*INDIAN AIR STRIKES ON PAKISTAN....WHAT'S NEXT?*

*by Maroof Raza*

Those who question the truth behind the Indian air force's spectacular air strikes on terror camps deep inside Pakistan, are unable to explain why Pakistan’s reactions were filled with confusion and contradictory statements - like they were after the US raid on Abottabad- including that of their Prime Minister Imran Khan, as the sheer audacity of the Indian air strikes had specially left Pakistan’s brass hats stunned. The inaction by India against several Pakistan sponsored terror strikes over the past three decades – with the exception of the commando raids cross the LOC in 2016, that came to be known as ‘surgical strikes’ – had lulled Pakistan’s military established into believing that ‘ war was not an option’ for India, since it could escalate into a nuclear confrontation. But the India's air strike has blown a hole through the Pakistani article of faith, that their nuclear arsenal was a protective shield against all their adventurism on Indian soil.

Masood Azhar Is China’s Favorite Terrorist

BY MICHAEL KUGELMAN

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On March 13, China placed a “technical hold” on a resolution calling on the United Nations Security Council to designate Masood Azhar, the leader of the Pakistani militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), as a terrorist. Beijing’s intervention effectively torpedoed the measure. This marked the fourth time that China has prevented Azhar, who enjoys long-standing ties to the Pakistani security establishment, from being officially designated a terrorist by the United Nations.

There had been good reason to believe that this time might be different, and that Beijing would step back and let the resolution get approved. The fact that the fourth time wasn’t the charm speaks volumes about how deep the partnership between China and Pakistan still runs, and how far Beijing is willing to go to defend its “iron brother.”

The Old Silk Road to Rome Gets New Life

By Kyle Anderson and Logan Pauley

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President Xi Jinping arrived in Italy today for a state visit, the first by a Chinese president in a decade.

The landmark meeting may result in Italy becoming the first member of the G-7 to endorse China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a prospect raised by Italy’s Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte earlier this month. Such an outcome is highly unwelcome in the United States and some EU member states. While Italy maintains that its primary goal in borrowing infrastructure investment funding from China is to increase exports, there is an overlooked historical foundation between Beijing and Rome that fundamentally undergirds what many are only seeing as an impulsive economic partnership.

Dialogue Surrounding the Upcoming Meeting

Inside China’s Plan for Global Supremacy

By David P. Goldman

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In 2013 my friend Eduardo Medina-Mora became Mexico’s ambassador to the United States. We had known each other since 1988, when I was preparing a study of Mexico’s tax and regulatory system for a U.S. consulting firm, and Eduardo was running a small Mexico City law firm after a stint as press officer for the Ministry of Fisheries. We kept in touch over the years. In 2003, when he headed Mexico’s foreign intelligence service, the CISEN, and I ran the fixed income research department of Bank of America, we compared notes over dinner in Mexico City. He went on to serve as attorney general and other senior posts.

Eduardo complained that no one in the Obama administration seemed responsible for Mexico. “We don’t even know who to call when a problem comes up,” he told me at his office at Mexico’s Embassy on Pennsylvania Avenue, where I called on him to offer my congratulations. “It’s easier for [then Mexican President Enrique] Peña Nieto to get the president of China on the phone than Barack Obama. What would you advise me to do?”

Racing Against China, U.S. Reveals Details of $500 Million Supercompute

By Don Clark

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SAN FRANCISCO — The Department of Energy disclosed details on Monday of one of the most expensive computers being built: a $500 million machine based on Intel and Cray technology that may become crucial in a high-stakes technology race between the United States and China.

The supercomputer, called Aurora, is a retooling of a development effort first announced in 2015 and is scheduled to be delivered to the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago in 2021. Lab officials predict it will be the first American machine to reach a milestone called “exascale” performance, surpassing a quintillion calculations per second.

That’s roughly seven times the speed rating of the most powerful system built to date, or 1,000 times faster than the first “petascale” systems that began arriving in 2008. Backers hope the new machines will let researchers create significantly more accurate simulations of phenomena such as drug responses, climate changes, the inner workings of combustion engines and solar panels.

