• I Helped Classify Calls for Two Presidents. The White House Abuse of the System Is Alarming

    The whistleblower at the heart of the Ukraine controversy said White House officials ordered information about President Trump’s phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky to be removed from the classified server typically used to store such information and placed on a hyper-secure “code word” server. Such special protections are typically reserved for material of the gravest sensitivity: detailed information about covert operations, for example, where exposure can get people killed. Kelly Magsamen, who staffed presidential meetings and phone calls with foreign leaders while she was an NSC staffer during the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, writes that “It is difficult to overstate just how abnormal and suspicious treating the call in that manner would be. It strongly suggests White House staff knew of serious wrongdoing by the president and attempted to bury it — a profound abuse of classified systems for political, and possibly criminal, purposes.”

  • Iranian Government Hackers Target U.S. Presidential Campaign: Microsoft

    Microsoft announced on Friday that a hacking group linked to the Iranian government has carried out a campaign against a U.S. presidential candidate. The group, which the tech giant named Phosphorous, made more than 2,700 attempts during a 30-day period between August and September to identify customer e-mail accounts. The hackers managed to hack into 241 of them. On Thursday, DHS and the FBI circulated a memo to state election officials warning that Russia will likely seek to interfere in the 2020 elections by discouraging voters or utilizing voter suppression tactics.

  • Eighteen Years On: The War on Terror Comes of Age

    Later this year, a U.S. service member is likely to be deployed to Afghanistan who was not yet born on September 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda terrorists launched the most devastating terrorist attack in history and killed almost 3,000 people, mostly Americans. The years in between have seen wars in Iraq and Syria justified in the name of counterterrorism as well as more limited U.S. interventions against jihadi groups in Libya, Somalia, and other countries. “Hundreds of thousands have died in these conflicts—some from terrorism, but most from combat and the associated ravages of war,” Daniel Byman writes. “Yet even as this body count soared, neither al-Qaeda nor other jihadi groups have proven able to conduct a repeat of 9/11 or even anything close to it.” He notes that judging the threat that jihadi terrorism currently poses to the United States and, more broadly, the success of the U.S.-led struggle against various jihadi groups in the post-9/11 era depends on what interests are prioritized and which perspective one takes. “Before Americans celebrate or despair, however, it is useful to take stock of the problems facing the main jihadi organizations themselves.”

  • Democrats Must Act Now to Deter Foreign Interference in the 2020 Election

    Parts of the U.S. government, such as the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, as well as state authorities, are working to prevent foreign interference in American elections, “but even with a Herculean effort, the country’s defenses against political warfare, especially in the cyber domain, are weak and porous. Such attacks are easy to execute, but difficult and expensive to thwart. The threat is evolving and will be different than it was in 2016. There are many targets,” Thomas Wright writes. “When defense is difficult, deterrence becomes important. One way to deal with election interference is to convince foreign adversaries that the cost might outweigh the gains, thus persuading them not to attack. This is where Trump’s position is so damaging, seeking to punish interference against him, but openly welcoming interference on his behalf.”

  • U.S. Officials Taking Putin Election Comments Seriously

    U.S. security officials are not laughing at the latest comments by Russian President Vladimir Putin about the Kremlin’s attempts to interfere in U.S. elections. Putin, speaking at an economic forum in Moscow Wednesday, dismissed U.S. allegations that Russia meddled in both the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the 2018 mid-term election as “ridiculous.” Despite Putin’s comments, U.S. security and intelligence officials have said, consistently, that they have seen indications Russia will try to interfere with the upcoming 2020 presidential elections.

  • A Bipartisan Step Toward Securing Our Election Infrastructure

    By David Levine

    Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved $250 million in funds to support state and local government efforts to strengthen election security ahead of the 2020 elections. The Committee’s action is an acknowledgment that securing elections from foreign interference is a bipartisan priority that requires more funding and continuous vigilance.

  • DHS’s New Counterterrorism Strategy Calls Out White Supremacism, but Will Need Resources and Support

    By Thomas S. Warrick

    Acting U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan unveiled on September 20 the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “Strategic Framework for Countering Terrorism and Targeted Violence.” For the first time, a formal Trump administration departmental strategy explicitly calls out white supremacism as “one of the most potent forces driving domestic terrorism.” In most other respects, the strategic framework did not break new ground. DHS’s real challenge will be whether its new counterterrorism (CT) framework will get the resources and political support DHS needs from the White House and the Congress.

