Countering China’s Economic Warfare

Anna Gustafson and Ellyn Chatham

Source Link

This month, Colombia announced it has officially joined the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an international development institution backed by the Chinese Communist Party. The initiative was designed with the intent to increase China’s global monetary influence through strategic infrastructure investments. This unfortunate news comes just months after Panama made the impressive decision to become the first country leave the BRI.

That Colombia, an American ally, would accept support from a U.S. adversary, points to a fundamental issue: the U.S. is not effectively countering China’s economic warfare.

Therefore, to protect our allies across the globe, Washington must commit to the shift from ineffective grant-based USAID to the America First aligned Development Finance Corporation.

Appealing to Colombia’s underutilized Pacific coast and a $14 billion trade deficit, Xi Jinping was able to convince Colombia’s Marxist President Gustavo Petro to sign a deal promising a commercial trade route from Shanghai to Puerto Buenaventura.

Colombia has long been one of America’s closest allies in the Western Hemisphere and the two have a strong and effective partnership. After decades of conservative leadership in Bogota, resulting in a more prosperous and secure Colombia, it is a shame Colombia’s leftist leader is opting to accept CCP funds.

But these instances are, unfortunately, not unique to Colombia. Developing nations cannot help but accept billion dollar offers by the CCP, especially when some politicians are paid to pursue dangerous BRI deals.

China Unleashes Hackers Against Its Friend Russia, Seeking War Secrets

Megha Rajagopalan

Source Link

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, groups linked to the Chinese government have repeatedly hacked Russian companies and government agencies in an apparent search for military secrets, according to cyberanalysts.

The intrusions started accelerating in May 2022, just months after Moscow’s full-scale invasion. And they have continued steadily, with Chinese groups worming into Russian systems even as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China publicly professed a momentous era of collaboration and friendship.

The hacking campaign shows that, despite this partnership and years of promises not to hack each other, China sees Russia as a vulnerable target. In 2023, one group, known as Sanyo, impersonated the email addresses of a major Russian engineering firm in the hunt for information on nuclear submarines, according to TeamT5, a Taiwan-based cybersecurity research firm that discovered the attack last year and linked it to the Chinese government.

China is far wealthier than Russia and has plenty of homegrown scientific and military expertise, but Chinese military experts often lament that Chinese troops lack battlefield experience. Experts say that China sees the war in Ukraine as a chance to collect information about modern warfare tactics, Western weaponry and what works against them.

“China likely seeks to gather intelligence on Russia’s activities, including on its military operation in Ukraine, defense developments and other geopolitical maneuvers,” said Che Chang, a researcher with TeamT5.

It is unclear how successful these attempts have been, partly because Russian officials have never publicly acknowledged these intrusions. But a classified counterintelligence document from Russia’s domestic security agency, known as the F.S.B., makes clear that intelligence officials are concerned. The document, obtained by The New York Times, says that China is seeking Russian defense expertise and technology and is trying to learn from Russia’s military experience in Ukraine. The document refers to China as an “enemy.”

New Legislation Could Increase Security Presence in Hong Kong

Source Link

Two new pieces of national security legislation in Hong Kong introduce six offenses and six “prohibited places,” signaling closer alignment with the laws of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) mainland and raising concerns about the safety and freedom of foreigners and locals.

The Office for Safeguarding National Security (OSNS), Beijing’s counter-subversion arm, is central to these efforts. Established in 2020, its leadership is selected from the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, and the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office in Beijing.

The apparent requisition of around 1,700 rooms across four hotels suggest that Beijing’s security presence on the ground in Hong Kong is set to ramp up and could lead to increased efforts to build cases against targets abroad and their relatives at home.

The Hong Kong government rushed two pieces of security-related legislation through the Legislative Council in a single day on 13 May. Six new national security offenses and six “prohibited places” (禁地) were unveiled, 

enacted under the National Security Law. The government claimed that the urgency was due to an “increasingly turbulent global geopolitical landscape” (全球地緣政治局勢震盪升溫) (China Brief, March 1, 2024; Hong Kong E-legislation, May 13; (Hong Kong Government Information Office, May 13). Officials have also stated that the legislation will support the work of the Office for Safeguarding National Security (OSNS; 特别行政区维护国家安全公署), the central government’s powerful counter-subversion arm in Hong Kong. This suggests that Beijing may deploy additional security personnel to the city in the near future.

China Unleashes Hackers Against Its Friend Russia, Seeking War Secrets

Megha Rajagopalan

Source LInk

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, groups linked to the Chinese government have repeatedly hacked Russian companies and government agencies in an apparent search for military secrets, according to cyberanalysts.