Schieffer Series: China's Rise

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Andrew Schwartz: Good evening, and welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I’m Andrew Schwartz here at CSIS.

Andrew Schwartz: So happy to have all of you here, especially Dean Kristie Bunton from TCU. TCU and the Schieffer College of Communication are our partners, and we’re very sad that the Horned Frogs didn’t make the NCAA Tournament, March Madness, but we love them anyway. And it’s baseball season, so who cares, right? (Laughter)

Andrew Schwartz: We also have to thank our partner, longtime for the Schieffer Series. That’s the Niarchos Foundation, who has been amazing at helping us put the series on. Thank you to them.

Andrew Schwartz: And without further ado, the strongest name in news, Bob Schieffer. (Applause.)

Bob Schieffer: Well, this is a big one, and I think we have one of the strongest groups of experts that anybody has put together on this. The title, as you saw in your program, is the rise of China.

The Charm Offensive: Peacekeeping And Policy In China – Analysis

By Marissa Gibson*

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Introduction

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the nations of the world made a pledge to prevent the recurrence of such a global tragedy, and although this pledge had been made before, the United Nations (UN) promised to be something stronger than its predecessor, the League of Nations. Founded in 1945, the United Nations was an international forum meant to maintain the international order, and the powers vested in its Charter gave it a unique international character that assisted it in maintaining and protecting international peace and security. It is the UN Security Council (UNSC) that holds this responsibility. Comprised of 15 members, including 5 permanent members: the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China, the UNSC may take collective action in order to maintain international peace and security, as authorized in Chapters VI and VII of the UN Charter. These actions are manifested in the form of peacekeeping operations, which are staffed by troops of UN member states under UN operational control. Peacekeeping operations emerged in the early-1950s as a response to a growing number of border disputes that were sparked by decolonization processes and the need for a mediating body to assist in the implementation of cease-fire agreements or political settlements to these international conflicts.1

Trump Wants NATO’s Eyes on China

BY ROBBIE GRAMER

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The Trump administration is pushing NATO to address potential threats from China in its day-to-day work in Brussels and at an upcoming meeting of foreign ministers in Washington next month, U.S. and European officials say. The move is part of a shift in American priorities away from fighting Islamist terrorists and toward a so-called era of great power competition.

For months, the administration has been working to persuade Europeans to rebuff Chinese investment in the continent’s critical infrastructure and telecommunications networks. The campaign has received a lukewarm reception in some parts of Europe, where U.S. allies are already troubled by the U.S.-China trade war and President Donald Trump’s hostile jabs at the European Union and NATO.

While many Europeans view China as a potential challenge to the West, some are skeptical that NATO, oriented toward deterring Russia and still engaged in the yearslong fight in Afghanistan, is the best forum to address the threat. China has never before been a key conversation topic in the alliance.

Evasive Action: Why America Needs to Avoid a Cold War with China

by Peter Harris 

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Are the United States and China on the brink of a new Cold War? If the question is whether U.S.-China relations are destined to closely replicate the U.S.-Soviet rivalry, then the answer is surely “no.” As Joshua Shifrinson has recently (and rightly) argued, today’s superpowers coexist in an international setting much different from—and more forgiving than—that which existed between 1947 and 1989.

But this hasn’t stopped a broad range of scholars, analysts, and policy practitioners from debating the usefulness of the Cold War analogy, and unearthing a range of discrete, nuanced lessons that can help to shed light on twenty-first century geopolitics. Overall, most analysts seem to agree with Kori Schake , who has noted that even if U.S.-China relations unfold differently to the U.S.-Soviet relationship, the challenges facing U.S. leaders today “bear some interesting resemblances to the [early] Cold War.”

