Hackers steal maternity ward CCTV videos in India cybercrime racket

Cherylann Mollan, Gopal Kateshiya and Roxy Gagdekar Chhara

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Hacked CCTV videos from a maternity hospital in India have been sold on Telegram, police say, raising serious questions about privacy and security in a country where such cameras have become commonplace.

Earlier this year, police in Gujarat state were alerted by the media to videos on YouTube - some showed pregnant women undergoing medical exams and receiving injections in their buttocks - in a maternity hospital in a city.

The videos had a link directing viewers to Telegram channels to buy longer videos.

The director of the hospital told the BBC that the cameras had been installed for the safety of doctors. The BBC is not naming the city or hospital to protect the identity of the women in the videos. None of them have filed a police complaint.

Police say their investigation uncovered a massive cybercrime racket where sensitive footage from at least 50,000 CCTVs from across the country was stolen by hackers and sold on the internet.

CCTVs have become ubiquitous in India, especially in urban areas. They are installed in malls, offices, hospitals, schools, private apartment complexes and even inside people's homes.

Experts warn that while CCTV boosts security, poorly installed or managed systems can threaten privacy. In India, cameras are often handled by staff without cybersecurity training, and some domestically manufactured models are reportedly easily exploitable.

In 2018, a tech worker in Bengaluru city said that his webcam was hacked, and that the hacker demanded payment in exchange for not sharing his private videos. In 2023, a YouTuber reportedly found out that his home CCTV had been hacked after private videos went viral.

Last year, the federal government asked states to not procure CCTVs from suppliers with a history of security and data breaches and also introduced new rules to improve cyber security of CCTV cameras. But hacking incidents like these are still reported.

Anthropic Warns of AI-Driven Hacking Campaign Linked to China

David Klepper , Matt O'Brien

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The AI company Anthropic said this week that it disrupted a cyber operation that its researchers linked to the Chinese government. The operation involved the use of an artificial intelligence system to direct the hacking campaigns, which researchers called a disturbing development that could greatly expand the reach of AI-equipped hackers.

While concerns about the use of AI to drive cyber operations are not new, what is concerning about the new operation is the degree to which AI was able to automate some of the work, the researchers said.

“While we predicted these capabilities would continue to evolve, what has stood out to us is how quickly they have done so at scale,” they wrote in their report.

The operation targeted tech companies, financial institutions, chemical companies and government agencies. The researchers wrote that the hackers attacked “roughly thirty global targets and succeeded in a small number of cases.” Anthropic detected the operation in September and took steps to shut it down and notify the affected parties.

Anthropic noted that while AI systems are increasingly being used in a variety of settings for work and leisure, they can also be weaponized by hacking groups working for foreign adversaries. The San Francisco-based company, maker of the generative AI chatbot Claude, is one of many tech developers pitching AI “agents” that go beyond a chatbot’s capability to access computer tools and take actions on a person’s behalf.

'They're just so much further ahead': How China won the world's EV battery race

Xiaoying You

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In 2005, China only had two EV battery manufacturers. Twenty years later, it produces more than three-quarters of the world's lithium-ion cells. How did it happen?

At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, athletes, journalists and officials from all over the world were transported by a fleet of sleek buses sporting a white, blue and green design as they zipped between different venues in the Chinese capital.

Different from the diesel-powered vehicles that ruled Beijing's streets at the time, the Olympic buses, numbering around 50, ran on lithium-ion batteries to help Beijing host a "green and high-tech" Olympic Games. It also marked the country's first foray into creating a lithium-ion battery industry for electric vehicles (EVs), laying the groundwork for China's ascension to world leader of this technology two decades later.

The Olympic e-bus campaign had been set in motion as soon as Beijing won the bid in 2001, according to a 2020 documentary aired by China's state media. But developing and producing EV batteries for the global event was no easy feat.

In late 2003, Mo Ke and his colleagues at the Beijing New Materials Development Centre – a government-affiliated research institute – were tasked to analyse China's lithium battery industry as part of Beijing's preparatory work for the Olympics.

But back then, China's lithium battery industry was "very small" with only two EV battery producers, as Mo's team found. In 2005, they hosted China's first conference for the lithium battery industry as a part of their research.

"All companies in the industry came, but there were only around 200 people in total," Mo says.

At the time, CATL, the world's current largest EV battery maker, was a department of ATL, a Japanese-owned company that made lithium batteries for electronic gadgets. BYD, the world's current second-largest EV battery maker and a leading EV maker, had just entered the auto industry after earning its first barrel of capital by supplying batteries to phone giants.