The intrusions started accelerating in May 2022, just months after Moscow’s full-scale invasion. And they have continued steadily, with Chinese groups worming into Russian systems even as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China publicly professed a momentous era of collaboration and friendship.

The hacking campaign shows that, despite this partnership and years of promises not to hack each other, China sees Russia as a vulnerable target. In 2023, one group, known as Sanyo, impersonated the email addresses of a major Russian engineering firm in the hunt for information on nuclear submarines, according to TeamT5, a Taiwan-based cybersecurity research firm that discovered the attack last year and linked it to the Chinese government.

China is far wealthier than Russia and has plenty of homegrown scientific and military expertise, but Chinese military experts often lament that Chinese troops lack battlefield experience. Experts say that China sees the war in Ukraine as a chance to collect information about modern warfare tactics, Western weaponry and what works against them.

“China likely seeks to gather intelligence on Russia’s activities, including on its military operation in Ukraine, defense developments and other geopolitical maneuvers,” said Che Chang, a researcher with TeamT5.

Viasat identified as victim in Chinese Salt Typhoon cyberespionage, Bloomberg News reports

Reuters

Source Link

Satellite model is placed on Viasat logo in this picture illustration taken April 4, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab

June 17 (Reuters) - Viasat Inc (VSAT.O), opens new tab has been identified as a victim of the Chinese-linked Salt Typhoon cyberespionage operation during last year's presidential campaign, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.

The breach at the satellite communications firm was discovered earlier this year and Viasat has been working with the government in the aftermath, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The Reuters Daily Briefing newsletter provides all the news you need to start your day. Sign up here.

Viasat and its independent third-party cybersecurity partner investigated unauthorized access through a compromised device but found no evidence of customer impact, the company said in a statement.

"Viasat believes that the incident has been remediated and has not detected any recent activity related to this event," the company said, adding that it was engaged with the government as part of its investigation.

U.S. officials have previously alleged that hackers targeted telecom companies such as Verizon (VZ.N), opens new tab, AT&T (T.N), opens new tab, Lumen (LUMN.N), opens new tab, and others, stealing telephone audio intercepts along with a significant amount of call record data.

In December, the officials added a ninth unnamed telecom company to the list of entities compromised by the Salt Typhoon hackers and said that the Chinese operatives gained access to networks with broad and full access, enabling them to "geolocate millions of individuals, to record phone calls at will".

Targets of Salt Typhoon reportedly included officials connected to the presidential campaigns of both Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump.

Chinese officials have previously dismissed the allegations as disinformation, asserting that Beijing "firmly opposes and combats cyber attacks and cyber theft in all forms".

Western democracies are actually pretty good at war

Source Link

“They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too.” — William T. Sherman

I am not a military analyst or expert. Usually I look at the world through the lens of economics, which I actually have some training in. But if you want to get a good holistic picture of the world, you need to understand at least a little bit about war and conflict. I think most pundits intuitively understand this, which is why you see them weighing in on things like the usefulness of military aid to Ukraine, or the cost-effectiveness of the F-35, or the need to establish military deterrence against China. And so I do the same, while being careful to remember that I’m not any kind of expert in the field.

One of the most persistent and annoying tropes I see, in discussions about war, is the idea that autocracies are inherently tough and martial, and that democracies — especially Western democracies — are irresolute, decadent, flaccid, and generally not very good at fighting. You see this when rightists praise Russian military ads where soldiers do a bunch of push-ups, and decry the state of America’s “they/them army” in comparison. You can see it when leftists declare that America loses every war it fights (which is obviously false). The idea is ingrained in our deep history — Thucydides lamented that “a democracy is incapable of empire”, and plenty of modern people will cite autocratic Sparta’s victory over democratic Athens in the Peloponnesian War.1

In fact, if you just looked at the results of the last two decades, you might be forgiven for buying the authoritarian hype. America was pushed out of Afghanistan, and its proxies quickly collapsed under the Taliban assault. Most people also say the U.S. lost the Iraq War.2 Democratic Armenia quickly lost a war to autocratic Azerbaijan in 2020, Israel broke its teeth on Hezbollah in 2006, Russia smashed Georgia easily in 2008, and Russia easily took Crimea from Ukraine in 2014. Since the turn of the century, military victories for Western democracies were few and far between.

Israel is luring the US into a trap

Paul R. Pillar

Source Link

Joining in Israel’s aggression against Iran would hurt, not advance, U.S. interests and international security.

