Digitizing Nepal from Within the Himalayas

By Chan Jia Hao

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Last month, Nepal launched its first satellite, NepaliSat-1 into the orbit, joining other South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in owning a national satellite. Previously, Nepal has been relying on the South Asia Satellite, launched by India and offered to other South Asian nations for boosting domestic information and communications technology (ICT) connectivity. Nepal’s own satellite launch took a different turn, however, by not relying on India. Instead, Nepal gathered multilateral assistance from the United Nation’s BIRDS program, in collaboration with Japan’s Kyushu Institute of Technology for the launch.

This episode, Nepal’s breakthrough in international space collaboration, is only a glimpse of Kathmandu’s ambition to boost its overall technological capabilities and independence from India.

What to Make of India’s Absence from the Second Belt and Road Forum ?

By Bansari Kamdar

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Unsurprisingly, Indian leaders were absent from the Second Belt and Road Forum (BRF) for International Cooperation hosted by China in Beijing on April 26 and 27. New Delhi has been a vocal opponent of its neighbor China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a multi-billion dollar overseas infrastructure investment initiative spearheaded by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

India also boycotted the first BRF in 2017, citing its concern over the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project, China’s flagship BRI project in Pakistan. India cited issues of “sovereignty” and “territorial integrity” as the roots of its concerns. The CPEC project passes through Indian-claimed but Pakistan-administered portions of Kashmir.

China has reiterated that the Indian absence from the BRI festivities will not impact the Indo-China relationship. At a press conference about the BRF, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated that the ties between India and China were insulated from differences due to BRI, as reported by The Hindu.

Google’s Sundar Pichai: Privacy Should Not Be a Luxury Good

By Sundar Pichai

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Google products are designed to be helpful. They take the friction out of daily life (for example, by showing you the fastest route home at the end of a long day) and give you back time to spend on things you actually want to do. We feel privileged that billions of people trust products like Search, Chrome, Maps and Android to help them every day.

It’s a trust we match with a profound commitment to responsibility and a healthy dose of humility. Many words have been written about privacy over the past year, including in these pages. I believe it’s one of the most important topics of our time.

People today are rightly concerned about how their information is used and shared, yet they all define privacy in their own ways. I’ve seen this firsthand as I talk to people in different parts of the world. To the families using the internet through a shared device, privacy might mean privacy from one another. To the small-business owner who wants to start accepting credit card payments, privacy means keeping customer data secure. To the teenager sharing selfies, privacy could mean the ability to delete that data in the future.

Dunford Suggests Longer Military Presence In Afghanistan

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The United States will need to keep counterterrorism forces in Afghanistan until there is no insurgency left in the country, the top US general said on Wednesday, suggesting a far longer military presence even after more than 17 years of war.

“I think we will need to maintain a counterterrorism presence as long as an insurgency continues in Afghanistan,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford said during a congressional hearing.

This comes as the US in the past nine months started peace talks with the Taliban about withdrawal of US forces. 

In the last seven days, the US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad and some key members of the Taliban are holding talks on Afghan peace in Doha, however, the two sides so far have not reached a final deal on issues under debate which are troop withdrawal, counterterrorism assurances, a ceasefire and intra-Afghan dialogue.

Move to withdraw Rs700bn tax exemptions, says official

Kalbe Ali

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ISLAMABAD: With Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) scheduled to conclude a staff-level agreement on Friday, the two sides agreed on Wednesday that the country would withdraw tax exemptions amounting to Rs700 billion within two years.

During their discussions on Wednesday, the two sides worked out a financing gap of around $11 billion for the next fiscal year, 2019-20.

Under the understanding, the government will start withdrawing exemptions offered in various taxes amounting to around Rs350bn in the budget for 2019-20.

The two sides also agreed that Pakistan would increase costs of electricity and gas for the consumers in the next budget.