China's investment spree in UK gave it access to military-grade technology, BBC told

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China has financed tens of billions of pounds' worth of investment in UK businesses and projects this century, some of which gave it access to military-grade technology, BBC Panorama has learned.

The spending spree - worth £45bn ($59bn) at 2023 prices - was at its height following a 2015 Chinese state directive, aimed at making the country a global leader in high-tech industries.

The UK has been the top destination among G7 nations for these investments, relative to the size of its population and economy, according to US-based research group AidData.

Panorama has investigated how this led to cutting-edge technology and skills being transferred to China. The UK was "far too free in allowing access to strategically important industries", according to a former head of GCHQ.

The BBC was given exclusive early access to data collected by AidData, a research group at William & Mary, a university in the US state of Virginia. A leading specialist in tracking how governments spend money overseas, AidData receives funding from governments and charitable foundations around the world.

Some government-backed Chinese investments were purely commercial but others were in line with Beijing's strategic objectives, according to Dr Brad Parks, AidData's executive director.

These objectives were laid out by China's communist leaders in a strategic plan 10 years ago, called "Made In China 2025". It set ambitious targets for the country to become the industry leader in 10 high-tech sectors, including aerospace, electric vehicles and robotics.

This was a far-sighted strategy, according to Prof Keyu Jin of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology: "It's the longer-term strategic thinking that China has always had, and I'd argue that many other countries also should have."

With access to AidData's research, the BBC has investigated how the purchase of some UK companies has led to technology with military potential to be transferred to China.

Iran begins cloud seeding to induce rain amid historic drought

Ruth Comerford

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Water levels in Tehran's Amirkabir dam are at 8% of capacity, officials say

Authorities in Iran have sprayed clouds with chemicals to induce rain, in an attempt to combat the country's worst drought in decades.

Known as cloud-seeding, the process was conducted over the Urmia lake basin on Saturday, Iran's official news agency Irna reported.

Urmia is Iran's largest lake, but has largely dried out leaving a vast salt bed. Further operations will be carried out in east and west Azerbaijan, the agency said.

Rainfall is at record lows and reservoirs are nearly empty. Last week President Masoud Pezeshkian warned that if there is not enough rainfall soon, Tehran's water supply could be rationed and people may be evacuated from the capital.

Cloud seeding involves injecting chemical salts including silver or potassium iodide into clouds via aircraft or through generators on the ground. Water vapour can then condense more easily and turn into rain.

The technique has been around for decades, and the UAE has used it in recent years to help address water shortages.

Iran's meteorological organisation said rainfall had decreased by about 89% this year compared with the long-term average, Irna reported.

"We are currently experiencing the driest autumn the country has experienced in 50 years," it added.

‘Good Enough’ Drones Have Become Geopolitical Chips

Steven Feldstein

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In Sudan, which has been engulfed in a ruinous civil war since 2023, drones have been devastating instruments of destruction. The conflict has killed as many as 400,000 people and displaced more than 12 million from their homes. Deployed indiscriminately against both civilian and military targets, the unconstrained use of drones by both sides has contributed to the war’s growing death toll and also inflicted heavy damage against vital infrastructure such as hospitals, airports, military bases, and ports.

The world is entering a new era of drone warfare. Drones are proliferating on the battlefield in both small and large conflicts. They are making warfare deadlier and easier to wage, granting increased firepower to nonstate actors and insurgent movements, in addition to enhancing the capacity of regular militaries. Fundamentally, drones offer several advantages. Unmanned systems allow militaries to conduct operations without risk to their own personnel; the human cost of deploying a drone is minimal. They are also effective weapons, enabling strikes against targets from remote distances. Compared with other types of weapons systems such as precision-guided missiles, drones have low acquisition and operating costs. Moreover, few states possess the requisite weaponry (at least at present) to defend against drones. Finally, drones are multifunctional. Not only are they adept at conducting kinetic strikes, but they can perform other critical functions, such as carrying out battlefield reconnaissance and surveillance.

Armenia Faces an Information War on Three Fronts | Opinion

Ilan Berman

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Big changes are afoot in the South Caucasus. Back in August, in a move that passed largely unnoticed in the American press, the Trump administration pulled off a major diplomatic coup when it brought together Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to ink a joint declaration formally ending decades of hostility between the two regional rivals. The resulting statement included commitments by both sides to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as to renounce the use of force to acquire land, something that had bedeviled their relations for decades.