This should not be surprising, given that support for U.S. interests and international security was not what led to Israel’s launching of the war. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argues that Iran’s nuclear program poses a threat to America and not just Israel, but the nuclear issue was not the main motivation behind Israel’s attack, as reflected in a target list that goes far beyond anything associated with Iran’s nuclear program.

Israel’s principal motivations for the war include ones peculiar to Israel and that the United States does not share, including the sabotaging of U.S. diplomacy with Iran. Another Israeli motivation is to distract the attention of not just the United States but the rest of the world from what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. Some of the most blatant killing of famished residents of the Gaza Strip who were seeking food aid has occurred since the start of the Israeli offensive against Iran.

President Donald Trump’s public statements about Israel’s war have evolved quickly from apparent detachment to enthusiastic support, extending even to use of the first person “we” when claiming air superiority over Iran. As Charlie Stevenson of Johns Hopkins University observes, Trump evidently is experiencing FOMO (fear of missing out) and seeks to claim credit for ending a purported Iranian nuclear threat.

What are either declared objectives (destroying Iran’s nuclear program) or widely assumed ones (regime change in Tehran) of the war are among the criteria according to which possible U.S. involvement in the war should be judged. But so are other consequences, as mentioned below.

The war, with or without U.S. involvement, will not make an Iranian nuclear weapon less likely and might make it more likely. War was not necessary to avoid an Iranian nuclear weapon. The prewar judgment of U.S. intelligence was that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon. Iran was willingly negotiating with the United States, with serious intent, to reach a new agreement that would preclude such a weapon.

How the Israel-Iran Conflict Is Reshaping the Middle East

Burcu Ozcelik

Source Link

The region’s powers worry that an Israeli victory over Iran may come at the cost of stability. A negotiated solution to Iran’s nuclear program remains the best bet.

Pandora’s box has been cast wide open with Israel’s air campaign against Iran—an escalation that will reshape strategic alliances and the balance of power in the Middle East. By targeting senior IRGC leadership and nuclear infrastructure deep inside Iranian territory, “Operation Rising Lion” has forcefully challenged assumptions about Iran’s deterrence posture.

A coordinated blend of Israeli HUMINT, SIGINT, and cyber operations has left Iran boxed in, with fewer viable options. Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Israel have inflicted tactical damage but fell short of the scale Tehran has long threatened. For a state that has spent years constructing a deterrence architecture built on the doctrine of forward defense via regional proxy networks and missile threats, the limited response is telling. It signals one of two things: either Iran is exercising calculated restraint, or it is running up against the limits of its military reach relative to Israeli air dominance and potential US escalation in the Gulf.

Either way, and if only through indirect back-channels, in the span of a few short days, Iran has signaled that it wants to talk. The question has been whether Tehran is prepared to make deep concessions on its nuclear program to deter further Israeli strikes and prevent direct US intervention.

There was always a risk that the maximalist US demands for complete dismantling of the enrichment program would derail the pursuit of an agreement. Tehran appears to have overestimated American flexibility in negotiations and underestimated Israel’s military preparedness and risk appetite. Until the final hours before the operation launched on June 13, Tehran likely continued to view the US military buildup and threats of force as psychological pressure tactics.

Trump’s two-week delay will unsettle Ira

Source LInk

In a statement relayed by press secretary Karoline Leavitt, the White House declared that President Donald Trump would decide ‘within the next two weeks’ whether to join Israel’s air campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities. In isolation,

 it might seem a routine delay – an effort to keep diplomatic channels open, to stage manage an American entry into the conflict or even to row back on Trump’s previous gung-ho position. But by now we should all be attuned to Trump’s history and methods, and appreciate that this declaration could in fact carry a more intricate calculus. Beneath its surface lies a lattice of strategic ambiguity, political choreography and psychological pressure. 

With this single phrase, deliberately delivered by a spokesperson not by the President himself, Trump has once again defied expectations, introduced a calibrated uncertainty, and blurred the lines between bluff, intention and inevitability.

While Trump claims the United States is watching and waiting, Israeli fighter jets are dismantling Iran’s military-industrial complex with breathtaking speed

The phrase itself – ‘within the next two weeks’ – is familiar terrain. Trump has employed it repeatedly during his political career to imply imminent action without ever committing to it. As Senator Chris Murphy acidly observed, 

‘He’s used it a million times before to pretend he might be doing something he’s not.’ But this very elasticity is the point. Trump’s rhetorical timeline is not a promise – it is a tool. Far from making ‘America look weak and silly’ as Murphy says, the deliberate vagueness allows Trump to keep adversaries off balance, generate psychological stress and maintain operational flexibility. It creates space in which pressure can build, without necessarily triggering immediate confrontation.