  • New Domestic Terrorism Laws Are Unnecessary for Fighting White Nationalists

    In the past, incidents of white nationalist violence haven’t garnered the attention they deserve from Congress or federal law enforcement. But after the August 2019 El Paso shooting by a young white supremacist, Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Randy K. Weber Sr. (R-TX) introduced two separate bills that would create a new crime of domestic terrorism, citing lethal white nationalist crimes as the justification. Faiza Patel writes for the Brennan Center that while it’s reassuring, and long overdue, for members of Congress to take the threat of white nationalist violence seriously, such legislation is both unnecessary and creates serious risks of abuse.

  • India-Pakistan Nuclear War Could Kill Millions, Lead to Global Starvation

    A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could, over the span of less than a week, kill 50-125 million people—more than the death toll during all six years of World War II, according to new research. The researchers calculated that an India-Pakistan war could inject as much as 80 billion pounds of thick, black smoke into Earth’s atmosphere. That smoke would block sunlight from reaching the ground, driving temperatures around the world down by an average of between 3.5-9 degrees Fahrenheit for several years. Worldwide food shortages would likely come soon after. Today, India and Pakistan each have about 150 nuclear warheads at their disposal, and that number is expected to climb to more than 200 by 2025.

  • How to Dismantle a Nuclear Bomb: Team Successfully Tests New Method for Verification of Weapons Reduction

    By Peter Dizikes

    How do weapons inspectors verify that a nuclear bomb has been dismantled? An unsettling answer is: They don’t, for the most part. When countries sign arms reduction pacts, they do not typically grant inspectors complete access to their nuclear technologies, for fear of giving away military secrets. Now MIT researchers have successfully tested a new high-tech method that could help inspectors verify the destruction of nuclear weapons. The method uses neutron beams to establish certain facts about the warheads in question — and, crucially, uses an isotopic filter that physically encrypts the information in the measured data.

  • Hacking Back May Be Less Risky than We Thought

    The United States has historically been wary of punching back in cyberspace, fearing that a digital conflict could rapidly escalate to rockets and bombs. But those concerns may be overblown. Two recent studies have found it’s extremely rare for nations to ratchet up a cyber conflict, let alone escalate it to a conventional military exchange, and that the U.S. public may put extra pressure on leaders not to let a cyber conflict get out of hand. But one of the studies did not find much evidence that hacking back does anything to make adversaries stop hacking you in the first place.

  • Islamic State 2.0 and the Information War

    In December 2018, US President Donald Trump declared victory over the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, tweeting that ‘ISIS is largely defeated and other local countries, including Turkey, should be able to easily take care of whatever remains. We’re coming home!’ And in the first three months of this year, Trump said or tweeted 16 times that IS was either completely defeated or soon would be. But the United States government appears to disagree. In August, the three lead inspectors general from the Department of Defense, the Department of State and the US Agency for International Development submitted a joint report to Congress reviewing Operation Inherent Resolve, the US campaign to defeat IS, over the period from 1 April through 30 June of this year. They concluded that, ‘Despite the loss of physical territory, thousands of ISIS fighters remain in Iraq and Syria and are carrying out attacks and working to rebuild their capabilities.’

  • North Korea Using Companies Registered in Britain to Bypass Nuclear Sanctions

    North Korean efforts to evade international sanctions have been aided by companies registered in Britain, according to an investigation by the London-based Royal United Services Institute. The report explains how Britain-registered companies are being used to operate cargo ships smuggling coal out of North Korea, which is the country’s biggest export. Income from the trade provides crucial funds for Pyongyang’s nuclear and ballistic missile program, according to the United Nations Security Council.

  • What’s at Stake in Trump’s War on Huawei: Control of the Global Computer-Chip Industry

    By Clinton Fernandes

    Silicon Valley may now be more popularly associated with software companies such as Google and Facebook but it takes its name from the material most used to make semiconductors. Semiconductors – or computer chips – power everything from mobile phones to military systems. The semiconductor industry sits at the center of the modern world. This point is key to appreciating what’s going on in the US government’s battle with Chinese technology giant Huawei.

  • White Supremacists Lead New Wave of Foreign Fighters: Report

    The Soufan Center released a new report which closely examines the transnational nature and operational dynamics of a wide range of white supremacy extremist (WSE) groups across the world. The report also draws on lessons learned from disrupting and combatting Salafi-jihadist groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, the tactics of which in some cases are being utilized by WSE groups.