It has been agreed that the power sector regulator, the National Electric Power Regulatory Authority (Nepra), would be made autonomous and the government interference to take popular decisions would be minimised.

Re-emergence of Islamic State’s Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Anurag Sharma

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On Saturday, April 27, 2019, Islamic State’s (IS) central media outlet, Al-Furqan, released an 18-minute propaganda video featuring its ‘underground’ leader and self-proclaimed ‘Caliph Ibrahim’, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.1 It was the first time in half-decade, that Al-Baghdadi made a public appearance in a video message. Last time it was in summer of 2014 (04 July), when the IS leader appeared at the podium from the shadows of Friday prayer during the month of Ramadan at Mosul’s Great Mosque of Al-Nuri. In his message to his follower he called upon the Ummah (Muslim communities) around the world to “obey” him as the Caliph of the newly declared Caliphate and pay allegiance to the group. 2

In past, Al-Furqan used to mostly broadcast his audio messages and those of the IS leadership. Video messages used to come on very rare occasions and used to mostly carry gory images of brutal killing of IS hostages or dissenters. Therefore, the release of the latest video now has raised considerable interest among IS watchers, raising questions like its authenticity, the purpose behind its release and most importantly, the significance of timing of the release. In the following paragraphs, an attempt is made to decipher some of these questions.

Bangladesh: The Rohingya Issue: No Solution in Sight!:

By Dr. S. Chandrasekharan.

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It is to the credit of Sheikh Hasina that despite intense pressure from interested groups, she has managed to keep the Rohingya issue as a bilateral one and any criticism so far has been managed internally. But with the overwhelming success of Hasina in the last General elections and an assured stability in administration for the next five years there are calls that Bangladesh should take a tougher stand as the issue has already been internationalized and more importantly the bilateral talks have stalled with no progress despite four meetings of the Joint Working Group with the last one meeting recently in the first week of this month at Naypyitaw.

A million refugees are in the camps here in Southern Bangladesh near Cox’s Bazaar with no prospect of their immediate return.

As one who has seen the situation in the refugee camps in southern Nepal some years ago, of the Bhutanese of Nepali origin who numbered about one hundred thousand, one can imagine the chaotic conditions in Rohingya camps where a million people are housed. In Nepal the refugees were well behaved innocent people and well-disciplined and yet there were problems galore. In the Rohingya camps, there is said to be total lawlessness and the camp officials are afraid to move around after sunset. The ARSA is said to have already infiltrated in many camps and there have been instances of human trafficking. Refugees have been found sneaking regularly into Mizoram and as far away as Malaysia. Even Chennai has a small Rohingya refugee community in Kelambakkam! In addition, there are the drug pushers and Yaba tablets are available in plenty and are being transported to other regions!

Nepal Inching Toward China

By Kamal Dev Bhattarai

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In what appears to be a delicate balance between major powers, the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) led government of KP Sharma Oli is slowly but gradually taking steps to benefit economically from China.

Two significant developments in recent weeks clearly show that Nepal wants to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and use Chinese routes and ports in order to lessen its heavy dependence on India. Though there has been some delay in the selection of specific projects under BRI, with the exception of the cross-border Kerung-Kathmandu railway, Nepal has shown unwavering attraction to BRI.

Nepal’s President Bidya Devi Bhandari participated in Second Belt and Road Forum (BRF) for International Cooperation held in Beijing in late April. A joint communique issued after the leaders’ roundtable mentions the Nepal-China Trans-Himalayan Multi-dimensional Connectivity Network, including the Nepal-China cross-border railway, an ambitious connectivity project which is drawing international attention. China wants to develop this railway line as a gateway to South Asia. This is a first time that Nepal’s specific project has been mentioned in official BRI documents, but it is still not listed among the deliverables.

INSIDE CHINA'S MASSIVE SURVEILLANCE OPERATION

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THE WOMAN REMEMBERS the first time she got a smartphone.

