China’s Hydropower Projects on River Brahmaputra

Amit Ranjan

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A number of hydropower projects on the Chinese side of River Brahmaputra are a cause of concern for India. While some of these worries may be genuine, scholars argue that others stemming from the fear of a decline in water flow are unfounded.

On 23 January 2013, three hydropower projects – Dagu, Jiacha and Jixu – on Yarlung Tsnagpo, known as the Brahmaputra in India, were listed in the State Council of China’s energy plan for the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15). These three hydro projects were in addition to the 510 megawatt (MW) Zangmu, located in the Gyaca in Tibet. Its construction began in 2010 and, in October 2015, the Zangmu dam became fully operationalised. Zangmu is considered to be the world’s highest-altitude hydropower station. It has a capacity of producing 2.5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year.

Among the three new dams planned in 2013, Dagu (640 MW) is bigger than Zangmu. It lies 18 kilometres upstream of Zangmu. Jiacha is a 320-MW dam located in the middle reaches of River Brahmaputra, downstream of Zangmu. The third is the 560-MW Jiexu dam. It is 11 kilometres upstream of Zangmu.

Addressing the concerns expressed by India over the three planned dams on River Brahmaputra, in a press conference on 4 February 2013, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying, said:

Exclusive: India data-curb plan 'anathema', U.S. tech giants plan pushback

Aditya Kalra

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A government-appointed panel in July recommended setting up a regulator for information that is anonymised or devoid of personal details but critical for companies to build their businesses.

The panel proposed a mechanism for firms to share data with other entities - even competitors - saying this would spur the digital ecosystem. The report, if adopted by the government, will form the basis of a new law to regulate such data.

But the U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC), part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, calls imposed data sharing “anathema” to promoting competition and says this undermines investments made by companies to process and collect such information, according to a draft letter for the Indian government.

“USIBC and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are categorically opposed to mandates that require the sharing of proprietary data,” says the USIBC’s previously unreported letter, which is likely to be completed and submitted in coming weeks to India’s information-technology ministry.

“It will also be tantamount to confiscation of investors’ assets and undermine intellectual property protections.”

Pakistan under the China Model of Governance

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Key Points

Pakistan’s top spy agency, backed by the Army, controls the media, both print and electronic, and is stifling the voice of pro-democracy Pakistanis.

Most judges in Pakistan’s higher judiciary cannot resist the advances and ambitions of Pakistan’s spy agency to control the country by stealth.

Kidnapping, humiliating and torturing journalists who speak for constitutionalism have become the norm.

The remnants of military rule, in both person and ideology, haunt Pakistan today.

Pakistan is fast sliding into an undeclared authoritarian rule.

Summary

On 21 July 2020, a senior journalist, Matiullah Jan, who is known for his outspoken views, was abducted from outside a school where his wife worked as a teacher in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Footage from two CCTV cameras showed a dozen persons in plain clothes and a few armed persons in police uniform in five vehicles approached and apprehended Mr Jan in the street and bundled him into one of their cars, which then drove away. The incident fuelled an outcry, which prompted the release of Mr Jan after 12 hours of illegal custody. He was released by being driven late at night to a deserted location on the outskirts of Islamabad and abandoned there.

Which Way the Dragon? Sharpening Allied Perceptions of China’s Strategic Trajectory

Ross Babbage
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Given the rapid pace of change throughout Asia in recent decades, assessing China’s longer-term trajectory – and that of the Indo-Pacific region as a whole – represents a huge challenge for defense and security planners. Attempts to predict China’s strategic posture 15 to 30 years from now are hampered by a far more volatile security environment than that which governed the Cold War era. Yet in spite of the many strategic dislocations of the 21st century, most Western policymakers continue to rely upon the periodic strategic assessment principles regarding China that were practiced during the relatively stable late 20th century. The resulting policies are frequently and necessarily revised in the face of contemporary economic, political, and even epidemiological disruptions.