The State of War

BY RACHEL KLEINFELD, ROBERT MUGGAH 

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A Syrian force’s artillery observer looks through a scope as smoke plumes rise on the horizon, near Hama, on April 1, 2017. (Stringer/AFP/Getty Images)Syrian government forces and allies regained most of the territory they lost earlier during an assault by rebels and jihadists launched on March 21, 2017 in the country's centre, reported the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor on March 31, 2017. Hama province is of strategic importance to President Bashar al-Assad, as it separates opposition forces in the northwestern province of Idlib from Damascus to the south and from the regime's coastal heartlands to the west. / AFP PHOTO / STRINGER (Photo credit should read STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images) 

The world is less violent today than at virtually any other time in human history. Hard as it is to believe, deaths from armed conflicts between states have declined dramatically since the 1950s. And although civil-war deaths have ticked up in recent years, they have still fallen dramatically since the end of the Cold War. After increasing over the past decade, even terrorist-related killings have started to fall. Homicides, too, are on the decline in most parts of the world.

All this is cause for celebration, but it is not the whole story. Although the world has done a good job at reducing certain forms of violence, others are on the rise, particularly state violence against citizens and criminal violence from mafias, drug cartels, and gangs. Complicating matters, state and criminal killings are often intertwined. Politicians, police, and other officials may be in cahoots with criminal bosses, which makes their crimes harder to uncover and address.

For Somaliland and Djibouti, Will New Friends Bring Benefits

BY MATT KENNARD, ISMAIL EINASHE

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BERBERA, Somalia—On any given day in Berbera, the deep-water port on Somaliland’s Red Sea coast, ramshackle ships dock next to small boats known as dhows. Most of them are waiting to set off for the Persian Gulf, laden with spices, scrap metal, and often more lively cargo—goats raised for the global market on the country’s scorched landscape.

It may be hard to tell by looking at it, but some 30 percent of the world’s crude oil transported on ships passes just a few miles offshore, a detail that has made Berbera’s port a prized location for outside powers looking for a new connection to the world’s most vital sea transport route. As a result, Somaliland, like its neighbor Djibouti, which is emerging as a hub for foreign military installations, has found itself at the center of big power rivalries that could reshape the Horn of Africa.

The Christchurch Massacre Was Another Internet-Enabled Atrocity

by James Dobbins

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We are reminded every time we stream a movie, search Google or receive an email of the immense benefits that flow from the internet.

The latest mass killing in New Zealand is a reminder that these benefits are not unalloyed. Trolling, bullying, fake news, election manipulation, hate speech, international and domestic terrorism have all become internet-enabled abuses, incited by, propagated by, sometimes organized by and concealed by online activity. Calls to rein in such malign behavior have grown, so far to limited effect.

The ubiquity and the anonymity associated with the online world make fixing responsibility for abuses and designing remedies exceptionally difficult.

Who should be held accountable for abusive content online, the author or the publisher? That is, should it be the creator of the content or the hosting site? And what role should government play, if any, in regulating such activity?

Back to the Nuclear Precipice

JAVIER SOLANA

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Long a global leader in efforts to reduce nuclear-weapons stockpiles and limit nuclear proliferation, the United States is now fostering the conditions for a new global arms race. With hawks calling the shots in US President Donald Trump's administration, a nuclear conflagration in one of the world's hot spots is becoming more likely.

MADRID – Ten years ago, during his first trip to Europe as US president, Barack Obama delivered an historic speech in Prague. Much to the delight of the crowd, Obama described a world free of nuclear arms as being both desirable and within reach. That declaration was unprecedented for an American president, and would contribute to his winning the Nobel Peace Prize later that year.

Obama also used the occasion to reassure Czechs – and Europeans generally – that the United States would never turn its back on them; that its commitment to the principle of collective defense under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty was permanent and unconditional. Those words now seem like a relic of a bygone era.

Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, has questioned that key pillar of NATO, departing from almost 70 years of diplomatic tradition. Worse, he recently announced his intention to withdraw the US from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, which has been fundamental in guaranteeing European security since 1987. And though the Obama administration did end up deprioritizing nuclear disarmament over time, Trump seems to have replaced that goal with its polar opposite: rearmament.