It was 2011, and she was living in Hotan, an oasis town in Xinjiang, in northwest China. The 30-year-old, Nurjamal Atawula, loved to take pictures of her children and exchange strings of emoji with her husband while he was out. In 2013, Atawula downloaded WeChat, the Chinese social messaging app. Not long after, rumors circulated among her friends: The government could track your location through your phone. At first, she didn’t believe them.

In early 2016, police started making routine checks on Atawula’s home. Her husband was regularly called to the police station. The police informed him they were suspicious of his WeChat activity. Atawula’s children began to cower in fear at the sight of a police officer.

The harassment and fear finally reached the point that the family decided to move to Turkey. Atawula’s husband, worried that Atawula would be arrested, sent her ahead while he stayed in Xinjiang and waited for the children’s passports.

“The day I left, my husband was arrested,” Atawula said. When she arrived in Turkey in June 2016, her phone stopped working—and by the time she had it repaired, all her friends and relatives had deleted her from their WeChat accounts. They feared that the government would punish them for communicating with her.

The Pentagon Reports: China’s Military Power

by Andrew S. Erickson

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As Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Randall G. Schriver emphasized in his rollout remarks on May 2, 2019, “our annual report to Congress, which we refer to as the China Military Power Report… is our authoritative statement on how we view developments in the Chinese military, as well as how that integrates with our overall strategy.” 

Weighing in at a hefty 123 pages, this year’s document is nearly an inch thick. In terms of substance, it compares favorably among its seventeen predecessors. Among the report’s greatest strengths: as with previous iterations, it offers new data points and clarifications available nowhere else in authoritative form. This underscores the power of the U.S. government to disclose some of its collected information and accompanying analysis, a power this author and others believe should be used far more frequently.

U.S.-China: A Tariff Threat Ups the Ante as Trade Talks Inch Toward the Finish

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The Big Picture

An escalating trade war between China and the United States, including exchanges of tariffs and threats of more, has contributed to a global economic cooling over the past year. As the two powers have worked toward a mutual understanding over the final form of a trade deal between them, they have engaged in a lengthy set of negotiations, which appear to be entering their final phase. But some sticky points of contention — and room for escalation — remain.

What Happened

Can NSA Stop China Copying Its Cyber Weapons?

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. and THERESA HITCHENS

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WASHINGTON: Adversaries have been copying and stealing each others’ weaponsever since Ape A threw a rock at Ape B and Ape B got the bright idea to throw it back. But recent revelations from Symantec and The New York Times suggest this problem is much bigger with cyber weapons. Why? In order to attack an enemy’s computer, they have to copy their code onto it. It’s like bombing an enemy with munitions that scatter their own blueprints around the blast site.

US hacking tools have gone astray before, most notoriously when a mysterious group called Shadow Brokers repeatedly released National Security Agency code for hackers around the globe to use in attacks like WannaCry. But cybersecurity analysts at Symantec have found evidence that hackers working for China’s Ministry of State Security were using NSA-built cyber weapons “at least a year prior to the Shadow Brokers leak.” (To avoid offending nation-states, the Symantec report only IDs the Chinese as “Buckeye” and NSA as “Equation Group”). Symantec’s suggested explanation: “one possibility is that Buckeye may have engineered its own version of the tools from artifacts found in captured network traffic, possibly from observing an Equation Group attack.”

Revealed: new evidence of China's mission to raze the mosques of Xinjiang

Lily Kuo 

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Around this time of the year, the edge of the Taklamakan desert in far western China should be overflowing with people. For decades, every spring thousands of Uighur Muslims would converge on the Imam Asim shrine, a group of buildings and fences surrounding a small mud tomb believed to contain the remains of a holy warrior from the eighth century.

Pilgrims from across the Hotan oasis would come seeking healing, fertility, and absolution, trekking through the sand in the footsteps of those ahead of them. It was one of the largest shrine festivals in the region. People left offerings and tied pieces of cloth to branches, markers of their prayers.