The August meeting also included a major trade component, with the U.S. securing rights to develop the Zangezur Corridor, now renamed the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP). As envisioned, TRIPP will run through southern Armenia, linking Azerbaijan with its territorial exclave of Nakhchivan and bringing economic prosperity to both countries—as well as to the American companies and stakeholders that become involved there.

But now, one of the parties, Armenia, is facing an informational assault from three separate directions, as political stakeholders attempt to undermine the nascent peace effort and force Yerevan to reject the economic dividends and pro-Western politics that accompany it.

The first emanates from Russia. While the Kremlin formally welcomed the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace deal, the weeks since have seen a veritable deluge of negative media coverage that tells a very different story. Outlets like Komsomolskaya Pravda have accused Pashinyan of “selling out his Motherland” and betraying Armenian national interests. And Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Russia Today and arguably Moscow’s most notorious propagandist, has called the Armenian premier “a degenerate,” “a traitor” and a “CIA puppet without honor or conscience.”

The harshness of the rhetoric reflects just how much Moscow stands to lose if the deal holds and TRIPP become a reality. Russia, after all, has long wielded controlling interest over Armenian politics, complete with a long-term military presence on Armenian soil. The new Armenia-Azerbaijan peace deal “shall not deploy along their mutual border forces of any third party”—an edict that Kremlin officials clearly fear might be used to evict Russian troops from the country. Worrisome, too, are the economic implications of TRIPP, which effectively displaces Moscow as a guarantor of commerce in the area. Finally, Moscow naturally fears being excluded from any new security architecture for the region, and a diminution of its own (traditionally extensive) influence.

Iran Is on the Brink of “Water Bankruptcy”

RFE/RL staff

Sourec Link 

Iran is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years, with major reservoirs running near-empty and water rationing beginning in Tehran.

Experts say decades of mismanagement and unrealistic agricultural self-sufficiency goals have pushed the country into “water bankruptcy.”

President Pezeshkian has warned that continued rainfall shortages could force evacuations from parts of Tehran and potentially require moving the capital.

Decades of mismanagement compounded by prolonged drought have pushed Iran to the brink of what experts call water bankruptcy.

With reservoirs running on empty and rainfall at a record low, the authorities have begun rationing water supplies in the Iranian capital, Tehran, a city of some 10 million people.

President Masud Pezeshkian has warned that the water crisis could lead to the evacuation of parts of Tehran and has gone as far as floating the possibility of moving the capital.

Kaveh Madani, director of the Canada-based United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment, and Health, said the warnings by the authorities didn't go far enough.

"The level of their warnings is too low compared to the reality on the ground," Madani, who previously served as deputy head of Iran's Department of Environment, told RFE/RL's Radio Farda.

"The government is being too cautious because it doesn't want to stress the public and upset people even more," he added.

Water bankruptcy is when consumption exceeds supply and the depletion of resources is irreversible. It is often driven by what experts say is misguided government policies intended to boost agriculture and development.

How Bad Is Iran's Water Crisis?

Iran is currently in the grips of the worst drought in some 60 years.

Israeli troops fire at UN peacekeepers in Lebanon

Jon Shelton 

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A United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) statement said Israeli forces "fired on UNIFIL peacekeepers from a Merkava tank from near a position Israel has established in Lebanese territory." The statement added that heavy machine gun rounds had landed about 5 meters (16.5 feet) from peacekeepers. No one was injured in the incident.Israel said it had identified "two suspects" in the El Hamames area of southern Lebanon and that "troops subsequently fired warning shots, and the suspects distanced themselves. No injuries were reported."

"After a review, it was determined that the suspects were UN soldiers who were conducting a patrol in the area and were classified as suspects due to poor weather conditions," the statement continued. "No deliberate fire was directed toward UNIFIL soldiers."UNIFIL forces were reportedly pinned down for 30 minutes before they could depart the area after IDF soldiers withdrew.UN calls shelling 'serious violation'UNIFIL officials called the incident "a serious violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701," which states that no armed forces should be operating in southern Lebanon except UN peacekeepers and the Lebanese military.

UN peacekeepers have been working in coordination with the Lebanese army in an effort to monitor a truce between Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants signed last November.Clashes between Hezbollah and Israel began shortly after the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led militant attack on Israel that sparked the latest war in Gaza.

The ‘Donroe Doctrine’: Trump’s Bid to Control the Western Hemisphere

Jack Nicas

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President Trump opened the year with pledges to seize the Panama Canal, take control of Greenland and rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.He is ending it by bombing boats from South America, stationing the world’s largest aircraft carrier in the Caribbean and exploring military options against Venezuela’s autocratic leader.