Annexation of Crimea: A masterclass in political manipulation

by Leonid Ragozin

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The annexation of Crimea was a triumph of political manipulation over national interests and common sense. This is why old-school geopolitics alone cannot explain what really happened between Russia and Ukraine in March 2014.

What usually debilitates the analysis of this episode, at least in the West, is the tale of an inherently violent alien Russian race intent on conquering the world. An identical twin of Kremlin's myth about the West plotting to destroy Russia, it is peddled by hawks who live in symbiosis with their Russian counterparts and grow in strength by pushing polarising agendas. Of course, the image they are trying to sell can't be more different from the complicated reality of the relatively modernised post-Soviet mafia state with its mild authoritarianism, deep integration into the Western cultural and financial realm, and - critically for the Crimean story - extreme psychological dependence on feedback in the form of opinion polls and approval ratings. The latter serves as a substitute for electoral democracy, which has been squashed by Putin's majoritarianism in Russia. 

Is There a Future For American Universities in the Middle East?

By Lisa Anderson

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On January 10, Mike Pompeo, the U.S. secretary of state, delivered a contentious speech at the American University in Cairo (AUC). He ridiculed former president Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, thanked Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for his “courage” in confronting extremism, and repeated calls for a tough stance against Iran. The university’s faculty were outraged, not only by the speech but also by Pompeo’s failure to engage with students. In February, the faculty voted to declare no confidence in the university president who had invited Pompeo, Francis J. Ricciardone, himself a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt.

The insurrection was not just a response to the secretary’s speech but an expression of long-standing unease about the direction of the university. The faculty’s concerns about academic freedom and governance also in part reflect broader alarm in the academic community in Egypt about the erosion of free speech and public debate. Although Pompeo urged the Egyptian government to “unleash the creative energy of Egypt’s people … and promote a free and open exchange of ideas,” crackdowns on universities and the media have dramatically diminished the arena of public debate. In 2016, Sisi’s government required academics to obtain approval from security officials for travel abroad, and Egypt is now ranked 161 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index. In this context, AUC faculty fear for the future of the unique model of American higher education in the region that the university represents.

A Case For Area Studies – Analysis

By César Braga-Pinto*

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Scholars of history and literature, anyone who appreciates culture, share a keen interest in memory and, in countries with volatile politics, a fear for the fate of priceless documents and precarious archives. This takes place amid a broader crisis with dismissal of the humanities. Language and literature departments may be among the most vulnerable, especially teaching and research in the less commonly taught languages, such as Portuguese, which constantly struggle to prove their relevance.

Scholars of the humanities are alarmed. Eric Hayot, a professor of Comparative Literature and Asian Studies, calls attention to the steady decline in tenure-track jobs advertised, by as many as 50 percent, and a corresponding decline of humanities majors reported by institutions. To remain relevant, scholars in the humanities must pursue all avenues of interdisciplinarity, although the scope and viability of such studies vary among institutions. Likewise, the nature and scope of research and teaching, or the discipline and departments, do not always coincide.

Falling World Oil Prices In Fact Benefit Russia – OpEd

By Paul Goble

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It has long been common ground in the West that declining oil prices, either as the result of government policy or technological innovation, helped to bring down the Soviet Union and undermine Putin’s Russia because lower prices mean that Moscow doesn’t get the income that it had when the prices were higher.

That conviction has only been reinforced by the problems Vladimir Putin has had over the last decade at least in part because of falling oil and gas prices brought on by the shale oil revolution and declining international demand. And in most cases, this Western belief has been echoed by analysts and commentators in Russia itself.

But in Izvestiya, Dmitry Migunov argues such views are mistaken. In fact, he says, falling oil and gas prices have slowed the turn to other forms of energy and thus ensured Russia’s possession of major oil and gas reserves will remain a major source of income for it far longer than expected (iz.ru/858440/dmitrii-migunov/podslastili-slantcevaia-revoliutciia-v-ssha-okazalas-vygodna-rossii).

