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China and Global Development of Critical Resources
To what extent has China adhered to its pledge to not build new overseas coal power plants? What are the main concerns related to China’s ownership or control over power transmission and distribution companies in Latin America? What is the state of China’s deep- and distant-sea and seabed mining exploration activities, and to what extent does it use these activities for ulterior strategic purposes?
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Survey Reveals Worrying Trend in Conspiracy Theories That Deny Terrorist Attacks Ever Happened
As a study my team and I conducted highlights, frightening proportions of the public believe in conspiracy theories that doubt the truth of reported events, even terrorist attacks. In our findings, one in seven respondents believed victims of the May 2017 Manchester Arena bombing were not really victims at all, but “crisis actors” – essentially, that they were brought in to pretend to be victims of an attack to manipulate public opinion. We also found that one in 20 were convinced the attack in Manchester and the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005 were “hoaxes”.
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The Missing Review of FBI’s January 6 Intelligence and Law Enforcement Failures
Much attention has been paid to the troubling institutional culture among agents at the U.S. Secret Service – agents who, according to Asha Rangappa. sympathized with, and since minimized their advanced knowledge of, the violent assault on the Capitol on January 6. “It is time to focus similar attention on the FBI,” she writes.
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No Evidence of Any Voting Machine Compromised: CISA
“We have seen no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was any way compromised in any race in the country”: CISA
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Voters Largely Reject Election Deniers as Secretaries of State – but the Partisan Battle for Election Administration Will Continue
It appears that voters have largely rejected the vast majority of chief election official candidates who ran their campaigns as election deniers. But this election season raises questions, and exposes flaws, about how senior election officials are selected in the U.S. The platforms of these election deniers who appeared on the 2022 midterm ballot illustrate the risk that this dynamic poses to ongoing voter trust and future election results.
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Improving Security for Smart Systems
In an increasingly connected and smart world, sensors collect and share large amounts of data to help people make decisions. Researchers has recently developed a way to statistically analyze such complex sensor data, so that the computer algorithms that make data-based decisions can be more resilient and better able to cope with small errors.
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U.S. Officials Hope Confidence Campaign Pays Off for Midterm Elections
“Americans should go to the ballot box with confidence,” Jen Easterly, the director of the Cybersecurity and Election Security Agency (CISA), told a cybersecurity forum late last month. Yet U.S. officials also acknowledge the threats to Tuesday’s elections are serious and are being treated with proper caution.
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Beyond the Results, the Midterms Can Tell Us a Lot About How American Democracy Is Faring
Election night and the days immediately before and after will provide valuable insights into the health of democracy in the United States. Here are four things to watch.
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German Ministry Seeks to Block Chinese Chip Factory Takeover
German Economy Minister Robert Habeck wants to stop the sale of a chip production plant to a Chinese investor. The Green Party politician has expressed concern about giving China control over key infrastructure.
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Bolstering Biosafety Education to Address Biosecurity Professionals Shortfalls
Many countries face an severe shortages of biosafety and biosecurity professionals. To address these shortages, experts call for a multisectoral effort toward a future sustainable workforce by formalizing a biosafety & biosecurity career path within the higher education system.
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Better Defense Planning Could Use Statistics to Try to See into the Future
The war in Ukraine is not the first time—nor will it be the last—that the Department of Defense (DoD) has been forced to respond rapidly to unexpected threats or to reorient priorities when the assumptions guiding its force planning changed.
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Investigating Stockpile Stewardship Applications for World’s Largest Computer Chip
The Cerebras Wafer-Scale Engine is the largest computer chip in the world, containing 2.6 trillion transistors, 850,000 artificial intelligence cores. Researchers at Sandia and Los Alamos are accelerating advanced simulation and computing applications in support of the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile stewardship mission.
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Nuclear Weapons Use Will ‘End’ Kim Regime, US, South Korea Say
The United States and South Korean defense leaders are warning Pyongyang that any use of nuclear weapons by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would be the “end” of his regime.
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Panic Buttons, Automatic Locks and Bulletproof Windows Top the Proposed Safety Rules after Uvalde Shooting
These proposed requirements could take effect this school year after the Texas Education Agency takes public comment into consideration.
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Software Suite Will Bolster Defenses for Soft Targets
Anyone who has ever gone to a major sporting event or concert, taken public transportation, even visited a farmer’s market on a brisk weekend morning, has likely benefitted from soft-target physical security—and perhaps didn’t even know it. DHS S&T is working developing a suite of decision-support software known as Special Event Planning Tools (SEPT) to help those in charge of securing soft targets.
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The long view
January 6th Report Summarizes Extremist Threat – But Leaves Key Gaps
The House Jan. 6 committee’s 845-page report is unquestionably valuable, but significant questions remain largely unanswered around two interrelated components of the committee’s investigation: the scope of law enforcement and intelligence failures preceding the attack on the U.S. Capitol, and what concrete steps should be taken to combat both those failures and the rising threat of domestic violent extremism in the aftermath of January 6th.
Protecting Democracy: Jan. 6 Panel’s Recommendations, Proposed Reforms
On Thursday, 22 December, the House committee examining last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol issued its long-awaited final report. The final report also proposes eleven reforms aiming to ensure that Trump’s attempt to subvert the will of the voters and prevent the peaceful transition of power from one president to the next would not be repeated.
Far-Left Extremist Groups in the United States
Far-left extremism in the United States was most active during the period between the 1960s and 1980s. In the 1990s, a new type of left-extremism began to emerge – what the FBI calls “special-interest extremism,” as expressed by groups such as the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF). The far left encompasses multiple ideologies, but security experts believe that a large percentage of far-left radicals subscribe to at least one of three main classifications: anarchism, communism/socialism/Marxism, and autonomous radicals.
Concerns About Extremists Targeting U.S. Power Stations
Attacks on four power stations in Washington State over the weekend added to concerns of a possible nationwide campaign by far-right extremists to stir fears and spark civil conflict. Violent extremists “have developed credible, specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020, identifying the electric grid as a particularly attractive target given its interdependency with other infrastructure sectors,” the DHS said in a January.
New Bill Proposes Banning TikTok in the U.S.
Both the administration and Congress have moved to limit, or even ban, TikTok in the United States because of worries about China using the Chinese-owned platform to gather personal data on millions of Americans. Justin Sherman writes that “all told, it is a noteworthy piece of legislation, and it delineates between the risk of data access and the risk of content manipulation better than then-President Trump’s executive order on TikTok.”
Was George Santos Groomed to be a Russian Agent?
Among the multitude of lies and falsehoods newly elected Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) has concocted, the most intriguing item – and likely the source of Santos’s most serious potential legal trouble – are his campaign finances. What is especially noticeable, and disturbing, are the generous contributions Santos has received from Viktor Vekselberg, one of Vladimir Putin’s wealthiest and most influential courtiers. “For all we know,” writes one commentator, “some foreign power may have bought itself a congressman. This isn’t outlandish speculation.”