Visiting a sacred shrine three times, it was believed, was as good as completing the hajj, a journey many in underdeveloped southern Xinjiangcould not afford.Before and after images of the Imam Asim Shrine. Credit: Digital Globe/ Planet Labs

Xi Jinping Wanted Global Dominance. He Overshot.

By Yi-Zheng Lian

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The endgame in the trade war between China and the United States seems near. President Trump, betting with real currency — American strength — apparently has the upper hand, and the concessions President Xi Jinping is likely to make won’t be mere tokens. When — if? — an agreement is finally announced, Mr. Trump will surely fire off bragging tweets, partly to shore up his credentials for a second term, amid personal and policy troubles. For Mr. Xi, almost any deal could mean a very serious loss of face.

Mr. Xi assumed power when China was still riding high on its so-called economic miracle (and the United States remained mired in the aftereffects of the 2008-9 recession). He became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) in late 2012 and president of the People’s Republic in early 2013. His anticorruption campaign was instantly popular. He championed the “Chinese Dream,” a vague vision of prosperity, strength and well-being for the country and its people, that seemed to fire up many citizens. His proposal to President Barack Obama to establish a “New Model of Major Country Relations” could only please Han-majority Chinese with imperial yearnings.

RiskSec 2019: Israel strike on Hamas hackers did not ‘cross the rubicon’

Bradley Barth

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Israel’s air strike of a Hamas cyber operations facility last weekend is not a game changer that opens the door for future military attacks as a common response to offensive cyber activity, according to Duke University Cyber Scholar Zhanna Malekos Smith, speaking at SC Media’s RiskSec conference today.

“There are some people who say, ‘We’ve crossed the rubicon now… and what will this portend for the future of cyber international relations and conflict in cyberspace?'” said Smith, a Reuben Everett Cyber Scholar at Duke’s law school, and a former captain in the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

But Smith said she had adopted “a more moderate perspective on this,” noting that in this particular case, the bombing was part of a larger series of deadly engagements between Israel and Gaza militants. Indeed, prior to reaching a cease-fire on Monday, Israel reportedly struck hundreds of targets in Gaza amidst claims that militants launched more than 600 rockets toward Israel. At least four Israelis and 23 Palestinians were reportedly killed in the fighting.

RiskSec 2019: Israel strike on Hamas hackers did not ‘cross the rubicon’

Bradley Barth 

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Israel’s air strike of a Hamas cyber operations facility last weekend is not a game changer that opens the door for future military attacks as a common response to offensive cyber activity, according to Duke University Cyber Scholar Zhanna Malekos Smith, speaking at SC Media’s RiskSec conference today.

“There are some people who say, ‘We’ve crossed the rubicon now… and what will this portend for the future of cyber international relations and conflict in cyberspace?'” said Smith, a Reuben Everett Cyber Scholar at Duke’s law school, and a former captain in the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

But Smith said she had adopted “a more moderate perspective on this,” noting that in this particular case, the bombing was part of a larger series of deadly engagements between Israel and Gaza militants. Indeed, prior to reaching a cease-fire on Monday, Israel reportedly struck hundreds of targets in Gaza amidst claims that militants launched more than 600 rockets toward Israel. At least four Israelis and 23 Palestinians were reportedly killed in the fighting.

What Effects Will Tighter U.S. Sanctions on Iran’s Oil Have?

by Amy M. Jaffe

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With significant risks now looming over global energy markets, the United States should be careful in evaluating any future oil sanctions, Amy Myers Jaffe writes in the following Q & A which first appeared on CFR.org. Oil prices ticked up a few percentage points after the announcement. Do you expect prices to remain higher, or is there enough supply in the market to cover a drop in Iranian exports?

U.S. sanctions had already curbed Iran’s oil production substantially earlier this year. The Trump administration’s tough stand on waivers could remove an additional five hundred thousand barrels per day or more from the market in the coming weeks. This would come on top of production cuts planned by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and ongoing production and export problems in Libya and Venezuela.