Trump’s Space Force Gets the Final Frontier All Wrong

BY PETER JUUL 

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Just before Valentine’s Day last month, NASA made one final call to Opportunity, the little Mars rover that had been trekking across the red planet since it arrived in 2004. The space agency lost contact with the robotic explorer in June 2018 during a massive planetary dust storm and had been attempting to reconnect with it ever since. To no avail: “With a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude,” NASA officials declared on February 13 that Opportunity was dead and its mission was over.

Americans from former President Barack Obama on down bid a fond farewell to what Wired called “the hardest-working robot in the solar system.” Indeed, it had lasted almost 15 years despite being designed to have a life span of just three months. Opportunity is survived on Mars by two other American robotic explorers: fellow rover Curiosity and the recently arrived InSight lander.

Trump Is Right About Huawei

By FRED KAPLAN

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President Donald Trump got something right. His administration’s recent rule barring the use of federal funds to buy products made by the Chinese telecom firm Huawei is sound national security policy. So is his urging of allied governments to do the same.

Even here, though, the Trump touch—the diplomatic equivalent of an inept gardener’s black thumb, turning even healthy plants to weed—has blighted the policy’s prospects.

To be fair, it would be a hard row to hoe for any president. Huawei is the world’s largest telecommunications manufacturer, with products selling in 170 countries, including in Europe, where it provides the infrastructure for networks under development by such giants as Vodafone, Deutsche Telekom, and BT Group. For these firms to cancel their contracts now would be very expensive, especially since Huawei’s wares are competitive with much more expensive brands.

A New Age of Warfare: How Internet Mercenaries Do Battle for Authoritarian Governments

by Mark Mazzetti, Adam Goldman, Ronen Bergman and Nicole Perlroth 

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… The Saudi government’s reliance on a firm from Israel, an adversary for decades, offers a glimpse of a new age of digital warfare governed by few rules and of a growing economy, now valued at $12 billion, of spies for hire.

Today even the smallest countries can buy digital espionage services, enabling them to conduct sophisticated operations like electronic eavesdropping or influence campaigns that were once the preserve of major powers like the United States and Russia. Corporations that want to scrutinize competitors’ secrets, or a wealthy individual with a beef against a rival, can also command intelligence operations for a price, akin to purchasing off-the-shelf elements of the National Security Agency or the Mossad.

NSO and a competitor, the Emirati firm DarkMatter, exemplify the proliferation of privatized spying. A monthslong examination by The New York Times, based on interviews with current and former hackers for governments and private companies and others as well as a review of documents, uncovered secret skirmishes in this burgeoning world of digital combat.

Intel offers AI breakthrough in quantum computing

By Tiernan Ray 

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We don't know why deep learning forms of neural networks achieve great success on many tasks; the discipline has a paucity of theory to explain its empirical successes. As Facebook's Yann LeCun has said, deep learning is like the steam engine, which preceded the underlying theory of thermodynamics by many years. 

But some deep thinkers have been plugging away at the matter of theory for several years now. 

On Wednesday, the group presented a proof of deep learning's superior ability to simulate the computations involved in quantum computing. According to these thinkers, the redundancy of information that happens in two of the most successful neural network types, convolutional neural nets, or CNNs, and recurrent neural networks, or RNNs, makes all the difference. 

Amnon Shashua, who is the president and chief executive of Mobileye, the autonomous driving technology company bought by chip giant Intel last year for $14.1 billion, presented the findings on Wednesday at a conference in Washington, D.C. hosted by The National Academy of Sciences called the Science of Deep Learning Conference. 

HOLD THE PHONE! THE THREATS LURKING BEHIND A MISSED CALL AND OTHER FORMS OF TELECOM FRAUD

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As our society evolves, so does our reliance on telecommunications technology. Cybercriminals prey on our daily use of electronic devices and continuously seek out new ways to exploit vulnerabilities and access information. Cooperation and information-sharing between law enforcement and the private sector has therefore become essential in the fight against these types of crime. One example of this collaboration is the joint Cyber-Telecom Crime Report 2019, published by Europol and Trend Micro today. The report gives an overview of how telecom fraud works and serves as a technical guide for stakeholders in the telecoms industry.

