• Labour in fresh anti-Semitism row over Corbyn endorsing book about Jews controlling banks, press

    In a fresh row over anti-Jewish sentiments in the British Labour Party, leader Jeremy Corbyn has been slammed for writing the foreword to a recent edition of a century-old book which contains overtly anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracy theories.

  • Influence operations in the digital age

    Influence operations in the digital age are not merely propaganda with new tools. They represent an evolved form of manipulation that presents actors with endless possibilities — both benign and malignant. While the origins of this new form are semi-accidental, it has nonetheless opened up opportunities for the manipulation and exploitation of human beings that were previously inaccessible. Zac Rogers, Emily Bienvenue, and Maryanne Kelton write in War on the Rocks that digital influence operations, now conducted across the whole of society, indicate that we are only at the beginning of a new era of population-centric competition. With regard to propaganda, the fundamental distinction between the old and the new lies in the difference between participatory and passive forms of information consumption.

  • U.S. to designate Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization

    Russia and China have recently touted their progress in developing hypersonic vehicles, which fly much faster than the speed of sound, which is 767 mph. Hypersonic missiles are rocket-boosted to high altitude and may be launched from land, sea or air. Over the past 60 years, U.S. interest in hypersonic vehicles has waxed and waned. Now it seems the U.S. is back in the hypersonic effort in a serious way.

  • Sri Lankan terrorists: An example of family-affiliated terrorism

    A researcher recently published a book, Family Terror Networks, which addresses the phenomenon of family-linked terrorism, offering insight into the terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka, which killed nearly 300 people and injured more than 500 others and included attackers and cell members from several family terror networks, including two sets of brothers, as well as a husband and wife.

  • DHS’ assertion of broad authority to search travelers’ phones, laptops challenged

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU the other day asked a federal court to rule without trial that the Department of Homeland Security violates the First and Fourth Amendments by searching travelers’ smartphones and laptops at airports and other U.S. ports of entry without a warrant.

  • What helps, or prevents, U.S. military interventions from achieving their goals?

    Using an original data set of 145 ground, air, and naval interventions from 1898 through 2016, a new report identifies those factors that have made U.S. military interventions more or less successful at achieving their political objectives. The United States has successfully achieved its political objectives in about 63 percent of the interventions, but the levels of success have been declining over time as the United States has pursued increasingly ambitious objectives.

  • Ending the myth of the poor terrorist

    The jihadists who carried out the Easter massacre in Sri Lanka were educated members of their country’s elite, a background that’s closer to the terrorist norm than the exception, Claude Berrebi and Owen Engel write in The Tablet. Researchers have been demonstrating for years that most terrorism is committed by individuals who are, on average, wealthier and better educated than the median level in their respective society.

  • FBI thwarts terrorist plot in Los Angeles

    The FBI Monday said the agency had foiled a domestic terror plot by an American military veteran, who was aiming to attack “multiple targets” in Southern California, including Huntington Beach, the port of Long Beach, and the Santa Monica Pier. The suspect, identified as 26-year old Mark Steven Domingo of Reseda, California, is a recent convert to Islam. He said he was planning the attack in retribution for the attacks on mosques in New Zealand.

  • Islamic State leader: Next chapter in IS’s campaign will be “war of attrition”

    Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is showing his face for the first time in five years, appearing on a video posted to the internet Monday by the terror group. Baghdadi acknowledges the fall of the last IS-held territory in Baghuz, Syria, and describes the terror group’s fight now as a “battle of attrition.”

  • Sri Lanka bans face veils in wake of Easter terror attacks

    Women in Sri Lanka will no longer be able to cover their faces under new emergency regulations which came into effect Monday. Sri Lanka issued the ban as part of a series of emergency measures enacted in the wake of the Easter Sunday suicide attacks.

  • World military expenditure reaches $1.8 trillion in 2018

    Military spending in Ukraine and several other Central and Eastern European countries rose sharply in 2018, largely in reaction to perceived threats from Russia, a leading research institute says. Total world military expenditure rose to $1822 billion in 2018, representing an increase of 2.6 percent from 2017, according to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

  • Sri Lanka: Militant leader killed in Easter bombings

    Sri Lankan Islamic militant leader Zahran Hashim was apparently killed in one of the suicide attacks on Easter, President Maithripala Sirisena said on Friday. Police are now hunting for 140 people with suspected “Islamic State” ties.

  • How artificial intelligence systems could threaten democracy

    U.S. technology giant Microsoft has teamed up with a Chinese military university to develop artificial intelligence systems that could potentially enhance government surveillance and censorship capabilities. The advent of digital repression is profoundly affecting the relationship between citizen and state. New technologies are arming governments with unprecedented capabilities to monitor, track and surveil individual people. Even governments in democracies with strong traditions of rule of law find themselves tempted to abuse these new abilities.

  • Studying Russian disinformation campaigns

    An interdisciplinary research team from communications, anthropology, and political science will study Russian disinformation campaigns in three former Soviet republics as part of a $1.6 million Minerva research grant awarded through the U.S. Department of Defense.

  • ICE looking at housing migrant children at Guantánamo Bay: Report

    DHS is considering housing migrant children at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay to help deal with a sharp increase in the number of immigrants crossing the U.S. southern border. The idea was first proposed earlier this year as DHS looked for military facilities in which to hold undocumented immigrants as they wait for their cases to be processed. There are no immediate plans to bring children to Guantanamo Bay, and officials admit that the optics of housing children next to terrorists would be problematic.