In a sharp shift of decades of U.S. foreign policy, the Western Hemisphere has become the United States’ central theater abroad. In addition to military threats and action, the White House this year has carried out punishing tariffs, severe sanctions, pressure campaigns and economic bailouts across the Americas.

Mr. Trump has said he is seeking to stop drugs and migrants from entering the United States. But, in other moments, top administration officials have been explicit that their overarching goal is to assert American dominance over its half of the planet.

“He believes this is the neighborhood we live in,” said Mauricio Claver-Carone, Mr. Trump’s special envoy to Latin America until June, who continues to advise the White House. “And you can’t be the pre-eminent global power if you’re not the pre-eminent regional power.”The United States has long tried to tip the scales around Latin America, where it has supported military coups, conducted covert operations and invaded Panama.

The Darkest Thread in the Epstein E-mails

Jessica Winter

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On Sunday, the anti-trafficking organization World Without Exploitation released a P.S.A. featuring eleven of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims. Each of the women holds a photograph of herself from around the age at which she first encountered the reviled sex offender. (“I was fourteen years old” . . . “I was sixteen years old” . . . “I was sixteen” . . . “Seventeen” . . . “Fourteen years old.”) The P.S.A. ends by directing viewers to call their congressional representatives to urge the release of the remaining Epstein files: “It’s time to bring the secrets out of the shadows.”

This plea may appear to have some momentum. Last week, the House Oversight Committee made public more than twenty thousand pages of documents subpoenaed from Epstein’s estate, and, in days to come, the House is expected to vote on a bill to open up a trove of Justice Department files related to Epstein. But, even if the bill passes the House, it may die in the Senate, or by a veto from President Donald Trump, or in the hands of Pam Bondi, the U.S. Attorney General.

Trump, after months of stonewalling on the release of the remaining Epstein papers, appeared to reverse himself over the weekend, posting to Truth Social, “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide, and it’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party.” He added, “I DON’T CARE!” But we know Trump cares deeply about anything that bears his name, and his name is all over last week’s tranche of documents. House Democrats singled out a 2011 e-mail in which Epstein called Trump the “dog that hasn’t barked,” and another message, from 2019, in which Epstein invoked Trump’s private club, Mar-a-Lago, and said that “of course he knew about the girls”—presumably referring to girls such as Epstein’s most prominent accuser, Virginia Giuffre, who was a teen-age locker-room attendant at Mar-a-Lago when she was first spotted by Epstein’s main accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. But Giuffre, who died in April, always maintained that she had never witnessed inappropriate conduct by Trump.

Why the Time Has Finally Come for Geothermal Energy

Rivka Galchen

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When I arrived in Reykjavík, Iceland, last March, a gravel barrier, almost thirty feet at its highest point, had been constructed to keep lava from the Reykjanes volcano from inundating a major geothermal power station not far from downtown. So far, it had worked, but daily volcano forecasts were being broadcast on a small television at the domestic airport where I was waiting to take a short flight to Akureyri, a town on the north coast about an hour’s drive from one of the country’s oldest geothermal plants, the Krafla Geothermal Station. Until the early nineteen-seventies, Iceland relied on imported fossil fuels for nearly three-quarters of its energy. The resources of the country—a landscape of hot springs, lava domes, and bubbling mud pots—were largely untapped. “In the past, people here in the valley lacked most things now considered essential to human life, except for a hundred thousand million tons of boiling-hot water,” the Icelandic Nobelist Halldór Laxness wrote in “A Parish Chronicle,” his 1970 novel. “For a hundred thousand years this water, more valuable than all coal mines, ran in torrents out to sea.” The oil crisis of 1973, when prices more than tripled, proved a useful emergency. Among other efforts to develop local energy, public-investment funds provided loans for geothermal projects, whose upfront costs were considerable. By the early eighties, almost all the country’s homes were heated geothermally; in Reykjavík, a subterranean geothermal-powered system is in place to melt snow and ice off sidewalks and roads. Today, more than a quarter of the country’s electricity comes from geothermal sources, a higher proportion than in almost any other nation. Most of the rest is from hydropower.

