TerrorismTerrorism in Europe is Geographically Widespread and Multifaceted
Europol’s just-published report shows that in 2019, there were 119 foiled, failed, and completed terrorist attacks in 13 EU member states, and that 1,004 individuals were arrested on suspicion of terrorism-related offenses in 19 EU member states. Nearly all of deaths and 26 injuries were the result of jihadist attacks.
ExtremismU.S. Army Soldier Charged with Plotting “Mass Casualty” Attack on His Own Unit
A U.S. Army soldier, 22, has been charged with plotting a mass attack on his unit by sending sensitive military information to the Order of Nine Angles (O9A), a U.K.-based occult-obsessed, neo-Nazi, white supremacist group, the Justice Department announced Monday. O9Ahas affiliates around the world, including the United States, where they are associated with the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division.
ExtremismDHS Warns Boogaloo Bois May Be Targeting Washington, D.C.
On Monday, DHS has circulated intelligence memos to law enforcement agencies around the country, warning public safety officials that Boogaloo Bois, an extremist anti-government movement, may be targeting Washington, D.C. for violent attacks. The intelligence assessment stated that “the District is likely an attractive target for violent adherents of the boogaloo ideology due to the significant presence of U.S. law enforcement entities, and the wide range of First Amendment-Protected events hosted here.”
Lone wolvesMI5, Prevent Deemed Reading Attack Suspect Not Worth Investigation
Saturday knife attack in Reading, U.K., in which three people were killed, is being investigated as an act of terrorism, but investigators say that the 25-year old suspect’s long history of serious mental health issues, exacerbated by heavy drug use, is also being considered. In the last two years, the Libyan national, who was granted asylum in Britain in 2018, was investigated twice for possible ties to Jihadi extremists, but counterterrorism specialists at Prevent and MI5 determined that he had no clear ideology, posed no threat to the public, and required additional mental health care.
Lone wolvesProfiling of Lone-Wolf Terrorists Is Flawed
Terrorism has typically been considered an organized activity undertaken by networks of individuals who share a collective identity and purpose. However, in recent years, media, law enforcement and scholarly attention has increasingly focused on the construct of the lone terrorist. Researchers say that this approach may be flawed.
Regulating hate speechFrench High Court: Most of New Hate Speech Bill Would Undermine Free Expression
In what free-speech advocates hail as aa victory for the free speech rights of French citizens, France’s highest court last week struck down core provisions of a bill meant to curb hate speech, holding they would unconstitutionally sweep up legal speech.
PrivacyProtecting Children's Online Privacy
A University of Texas at Dallas study of 100 mobile apps for kids found that 72 violated a federal law aimed at protecting children’s online privacy. Researchers developed a tool that can determine whether an Android game or other mobile app complies with the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).
Flu vaccineUniversal Flu Vaccine May Be More Challenging than Expected
Some common strains of influenza have the potential to mutate to evade broad-acting antibodies that could be elicited by a universal flu vaccine, according to a study led by scientists at Scripps Research. The findings highlight the challenges involved in designing such a vaccine, and should be useful in guiding its development.
Our picksDHS Insider Threat Program | Memetic Warfare | Designating Terrorists, and more
· Reading Is Latest in Seven Years of Terrorist Knife Attacks in U.K.
· DHS Insider Threat Program Expanding to Anyone Who Accesses Agency Info
· The Meme-Fueled Rise of a Dangerous, Far-Right Militia
· As Protests Spread to Small-Town America, Militia Groups Respond with Armed Intimidation and Online Threats
· Black Hat Research Predicts Significant Changes to Security Operations Post COVID-19 and Exploit Concerns for 2020 U.S. Election
· What Antifa Is, what It Isn’t, and Why It Matters
· As More Violence Links to Boogaloo Bois, This Is What the Extremist Movement Believes
· Trump Wants to Label Antifa a Terrorist Organization. What About the KKK?
· The Iconoclast Unmasked: The Man Behind Far-Right YouTube Channel
Food securityCoronavirus: A Wake-Up Call to Strengthen the Global Food System
A new commentary in the journal One Earth highlights not only climate-related risks to the global food system, such as drought and floods, but also exposes the coronavirus pandemic as a shock to the system that has led to food crises in many parts of the world. To address the challenges of a globally interconnected food system, a systems approach is required.