Oil prices will continue to be sensitive to any supply disruptions, despite expectations of rising U.S. oil production and possible production increases from Saudi Arabia. Should prices begin to rise precipitously, the Trump administration could make sales from the United States’ strategic petroleum reserve.

However the S-400 Standoff Ends, U.S.-Turkey Ties May Only Get Worse

Iyad Dakka 

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The United States and Turkey have engaged in extensive diplomacy for over a year and a half now to try and resolve the festering dispute over the Turkish government’s decision to buy the advanced S-400 missile defense system from Russia. President Donald Trump and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have spoken about it personally several times, including in a phone call late last month. But the rift between the two is still too great to bridge. How this standoff is resolved, if at all, could permanently alter the trajectory of U.S.-Turkey relations, and by extension, Turkey’s role in NATO and its other Western ties.

Washington wants Turkey to terminate the S-400 acquisition, arguing that the deployment of such a weapon system on Turkish territory could compromise the operational effectiveness of the new F-35 fighter jet. Turkey, one of several countries involved in the long-delayed, trillion-dollar F-35 program, has ordered more than 100 of the jets, and was set to have the first ones delivered later this year. Turkey has argued that the S-400 decision is a sovereign matter, and that if the concerns are technical, it would work with the U.S. and NATO partners to mitigate any risks. ...

The US, Iran and a New American Deployment

By George Friedman

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The United States has announced that it is deploying a carrier battle group and a bomber group to the Middle East. The reason given is that U.S. intelligence has detected an Iranian threat against U.S. and allied assets in the region. The United States has stated that it does not want war with Iran but is prepared to defend its interests in the region. It’s not clear what threat the U.S. detected, but since this force will take some time to reach the area, we can assume that the threat is not perceived to be imminent. And we will assume that the type of threat the U.S. believes is posed by Iran can be countered by the type and amount of air power deployed. But as with all such deployments, there are military, psychological and political components that must be understood.

Fallout From the U.S. Drawdown

Since the Obama administration, Washington’s strategy has been to recognize that the United States’ massive interventions in the Middle East failed to achieve their political goals but imposed substantial costs on the U.S. military and unbalanced the U.S. global posture. They may have disrupted al-Qaida but did not create effective regimes that could themselves suppress jihadist groups. The deployments were neither achieving their goal nor supporting U.S. strategies. Washington understood that withdrawing U.S. forces from the region would have political consequences but concluded that the threat posed by these consequences was acceptable.

What Effects Will Tighter U.S. Sanctions on Iran’s Oil Have?

by Amy M. Jaffe

Source Link

With significant risks now looming over global energy markets, the United States should be careful in evaluating any future oil sanctions, Amy Myers Jaffe writes in the following Q & A which first appeared on CFR.org. 

Oil prices ticked up a few percentage points after the announcement. Do you expect prices to remain higher, or is there enough supply in the market to cover a drop in Iranian exports?

U.S. sanctions had already curbed Iran’s oil production substantially earlier this year. The Trump administration’s tough stand on waivers could remove an additional five hundred thousand barrels per day or more from the market in the coming weeks. This would come on top of production cuts planned by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and ongoing production and export problems in Libya and Venezuela.

Liverpool and Tottenham Fail Better in the Champions League Semifinal

By Ed Caesar

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Before the second game of his team’s Champions League semifinal against Barcelona, Liverpool’s manager, Jürgen Klopp, summoned Samuel Beckett. In the first game of the two-game series, at Camp Nou, in Barcelona, a week earlier, Liverpool had played well, and lost 3–0. One of the goals Liverpool conceded—a rasping, freakishly curved free kick by the world’s best player, Lionel Messi—was regarded as among the finest ever scored in the competition. In the second game, at Anfield, Klopp’s team would not only have to stop an excellent Barcelona attack from adding to the three-goal lead but score at least three itself. And they would need to do so without their star center-forward, Mo Salah, who was ruled out of the game with a concussion. Liverpool’s task was, many believed, near impossible.