Options for Targeting Iran’s Fordow Nuclear Facilit

Source Link

In order to achieve its stated objective of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, Israel will need to take out a key Iranian facility, the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant. Fordow is buried deep under a mountain near Qom and is believed to be one of the key sites of Iran’s nuclear enrichment activities, about 54,000 square feet in size, with 3,000 centrifuges. Due to its hardening and depth, Israel lacks the ordnance to take out Fordow on its own in the short term; however, multiple strikes from the U.S. GBU-57, carried out by U.S. B-2 bombers, 

could destroy the facility. It has been reported that President Trump is weighing his options for whether or not to strike Fordow. On the one hand, Israel’s attacks on Iran’s military and nuclear assets have created a unique opportunity for significantly undermining the country’s potential for developing nuclear weapons. Given the administration’s stated nonproliferation objectives, with JD Vance stating, “the president hates nuclear proliferation. I hate nuclear proliferation”, striking Fordow could be a tempting prospect. On the other hand, using the GBU-57 would constitute direct support for Israel and have the potential to escalate and drag the United States into another war in the region.

The destruction of Fordow is shaping up to be a Rubicon as the crisis escalates. The GBU-57 may not fully destroy the facility, so regardless of Trump’s decision, Fordow will likely remain a challenge for nonproliferation efforts. 

There are at least five options for destroying Fordow. All of them will have varying degrees of impact on Iran’s nuclear program, along with unique risks of escalation and international response. Below is an analysis of all five options; however, to avoid escalation while still achieving nonproliferation objectives, Israeli sabotage appears to be an underappreciated option.

Moscow Uses Force to Get More Soldiers from North Caucasus

Source Link

Moscow is facing greater resistance to its military draft in the North Caucasus because of increasing quotas and the disproportionate impact of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine on the region.

The Russian government is applying more repressive pressure on North Caucasians to serve, a policy that is generating further anti-Moscow sentiment.

The Kremlin’s strong-arm efforts to enforce the draft in the North Caucasus may trigger a new wave of armed resistance in the region.

Moscow has been cautious about drafting men from the North Caucasus since the end of the Soviet Union. Between 1991 and 2013, the Kremlin called no Chechens and only tiny numbers of men from the other non-Russian, predominantly Muslim republics to military service (see EDM, July 10, 2012, April 19, 2016, July 26, 2018, March 31, 2022). 

Moscow feared that providing men from the North Caucasus with military skills would enable them to possibly use them against the Russian Federation, as was the case during the two post-Soviet Chechen wars. Russian commanders who observed ethnic conflict within their ranks, 

including among North Caucasians, were concerned that drafting North Caucasians would undermine unit cohesion in the Russian military (Window on Eurasia, October 27, 2015, February 27, 2016). Faced with Russia’s demographic decline and increased demands for manpower after the beginning of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, however, 

Moscow has concluded that it has no choice but to draft more North Caucasians. The Kremlin appears to be raising draft quotas in the region, although these remain lower relative to the population than in non-North Caucasian regions (Mediazona, April 25, 2022, accessed June 20; see EDM, January 20, 2023; Vazhnie Istorii, October 13, 2023).

US offering $10 million for info on Iranian hackers behind IOControl malware

Source Link

The U.S. State Department said they were seeking information on Iranian hackers who they accused of targeting critical infrastructure using a strain of malware deployed against industrial control systems.

U.S. officials are offering up to $10 million for details on a hacker affiliated with the group called CyberAv3ngers that gained prominence in 2023 and 2024 for a string of cyberattacks on U.S. and Israeli water utilities.

Law enforcement agencies eventually tied CyberAv3ngers to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber-Electronic Command, and in August offered a reward for information on at least six Iranian government hackers allegedly behind the effort and placing sanctions on the men.

On Thursday, the State Department issued a new reward centered around an online persona known as Mr. Soul or Mr. Soll. The notice said CyberAv3ngers is associated with the persona and “has launched a series of malicious cyber activities against U.S. critical infrastructure on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber-Electronic Command (IRGC-CEC).”

“CyberAv3ngers actors have utilized malware known as IOCONTROL to target [Industrial Control Systems/Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (ICS/SCADA)] devices used by critical infrastructure sectors in the United States and worldwide,” the State Department said.

The State Department and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency did not respond to requests for information about the most recent CyberAv3ngers attacks.

Members of CyberAv3ngers have boasted on Telegram of their attacks and compromises using IOControl.

IOControl is a strain of malware spotlighted by government officials in December 2024 that multiple cybersecurity firms said was being used by Iranian actors to attack Israel- and U.S.-based devices. Experts at Claroty said the malware was used to attack cameras, routers, firewalls and other industrial technology created by popular vendors like Unitronics, D-Link, Hikvision, Baicells and more.