In Which Way the Dragon?, CSBA Nonresident Fellow Ross Babbage and colleagues argue for a new, scenario-based approach to defense and security planning in the Indo-Pacific. Drawing upon expert analysis of current conditions, three to four overarching scenarios for China should be considered as potential guideposts over the next 15 years. Each outcome would include a series of lead indicators, allowing analysts to determine which future scenario China is headed towards, prepare for potential alternatives in advance, and make adjustments to strategies, operational concepts, and military and security systems when necessary. The end result should markedly reduce the uncertainties about the strategic environment in the 2035 timeframe and provide greatly improved foundations for confident decisions on security policy and capability development. In short, this approach offers a superior way of addressing the security challenges faced by the Western allies and their security partners in the Indo-Pacific.

Why is the Trump administration banning TikTok and WeChat?

Geoffrey Gertz

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Late Wednesday night, President Trump issued executive orders that will effectively ban two major Chinese apps from the U.S. market. The orders state that, 45 days from now, Americans will be prohibited from carrying out any transactions with the parent companies of TikTok and WeChat—meaning U.S. companies and individuals couldn’t advertise with the platforms, offer them for download via app stores, or enter into licensing agreements with them. The decision will have both immediate and long-term implications for the companies and their American consumers, for U.S.-China relations, and for the broader conflict over the future of the internet.

WHY IS THE US GOVERNMENT BANNING TIKTOK AND WECHAT?

The executive orders argue TikTok and WeChat should be banned from the U.S. market due to national security concerns. Yet on the surface neither appear to touch on traditional issues of national security, such as access to classified information on weapons or intelligence systems. Instead, the concern is primarily around data security and data privacy. TikTok is a social networking app for sharing short user-produced video clips, popular particularly among teenagers, with an estimated 100 million users in the U.S. and many more around the world. WeChat is a “super app” which includes messaging, social media, and payment platforms; while it is not as popular in the U.S. as TikTok, it is extensively used by the Chinese diaspora to connect with family and friends in China. Like other social networking apps, both TikTok and WeChat collect extensive data on their users, and the core American concern appears to be that the Chinese government will be able to access this data and potentially leverage it for espionage or blackmail. U.S. officials also worry the apps censor political speech and could be used to spread misinformation.

FIVE CRISES AROUND EUROPE NOT TO BE FORGOTTEN DESPITE COVID-19

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The COVID-19 pandemic understandably dominates both the headlines and policymakers’ agendas, but there are other crises brewing around Europe that receive far less media coverage. This Clingendael Alert highlights five political and military crises that stubbornly refuse to take a holiday break and which might well come to overshadow the summer season. The list is far from exhaustive; in its latest Crisis Watch, the International Crisis Group tracked no less than 16 deteriorating conflicts, and the planet continues to face climate emergencies, as witnessed by floods in Ukraine and China and locust plagues in the Horn of Africa and elsewhere.

The New Silk Road and the Maghreb Region

By Dr. Mordechai Chaziza

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Ever since the launch of the BRI in 2013, Beijing has shown great interest in the Maghreb region as an entry point to European and African markets. Beijing has prioritized commercial relations over political influence in the Maghreb. While the current BRI map does not officially include the Maghreb region (by design, as the BRI is more a loose brand than a strict program), Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) have been signed between China and every country in the Maghreb, demonstrating that China is expanding its foothold in the region.

China’s most significant 21st century diplomatic and economic activity is the launching of the new Silk Road project, dubbed the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI, a sprawling network of trade and commercial ties between China and various world regions, is the flagship foreign policy of the Xi Jinping administration and the Chinese Communist Party. The BRI seeks to open up new markets and secure global supply chains to help generate sustained Chinese economic growth, thereby contributing to social stability at home.

The BRI has both a maritime and a land-based component: the Maritime Silk Road Initiative (MSRI) and the Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB). The sub-branches of the SREB (a series of land-based infrastructure projects including roads, railways, and pipelines) and the MSRI (ports and coastal development) would create a multinational network connecting China to Europe and Africa via the Middle East. This is intended to facilitate trade, improve access to foreign energy resources, and give China access to new markets.