Our picksCoronavirus’s Impact on Terrorism | Dark Art of Russian Disinformation | Security Lapses & Saudi Shoot Up, and more
· How to Prepare for the Coronavirus’s Impact on Terrorism
· Reading Fatal Stabbing Suspect Khairi Saadallah Was Known to MI5
· Terror Groups “Exploiting Coronavirus Pandemic to Radicalize New Recruits,” QC Warns
· Team Trump Pushes Antifa Panic Hard on Facebook
· Vehicle Attacks Rise as Extremists Target Protesters
· Black Lives Matter Unrest in U.S. Makes It Easy for Vladimir Putin’s Election Trolls to Spread Fake News
· Russian Operatives Behind Fake Claim that Real IRA Was Recruiting Jihadists
· Russia report: U.K. MPs Condemn “Utterly Reprehensible” delay
· Fighting the Dark Art of Russian Disinformation This Election Season
· The Lapses That Let a Saudi Extremist Shoot Up a U.S. Navy Base
The Russia connectionRussian Info Ops Putting U.S. Police in Their Crosshairs
Russia appears to be intensifying its focus on police enforcement issues in the United States, using popular reactions to protests that have gripped the nation as part of a larger propaganda campaign to divide Americans ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November. For weeks Russia has used state-controlled RT and Sputnik, and social media posts, to spread disinformation about the protests. Only now, it seems that Russia, through the English-language RT in particular, is reaching out to U.S. police officers and union officials, in what some U.S. officials and lawmakers say is an effort to further inflame tensions.
PrivacyAI Could Help Solve the Privacy Problems It Has Created
The stunning successes of artificial intelligence would not have happened without the availability of massive amounts of data, whether its smart speakers in the home or personalized book recommendations. These large databases are amassing a wide variety of information, some of it sensitive and personally identifiable. All that data in one place makes such databases tempting targets, ratcheting up the risk of privacy breaches. We believe that the relationship between AI and data privacy is more nuanced. The spread of AI raises a number of privacy concerns, most of which people may not even be aware. But in a twist, AI can also help mitigate many of these privacy problems.
Supply chainsManufacturers to Rethink Global Operations in Face of COVID-19
Manufacturers must redesign and reform their Global Supply Chains or Global Production Networks (GPN) if they want to survive and prosper in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study argues. The virus’ impact demonstrates that global manufacturing concerns must switch from large production sites in a single location, such as China, to numerous smaller facilities around the world to reduce business risk. Stability, reliability, resilience and predictability are critical in the design of global production networks that balance risk versus reward and harmonize economic value with values related to reliability, resilience and location.
PrivacyHow Much Control Would People Be Willing to Grant to a Personal Privacy Assistant?
CyLab’s Jessica Colnago believes that in the future, the simple act of walking down the street is going to be a little weird. “You know how every time you enter a website, and it says: ‘We use cookies. Do you consent?’ Imagine that same thing walking down the street, but for a light pole, or a surveillance camera, or an energy sensor on a house,” Colnago says.
Tunnel evacuationSound Beacons Support Safer Tunnel Evacuation
Research conducted as part of the project EvacSound demonstrates that auditory guidance using sound beacons is an effective aid during the evacuation of smoke-filled road tunnels. This is good news. It is a fact that vehicle drivers and passengers cannot normally expect to be rescued by the emergency services during such accidents.
AliensSearching the Universe for Signs of Technological Civilizations
Scientists are collaborating on a project to search the universe for signs of life via technosignatures. Researchers believe that although life appears in many forms, the scientific principles remain the same, and that the technosignatures identifiable on Earth will also be identifiable in some fashion outside of the solar system.
Displaced persons1 Percent of Humanity Displaced: UN
UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, said yesterday it was appealing to countries worldwide to do far more to find homes for millions of refugees and others displaced by conflict, persecution or events seriously disturbing public order. This is as a report released today showed that forced displacement is now affecting more than one per cent of humanity – 1 in every 97 people – and with fewer and fewer of those who flee being able to return home.
