• Pentagon White Paper Says U.S. Underestimating Russia's Aggression

    A Pentagon white paper says the U.S. is underestimating the scope of Russia’s aggression. The document was shared with Politico, which reported on it Sunday. Chris Mills Rodrigo writes in The Hilss that the paper, which was prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff by the Pentagon and independent strategists, Russian efforts to undermine democracies. The study points to Russia’s use of propaganda and disinformation to sway public opinion across Europe, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America. It also highlights the danger of alignment between Russia and China, both of which fear the United States’ international alliances and share an affinity for “authoritarian stability.” The study recommends the State Department spearhead “influence operations,” including sowing divisions between Moscow and Beijing.

  • No, Russian Twitter Trolls Did Not Demonstrably Push Trump’s Poll Numbers Higher

    We should note at the outset that it’s clear that Russia’s interference in the election had a tangible effect. The information stolen from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman that was later released by WikiLeaks was a staple of media coverage around the conventions in July 2016 and during the last month of the campaign. While measuring the effect of that leaked information is tricky, it’s clear that it had influence. The Russian social media push, though? Philip Bump writes in the Washington Post: “[A]s I’ve written before, there’s very little evidence that Russia effectively targeted American voters with messages that powered Trump’s victory.: He adds: “We certainly can’t definitively say that no votes were changed as a result of Russian disinformation on Twitter or that no one’s political views were influenced by it. We can say, though, that [a recent University of Tennessee] study is worth a great deal of skepticism — especially among those who are looking for evidence that Russia’s trolling handed the election to Trump.”

  • Re-thinking Biological Arms Control for the 21st Century

    International treaties prohibit the development and use of biological weapons. Yet concerns about these weapons have endured and are now escalating. Filippa Lentzos writes in a paper issued by the U.S. Marine Corps that a major source of the growing concern about future bioweapons threats stem from scientific and technical advances. Innovations in biotechnology are expanding the toolbox to modify genes and organisms at a staggering pace, making it easier to produce increasingly dangerous pathogens. Disease-causing organisms can now be modified to increase their virulence, expand their host range, increase their transmissibility, or enhance their resistance to therapeutic interventions. Scientific advances are also making it theoretically possible to create entirely novel biological weapons, by synthetically creating known or extinct pathogens or entirely new pathogens. Scientists could potentially enlarge the target of bioweapons from the immune system to the nervous system, genome, or microbiome, or they could weaponize ‘gene drives’ that would rapidly and cheaply spread harmful genes through animal and plant populations.

  • Iranian enriched uranium limit breached, IAEA confirms

    The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed Monday that Iran has surpassed the stockpile of low-enriched uranium allowed under the 2015 nuclear accord with world powers, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

  • Lawmakers fume as Trump allows select U.S. firms to supply Huawei

    National security hawks who normally side with U.S. President Donald Trump on foreign policy issues are up in arms over his announcement on Saturday that he would indefinitely delay the imposition of tariffs on $300 billion of Chinese goods and relax restrictions on U.S. firms doing business with Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.

  • Defending democracy from cyberwarfare

    Foreign meddling in democratic elections, the proliferation of fake news and threats to national security through the “weaponization of social media” will be tackled by a new research Center being launched last week at Australia’s Flinders University.

  • Russian Twitter propaganda predicted 2016 U.S. election polls

    There is one irrefutable, unequivocal conclusion which both the U.S. intelligence community and the thorough investigation by Robert Mueller share: Russia unleashed an extensive campaign of fake news and disinformation on social media with the aim of distorting U.S. public opinion, sowing discord, and swinging the election in favor of the Republican candidate Donald Trump. But was the Kremlin successful in its effort to put Trump in the White House? Statistical analysis of the Kremlin’s social media trolls on Twitter in the run-up to the 2016 election social suggests that the answer is “yes.”

  • A Global War on Terror Memorial Is Unnecessary

    Chris Yeazel writes in War on the Rocks: “I am a veteran of the “Global War on Terror,” and believe that constructing a memorial to the war I fought in is unnecessary. The effort is well-intentioned and sincere, but risks creating a sense of false closure for the American people regarding a series of conflicts that remain far from over. Perhaps more importantly, veterans could have a positive impact on the lives of many Americans if we redirected the energy dedicated to constructing such a memorial towards other causes.”

  • U.S. House passes election security bill after Russian hacking

    The U.S. House of Representatives, mostly along partisan lines, has passed legislation designed to enhance election security following outrage over Russian cyberinterference in the 2016 presidential election.The Democratic-sponsored bill would mandate paper ballot voting and postelection audit as well as replace outdated and vulnerable voting equipment. The House bill faces strong opposition in the Republican-controlled Senate.

  • U.S. faces long-standing biological threats challenges

    GAO officials testified before a House committee on their efforts to identify and strengthen U.S. biodefense. GAO has also released a report highlighting the agency’s findings. Despite President Trump signing off on the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovations Act (PAHPA) on Monday, GAO says that there is still a lot of work to be done.

  • Rectifying a wrong nuclear fuel decision

    In the old days, new members of Congress knew they had much to learn. They would defer to veteran lawmakers before sponsoring legislation. But in the Twitter era, the newly elected are instant experts. That is how Washington on 12 June witnessed the remarkable phenomenon of freshman Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Norfolk), successfully spearheading an amendment that may help Islamist radicals get nuclear weapons. The issue is whether the U.S. Navy should explore modifying the reactor fuel in its nuclear-powered vessels — as France already has done — to reduce the risk of nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists such as al-Qaida or rogue states such as Iran. Luria says no. Alan J. Kuperman writes in the Pilot Online that more seasoned legislators have started to rectify the situation by passing a spending bill on 19 June that includes the funding for naval fuel research. They will have the chance to fully reverse Luria in July on the House floor by restoring the authorization. Doing so would not only promote U.S. national security but teach an important lesson that enthusiasm is no substitute for experience.

  • Monitoring Russia’s and China’s disinformation campaigns in Latin America and the Caribbean

    Propaganda has taken on a different form. Social media and multiple sources of information have obviated the traditional heavy-handed tactics of misinformation. Today, governments and state media exploit multiple platforms to shade the truth or report untruths that exploit pre-existing divisions and prejudices to advance their political and geo-strategic agendas. Global Americans monitors four state news sources that have quickly gained influence in the region—Russia Today and Sputnik from Russia, and Xinhua and People’s Daily from China— to understand how they portray events for readers in Latin America and the Caribbean. Global Americans says it will feature articles that clearly intend to advance a partial view, agenda, or an out-and-out mistruth, labeling them either False or Misleading, explaining why the Global Americans team has determined them so, including a reference, if relevant, that disproves the article’s content.

  • Israeli cyber intel helped foil attacks in “dozens” of countries

    Israeli cyber intelligence has helped thwart “major” terrorist attacks in “dozens” of countries, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a cyber-security conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. Israel shares information about cyber-threats and attacks with 85 countries, he explained.

  • Small increase in far-right extremist violence in Germany

    The BfV, Germany’s domestic intelligence service, said that violent crimes driven by xenophobia rose slightly in Germany last year. In a new report, BfV says that there were 24,100 right-wing extremists in Germany — 100 more than in 2017 — of whom 12,700 were considered “violence-oriented.”

  • Deepfakes: Forensic techniques to identify tampered videos

    Computer scientists have developed a method that performs with 96 percent accuracy in identifying deepfakes when evaluated on large scale deepfake dataset.