest new ruse – installing stooges at the helm of once credible bodies. That the WHO should praise China, having swallowed its faulty intelligence in January that investigations had found no evidence of human-to-human coronavirus transmission, is as absurd as it is unsurprising.” We may not be able to police the world’s second power, but we can better protect ourselves, Jacobs writes. “Britain hasn’t got the memo…. we must urgently [prepare] for the tech Cold war around the corner, treating healthcare as part of our defense sector, and becoming unreliant on China for crucial products and infrastructure.”
-
-
Germany Arrests 4 IS Members Plotting Attacks on U.S. Bases, Killing Critics of Islam
German police have arrested four members of the Islamic State militant group for planning attacks on U.S. military bases in Germany. The suspects, all migrants from Tajikistan, were also keeping critics of Islam under surveillance, with the goal of assassinating them later.
-
-
Amid Talk of Reopening, Fauci Warns U.S. Not There Yet with COVID-19
In an interview yesterday with the Associated Press, Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said opening up the nation on May 1 is “a bit overly optimistic.” His comments come a day after President Donald Trump announced a new reopening task force, meant to help guide the country back to economic health after the national COVID-19 30 April physical distancing campaign ends. In a heated back-and-forth with reporters, yesterday Trump said that only the president has the ability to call the shots on when and how to reopen the country. But Fauci said yesterday, “We have to have something in place that is efficient and that we can rely on, and we’re not there yet.” Meanwhile, governors yesterday and yesterday continued to outline their plans for reopening.
-
-
China Telecom Poses “Unacceptable” Espionage, Sabotage Risk in Providing U.S.-International Links: U.S. Govt. Agencies
The U.S. Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and several other government agencies have urged the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) to revoke China Telecom’s license to provide links between the United States and foreign countries. A U.S. investigation of China Telecom’s operations found “substantial and unacceptable national security and law enforcement risks,” the U.S. Justice Department said last week. The agencies expressed particular concern about the nature of China Telecom’s U.S. operations, which, the agencies argue, could give China Telecom the ability to engage in economic espionage and sabotage, mainly through the re-routing of U.S. internet traffic through Chinese servers using something called BGP (border gateway protocol) hijacking.
-
-
Partners in Crime? A Historical Perspective on Cumulative Extremism in Denmark
Can one form of extremism feed off and magnify other forms of extremism? Is there a positive extremist feedback loop, and, if so, can a cumulative perspective on extremism help us understand the ebb and flow of political violence, radicalization, and mobilization? The left- and right-wing extremism in Europe in the last four decades does exhibit an interdependency between mutually hostile movements, and the study of mutually reinforcing forms of extremism in Denmark offers a microcosm of a broader phenomenon.
-
-
The Challenge of Proximity Apps For COVID-19 Contact Tracing
Around the world, a diverse and growing chorus is calling for the use of smartphone proximity technology to fight COVID-19. In particular, public health experts and others argue that smartphones could provide a solution to an urgent need for rapid, widespread contact tracing—that is, tracking who infected people come in contact with as they move through the world. Proponents of this approach point out that many people already own smartphones, which are frequently used to track users’ movements and interactions in the physical world. But it is not a given that smartphone tracking will solve this problem, and the risks it poses to individual privacy and civil liberties are considerable.
-
More headlines
The long view
Are We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?
Anthropic’s Claude 4 is a warning sign: AI that can help build bioweapons is coming, and could be widely available soon. Steven Adler writes that we need to be prepared for the consequences: “like a freely downloadable ‘DeepSeek for bioweapons,’ available across the internet, loadable to the computer of any amateur scientist who wishes to cause mass harm. With Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 having finally triggered this level of safety risk, the clock is now ticking.”
A Brief History of Federal Funding for Basic Science
Biomedical science in the United States is at a crossroads. For 75 years, the federal government has partnered with academic institutions, fueling discoveries that have transformed medicine and saved lives. Recent moves by the Trump administration — including funding cuts and proposed changes to how research support is allocated — now threaten this legacy.
“The Federal Government Is Gone”: Under Trump, the Fight Against Extremist Violence Is Left Up to the States
As President Donald Trump guts the main federal office dedicated to preventing terrorism, states say they’re left to take the lead in spotlighting threats. Some state efforts are robust, others are fledgling, and yet other states are still formalizing strategies for addressing extremism. With the federal government largely retreating from focusing on extremist dangers, prevention advocates say the threat of violent extremism is likely to increase.
The “Invasion” Invention: The Far Right’s Long Legal Battle to Make Immigrants the Enemy
The Trump administration is using the claim that immigrants have “invaded” the country to justify possibly suspending habeas corpus, part of the constitutional right to due process. A faction of the far right has been building this case for years.
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak write, noting that “lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise.” Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system. In the prosecution’s case against Luigi Mangione, they charge, “That discretion was abused.”
How DHS Laid the Groundwork for More Intelligence Abuse
I&A, the lead intelligence unit of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) —long plagued by politicized targeting, permissive rules, and a toxic culture —has undergone a transformation over the last two years. Spencer Reynolds writes that this effort falls short. “Ultimately, Congress must rein in I&A,” he adds.