Is China Beating the U.S. to AI Supremacy?

Graham Allison

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The US-China Race for Artificial Intelligence

Combining decades of experience advancing frontier technologies, on the one hand, and analyzing national security decisionmaking, on the other, we have been collaborating over the past year in an effort to understand the national security implications of China’s great leap forward in artificial intelligence (AI). Our purpose in this essay is to sound an alarm over China’s rapid progress and the current prospect of it overtaking the United States in applying AI in the decade ahead; to explain why AI is for the autocracy led by the Chinese Communist Party (hereafter, the “Party”) an existential priority; to identify key unanswered questions about the dangers of an unconstrained AI arms race between the two digital superpowers; and to point to the reasons why we believe that this is a race the United States can and must win.

We begin with four key points. First, most Americans believe that U.S. leadership in advanced technologies is so entrenched that it is unassailable. Likewise, many in the American national security community insist that in the AI arena China can never be more than a “near-peer competitor.” Both are wrong. In fact, China stands today as a full-spectrum peer competitor of the United States in commercial and national security applications of AI. Beijing is not just trying to master AI—it is succeeding. Because AI will have as transformative an impact on commerce and national security over the next two decades as semiconductors, computers and the web have had over the past quarter century, this should be recognized as a matter of grave national concern.1,2,3

Chinese Hackers Have Pillaged Taiwan's Semiconductor Industry

ANDY GREENBERG

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TAIWAN HAS FACED existential conflict with China for its entire existence and has been targeted by China's state-sponsored hackers for years. But an investigation by one Taiwanese security firm has revealed just how deeply a single group of Chinese hackers was able to penetrate an industry at the core of the Taiwanese economy, pillaging practically its entire semiconductor industry.

Facebook Offensive Security Engineer Amanda Rousseau aka "Malware Unicorn" uses the power of Twitter to answer common questions about hacking. As an offensive security engineer, Amanda has seen just about everything when it comes computer hacking. What exactly is the difference between a black hat and a white hat hacker? Is there such thing as a red hat hacker? What's the point of malware, is it just to be annoying? Amanda answers all these Twitter questions, and much more!

WIRED is where tomorrow is realized. It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our lives—from culture to business, science to design. The breakthroughs and innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking, new connections, and new industries.

Violence without Borders: The Internationalization of Crime and Conflict

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Highlights

Threats like terrorism, civil war, drug trafficking, and wildlife poaching are at their highest points in decades and spilling across increasingly porous borders.

The Policy Research Report "Violence without Borders: The Internationalization of Crime and Conflict" argues that the need for regional and international coordination to foster stability and the rule of law is greater than ever.

The report unpacks the political economy of crime, conflict, and violence—a critical contribution to designing effective humanitarian, development, and security assistance.

With the increasing internationalization of conflict, crime, and violence, domestic political stability and law enforcement capability have now become regional and global public goods.

Rise and Fall? The Rise and Fall of ISIS in Libya

Dr Azeem Ibrahim
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This monograph places events in Libya since 2011 into their historical and social context and argues a form of radical Islamism, linked to long-standing national defiance of outside control, remains a factor even after the defeat of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). This entrenched radicalism means extremist Islamist groups may still make a renewed bid for power until the current civil war is resolved. At the time of this writing, the military campaign by the Libyan National Army has stalled outside Tripoli. Now is the time for the United States and the wider international community to step up and help Libya transition to a unitary government with conventional elections. If this fails to happen and ISIS is able to exploit the current chaos, the hard-won victory over the group in Libya may yet turn out to have been illusory.

