• America Is Acting Like a Failed State

    A global pandemic is a test — a mandatory exam — in national competence, Derek Thompson writes. It is a test for individuals, companies, and institutions. “And it is, above all, a test for the state. Only the national government can oversee the response to a national outbreak by coordinating research on the nature of the disease.” He adds: “In a country where many individuals, companies, institutions, and local governments are making hard decisions for the good of the nation, the most important actor of them all—the Trump administration—has been a shambolic bonanza of incompetence.”

  • Right-Wing Extremists’ New Weapon

    The 9 October 2019 attack on a synagogue in Halle, in eastern Germany, highlights terrorists’ growing affinity for homemade firearms as a means for leaderless resistance, a decentralized strategy of guerrilla warfare popularized by Ku Klux Klan member Louis Beam. Eric Woods write that “This presents particular legal challenges to the United States, more so than other countries. The United States has an idiosyncratic approach to homemade production of firearms, rooted in its history as a frontier country where informal networks of artisan producers existed for decades before federal armories.”

  • Facebook, Twitter Remove Russia-Linked Fake Accounts Targeting Americans

    Social-media giants Facebook and Twitter say they have removed a number of Russia-linked fake accounts that targeted U.S. users from their operations in Ghana and Nigeria. Facebook on 12 March said the accounts it removed were in the “early stages” of building an audience on behalf of individuals in Russia, posting on topics such as black history, celebrity gossip, and fashion.

  • Islamic State, Al-Qaeda “On the March" in Africa

    Western-backed efforts to counter terror groups across Africa are falling short, increasing the chances one or more affiliates of Islamic State or al-Qaida could try to carve out their own caliphate on the continent, according to the latest assessment by a top U.S. commander. The stark warning, shared with lawmakers Tuesday, builds on previous intelligence showing Africa-based groups have been growing more ambitious and more capable, with some increasingly bent on targeting the West.

  • Islamic State, Al-Qaida “On the March: in Africa

    Western-backed efforts to counter terror groups across Africa are falling short, increasing the chances one or more affiliates of Islamic State or al-Qaida could try to carve out their own caliphate on the continent, according to the latest assessment by a top U.S. commander. The stark warning, shared with lawmakers Tuesday, builds on previous intelligence showing Africa-based groups have been growing more ambitious and more capable, with some increasingly bent on targeting the West.

  • U.K.: Tory MPs Rebel against Government’s Huawei’s Plan

    The U.K. government has launched an all-hands-on-deck effort to contain a growing rebellion by Tory MPs who want to ban the use of Huawei’s equipment in the U.K. 5G telecoms network, arguing that allowing the Chinese company, with its close ties to China’s intelligence and military establishments, any access to the country’s communication infrastructure would be like inviting a fox to guard the hen house.

  • Chinese and Russian State-Owned Media on the Coronavirus: United Against the West?

    Beginning in late January, when news emerged of a “novel coronavirus” spreading through China, Beijing’s propaganda apparatus shifted into overdrive. The epidemic has also been heavily covered in externally directed Russian state-backed media outlets, offering an opportunity to compare and contrast the approaches of both countries’ propaganda apparatuses.

  • Court Blocks Fraudulent Declaration of Election Results

    The Supreme Court of Guyana on Sunday issued an injunction against the government-controlled Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM), blocking its declaration of fraudulent results for the 2 March national election. After the opposition PPP amassed winning margins in most of the country, the tallying of the results of Region 4- Georgetown was suddenly “shut down” and a mysterious “spreadsheet” – adding 25,000 fraudulent votes - was read-out by appointees of the governing APNU party. The U.S., U.K., EU, and International Observers denounced the APNU spreadsheet as a clear “fraud” which substantially inflated ANPU votes to make-up for a loss in the election. They demand that the already-counted votes, from the remaining 400 polling sites in Region 4 – which give the PPP a victory - be tallied.

  • State Pushes to List White Supremacist Group as Terrorist Org

    The State Department is pushing to designate at least one violent white supremacist group as a foreign terrorist organization, an unprecedented move which national security experts say would be a big step toward fighting a growing threat on U.S. soil.

  • Mind Reading: New Software Agents Will Infer What Users Are Thinking

    Personal assistants today can figure out what you are saying, but what if they could infer what you were thinking based on your actions? A team of academic and industrial researchers is working to build artificially intelligent agents with this social skill.

  • Why the 2020 Election Will Be A Mess, Part II: Beyond Russian Disinformation

    In 2016, an effective Russian disinformation campaign helped Donald Trump win the presidential election. What would the next iteration of Russia’s effort look like? Alex Finley, Asha Rangappa, and John Sipher write that an influence campaign “is only one piece of Russia’s larger use of political warfare. Russia’s full active-measures toolkit—one that goes back to the Soviet Union’s KGB—includes subversion, espionage, sabotage, propaganda, deception, provocation, spreading of rumors and conspiracy, weaponization of social media, and even assassination and promotion of violence.” The three authors write that a look at Russia’s actions in Europe and past practice “suggests the United States should prepare for the worst.”

  • West Africa’s Democratic Progress is Slipping Away, Even as Region’s Significance Grows

    Rising authoritarianism is curtailing individual freedoms around the globe. Jon Temin and Isabel Linzer write that in an alarming development, however, the region that showed the fastest decline in political rights and civil liberties last year was West Africa, which had long been a driver of democratic gains. The warning signs have failed to spur corrective action.

  • “Internet of Things” Could Be an Unseen Threat to Elections

    The app failure that led to a chaotic 2020 Iowa caucus was a reminder of how vulnerable the democratic process is to technological problems – even without any malicious outside intervention. Far more sophisticated foreign hacking continues to try to disrupt democracy, as a rare joint federal agency warning advised prior to Super Tuesday. Russia’s attempt to interfere in the 2016 election has already revealed how this could happen: social media disinformation, email hacking and probing of voter registration systems. The threats to the 2020 election may be even more insidious.

  • American Observers Threatened over Guyana Election Results

    Tensions are rising in newly oil-rich Guyana with nearly 100 percent of the votes now reported from Monday’s national election. The governing APNU party appears to have lost to the opposition Peoples Progressive Party (PPP). International elections observers – mostly Americans – are now being menaced and threatened by APNU to leave or face arrest. Guyana’s election is being watched closely because the winner will be in control of a coming oil boom which will transform Guyana. In December Exxon began commercial exploitation of a huge 2016 oil discovery off the coast, and production is expected to grow from 52,000 barrels per day to over 750,000 by 2025.

  • Lawmaker Presses Clearview AI on Foreign Sales of Facial Recognition

    Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Massachusetts earlier this week raised new concerns about Clearview AI’s facial recognition app. Markey initially wrote to Clearview in January 2020 with concerns about how the company’s app might violate Americans’ civil liberties and privacy. Clearview is marketing its product to users in foreign countries with authoritarian regimes such as Saudi Arabia. The company might also be collecting and processing images of children from social media sites.