In some ways, the process of harnessing geothermal energy is simple. The deeper you dig, the hotter the temperatures get. For direct heating, you dig relatively shallow wells (typically several hundred metres deep), to access natural reservoirs of hot water or steam, which can be piped into a structure. For electricity, wells are dug farther down, to where temperatures are above a hundred and fifty degrees Celsius. (In Iceland, this temperature is reached at around one thousand to two thousand metres deep.) Pressurized steam spins a turbine that in turn spins a generator. Thermal energy (steam) is translated into mechanical energy (the spinning turbine), which is translated into electrical energy (via the generator). Geothermal energy is essentially carbon-free, it is available at any time of day and in any weather, and it leaves a small—albeit very deep—footprint on the landscape.

Kash Patel’s Acts of Service

Ben Kirchner

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On June 5th, Kash Patel, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was in Austin, Texas, to record a podcast interview with Joe Rogan. Patel had recently declared that the F.B.I. had moved on from its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s sex crimes, but his agents were still looking into other “coverups,” including the Covid-19 lab leak and the role that the Bureau’s own operatives supposedly played in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. In Rogan’s studio, Patel, wearing an olive-green hoodie and smoking a fat cigar, laid out a new conspiracy, in which the Chinese Communist Party was systematically killing Americans with fentanyl as part of a “long-term plan” to “wipe out tens of thousands of Americans a year” who “might grow up to serve in the United States military or become a cop or become a teacher.”

Rogan said, “Oh, that is such a dark, dark thing.” Patel fired up his stogie with a butane lighter and exhaled a billowy cloud of smoke. “It is,” he replied. “But we’re on it.”

Rogan was clearly impressed. “What is it like to be the head of the F.B.I.?” he asked at one point. “How weird is that?”

“It’s completely effing wild,” Patel said. “I mean, I don’t even know how to describe it.”

Many of Patel’s past associates are similarly astonished. Bennett Gershman, a professor at Pace University’s law school, where Patel got his degree, described Patel as an “at best average” student who was interested in issues of social justice and identity politics. “He seemed to be on the side of the left,” Gershman said. Former colleagues in Miami, where Patel spent eight years as a public defender, called him an “adequate” attorney. “We had two hundred lawyers, and he was neither one of the best nor one of the worst,” Bennett Brummer, the elected Miami-Dade public defender at the time, said. Kushagra Katariya, a cardiothoracic surgeon who became friends with Patel in Miami, said Patel’s passions were hockey and exploring ways to get rich. “I never imagined him getting to this point in his life,” Katariya said. “It’s a good surprise.”

Putin’s Elites Could Become Proponents of Peace

Pavel K. Baev

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The end of World War I has never been a significant anniversary in Russia because the Bolshevik government signed a separate peace with the Central Powers in March 1918, thereby breaking its commitments to the Allies. Instead, Russia celebrates “National Unity Day” on November 4 to commemorate the end of the “Times of Troubles” in the early seventeenth century, which has scant meaning for the majority of Russians (Izvestiya; TopWar.ru.

The Kremlin’s war against Ukraine has already continued longer than the Russian Empire’s involvement in World War I, which was a central cause of its collapse in 1917 (Kommersant, November 15). Exhaustion and anger about World War I led many elite groups to demand and support the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in March 1917. The resulting provisional government’s inability to bring the war to an end catalyzed the Bolshevik Revolution in November 1917, followed by the Russian Civil War, which ended on the European front when the last ship carrying the survivors of the White Armies left Sevastopol on November 16, 1920 (Novaya Gazeta, November 11, 2020). These historical comparisons raise the possibility that some present-day elite groupings may internalize the strong preference for ending the war in Russian society and act as promoters of a peace deal (Levada Center, November 11).

In Major Breakthrough, U.N. Security Council Adopts U.S. Peace Plan for Gaza

Farnaz Fassihi

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The United Nations Security Council on Monday approved President Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, a breakthrough that provides a legal U.N. mandate for the administration’s vision of how to move past the cease-fire and rebuild the war-ravaged Gaza Strip after two years of war.

The Council’s vote was also a major diplomatic victory for the Trump administration. For the past two years, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas has raged, the United States had been isolated at the United Nations over its staunch support for Israel.

The U.S. resolution calls for an International Stabilization Force to enter, demilitarize and govern Gaza. The proposal, which contained Mr. Trump’s 20-point cease-fire plan, also envisions a “Board of Peace” to oversee the peace plan, though it does not clarify the composition of the board.

The Bolduc Brief: A Critical Examination of Military Engagement in Venezuela – The Case Against Current Strategies

Donald Bolduc 

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We are posturing for a fight in Venezuela without a coherent strategy, bleeding scarce combat power and credibility in pursuit of a mission that serves politics more than the security of the American people.Brigadier General (Ret.) Donald C. Bolduc, former US Army Special Forces Commander. (US Army).