OVER €29 BILLION PER YEAR

This report highlights that telecom fraud is becoming a low-risk alternative to traditional financial crime. The reduced cost and increased availability of hacking equipment means this type of fraud is on the rise. The cost of telecommunications fraud is estimated to be €29 billion a year.

Five Tech Trends Driving Cybersecurity In 2019

Bob Bruns

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When industry analyst Gartner listed its top 10 technology trends for 2019, one of the primary themes that stood out was cybersecurity. Things continue to move fast on both sides of the equation, with both black hats and white hats evolving the sophistication of their methods and tools. Here are five things I believe will play a pivotal role in cybersecurity in the coming year.

1. Analytics And Automation

The intelligent enterprise of the future will use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to evolve, mature and even disrupt current business practices to get more effective results. Cybersecurity is an area that is ripe for the machine learning evolution where we can take massive sets of data, analyze them, and take action in an automated way or recommend action through insights and patterns developed over time. Protecting against ransomware is a good example of this and is an area that is maturing quickly, as organizations will use AI to identify attempted attacks and problem-solve ways to proactively protect themselves before they even get to the targeted person(s).

The Promise and Perils of AI: Q&A with Douglas Yeung

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Douglas Yeung is a social psychologist at RAND whose research has covered topics as diverse as social well-being, workforce diversity, and public opinion in Iran. He specializes in analyzing large volumes of social media posts for insights into human behavior. Before coming to RAND, he helped develop an app called Wertago (“the ultimate nightlife app for the ultimate night owl”) that was a grand prize winner in Google's first Android Developer Challenge.

You work on artificial intelligence. Let's start with a definition. When you say artificial intelligence, what do you mean?

It's really any kind of computing system that can augment our decisionmaking, or can even figure some things out on its own. The whole idea is to leverage the computing power that we have today to help make decisions, to help spot patterns and trends that we couldn't otherwise detect.

You've looked recently at the question of bias in AI. What's the concern there?

Defense Alone Won't Stop Cyber Threat To U.S. Finance

Taylor Armerding

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There are any number of reasons for a Fed chairman to lose sleep – he or she is, after all, overseeing the nation’s financial system – both its stability and its existential effect on the overall economy. So, it’s about more than whether or not to increase the prime interest rate.

There is responsibility for bank lending standards, tracking whether they are over-leveraged, whether they are too big to fail etc. And, as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley recently, there is the ongoing, escalating threat of cyberattacks.

Which is a somewhat unusual admission. Fed chairs tend not to go looking for high-profile media interviews, and if they do consent to one, tend to speak in broad generalities.

Can Amazon Reinvent the Traditional Supermarket?

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Amazon’s plans to launch physical grocery stores this year is just the latest affirmation that, ironically, bricks-and-mortar stores are crucial to the e-commerce giant’s future growth. Amazon may launch as many as 2,000 supermarkets in major U.S. cities, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal. It will be Amazon’s sixth physical retail format after Whole Foods, Amazon Books, Amazon Go, Amazon 4-Star and Amazon Pop-Up.

Amazon’s plans are likely to rattle major grocery purveyors such as Kroger’s and Walmart, whose shares fell on the news. But the expectation is that Amazon will introduce a different business model — one that merges bricks-and-mortar and online experiences, then powering it with data analytics, according to experts at Wharton and Columbia University who spoke about Amazon’s grocery-store strategy on the Knowledge@Wharton radio show on SiriusXM. (Listen to the podcast at the top of this page.)

Are security concerns over Huawei a boon for its European rivals?

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In the days of pre-internet capitalism the troubles of one dominant company in an industry tended to be good news for its rivals. In today’s hyperconnected world a threatened ban by Western governments of Huawei, the Chinese market leader in telecoms gear, is also a worry for its competitors. Both Ericsson, a Swedish company, and Nokia, a Finnish one, would prefer the geopolitical saga to end, the better to focus on competing for contracts related to the launch of super-speedy “fifth generation” (5g) mobile-phone networks.