Pandemics5 Ways the World Is Better Off Dealing with a Pandemic Now Than in 1918
Near the end of the First World War, a deadly flu raced across the globe. The influenza pandemic became the most severe pandemic in recent history, infecting about one-third of the world’s population between 1918 and 1920 and killing between 50 and 100 million people. It was caused by an H1N1 virus that originated in birds and mutated to infect humans. Now a century later the world is amidst another global pandemic caused by a zoonotic disease that “jumped” from wildlife to people, a novel coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2. If managed competently, this fight may turn out differently, resulting in lower rates of infection and mortality and, possibly, fewer deaths.
VaccinesVaccine Access and Hesitancy: The Public Health Importance of Vaccines
While health experts say a vaccine to prevent COVID-19 infection is needed to return to “normal,” several polls have indicated some Americans would be reluctant to receive a vaccine, citing safety concerns. The spread of disinformation on social media has only further complicated matters.
ExtremismThe Appeal of Far-Right Politics
Why do “ordinary” citizens join far-right organizations? Agnieszka Pasieka explores how far-right groups offer social services, organize festivals, and shape their own narrative to attract new members. In her Austrian Science Fund (FWF)-project, she accompanies activists to investigate their practices and philosophies. Pasieka says that difficult as it might be to empathize with someone who shares fundamentally different values, taking all parties seriously and understanding their motivation is key in a time in which a refusal to engage with other people’s views has become a feature of political as well as academic debates.
Energy securityUsing Wind Turbines to Defend the National Grid from Power Cuts
A ‘smart’ system that controls the storage and release of energy from wind turbines will reduce the risk of power cuts and support the increase of wind energy use world-wide, say researchers. The system uses the variable speed of the rotors in wind turbine systems to more closely regulate the supply of power to the grid. This means that when electricity demand is high, stored kinetic energy in the turbines can be used intelligently to keep the grid stable.
起航小说网
起航小说网
PerspectiveIs China winning?
This year started horribly for China, with a respiratory virus spread in Wuhan, and the Chinese government hiding the truth about it from the world. But the draconian measures taken by the government appears to have worked, and Wuhan is back to normal (to a new, post-COVI-19 normal, that is). The Economist writes that China’s Communist Party hails this as a triumph not only for Chinese science: the country’s vast and well-oiled propaganda machine explains that China brought its epidemic under control thanks to its strong one-party rule – and the fact tat some Western democracies – chief among them the United States – have botched their response to the epidemic shows that Western liberal democracy is an inferior system of government compared to China’s own. “Some, including nervous foreign-policy watchers in the West, have concluded that China will be the winner from the COVID-19 catastrophe. These observers warn that the pandemic will be remembered not only as a human disaster, but also as a geopolitical turning-point away from America,” the Economist writes.
PerspectiveWhat to Make of New U.S. Actions Against Foreign Telecoms
Recent moves by the administration mark another concrete step in the U.S. campaign to limit the digital and economic influence of Chinese telecommunications companies both within and outside U.S. borders. Justin Sherman writes that “The moves also demonstrate that current American efforts to limit the influence of the Chinese telecommunications sector are much broader than just the well-publicized targeting of Chinese telecom giant Huawei.”
PerspectiveInternational Air Travel as an Indicator of COVID-19 Economic Recovery
It seems likely that routine international air travel may not resume until the end of June at the earliest. Paul Rozenzweig writes that that, more than President Trump’s wishful thinking, is a true indicator of what economic recovery will look like. As any good student of law and economics would say, the best indicator of commercial expectations can be found in commercial enterprises—the market signals that indicate what businesses truly anticipate. And if any enterprise is likely to be a leading indicator of economic expectations, it seems that the airline industry is a good candidate.
ArgumentThe Totalitarian Temptation Resisted
In Hungary, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Russia, the Philippines, and other countries, strongman leaders are taking advantage of a distracted international community to reinforce authoritarian agendas. Josef Joffe writes that, in contrast, national emergencies in the West do not breed despots, nor the grasping security state. Joffe argues that those who predict that the coronavirus epidemic will facilitate an authoritarian takeover, ignore four critical points – all of which contribute to making Western democracies resilient in the face of challenges such as an epidemic and other crises.
