• Weapons experts: Iranian nuclear archive shows that Iran lied about uranium mine

    Nuclear weapons experts, who have reviewed the Iranian nuclear archive that Israel recovered from a Tehran warehouse, concluded that Iran lied that a uranium mine was under control of its civilian atomic energy agency.

  • China exerting “sharp power” influence on American institutions

    China is penetrating American institutions in ways that are coercive and corrupt, while the United States has not fully grasped the gravity of the situation, a Hoover Institution expert says. “An ultimate ambition for global hegemony” is driving China’s multifront efforts to manipulate US state and local governments, universities, think tanks, media, corporations, and the Chinese American community, said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Hoover.

  • Social media efforts to combat foreign interference

    In the wake of revelations throughout 2017 that Russia had exploited social media platforms to influence the 2016 presidential election, executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on 31 October 2017 to discuss foreign interference on their platforms. Over ten months later, on 5 September 2018, representatives from tech giants were again called to Capitol Hill to update lawmakers on their efforts in the lead-up to the midterm elections. A new report reviews and analyzes the steps taken by online information platforms to better defend against foreign interference since 2016, specifically focusing on three lines of effort: policies to address inauthentic behavior, measures to improve advertising transparency, and forward-looking investments and external partnerships.

  • The IRA and political polarization in the United States

    Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA) launched an extended attack on the United States by using computational propaganda to misinform and polarize U.S. voters. A new report from the Computational Propaganda roject at Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute (OII) provides the first major analysis of this attack based on data provided by social media firms to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). The analysis answers several key questions about the activities of the known IRA accounts, and identifies which aspects of the IRA’s campaign strategy got the most traction on social media and the means of microtargeting U.S. voters with particular messages.

  • Islamic State greater draw for U.S.-born recruits than al Qaeda

    ISIS has been more successful than its predecessor organization, al Qaeda, in drawing Americans to its cause. Whereas al-Qaeda was more reliant on preexisting connections to the region or Islam, an ISIL candidate recruit is more likely to be younger, less educated, and a U.S.-born citizen.

  • Does terrorism work? We studied 90 groups to get the answer

    Do terror attacks actually work? Terrorist groups may occasionally achieve a limited goal, but when it comes to accomplishing broader strategic goals, terrorists usually fail. Terrorists can threaten modern nation-states into offering minor concessions, such as giving up a small piece of territory, forcing the resignation of a leader or promising to return to the negotiating table, but nation-states are too militarily and economically strong to be overthrown by terrorists, or to surrender their own aims that they see as vital to national security.

  • A note on FISA “verification”

    Last week, former FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees in closed session. When, at Comey’s request, a transcript was released shortly thereafter, mainstream news outlets mostly yawned, but numerous pro-Trump outlets had a different reaction, seizing on Comey’s acknowledgement that the now-notorious “Steele Dossier” was still in the process of being vetted when Comey left in the Bureau. Julian Sanchez writes in Just Security that this provided those who want to protect Trump from the Muller investigation an opportunity to revive a complaint about purported improprieties in the application for a FISA order to intercept the communications of erstwhile Trump campaign advisor Carter Page: The information provided in FISA applications must be “verified” before it is submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and here we have (the objection runs) an apparent admission that the information was not verified! But if the objection to using the material in the Steel Dossier is procedural—an argument that the FBI violated its own requirements—then the complaint is simply wrong, and based on a basic confusion about what FISA “verification” means.

  • Russian social-media-interference operations “active and ongoing”: Senate Intel Committee

    The Russian influence campaign on social media in the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign sought to help Donald Trump win the 2016 presidential election by deepening divisions among Americans and suppressing turnout among Democratic voters, according to a report produced for the Senate Intelligence Committee. “What is clear is that all of the [Russian social media] messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party — and specifically Donald Trump,” the report says. “Increasingly, we’ve seen how social media platforms intended to foster open dialogues can be used by hostile foreign actors seeking to manipulate and subvert public opinion,” said the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Burr (R-North Carolina). “Most troublingly, it shows that these activities have not stopped.”

  • Russian interference: Far, wide, ongoing, and successful

    Thanks to the bipartisan, exhaustive work of the Senate Intelligence Committee, we now know more about Russia’s broad, sustained effort to help Donald Trump win the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. This effort was similar to Russia’s interference campaign in more than two dozen other countries, aiming to bring to power – or increase the power of – leaders, parties, and movements who would be more accommodating toward Russia’s interests. Here is how the U.S. media covered the two important reports written based on material gathered by the Intel Committee.

  • Women’s March in Washington state disbands citing Farrakhan ties to national leadership

    The Women’s March movement of Washington State has announced its dissolution over the ties leaders of the national organization have with anti-Semitic preacher Rev. Louis Farrakhan. In a statement, Angie Beem, who served as president of Women’s March Washington, wrote: “Because of the events happening at the national level and their refusal to acknowledge and apologize for their anti-Semitic stance, we have decided to dissolve our Women’s March on Washington State organization in order to separate” from the national organization.

  • Medical problems of U.S. Havana embassy personnel explained

    A medical team has released the first report of acute symptoms and clinical findings in 25 personnel living in the U.S. Embassy in Havana. The researchers did not attempt to determine the cause of the symptoms in the U.S. Embassy residents, the authors noted that intense ultrasonic radiation can produce “a syndrome involving manifestations of nausea, headache, tinnitus, pain, dizziness, and fatigue,” based on occupational health literature.

  • Evidence supporting regulation of greenhouse gases stronger than ever: Scientists

    Sixteen prominent climate scientists argue that there is more reason than ever for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases, at the same time some politicians are pushing the EPA to reverse its 2009 decision to do so.

  • Maria Butina pleads guilty to U.S. charge of foreign-agent conspiracy

    A Russian woman has pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to act as a foreign agent in a case that the U.S. government said highlighted Moscow’s efforts to influence Washington’s foreign policy. Butina, who received a graduate degree from American University in Washington and who publicly advocated for gun rights, sought to build relationships with influential conservative political groups, including the powerful National Rifle Association.

  • Demagogues on the right and left use digital tools to exploit popular resentment, dissatisfaction

    The digital era has spurred many advancements in many areas of human society, but it has also led to growing instability and inequality, notes Tom Wheeler, a Visiting Fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings’ Center for Technology Innovation. At the political level, the digital engine which is driving economic and social instability also provides the tools to exploit the resulting dissatisfaction so as to threaten liberal democratic capitalism, he argues.

  • The time of the trolls

    The West woke up to the threat of Kremlin trolls in 2016, however it had already been very damaging in 2014–2015. The Ukraine crisis saw the deployment of trolls to Facebook and VKontakte, as well as YouTube and Twitter. The investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election showed that trolling was never completely dependent on a technology like bots, nor that it was predominantly about Kremlin employees sitting somewhere in Russia manufacturing anti-Clinton propaganda. Rather, it was ordinary Americans and Europeans that were sharing the messages launched by trolls, and often posting them themselves.