Public-Private Collaboration to Counter the Use of the Internet for Terrorist Purposes

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This report is from Phase 1 of GIFCT’s research network initiative. Please note that during this time the network was known as the Global Research Network on Terrorism and Technology (GRNTT) and was delivered by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

This paper summarises the outcomes of a three-month research project conducted by RUSI’s Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies. It draws on semi-structured interviews conducted in July and August 2018 with communication service providers, government, law enforcement and international agencies involved in the response to the online terrorist threats. Details from a cross-sectoral workshop held at RUSI with 25 representatives from government, law enforcement and the private sector involved in the response to either terrorist financing or the terrorist use of online communications services were also included in the research. This paper put forward a number of key recommendations, which include that the design of the response to the online terrorist threat should mitigate the risk of unintended consequences similar to those observed as a result of counterterrorist financing regulations, and as a complement to regulations, policymakers and communication service providers should identify areas in which public–private collaboration could strengthen the response to the terrorist use of online communication services.

Read full report

The Role of the Internet in Facilitating Violent Extremism: Insights from Former Right-Wing Extremists

By Tiana Gaudette, Dr. Ryan Scrivens and Dr. Vivek Venkatesh
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In the past five years, it has become increasingly common for practitioners and policymakers in the Western world to draw from the insights of former extremists to generate knowledge on the prevalence and contours of violent extremism and terrorism. While some researchers and practitioners have raised concerns about including formers in this space, ranging from discussions about their reliability and credibility to questions about whether their inclusion could raise concerns in the public sphere, others have argued that formers can provide valuable insight into issues that terrorism scholars, amongst many others, are concerned with. To illustrate, researchers have shown a growing interest in drawing from the voices of former extremists to address key questions in terrorism and extremism studies, including – but not limited to – empirical studies focusing on processes of radicalisation to extremism, processes of deradicalisation and disengagement from extremism, or both pathways in and out of extremism. Some research is also beginning to emerge on how formers think that violent extremism can be combated as well as the impact of using formers to prevent violent extremism.

Regardless of the above-mentioned developments, scholars who are working in the field of violent online political extremism have been much slower to bring formers to the table. This is in light of the fact that many researchers, practitioners, and policymakers continue to raise questions about the role of the Internet in facilitating violent extremism.

The Integrated Review: Harnessing the UK’s Financial Capabilities in Support of National SecurityTom Keatinge

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As the UK government undertakes its Integrated Review of foreign policy, defence, security and international development to re-examine the UK’s priorities and objectives, this paper argues that one of the UK’s great strengths remains underexploited.

As one of the largest economies and, importantly, most central financial hubs in the world, the UK is well positioned to capitalise on these advantages, to contribute further across the fields of foreign policy, defence and security. 

Today, the UK finds itself at a crucial juncture: some argue that Brexit will lead to the inevitable diminution of the UK’s global influence; the UK government is seeking to develop wide-ranging trade agreements and overseas business opportunities; and hostile foreign powers are seeking to better the UK at home and abroad via covert and overt financial means.

Effectively exploiting the country’s financial tools and capabilities to combat illicit finance and identify hostile financial activity will be central to addressing these challenges. This paper therefore argues that the inclusion of finance-based tools in the national security strategy that leverage the UK’s economic strength, central role in global finance and considerable financial prowess should be a central theme of the upcoming review. 

Which Way the Dragon? Sharpening Allied Perceptions of China’s Strategic Trajectory

Ross Babbage
Source Link

Given the rapid pace of change throughout Asia in recent decades, assessing China’s longer-term trajectory – and that of the Indo-Pacific region as a whole – represents a huge challenge for defense and security planners. Attempts to predict China’s strategic posture 15 to 30 years from now are hampered by a far more volatile security environment than that which governed the Cold War era. Yet in spite of the many strategic dislocations of the 21st century, most Western policymakers continue to rely upon the periodic strategic assessment principles regarding China that were practiced during the relatively stable late 20th century. The resulting policies are frequently and necessarily revised in the face of contemporary economic, political, and even epidemiological disruptions.

