• Pandemics Can Fast Forward the Rise and Fall of Great Powers

    Fortunately for the United States, my research shows that democracies generally outperform their autocratic competitors in great power rivalries. Still, there is no time to lose. As U.S. leaders formulate their response to the coronavirus, they must think not only in terms of the immediate public health crisis, but also about the very future of American global leadership.

  • Right-Wing Extremism: The Russian Connection

    Over the past eight years, one of Russia’s more effective strategies to weaken the West, subvert liberal democratic societies, sabotage the U.S.-created post-WWII world order, and facilitate the expansion of Russian influence has been to provide active support – at times overt, often covert — to various far-right, ethnonationalist, and populist political parties and movements. Russia has been providing support not only to political parties and movements. As part of its effort to undermine the West and weaken democracies, the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence, has been supporting an assortment of violent, white supremacist groups in many European countries: fight clubs, neo-Nazi soccer hooligans, motorcycle gangs, skin heads, and neo-fascist rock groups. These groups are serving as conduits for the Kremlin’s influence operations in Western countries.

  • Coronavirus: China Floods Europe With Defective Medical Equipment

    As the coronavirus rages across Europe, a growing number of countries are reporting that millions of pieces of medical equipment donated by, or purchased from, China to defeat the pandemic are defective and unusable. Soeren Kern writes for the Gatestone Institute that the revelations are fueling distrust of a public relations effort by Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Communist Party to portray China as the world’s new humanitarian superpower. Two examples: In Spain, the Ministry of Health revealed that 640,000 coronavirus tests that it had purchased from a Chinese supplier were defective. In addition, a further million coronavirus tests delivered to Spain on March 30 by another Chinese manufacturer were also defective. The Czech news site iRozhlas reported that 300,000 coronavirus test kits delivered by China had an error rate of 80 percent. The Czech Ministry of Interior had paid $2.1 million for the kits.

  • DOJ: Deliberately Spreading COVID-19 to Be Prosecuted as Domestic Terrorism

    As panic and fear spread with the COVID-19 pandemic, stupid, or malicious, acts may soon be considered criminal offenses and subject to terrorism laws. DOJ has circulated a memo to law enforcement and federal prosecutors saying that deliberate acts to spread the coronavirus could be prosecuted under federal terrorism laws given that the virus is a biological agent.

  • Russia Using COVID-19 Disinformation, Conspiracy Theories to “Subvert the West”: Repot

    Russian President Vladimir Putin and his administration are using the coronavirus crisis to spread conspiracy theories in a bid to “subvert the West” and create a new world order, a new report has charges. The report says that Russia was propagating disinformation and conspiracy theories via social media accounts, fake news outlets, state-controlled media, pseudo-scientists and Russians living in the West.

  • UN Report Highlights Threat of Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism

    The UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED) has just issued a new report on the dangers posed by the rise of right-wing terrorism. The report cites experts who have identified extreme right-wing terrorism as a unique form of political violence with often fluid boundaries between hate crime and organized terrorism. It is a not a coherent or easily defined movement, but rather a shifting, complex and overlapping milieu of individuals, groups and movements (online and offline) espousing different but related ideologies, often linked by hatred and racism toward minorities, xenophobia, islamophobia or anti-Semitism.

  • Threats to Democracy Spread with the Virus, We Must Keep Both in Check

    As the coronavirus pandemic has spread, governments have responded predictably to the threat by agitating for increased authority. Melissa Hooper writes that the worst of these, the Hungarian proposal, was easily enacted into law on Tuesday, “setting a terrible precedent for other countries, in the West and around the world.” She adds: “Under the legislation, Hungary’s parliament will be disempowered in favor of rule by executive decree. The parliament now loses the ability to check the power of Viktor Orbán and his executive branch. Since the Fidesz government has hamstrung its court system, already limiting judicial oversight, this would remove the last obstacle to a dictatorial government. This is especially true since expanded executive power will be granted indefinitely: The bill has no sunset clause.”

  • Some Mobile Phone Apps Contain Hidden Secrets Compromising Users’ Private Data

    Researchers have discovered that a large number of cell phone applications contain hardcoded secrets allowing others to access private data or block content provided by users. The study’s findings: that the apps on mobile phones might have hidden or harmful behaviors about which end users know little to nothing.

  • The U.S. Needs to Know What Went Wrong

    When America has recovered from the coronavirus crisis and people are back to work, Congress should consider a 9/11-style independent commission to examine why the United States was so unprepared for the pandemic.

  • Atlantic Council Launches Future of DHS Project

    The Atlantic Council announced the other day that the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security’s launch of the Future of DHS Project: Protecting the Homeland from Coronavirus, Threats to Democracy, and Other Future Threats. The project will rely on senior experts in homeland and national security to recommend major reforms for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

  • How to Think about the Right to Privacy and Using Location Data to Fight COVID-19

    If asked to give up their privacy in the interests of stemming the coronavirus, many Americans may be inclined to say yes. Jay Stanley writes, however, that the answer requires more nuance, both because there are serious tradeoffs to be made, and because sacrificing privacy may actually backfire.

  • Why Does Russia Use Disinformation?

    There is much discussion about Russian disinformation in today’s popular discourse, but the conversation about why Russia uses disinformation usually does not get beyond general notions of Moscow wanting to “divide us” or “muddy the waters.” Kasey Stricklin writes that this is dangerous and incorrect thinking, because, in fact, “Russia has a number of strategic goals that it hopes to advance through its use of disinformation, including restoring Russia to great power status, preserving its sphere of influence, protecting the Putin regime and enhancing its military effectiveness.

  • How to Keep the New Coronavirus from Being Used as a Terrorist Weapon

    The possibility that extremist groups may attempt to deliberately spread SARS-CoV-2—the virus causing the current pandemic—should not be ignored. In fact, one of the primary limiting factors to such an attack—recruiting humans willing to infect themselves—does not apply in this case; potential perpetrators would come from the ranks of those already infected with the virus. We are faced, therefore, with a genuinely challenging task: preemption.

  • U.S. COVID-19 Cases Surge Past 82,000, Highest Total in World

    Confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, reached 82,404 yesterday in the United States, giving it the most cases in the world. And yesterday was the most active day so far in the country, with 14,042 new cases reported, and the national death toll reaching 1,069 fatalities. The numbers came on day 10 of the White House’s “15 days to slow the spread campaign,” a nationwide effort at social distancing measures that has been implemented in a patchwork fashion across the 50 states.

  • U.S. Announces Narcoterrorism Charges Against Venezuela's Maduro

    The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday announced narcoterrorism charges against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and other top officials, accusing them of collaborating with a leftist Colombian guerrilla group to traffic cocaine to the United States.