When Grok is wrong: The risks of AI chatbots spreading misinformation in a crisis

Kjølv Egeland 

Source Link

In recent months, there have been surges of speculation online that seismic events in Asia were caused by clandestine nuclear tests or military exchanges involving nuclear arms. An earthquake in Iran last October and a series of seismic events in Pakistan in April and May stimulated frantic theory-crafting by social media users and sensationalist news organizations. Both waves of speculation took place against a backdrop of intense conflicts in the regions concerned.

The spread of hearsay about nuclear or other strategic weapons tests is not new. During the Cold War, speculation about atomic tests, secret superweapons, and exotic arms experiments flourished in print magazines and popular culture. But novel digital technologies have added a new layer of complexity to the grapevine, boosted by ever-pervasive and invasive social media platforms.

Social media and AI-powered large language models certainly offer valuable sources of information. But they also risk facilitating the spread of misinformation more widely—and faster—than traditional modes of communication.

Worse, large language models could also end up validating false information.

‘Grok’ was lucky this time. Following a seismic event in Pakistan on May 12, numerous users of Elon Musk’s social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) resorted to asking its AI chatbot “Grok” whether the event might have been produced by an underground nuclear test. X’s chatbot Grok adds to a growing list of other chatbots, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and China’s DeepSeek.

Grok’s answer to X users curious about the May 12 event was that the quake was due to natural causes. To support its answer, Grok used as evidence the fact that the event had taken place at a depth of 10 kilometers—too deep for a nuclear test.

Ukraine’s smart munitions deliver a punch—and a warning about the future of warfare

Erik Lin-Greenberg 

Source Link

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky listening to the report of the head of the Security Service of Ukraine Vasyl Malyuk on the success of the operation “Spider's Web.” Image: president.gov.ua, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Share

Earlier this month, Ukraine’s security services launched an audacious, multi-pronged drone attack on military airbases deep in Russian territory. The attacks degraded Russia’s military capability, damaging or destroying dozens of bombers, transports, and command and control aircraft, and highlighted how drones are changing the character of armed conflict.

In the early days of the Russia-Ukraine war, Ukraine relied heavily on drones for intelligence gathering, employing remotely piloted aircraft to locate and help target enemy troops. Russia has launched thousands of one-way attack drones at Ukraine, destroying both civilian and military infrastructure. Both sides have increasingly used first-person view (FPV) drones—small and highly maneuverable platforms with relatively short flight times that transmit live video feed to operators—to attack their rivals. Most first-person view drones target troops and equipment near the frontlines, but Kyiv’s June 1st airbase attacks marked a significant shift in the employment of these drones.

Rather than using first-person view drones along the battlefront, the Ukrainian Security Service launched these drones to strike critical military assets thousands of miles from Ukraine in a mission dubbed “Operation Spider’s Web.” According to Ukrainian officials, the operation involved more than 100 small Osa quadcopter Ukrainian-made drones, each with four rotating propellers and carrying roughly seven pounds of explosives. Given their relatively short range—about 15 minutes of flying time—these drones were deployed near their targets, hidden in the roof compartments of prefabricated buildings loaded onto trucks. Once the trucks arrived at designated locations near the targeted airfields, the drones were launched and guided to their targets by pilots operating far from the front lines, reportedly aided by artificial intelligence systems.

Israel and Iran exchange words along with weapons

Dawn Stover 

Source Link

Iran’s state television network was broadcasting live when an Israeli strike hit the building. Credit: Iranian State TV, via IRIB

Sahar Emami, an anchorwoman for Iran’s state-owned television network, was in the middle of a live news broadcast when an Israeli strike hit the network’s headquarters in Tehran. She hurried offscreen as dust and debris rained down but resumed reporting from another studio minutes later.

Israel Defense Forces confirmed the strike on the broadcasting network, saying that it had targeted a “communication center that was being used for military purposes by the Iranian Armed Forces…under the guise of civilian activity” after warning residents of the area to evacuate. Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz referred to the television station as Iran’s “propaganda and incitement broadcasting authority.”

The attack was the most obvious example of an information war in which Israel and Iran are pushing their own narratives and attempting to shut down opposing ones—sometimes with military force. The war of words, coupled with a flood of fast-breaking news and viral images on social media, has left many people struggling to find accurate information.