In Which Way the Dragon?, CSBA Nonresident Fellow Ross Babbage and colleagues argue for a new, scenario-based approach to defense and security planning in the Indo-Pacific. Drawing upon expert analysis of current conditions, three to four overarching scenarios for China should be considered as potential guideposts over the next 15 years. Each outcome would include a series of lead indicators, allowing analysts to determine which future scenario China is headed towards, prepare for potential alternatives in advance, and make adjustments to strategies, operational concepts, and military and security systems when necessary. The end result should markedly reduce the uncertainties about the strategic environment in the 2035 timeframe and provide greatly improved foundations for confident decisions on security policy and capability development. In short, this approach offers a superior way of addressing the security challenges faced by the Western allies and their security partners in the Indo-Pacific.

Belarus beyond 2020: Implications for Russia and the West

Ben Challis

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Protests in Belarus have captured media imagination ahead of 9 August elections. However, little attention has been paid to what comes next or to the potentially serious consequences for European security. In 2017, the ELN warned that a political crisis in Belarus was one of the most likely triggers of a NATO-Russia confrontation. Today’s protests take place in the context of worsening tension between NATO and Russia, and the build-up of both NATO and Russia military forces around Belarus’s borders. As we head into the country’s most turbulent elections in decades there is an urgent need for a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the country’s poorly understood role in European security dynamics.

This policy brief, by ELN Policy Fellow Ben Challis, highlights the risks, urges policymakers to pay greater attention to them, and calls on Russia and the West to avoid a damaging competition for influence in Belarus. It provides a set of scenarios which policymakers may wish to use as a tool to develop institutional networks, to consider risks and to prepare for the kinds of situation they may face. The report recommends that:

Policymakers invest now in the institutional networks, contextual understanding and strategic planning required to respond to future developments in Belarus based on a fuller and more heuristic understanding of interests and regional security dynamics.

Recognise the mutual benefits of Belarusian security guarantees and take steps to protect them.

Adopt a politically sensitive and human security centred approach to economic relations with Belarus.

Take steps now which reduce the risk of a confrontation in any crisis, and which enhance predictability and transparency in and around the Suwalki Gap.

STAND BY ME! THE SINO-RUSSIAN NORMATIVE PARTNERSHIP IN ACTION

Alice Ekman, Sinikukka Saari, Stanislav Secrieru
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INTRODUCTION

It has become commonplace to describe the relationship between China and Russia as ‘a marriage of convenience’,1 in particular in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea in 2014. However, this popular metaphor hides very different – even contradictory – interpretations of the nature and future of the relationship. Perhaps depending on one’s take on arranged marriages, the deepening relationship between these two states is seen as ‘stable and successful’2 and ‘durable’,3 or on the contrary, as a ‘mere’ convenient arrangement doomed to be a temporary solution.4 It seems that fuzzy and often misunderstood marriage allegories bring more confusion than clarity to understanding and explaining complex relations between states. Shared norms and worldview would certainly indicate a steady and long-term arrangement whatever the marriage metaphor used.

The Sino-Russian partnership is dense and multidimensional, and it is rooted in shared norms. International norms – the standard of expected state behaviour – reflect the underlying values of the global system, and underpin international cooperation in the political, economic and security-related fields.Sino-Russian normative cooperation aims at redefining and re-interpreting existing international norms in a way that reflects their shared principles, worldviews and threat perceptions – ‘like-mindedness’ as Chinese official communication refers to it.5

Biden Plans to Make Harris as Powerful a Veep as He Was Under Obama

BY MICHAEL HIRSH
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If she is elected along with her running mate, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris will be no ordinary vice president—and that goes well beyond her historic selection as the first Black and South Asian American woman to back up a major party ticket. On the contrary, Biden plans to model her role on the extraordinarily influential part he played himself for eight years as Barack Obama’s vice president, according to a senior Biden advisor.

The terms of the relationship will plainly be somewhat different. Obama, who took office in January 2009, was a freshman senator with very little experience in foreign policy; as a consequence, the new president deferred to Biden on a wide range of foreign-policy issues. Biden told me in a 2010 interview that, to his continuing surprise, Obama decided to “turn over big chunks” of policy to him to handle on his own. And “he doesn’t check back,” Biden added, whether it was a question of negotiating withdrawal from Iraq or overseeing the economic recovery act. Biden often used the phrase “Barack and I” without diffidence.