The Dark Side of Sunlight How Transparency Helps Lobbyists and Hurts the Public

By James D'Angelo and Brent Ranalli

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The U.S. Congress is broken. Legislators prioritize political posturing and self-aggrandizement over the actual business of legislation. They have caused two costly and pointless shutdowns of the federal government in the past two years alone. Despite his campaign promises, President Donald Trump has not, in fact, drained the swamp. The Republicans’ 2017 tax reform bill set off a frenzy of lobbying, and in the 2018 midterm elections, total campaign spending broke the $5 billion mark for the first time. The only lawmakers who buck the party line tend to be those who have already announced their retirement—and even then, they dissent only rarely and with trepidation. No wonder 76 percent of Americans, according to a Gallup poll, disapprove of Congress.

This dysfunction started well before the Trump presidency. It has been growing for decades, despite promise after promise and proposal after proposal to reverse it. Many explanations have been offered, from the rise of partisan media to the growth of gerrymandering to the explosion of corporate money. But one of the most important causes is usually overlooked: transparency. Something usually seen as an antidote to corruption and bad government, it turns out, is leading to both.

A New Brexit Countdown: What the U.K. Could Do Before Oct. 31

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Last month's agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom to move the official date of Brexit to Oct. 31 has somewhat reduced the sense of urgency connected to the United Kingdom's departure from the Continental bloc. But while delaying Brexit has bought British politicians some time, it has not eliminated the divisions within Prime Minister Theresa May's government, reduced the fragmentation in the House of Commons or eliminated long-term questions about the final shape of the Brexit deal. Indeed, the coming weeks and months will be plenty full of Brexit drama; there are several possibilities for how events will unfold, and we have outlined them below.

The Big Picture

The decision to postpone Brexit until Oct. 31 has reduced immediate uncertainty about the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union, but it has also left long-term questions about the future unanswered. In the meantime, British politicians remain as divided as ever about the kind of Brexit that they want.

Huawei: Fears In The West Are Misplaced And Could Backfire In The Long Run

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Western fears of Chinese telcoms giant Huawei infiltrating their technological infrastructure are rooted in fears of China's rise. Three of the "Five Eyes Network" of English-speaking states that share intelligence - the US, Australia and New Zealand - have blocked their local firms from using Huawei tech in building their 5G networks. The UK and Canada are under pressure to follow suit.

But a lot of these fears are misplaced and cutting Huawei out of the picture could backfire in the long run. Not only would it limit Western access to new, state-of-the-art technology, it could create a world split along technological lines.

Depending on who you talk to, you'll get vastly differing portrayals of Huawei. Many of the concerns are based on the idea that the company is in bed with the Chinese government and point to founder, Ren Zhengfei's background as a People's Liberation Army engineer. Yet Ren only owns about 1.4% of the company's stock - the rest is owned by more than 80,000 of Huawei's employees and it is a private company, not a state-owned enterprise.

Is technology good or bad for learning?

Saro Mohammed

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I’ll bet you’ve read something about technology and learning recently. You may have read that device use enhances learning outcomes. Or perhaps you’ve read that screen time is not good forkids. Maybe you’ve read that there’s no link between adolescents’ screen time and their well-being. Or that college students’ learning declines the more devices are present in their classrooms.

If ever there were a case to be made that more research can cloud rather than clarify an issue, technology use and learning seems to fit the bill. This piece covers what the research actually says, some outstanding questions, and how to approach the use of technology in learning environments to maximize opportunities for learning and minimize the risk of doing harm to students.