ArgumentThe Next Pandemic Might Not Be Natural
Germs have killed more people than all the wars in history, and people have been trying to make use of them throughout all those wars. In the U.S., we have seen small-scale bioterrorist attacks – the Rajneeshee poisoning of restaurants in 1986 and the Amerithrax letters that were mailed in 2001. Still, the years running up to this current coronavirus pandemic not only saw the gutting of U.S. national health institutions but also a cultural groundswell of science denial in the anti-vaccination movement. Today the United States in particular is paying for that denial in livelihoods and lives. The warnings were clear. If 9/11 was a “failure of imagination,” then history will no doubt judge the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19 as a failure of courage, compassion, and, most of all, competence.
PerspectiveChinese Agents Helped Spread Messages That Sowed Virus Panic in U.S., Officials Say
U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Chinese operatives have pushed false messages across social media platforms, aiming to amplify and exaggerate the actions of the U.S. government in order to sow panic, increase confusion, and deepen political polarization in the already-on-edge American public. The amplification techniques are alarming to U.S. officials because the disinformation showed up as texts on many Americans’ cellphones, a tactic that several of the officials said they had not seen before. American officials said the operatives had adopted some of the techniques mastered by Russia-backed trolls. That has spurred agencies to look at new ways in which China, Russia and other nations are using a range of platforms to spread disinformation during the pandemic. President Trump himself has shown little concern about China’s actions, dismissing worries over China’s use of disinformation when asked about it on Fox News. “They do it and we do it and we call them different things,” he said. “Every country does it.”
ArgumentThe Limits of the World Health Organization
President Trump has characteristically tried to divert public attention from his botched response to the coronavirus pandemic by blaming others—Democrats, governors, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, China. Eric Posner writes that in the World Health Organization (WHO), however, he has found the ideal pi?ata. It is tempting to blame the WHO itself for its problems—its notoriously complex bureaucracy, its decentralized structure, its “culture” or the persons who run it. But, Posner writers, all of those things are a result of the political constraints it operates under, as many reform-minded critics have observed.
PerspectiveAutocrats See Opportunity in Disaster
The world is distracted and the public need saving. It is a strongman’s dream. All the world’s attention is on COVID-19. The Economist writes that rulers everywhere have realized that now is the perfect time to do outrageous things, safe in the knowledge that the rest of the world will barely notice. Many are taking advantage of the pandemic to grab more power for themselves. No fewer than 84 have enacted emergency laws vesting extra powers in the executive. “In some cases, these powers are necessary to fight the pandemic and will be relinquished when it is over. But in many cases they are not, and won’t be. The places most at risk are those where democracy’s roots are shallow and institutional checks are weak.” The Economist continues: “Take Hungary, where the prime minister, Viktor Orban, has been eroding checks and balances for a decade. Under a new coronavirus law, he can now rule by decree. He has become, in effect, a dictator.”
PerspectiveCoronavirus and Its Social Effects Fueling Extremist Violence, Says Government Report
The coronavirus pandemic and its social repercussions are fueling violence by both frustrated individuals and domestic terrorists, according to a new intelligence report by the Department of Homeland Security. Social distancing has meant the cancelation of mass gathering events that are historically appealing targets for both international and domestic terrorists, the report adds, but “the pandemic has created a new source of anger and frustration for some individuals. As a result, violent extremist plots will likely involve individuals seeking targets symbolic to their personal grievances.”
ArgumentMinisters Can’t Keep Hiding Behind the Science
It’s dishonest and cowardly to keep pretending that how and when the lockdown is lifted isn’t a political judgment call. Matthew Parris writes that the political leaders of the country – the U.K. in his case, but any country – must have the courage to share with the public the political — political, not medical — choices they must make, and take ownership “of the trade-offs that only politics can settle: trade-offs between deaths caused by one disease and deaths caused by others less immediately in the public eye; between the longevity of the elderly and the education of the young; between mortality in April 2020 and debt that will scar a whole generation; between loss of life and loss of livelihood.” Whichever side you come down on in this trade-off, Parris write. somebody’s got to say there’s a trade-off, and it isn’t ‘the’ science. “It is for the ministers who will make the judgment to be upfront with the public about the human cost. They can ‘follow’ the science, cite the science, be guided by the science, but in the end the science will lead them to a point where paths diverge.”