At an early meeting, Biden recalled in the interview, “All of sudden, he stopped. He said, ‘Joe will do Iraq. Joe knows more about Iraq than anyone.’ … The Recovery Act, he just handed it over.” (Biden responded by getting three key Republican votes from his old Senate colleagues for the 2009 stimulus, earning Obama’s praise.) Though Obama didn’t always listen to his veep—rejecting Biden’s advice at first against a severely scaled-down presence in Afghanistan and his initial opposition to the raid on Osama bin Laden in 2011—Biden said in a campaign speech in 2012: “I literally get to be the last guy in the room with the president. That’s our arrangement.”

Why Belarus Is Not Ukraine

BY AMY MACKINNON
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Scenes in Belarus of protesters erecting crude barricades while fending off the attacks of heavily armored riot police have evoked memories of another uprising in the borderlands between Russia and the European Union: the 2014 Ukrainian revolution that erupted in Kyiv’s Maidan square, an uprising that drove out the country’s kleptocrat president and ushered in a new, if complicated, era in Ukraine. 

The similarities certainly have not escaped Belarus’s authoritarian leader, Aleksandr Lukashenko, who claimed a sixth presidential term Sunday in an election nearly universally condemned as a farce. “As I have warned, there will be no Maidan, no matter how much anyone wants one,” he said on Monday, just as the protests began picking up steam.

But despite the similar, gruesome optics, the differences between the two uprisings far outweigh their similarities, though the two countries may both be neighbors and former Soviet Republics. Those differences make it harder to look to Ukraine as a potential road map for how the events in Belarus may unfold. 

For starters, Belarus is a lot more authoritarian than Ukraine was or is.

The Internet of Bodies Is Here: Tackling new challenges of technology governance

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Recent technological advancements have ushered in a new era of the “internet of bodies” (IoB), with an unprecedented number of connected devices and sensors being affixed to or even implanted and ingested into the human body.

The IoB generates tremendous amounts of biometric and human behavioral data. This is, in turn, fuelling the transformation of health research and industry, as well as other aspects of social life, such as the adoption of IoB in work settings, or the provision of new options for entertainment – all with remarkable data-driven innovations and social benefits.

Yet the IoB also raises new challenges for data governance that concern not only individual privacy and autonomy but also new risks of discrimination and bias in employment, education, finance, access to health insurance and other important areas for the distribution of social resources.

Cementing American Artificial Intelligence Leadership: AI Research & Development

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Greater investments in artificial intelligence research and development are essential to maintaining American leadership in AI. Throughout the 20th century, the federal government played a critical role in fueling technological innovation by funding pivotal basic research. Government funding was essential to developing the transistor, GPS, and the internet—inventions that transformed the world economy. Yet over the past several decades, federal government spending on R&D as a percentage of GDP declined from about 1.2% in 1976 to around 0.7% in 2018. This is a worrisome trend as the federal government remains the main funder of basic research. Government support again could be pivotal both in fostering new AI breakthroughs and ensuring that the U.S. government has access to those breakthroughs.

Beyond AI, overall R&D spending trends are troubling. Other countries are outpacing the United States with faster growth of their national R&D budgets. Total U.S. national (public and private) R&D expenditures as a share of GDP have been mostly stagnant since 1996. China quadrupled its R&D expenses as a share of GDP over the same time frame, and countries like Israel and South Korea also significantly ramped up spending.

As a result, the U.S. share of global R&D has declined over the past several decades, falling from 69% in 1960 to 28% in 2016. From 2000 to 2015, the United States accounted for 19% of global R&D growth, while China accounted for 31%. China was on track to top the United States in total R&D investments (in purchasing power parity-adjusted dollars) as soon as 2019.