The global political landscape often necessitates strategic military readiness, with nations prepared to respond to threats in various forms. However, as the current environment surrounding U.S. military presence in Venezuela indicates, the notion of “setting the table” for potential military action represents not just a miscalculation but a misallocation of resources and priorities. The approach taken by the Trump administration in this context is particularly concerning, as it appears detached from comprehensive policy, coherent strategy, and critical logistical planning.

At the forefront of this discussion is the deployment of the USS Gerald Ford, a state-of-the-art aircraft carrier that has been pulled from more pressing operations in the Mediterranean to support what is being characterized as a lower-priority mission against Venezuela. This move not only reflects poor management of combat assets but also indicates an alarming trend towards overzealous military posturing. The U.S. does not need to surge naval resources to exert pressure on Venezuela; rather, such actions may yield significant economic and political costs with minimal gains.

Russian Green Berets: Recon Paratroopers

Warren Gray

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The Russian Airborne Forces (Vozdushno-Desantnye Voyska Rossii, or VDV) are the huge nation’s substantial, paratrooper command, formed on May 7, 1992, and boasting at least 60,000 soldiers in four divisions and four separate brigades. They serve as light infantry, airborne infantry, or airmobile infantry, and they wear sky-blue berets and blue-and-white-striped telniashka undershirts, usually visible at the neck of the uniform. So, they are nicknamed the “Blue Berets,” although Russian elite, SpetsNaz commandos also typically wear the blue beret, to blend in with ordinary airborne troops.

However, the advance elements of any military formation are their forward-deployed scouts, or reconnaissance teams, tasked with traveling very fast and light in order to stay ahead of the main columns and report vital intelligence information about enemy troop dispositions and possible targets back to the unit’s leaders in combat. These are a special breed of men – part spy, part messenger, and part commando, normally trained not to fight, unless absolutely necessary, because combat action would betray their concealed positions. In the Russian Army, these special reconnaissance units wear a distinctive, dark-green beret, or a camouflaged beret if worn into actual battle.

Russia-led Regional Integration Projects Continue to Flounder

Luke Rodeheffer

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The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU)—comprising Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan—continues to promote regional integration despite its decade-long existence yielding a resounding lack of results. A new set of procedures to deepen integration processes, known as the “Lead Protocol No.4” («IV Большой» протокол; “IV Bol’shoi” protokol), was approved by the Supreme Council—the trade bloc’s governing body—this summer and was introduced into Kazakhstan’s parliament. The text was posted on the official government portal to allow citizens to review it (Eurasian Economic Commission, September 25). Kazakhstan’s press noted in October that the protocol contains provisions by Russia to exempt its armaments industry from the proposed integrated EAEU procurement system (Exclusive.kz, October 5). The provisions include language on “alterations regarding the laws of the Russian Federation concerning government defense procurements,” which allows the Kremlin to maintain a special system for its military-industrial complex that is exempt from oversight of the Eurasian Economic Commission, the governing body of the EAEU. This contradicts the EAEU’s drive to grant the body more powers to remove trade barriers and regulate a common market across the five EAEU member states and their trade partners (EAEU, accessed November 17).

Russia has also introduced tougher measures earlier this year to limit guest worker access to its labor market, and the country’s Immigration Service frequently refuses to reregister guest workers if they move jobs (Eurasianet, September 9). These shifts in Russian guest worker policy contradict the central goals of the EAEU on the creation of a common labor market and conflict with the EAEU’s own laws, which allow EAEU citizens to reregister with new labor contracts (Radio Azatutyun, January 18).

US Foreign Assistance as a Means of Soft Power

Steve Dewey

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The Marshall Plan to rebuild post-World War II Europe has been acclaimed as the most successful foreign assistance program in U.S. history. The plan, officially known as the European Recovery Program (ERP), was created under the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948 (also known at the Foreign Assistance Act of 1948) signed into law by President Harry Truman on April 3, 1948.

The plan was named after George Marshall, its leading advocate and Truman’s Secretary of State at the time. It provided an aggregate total of $13.3 billion (equivalent to about $200 billion in 2025) in financial assistance to 16 European countries over a period of approximately four years from April 1948 to June 1952. Both the Truman administration and large majorities in Congress viewed the Marshall Plan as essential in not only helping reconstruct a war-torn Europe and regenerate its economies, but also to prevent the westward expansion of communism across the European continent by the Soviet Union.