PerspectiveThe Deepfake iPhone Apps Are Here
On Sunday, Lawfare’s Jacob Schulz, like many Americans, woke up to see that President Donald Trump had retweeted a misleading gif of his presumptive Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. Schultz notes that Trump’s dissemination of a deepfake video was met with alarm. David Frum, for example, noted the significance of the president’s retweet: “Instead of sharing deceptively edited video—as Trump and his allies have often done before—yesterday Trump for the first time shared a video that had been outrightly fabricated.” Schulz adds: “Soon, people will be able to use their iPhones not just to turn themselves into mildly convincing late-night comedians but to convincingly turn Joe Biden into whatever they want. When that happens, in the now-infamous words of Samantha Cole of Motherboard, ‘We are truly f****d.’”
PerspectiveThe Department of Defense Should Not Wage Cyber War Against Criminal Hackers During the Coronavirus Crisis
Politicians and pundits in the United States have frequently described the challenge of controlling the COVID pandemic with the language of waging war. Erica D. Borghard writes that given this terminology, it can be tempting to look to the Department of Defense (DOD) to solve problems it was not meant to address. While nefarious actors in cyberspace are seeking to capitalize on scared and vulnerable individuals during the pandemic for criminal gain and national strategic objectives, “any efforts to leverage DOD capabilities in combating these efforts must distinguish between nation-state and criminal activity,” she writes.
PerspectiveCyber Operations against Medical Facilities During Peacetime
In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, governments around the world have tried to compensate for insufficient hospital beds and intensive care units by nationalizing private medical facilities and relying on military ships and improvised evac hospitals. Adina Ponta writes that at a time when overcrowded medical and testing facilities struggle with shortages in supplies and a huge influx of patients, hacker groups have exploited their inattention to cybersecurity.
Perspective“A Threat to Health Is Being Weaponized”: Inside the Fight against Online Hate Crime
Perpetrators of terrorist attacks now routinely leave online statements or manifestos to justify their actions, hoping their words might encourage others. Simon Parkin writes that now, just as Facebook and Twitter have become the prodigious muck-spreaders of our age, a handful of clandestine startups are using technology to stem the flow. Moonshot, whose office is at a secret location in London, is, at five years old, a veteran in this emerging industry.
The BriefRestless citizenry; clinical success and failure; holding China to account
These four major developments on the coronavirus front in the past week caught our eye:
1. Difficult reopening. More and more countries are moving to reopen their economies, schools, and other parts of society, and each offers a different mix of measures aiming to balance economic recovery, societal (new) normalcy, and health security, with an eye to avoiding a second wave of infections in the fall. They all share one thing: Their citizens are becoming restless.
2. Clinical success. The FDA om Friday allowed emergency use of remdesivir, the first drug that appears to help some COVID-19 patients recover faster, a milestone in the global search for effective therapies against the coronavirus.
3. Clinical failure. Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin have been aggressively promoted by President Trump as possibly “the biggest game changer in the history of medicine.” But in the largest clinical trial yet of the two drugs, they failed to have any benefit for infected patients, while significantly increasing the risk of electrical changes to the heart and cardiac arrhythmias, which could lead to heart attacks, strokes, and death.
4. The China syndrome. More and more countries are calling for an impartial and credible investigation of China’s conduct regarding the coronavirus between November 2019 and the end of February 2020.PerspectiveAll’s Clear for Deep Fakes: Think Again
A few analysts are claiming that the bark of deepfakes is worse than their bite. Robert Chesney, Danielle Citron, and Hany Farid disagree, writing that “Now is not the time to sit back and claim victory over deep fakes or to suggest that concern about them is overblown. The coronavirus has underscored the deadly impact of believable falsehoods, and the election of a lifetime looms ahead. More than ever we need to trust what our eyes and ears are telling us.”