Echoes of 2024. The current Israel-Iran war has some similarities to conflicts that occurred last year. On April 1, 2024, Israel bombed an Iranian consulate in Syria, killing seven military officers. Within two weeks, Iran responded by seizing a ship leased by a company with Israeli connections and launching missile strikes on Israel. Israel then retaliated with limited strikes in Iran and Syria before the conflict subsided.

In early October, Iran launched about 200 ballistic missiles at Israel. Israel responded with retaliatory strikes later that month.

With the Israel-Iran war, Russia is learning to become irrelevant

Daniel Rakov 

Source Link

Russia views the rapid escalation of the Iran-Israel conflict with alarm. The Kremlin recognizes that the war’s outcome may reshape its global stature, fundamentally alter the dynamics of the “Iran question”—in which Moscow has long claimed a central role—and impact global strategic stability and non-proliferation efforts.

Tactical parallels of two operations. Russia is closely following the military innovations introduced by this new war. Russian publicists and military bloggers have focused on the Mossad’s operations inside Iran, especially how Israel launched herds of attacking drones from within Iranian territory in the early hours of the June 13 surprise attack. 

Given their apparent resemblance, Russian military commentators see Israel’s drone strikes against Iran’s air defense systems launched from Iranian territory as echoing Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia’s strategic nuclear bomber bases only two weeks earlier. In that case, however, they tried to downplay Ukraine’s military ingenuity, 

claiming that Israel’s national intelligence agency, Mossad, may have assisted the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) or rehearsed its own Iran operation via the Ukrainians.

There are indeed shared technical and tactical features between SBU’s “Spider Web” and the Mossad’s drone operations. According to leaks from both agencies, the operations were long-planned, involved smuggling explosive drones into enemy territory, operating a covert workshop in the enemy’s domain for assembling and deploying them, and conducting a surprise, synchronized strike on key security targets.

Both the Mossad and the SBU publicized their activities shortly after the attacks, including photographic evidence, thereby dominating the media agenda and sowing doubt in the enemy’s mind as to whether the exposed activity was only the tip of an iceberg of yet-to-come further operations. Above all, both operations presented Ukraine and Israel as innovative and daring—modern-day Davids confronting the giant, cumbersome, and outdated Goliaths of Russia and Iran.

With strikes on Iran, Netanyahu has diverted criticism of Israel’s Gaza operations

Source Link

As the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) systematically degrade Iranian nuclear and military infrastructure, Israel faces a complex challenge: to what extent can it maintain its international legitimacy and pursue existential security objectives, without the guaranteed backing of the United States?

The initial results of the strikes reveal a paradox: Israel’s strategic position is strengthening – even as fundamental questions emerge about the sustainability of its independent military approach.

The US–Israel partnership: support without commitment

The US response to the strikes exemplifies the complexities of alliance management when partners have different appetites for risk.

The administration of President Donald Trump has continued to provide military support to Israel, including intelligence sharing, and defensive coordination – while explicitly avoiding direct involvement in the strikes against Iran.

That reflects a reported divide among top Pentagon officials over the extent of US military support. Many, including chief of US Central Command, Gen. Michael Kurilla, have requested more resources to support Israel. But their requests have drawn resistance from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby, who has long opposed diverting US military assets from Asia to the Middle East.

This creates a strategic dilemma for Israel: can it achieve its ultimate objectives – including the neutralization or significant slowing down of Iran’s nuclear program – without total US commitment, including the use of American bunker-busting capabilities?

Analysis:Intelligence Window Might Have Been a Factor in Timing of Israeli Attack on Iran

Daniel Byman, 

Source Link

When Israel attacked Hezbollah last September with exploding beepers and a broad assassination campaign, one thing that dictated the timing was Israel’s concern that the group was about to discover that its communication gear had been boobytrapped—part of a complex intelligence operation that took years, or even decades, to plan. Israeli leaders decided to strike hard rather than risk losing the capability.

A similar consideration might have been at play in the timing of Israel’s decision to go to war against Iran last week. Tehran was not about to field a nuclear weapon. For the last few years, 

it had been a few months away from developing a nuclear weapon, and U.S. officials did not see any significant change in the Iranian program, much less a decision to weaponize. But Israel had managed by last week to put in place a remarkable intelligence and covert military operation, placing drones inside Iran that could be used to strike strategic assets and pinpointing the location of key regime figures. 

The concern about losing that capability was perhaps one of the factors that led Israel to launch its attack when it did.

My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. Subscribe Now | Log In

Daniel Byman is a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. His latest book is Spreading 

Israel’s Long Road to Regional Dominance

Michael Hirsh, a columnist for Foreign Policy.