The AI Triad and What It Means for National Security Strategy

Ben Buchanan

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One sentence summarizes the complexities of modern artificial intelligence: Machine learning systems use computing power to execute algorithms that learn from data. This AI triad of computing power, algorithms, and data offers a framework for decision-making in national security policy.Download Full Report

A single sentence can summarize the complexities of modern artificial intelligence: Machine learning systems use computing power to execute algorithms that learn from data. Everything policymakers need to know about a technology that seems simultaneously trendy, powerful, and mysterious is captured in those 13 words.

AI matters. At home, it is already fundamental to everyday life, voiced by Alexa and Siri and tucked inside smartwatches and phones. In science, it contributes to major breakthroughs, from diagnosing disease to aiding drug discovery to modeling the climate. In business, it shapes the economic competitiveness of nations and alters how trillions of dollars pulse through global markets. In national security, it bolsters logistics and intelligence analysis and—with visions of lethal autonomous weapons, drone warfare, and self-guided cyberattacks—seems poised to do much more.

Information Warfare: Licensed To Ill

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August 12, 2020: In July 2020 it was revealed that in 2018 the U.S. president secretly gave the CIA permission to take more aggressive action against hacker groups that have been responsible for attacks on the United States. This explained several mysterious incidents were anti-American hacker groups had details of their group and its membership revealed. Then there were incidents were these anti-American hackers had their operations sabotaged or otherwise disrupted. There were also cases where anti-American hackers had their identities and much personal information made public. For a while the victims didn’t realize they were under attack by a Cyber War opponent.

The CIA, NSA and Department of Defense had long been asking for this authority. Granting it to the CIA allowed the CIA to bring in NSA and Department of Defense experts for joint operations. Russian hackers have been responsible for a lot of the successful hacking operations inside the United States. Chinese, North Korean and Iranian hackers have also been very active and they are also on the CIA target list. The exact composition of the target list is secret as are the attack operations carried out against the major hacking groups.

Hacking has been around since the 1980s and with the growth of the Internet became big business. Hacking went from masses of individuals or small groups to larger, professional and longer-lasting groups. These came to be called APTs (Advanced Persistent Threat) organizations. APTs are well organized and very active hacker groups that are sometimes created and often sustained by governments or major criminal gangs. APTs exist all over the world, especially in larger nations that have large numbers of well-educated but unemployed technical people.

Burnt by the Digital Sun

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How are liberal democracies balancing the right to freedom of expression with addressing false information and hostile actions in the information environment? This report begins by surveying how the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, France, and Germany are grappling with this intricate Gordian knot. Next, it offers an introductory examination of “information warfare” and how it is shaping the great power competition between Russia, China, and the United States. Granted, information warfare is a hotly contested term with many competing definitions within the field of military science, as well as across Western and Eastern cultures; however, this report refers to it as the military art of using information to deliberately mislead an adversary and influence their decisionmaking for a strategic purpose. Lastly, to help inform effective policy against such persistent information threats, the report outlines a creative multi-pronged framework.

Israel Versus Anyone: A Military Net Assessment of the Middle East

By Kenneth S. Brower

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Mideast Security and Policy Studies Paper #178

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Most published Middle Eastern military net assessments are based primarily on lists of units and equipment. Unfortunately, history proved that such lists are all too often incorrect. Even when they were correct, the overall assessments generally ignored the quality of personnel and/or equipment, as well as the extent to which rival defense systems could turn available financial, human, and material resources into actual military power.

Almost without exception, these earlier net assessments ignored the impact of the time required by all militaries to mobilize and deploy. This is particularly true for the major powers that were remote from the Middle East. These countries had to project their forces over intercontinental distances, which was, and is, a slow and difficult process.

This study contains no lists at all. Its assessments are based on historically proven combat data, which reflects the impact of human and technical quality on military combat effectiveness. The study also reflects a unique understanding of the significant variation in the efficiency of alternate national defense systems and the realistic impact of time on the generation of regional military power.