The Trump administration’s clean-up of the waste, fraud, and abuse in U.S. foreign assistance  should lead to a far more efficient and effective U.S. foreign policy.

The impact of the plan on recipient countries show that it achieved its primary objectives. From 1947 to the end of 1951, trade volume within Europe almost doubled, industrial production increased 55 percent, and average GNP rose by roughly 33 percent. In addition, the Marshall Plan had geopolitical value for the United States that is not easily quantifiable beyond the economic benefits. Many observers believe that the plan was critical in preventing the spread of communism in the assisted countries.

What to Expect From Trump’s Meeting With MBS

John Haltiwanger

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The defense pact on the table is reportedly similar to the one that Trump agreed to with Qatar in September in which the United States committed to treat any attack on Qatar as a threat to U.S. security and to “take all lawful and appropriate measures — including diplomatic, economic, and, if necessary, military — to defend the interests of the United States and of the State of Qatar and to restore peace and stability.” Importantly, that agreement was only an executive order, which, unlike a Senate-ratified treaty, carries basically no legal weight and can easily be undone by a future president.

An Unusual Election in Iraq Offers the U.S. an Unusual Opportunity

Bobby Ghosh

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Americans who haven’t been following Iraq for the past decade might be surprised to learn that the country just conducted a reasonably free, fair, and peaceful election. On Nov. 11, nearly 7,750 candidates competed for 329 parliamentary seats in a contest that, by the troubled standards of the region, went remarkably smoothly. There was no major violence and relatively few allegations of fraud. Despite predictions of record-low participation, election turnout reached 56 percent—comparable to many U.S. presidential elections over the past century.

Iraq, for so long a shorthand for everything that can go wrong with U.S. foreign policy, just demonstrated more democratic resilience than its critics give it credit for. Squint hard enough, and you might even see it as the closest thing to a stable, peaceful, and genuinely democratic Arab state.

Poland says blast on rail line to Ukraine 'unprecedented act of sabotage'

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Poland's prime minister has said an explosion on a railway line leading to the Ukraine border this weekend was caused by "an unprecedented act of sabotage", and vowed to catch those responsible "regardless of who their backers are".

Visiting the scene this morning, Donald Tusk said the damage done to the railway tracks on Sunday was deliberate and likely aimed at blowing up the train. He expressed relief there were no casualties.

Speaking later in Warsaw, after an emergency meeting of security officials, Poland's special services minister said there was a "very high chance" that the blast was carried out on the orders of "foreign services".

He didn't name Russia directly but Poland has experienced a series of major arson and sabotage attacks in recent years, including parcel bombings, that it sees as part of Moscow's hybrid war on the West.

The incident happened on the track between Warsaw and Lublin to the south-east, and Tusk noted that the route was "crucially important for delivering aid to Ukraine".

Poland's railway network is a critical part of the military supply lines for its neighbour as well as a route for civilians moving in and out of the country.

Investigators are looking into a second incident that occurred further down the same line on Sunday, where a packed train was forced to stop suddenly. It's thought "very likely" to be another case of sabotage – though not an explosion.

"These events show that the people behind it have decided to begin a new phase of threatening the railway infrastructure," Special Services Minister Tomasz Siemoniak said.

Russia always denies any role in such attacks.

The damage near Mika, about 100km (60 miles) south-east of Warsaw, was detected at around 07:30 local time (06:30 GMT) on Sunday morning by a train driver who was forced to make an emergency stop.

Mysterious drones have been spotted at night at airports across Europe. How worried should we be?

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First comes the warning, that disembodied voice over the tannoy: "Your attention please. Air siren in the city. Please move to the shelter on the minus second floor." Then comes the mosquito-like whine of the incoming Russian drones, massing in their hundreds just above the clouds.

It's followed immediately by the rattle of anti-aircraft fire, the distant thud of explosions, then finally the ominous klaxon call of ambulance and fire sirens.

This is the grim reality of nighttime in Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine.

These are attack drones that explode on impact.

Drones are now an integral part of modern warfare, but they are not confined to the battlefield.

Across western Europe, far from Ukraine, unarmed drones have also been found buzzing around airports, military bases and power plants, all part of a suspected programme of "hybrid warfare" being waged by Russia, with some speculating they're arriving to test the resilience of certain Nato countries that are helping Ukraine.

Drone sightings around critical infrastructure across Europe, including in Belgium, have sparked fear in a number of Nato countries

Recent drone sightings in Poland, along with a swathe spotted around critical infrastructure across Europe, including in Belgium and Denmark, have sparked fear across some Nato countries.