Source Link

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures as he addresses the assembly during a session of the Israeli parliament (Knesset) at its headquarters in Jerusalem.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures as he addresses the assembly during a session of the Israeli parliament (Knesset) at its headquarters in Jerusalem on June 11. Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images

My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. Subscribe Now | Log In

June 18, 2025, 3:12 PM

Israel is nearing the end of a remarkable, half-century-long arc of history in which it first established military dominance over its Arab neighbors and is now asserting the same degree of superiority over Iran, its one remaining regional threat.

Yet despite that astonishing record of martial success, Israel still needs the United States, its chief geopolitical ally, more than ever. Indeed, it’s fair to say that only U.S. President Donald Trump can end this latest war and deliver the strategic stability the region so badly needs.

My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. Subscribe Now | Log In

Michael Hirsh is a columnist for Foreign Policy. He is the author of two books: Capital Offense: How Washington’s Wise Men Turned America’s Future Over to Wall Street and At War With Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World. X: 

 VIP

Can Israel Destroy Iran’s Nuclear Program Without the U.S.?

John Haltiwanger, a reporter at Foreign Policy.

Source Link

It’s been five days since Israel launched a massive operation against Iran with the stated aim of destroying its nuclear program. Though over a dozen Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed and important nuclear sites have been damaged by the operation, a key enrichment site buried deep underground seemingly remains unscathed.

Experts say that Israel’s objective is far from completed and that destroying Iran’s nuclear program would likely require Israel and the United States to get their hands dirtier.

My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. Subscribe Now | Log In

The Many Ways U.S. Involvement in the War on Iran Could Go Badly

Howard W. French, a columnist at Foreign Policy.

Source Link

A billboard bearing a picture of U.S. President Donald Trump accompanied by a message is deployed in central Tel Aviv, Israel.A billboard bearing a picture of U.S. President Donald Trump accompanied by a message is deployed in central Tel Aviv, Israel, on June 18. Ahmad Gharabli/AFP via Getty Images

Following days of Israeli bombardment of Iran and missiles fired on Tel Aviv and other cities in reprisal by that country, the United States suddenly finds itself on the precipice of direct involvement in another major conflict in the Middle East.

Simply knowing the history of American warfare in that region and in countries nearby in the last generation is enough to render this surprising. The United States’ interventions in Iraq were enormously costly in both lives and treasure and left a broken country in their wake that has never fully rebounded. America’s long occupation of Afghanistan ended in abject retreat, having achieved even fewer of its goals and after exacting even higher costs.

My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. Subscribe Now | Log In

Howard W. French is a columnist at Foreign Policy, a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and a longtime foreign correspondent. His latest book is Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War. 

Iran's Cyber Army: Missing in Action

Source Link

Iran’s vaunted cyber war capability turns out to be not so vaunted afterall. It’s been the dog that didn’t—or hasn’t so far—barked in the war Israel launched against it last week.

For years, intelligence assessments have portrayed Iranian cyber capabilities as fearsome.

The U.S. intelligence community’s most recent annual threat assessment, as presented by National Intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard to Congress in March, branded Iran’s cyber capabilities “a serious threat to U.S. networks and data” and ranked its operations alongside those of cyber heavyweights China, Russia and North Korea.

Similarly, in April 2024 the cyber analytical firm Citanex composed a portrait of Iran’s “significant and growing cyber warfare capabilities, particularly in the realm of offensive cyber operations.” The readout specifically cited the ability of Iran’s cyber warriors to carry out espionage, destructive malware attacks on infrastructure, influence operations and asymmetric warfare.

“Its capabilities are rapidly advancing, and its strategic approach to cyber warfare makes it a persistent threat,” it said, adding, “Its willingness to engage in aggressive cyber operations, coupled with its focus on asymmetric tactics, poses ongoing challenges for global cybersecurity.”

But many experts and former officials scoffed.

“Iran doesn’t have the sophisticated cyber armies that you might find in a place like Russia or China,” a former official involved in Iran talks told SpyTalk in an email. “Its efforts, while sometimes savvy and damaging, tend to be more ragtag and the work of individuals, rather than PLA-like nodes. That’s not to say they wouldn’t be able to do damage, but what they can do wouldn’t hold a candle to what we might face from a more sophisticated adversary.”

Iran-Israel War Triggers a Maelstrom in Cyberspace

Source Link

As they trade missile strikes, Iran and Israel have also faced heavy waves of cyberattacks this past week.

On June 13, Israel initiated a military offensive it called "Operation Rising Lion," aimed at crippling Iran's nuclear weapons program. The two countries' covert war has become overt since then, shifting power in the region and causing dozens of civilian deaths in Israel and hundreds in Iran along the way.