The American government is not letting up its campaign to persuade allies to freeze Huawei out of 5g tenders. It worries that Huawei’s kit may contain “back doors”—deliberate security flaws inserted to allow Chinese spooks eavesdrop on, or attack, phone networks. Earlier this month, in a letter to Germany’s economics minister, America’s envoy to Berlin, Richard Grenell, threatened to cut back American co-operation with German security agencies if the country allowed Huawei or other Chinese firms to participate in the roll-out of 5g. Mike Pompeo, America’s secretary of state, suggested in Hungary recently that doing business with Huawei could tip decisions on where America stations troops.

America's Constant State of Hybrid War

by Jyri Raitasalo

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Hybrid warfare has been in the limelight for more than a decade within the Western strategic discourse. During the last five years, this slippery concept has mostly been attached to the malign actions of Russia towards the West. First, it has been claimed that Russia’s hybrid warfare towards the West—containing information warfare, cyber warfare and political warfare—has succeeded in attaining favorable outcomes for Russia. Thus, Russia has been able to achieve concrete security-related goals with its hybrid tools, according to this narrative.

Supposedly, from the Crimean Peninsula to Donbass, and from the Brexit vote to the 2016 presidential election in the United States, it was Russian hybrid warfare that excelled in bringing about outcomes that benefitted Russia. Surely enough, Russia cannot be blamed for trying to undermine the ability of the West to achieve its security interests. But trying does not equal succeeding. Evidence confirming Russia’s success is scarce—if not nonexistent. Buying Facebook ads does not equal having an influence on voters. Disrupting internet sites or stealing usernames, passwords, or credit card information can be awkward or troublesome, but they surely enough are not national-security threats. Even if the “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has noted, a whole industry of Russia’s successful hybrid warfare thesis is based on shaky—if not nonexistent—ground.

Huawei Redefines Video Experience with 5G Live Networks and Foldable Phones

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Huawei kicked off this year's Mobile World Congress with its ‘Day0 Forum’ in Barcelona. With the theme of building a fully connected intelligent world, the forum included industry insights of the latest trends.

At the ‘5G is ON’ industry insights, Huawei Executive Director and President of the Carrier Business Group Ryan Ding demonstrated the 4K video-on-demand service on a Huawei 5G foldable smartphone via a Vodafone Spain 5G live network powered by Huawei. This demo showcased the extraordinary Gbit/s-level bandwidth that 5G networks will provide anywhere, anytime.

"The wave of 5G is sweeping the globe, giving us a better life empowered by new technologies,” Ryan Ding said at the demo. “At the same time, the Gbit/s-level connections enabled by 5G and the monetization of experience fueled by CloudX services give global carriers new business opportunities." He added that Huawei will set up Open Labs to help its customers experience and innovate in 5G services on their networks in support of their success in the era of 5G.

Army Modernization: Priorities to get to the Army of 2028

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Mark F. Cancian: (In progress) – cold and rainy morning. We’re very privileged to have distinguished public servants joining us and Army veterans. We’ll pass over the fact that the panel is being moderated by a former Marine. (Laughter.)

Mark F. Cancian: Undersecretary McCarthy joined the administration after a distinguished career in government.

Mark F. Cancian: I have to turn my mic on. (Comes on mic.) All right. Ah, now you can all hear me. I apologize.

Mark F. Cancian: So Undersecretary McCarthy joined the administration after a distinguished career in industry and in government. He’s become famous or infamous for being a participant in “night court,” where the Army moved billions of dollars among accounts to align with the new National Defense Strategy. And I’m sure he’ll be talking about that. He served five years in the Army, including a tour in Afghanistan with the 75thRanger Regiment.

Mark F. Cancian: Congressman Brown represents Maryland’s Fourth District and serves on the Armed Services Committee. A former lieutenant governor and member of the House of Delegates, he was involved with bringing heath care to veterans and in coordinating the transfer of 60,000 jobs to Maryland as part of the BRAC round. And he retired as a colonel in the Army Reserve and – including a tour in Iraq.