Now, there is talk that a "drone wall" is to be designed to protect parts of Europe - but just how necessary is this, really? And more pertinently, how realistic?

A wake-up call to Europe

On 9 September, around 20 Russian drones overshot Ukraine and flew into Poland, forcing the closure of four airports.

How immigration is shaking Spanish politics

Jack Davey

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Spain is Europe’s left-liberal success story. In the words of the Financial Times, under socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, “Spain has become Europe’s standout economy” chiefly due to immigration.

However, the accolades of this PSOE minority government are ephemeral. The government is held up by separatist parties, caught as the Spanish say, between la espada y la pared — “the sword and the wall”. These separatists are tarnished by association with a socialist government mired in corruption but are unable to do anything. Elections would likely lead to a Spanish nationalist conservative government involving the hard-right Vox party — a nightmare for Catalan and Basque separatists. Pedro Sanchez has relied on this dynamic for almost eight years, but the immigration policy which has caused this growth and foreign adulation may be what brings him down.

“What I ask from the left is less purity and more sense.” That’s how Gabriel Rufián, the leader of Catalunya’s left-wing separatists Esquerra Republica Catalana (ERC), began his address to the Spanish Parliament. This attack on the PSOE government his party keeps in power started off with the normal concerns about the cost of housing, but then something changed. Rufián raised his voice: “We should talk about migration. Yes, migration, stop putting your ear to the ground for five minutes… understand that waves of migration are a challenge for communities.” Rufián is no post-liberal nor has he “left the left”; his speech this week still warned against the “exaggeration by some” of issues over security but the tone remains remarkable. Just a few years ago he declared “there was no wall higher than institutional racism” and railed against ascendant fascism. So what changed?

Rufián is reflecting the realities of a Catalan nationalism in crisis over immigration. Alianca Catalana, a firmly anti-immigration Catalan separatist party, is ascending in the polls every week. The party is led by Silvia Orriols, Mayor of Ripoll, a town in the Pyrenees who infamously described herself as “Catalan and Islamophobic”. Alianca Catalana is polling as the 3rd most popular Catalan separatist party, and Vox themselves were the most popular party for Catalans under 35 in the same survey. Catalans are especially impacted by immigration. Barcelona has a very large Moroccan community and most recent arrivals speak Spanish, not Catalan. Orriols is well beyond the nationalist electoral politics of the UK, declaring she wants a Catalonia “free from the Spanish state, free from the French state, and free from the Islamic state.” This anti-immigration surge is what Rufián is responding to as he says, “Everyone in society has rights and responsibilities no matter if you are called Javier or Brahim.”

Can the Latest Plan for CYBERCOM Stave Off Calls for a New Service?

Shaun Waterman

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In a brief email Nov. 6, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth laid out a new Cyber Force Generation plan, meant to give U.S. Cyber Command more authority over the employment, training, and equipping of U.S. troops preparing for and waging cyber war. Former Air Force officers and national security officials say the plan is meant to fix longstanding problems that have beset the U.S. military’s cyberspace efforts—and to head off growing calls for an entirely new military service.

Yet to some experts who have spent years working in cyber and believe a new service is needed, the new plan is destined not to succeed. Mark Montgomery, a retired rear admiral, praised some of the ideas in the plan, but argued that “it’s like installing a 70 mile-long screwdriver at [Cyber Command headquarters at] Fort Meade and expecting to drive a bunch of screws at the Pentagon. This is not going to work.”

Montgomery runs CSC 2.0, a nonprofit focused on implementing the recommendations of the congressionally mandated Cyberspace Solarium Commission, where he previously served as executive director.

“It’s great that they [Pentagon leaders] are thinking about force generation,” he said, adding that the list of seven “core attributes” central to the plan is “a wonderful list.”

“There’s good ideas, but I believe they’re tasking the wrong person with it,” said Montgomery, who is also a member of the Commission on Cyber Force Generation, launched in September by CSC 2.0 and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The commission was set up to provide the White House and Pentagon with the policy framework they will need if the administration decides to go ahead and establish a separate cyber force, explained former White House national security staffer Lauryn Williams, commission co-director and a senior fellow at CSIS. It will report no later than June 2026, she added.

“The bottom line is, we’re not recruiting the right force,” Montgomery said. “We’re not training them consistently. We’re certainly not paying them consistently, and as a result, we’re not retaining them at the proper levels.”