As expected, hacktivists have flocked to the scene like vultures. Analysts are now tracking more than 100 different threat actors carrying out, or at least claiming to carry out, cyberattacks against either Iran or, more often, Israel.

Iran, though, is the one implementing especially austere measures to protect its cyberspace. According to reports coming out of the country, the government has triggered a kind of cyber DEFCON 1 for government systems and employees, and imposed limitations on Internet and phone connectivity for citizens.

Iran Shuts Down the Internet

Iran's government and government-aligned media have indicated in recent days that the country is facing significant cyber threats coming from Israel.

Earlier this week, the state-sponsored Mehr News Agency published an announcement from the country's Cyber Security Command. Officials claimed that "the Zionist regime has launched a massive cyber war against the country's digital infrastructure," and that "so far, many of these attacks have been successfully repelled and in other cases, technical teams are restoring services."

The Element of Surprise: Space and Cyber Warfare in U.S.-China Rivalry

Dean Cheng

Source Link

The 2024 revelations over China’s effort to implant malware in critical U.S. infrastructure by the Volt Typhoon hacking group — as well as the Salt Typhoon group’s successful breaching of at least nine major U.S. telecoms — have renewed concern over Beijing’s constant, ongoing efforts to hack Western companies, governments and non-governmental organizations. Unlike past incidents, like those involving Chinese military unit 61398, which were largely about cyber espionage, the Volt Typhoon group was actively implanting malware designed to disrupt critical infrastructure such as water and power systems.

As the Volt Typhoon group is believed to be a state actor (as opposed to a criminal group or “hacktivists”), its actions highlight that the Chinese government is not just gathering information but instead threatening to sabotage the ability of economies and states to function.

Just as the Ukraine-Russia war is demonstrating that drone warfare has moved from the tactical to the strategic, China’s hacking activities showcase how cyber intrusions are increasingly strategic in effect. This is especially true when considering their potential impact on space 

Military history demonstrates that the ability to achieve surprise can be decisive; a smaller force exploiting surprise can often defeat a larger one. At its most basic, surprise allows one to concentrate forces at the time and place of one’s choosing. Further, organizational, doctrinal and technological surprise can exploit changes that an adversary cannot compensate or prepare for.

While tactical surprise has marked warfare for millennia, strategic surprise is much harder. Mobilizing and moving vast armies with minimal prospect of detection came about only in the 19th and 20th centuries, as railroads, motorization and then airpower allowed forces to concentrate rapidly and reach farther, even bypassing an adversary’s defenses.

Moreover, while various nations have succeeded in achieving strategic surprise at the onset of a conflict — like Japan at Pearl Harbor, Egypt and Syria in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War or Iraq at the outset of the Iran-Iraq war — capitalizing on that surprise can be difficult. Industrial states have enormous resources, and given time, can mobilize them, as the United States and Soviet Union did in World War II.

Israel-Tied Predatory Sparrow Hackers Are Waging Cyberwar on Iran’s Financial System

Source Link

The Israel-linked hacker group known as Predatory Sparrow has carried out some of the most disruptive and destructive cyberattacks in history, twice disabling thousands of gas station payment systems across Iran and once even setting a steel mill in the country on fire. Now, in the midst of a new war unfolding between the two countries, they appear to be bent on burning Iran's financial system.

Predatory Sparrow, which often goes by its Farsi name, Gonjeshke Darande, in an effort to appear as a homegrown hacktivist organization, announced in a post on on its X account Wednesday that it had targeted the Iranian crypto exchange Nobitex, accusing the exchange of enabling sanctions violations and terrorist financing on behalf of the Iranian regime. According to cryptocurrency tracing firm Elliptic, the hackers destroyed more than $90 million in Nobitex holdings, a rare instance of hackers burning crypto assets rather than stealing them.

“These cyberattacks are the result of Nobitex being a key regime tool for financing terrorism and violating sanctions,” the hackers posted to X. “Associating with regime terror financing and sanction violation infrastructure puts your assets at risk.”

The incident follows another Predatory Sparrow attack on Iran's finance system on Wednesday, in which the same group targeted Iran's Sepah bank, claiming to have destroyed “all” the bank's data in retaliation for its associations with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and posting documents that appeared to show agreements between the bank and the Iranian military. “Caution: Associating with the regime's instruments for evading sanctions and financing its ballistic missiles and nuclear program is bad for your long-term financial health,” the hackers wrote. “Who's next?”

Sepah Bank's website was offline yesterday but appeared to be working again today. The bank didn't respond to WIRED's request for comment. Nobitex's website was offline today and the company couldn't be reached for comment.