THE GOOD

In my recent posts, I have frequently cited the mixed evidence about blended learning, which strategically integrates in-person learning with technology to enable real-time data use, personalized instruction, and mastery-based progression. One thing that this nascent evidence base does show is that technology can be linked to improved learning. When technology is integrated into lessons in ways that are aligned with good in-person teaching pedagogy, learning can be better than without technology.

New authorities mean lots of new missions at Cyber Command

By: Mark Pomerleau  

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Leaders at U.S. Cyber Command have used new authorities to conduct more cyberspace operations in the last few months than in the previous 10 years, senior Department of Defense officials said.

“I would say that in 8, 9, 10 years under the old decision process, I can count on less than two fingers the number of operations conducted,” a senior Department of Defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told reporters in April.

The new process, called National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM) 13 and minted in August 2018, replaced an Obama administration-era process, which required presidential approval for offensive and defensive cyber operations outside U.S. networks.

Despite praising new offensive cyber authorities, officials are still unclear how the process will work exactly.

AI in packaging: Defining terms, assessing impact—Part 1

By Ray Chalmers 

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AI-enabled sensors, motors and controllers will mean self-adjusting automation on packaging lines. How data science intersects with machine engineering for smarter and more valuable packaging operations. Spend a little time investigating the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on packaging equipment and processing lines and it quickly becomes apparent the improvements AI holds for higher efficiencies, better quality and improved safety are just emerging.

AI covers a number of engineering-related goals: better predictive maintenance, the concept of zero downtime, clear traceability related to standards compliance and increased worker engagement. Indeed, “smart” devices—such as motors, controllers, sensors and more imparting improved algorithms to robots, conveyors, checkweighers and entire packaging lines—promise to engage workers rather than replace them. “Automate tasks, not replace workers” is the mantra.

How we get to the next big battery breakthrough

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As much as any other single development, China’s rise over the past two decades has remade the landscape of global politics. Find out more when you subscribe to World Politics Review (WPR). 

As much as any other single development, China’s rise over the past two decades has remade the landscape of global politics. Beginning with its entry into the World Trade Organization in December 2001, China rapidly transformed its economy from a low-cost “factory to the world” to a global leader in advanced technologies. Along the way, it has transformed global supply chains, but also international diplomacy, leveraging its success to become the primary trading and development partner for emerging economies across Asia, Africa and Latin America. 

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang presents the government’s “work report” during the second session of the 13th National People’s Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, March 5, 2019 (Imaginechina photo via AP Images). 

Nation state actors, affiliates behind increasing amount of data breaches

By Larry Dignan for Between the Lines

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Cyberattacks by nation states and parties affiliated with them represented 23% of data breaches, up from 12% in 2018 and 19% in 2017, according to Verizon's Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR).

The 12th annual data breach report were based on 41,000 cybersecurity incidents and more than 2,000 data breaches. At a high level, the DBIR report outlined the following:

A quarter of all breaches were associated with espionage;

C-level executives were 12x more likely to be the target of social incidents and 9x more likely to be a target of social breaches;

Ransomware is the No. 2 ranked malware type and accounts for 24% of cases;

Cybercriminals were targeting cloud-based email accounts and leveraging stolen credentials.

How an electronic warfare update could help the Navy

By: Adam Stone  

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The Navy wants to harden its aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers and warships against an evermore hostile electronic warfare environment. And to do so, the service recently awarded Lockheed Martin an $184 million contract.

The contract is for ongoing production of Block 2 systems that are part of the Surface Electronic Warfare Improvement Program, or SEWIP.

SEWIP supports AN/SLQ-32(V), a shipboard electronic warfare system that delivers electronic support and countermeasure protection for U.S. and international navies.

The Block 2 upgrade “increases the capability of the system significantly,” said Joe Ottaviano, director at Lockheed Martin Rotary and Mission Systems. “The number of threats and signals out there is increasing exponentially, and the system has to be able to handle those more complicated threats. It also brings the system into the digital age as the first open-architecture EW system that the Navy had moved on.”