The Facebook breach makes it clear: data must be regulated

Roger McNamee and Sandy Parakilas

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‘The big data companies are opaque to consumers and regulators alike, so few people understand the risks and companies can often hide data breaches for a long time.’ The Observer reported on Saturday that Cambridge Analytica acquired 50m Facebook profiles from a researcher in 2014. This appears to have been among the most consequential data breaches in history, with an impact that may rival the breach of financial records from Equifax. There are many problematic aspects to this. It appears the information was harvested by a researcher who collected data not only on the 270,000 or so users who Facebook said took his survey but also on their friends, who knew nothing about the survey, and then passed it to Cambridge Analytica in violation of Facebook’s terms of service. There are questions now over whether the data was destroyed.

Air Force "Hardens" Satellites to Prepare for Space War

By Kris Osborn - Warrior Maven

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Air Force space technology and weapons developers are working quickly to prepare for major space war by accelerating new weapons programs and fast-tracking satellite protections or "hardening" systems. Part of this challenge not only involves defending laser attacks or "jamming" weapons in space, but also hinges upon reconciling the advantages of using smaller form factors for space assets with the increased radiation challenges they present.

MARK ZUCKERBERG TALKS TO WIRED ABOUT FACEBOOK’S PRIVACY PROBLEM

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FOR THE PAST four days, Facebook has been taken to the woodshed by critics, the stock market, and regulators after it was reported that the data-science firm Cambridge Analytica obtained the data of 50 million Facebook users. Until Wednesday, Mark Zuckerberg had stayed silent. On Wednesday afternoon, though, he addressed the problem in a personal Facebook post and laid out some of the solutions he will introduce. He then gave an interview to WIRED in which he discussed the recent crisis, the mistakes Facebook made, and different models for how the company could be regulated. He also discussed the possibility that another—Russian—shoe could drop. Here is a transcript of that conversation:

Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, and the Revelations of Open Secrets

By Sue Halpern

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Christopher Wylie, formerly of Cambridge Analytica, has explained how the company used Facebook data to advance Donald Trump’s campaign.What are we to make of the revelations published over the weekend, in the Observer and the Times, that Cambridge Analytica, the data-analytics and messaging company financed, in part, by the conservative billionaire Robert Mercer, used tens of millions of ill-gotten Facebook profiles to create algorithms aimed at “breaking” American democracy? First, that these were not really revelations at all. Reporters from the Guardian, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Das Magazin, and the Intercept have been reporting these facts for years. 

Cambridge Analytica and Our Lives Inside the Surveillance Machine

By Adrian Chen

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Alexander Nix, pictured here in 2016, was recently suspended from his position as the C.E.O. of Cambridge Analytica, the firm at the center of a data-mining scandal involving Facebook. In 2006, a local pollster in Nepal was kidnapped by Maoist rebels while conducting opinion surveys on behalf of the American political strategist Stan Greenberg. The Maoists, who had been waging a long-running insurgency against the government, did not issue their typical ransom demands—money or weapons in exchange for the prisoner. No, they wanted the polling data that Greenberg’s team had collected, evidently to gauge the political climate in the country for themselves. The researchers eventually handed it over. In his book “Alpha Dogs,” the British journalist James Harding cites this story as an example of how the business of political campaigning is being remade, across the globe, by a profusion of fine-grained data about voters and their habits. Where the consultants of the nineteen-sixties and seventies obsessed over how to use television to beam ideal images of their clients into voters’ homes, today’s spinmasters hope that big data will allow them to manipulate voters’ deepest hopes and fears. “What’s the currency of the world now?” one of Greenberg’s partners asks Harding. “It’s not gold, it’s data. It’s the information.”

COUNTERING RUSSIAN AGGRESSION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Lionel Beehner and Liam Collins

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Over the past year, the United States has dusted off its international relations textbooks from the Cold War era and prioritized “revisionist powers” like the Russian Federation and China in terms of reshaping its military strategy and doctrine. The 2008 Russia-Georgia War, nearing its ten-year anniversary, is worth reexamining to understand how these “revisionist powers” will fight in the twenty-first century.

The New Military-Industrial Complex of Big Data Psy-Ops

Tamsin Shaw

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Apparently, the age of the old-fashioned spook is in decline. What is emerging instead is an obscure world of mysterious boutique companies specializing in data analysis and online influence that contract with government agencies. As they say about hedge funds, if the general public has heard their names that’s probably not a good sign. But there is now one data analysis company that anyone who pays attention to the US and UK press has heard of: Cambridge Analytica. Representatives have boasted that their list of past and current clients includes the British Ministry of Defense, the US Department of Defense, the US Department of State, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and NATO. Nevertheless, they became recognized for just one influence campaign: the one that helped Donald Trump get elected president of the United States. The kind of help the company offered has since been the subject of much unwelcome legal and journalistic scrutiny.

Corbusier’s Modernism to the Needs of India

By Samanth Subramanian

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The ninety-year-old architect, who won this year’s Pritzker Prize, believes that architecture should be informed by empathy. In the buildings of Balkrishna Doshi, the Indian architect who won this year’s Pritzker Prize, it’s easy to take the light for granted. Years ago, I visited the Ahmedabad campus of cept University, which began as an architecture school founded by Doshi. It was midsummer, and the afternoon roared with heat, but in the paths between buildings, overhangs and parapets dropped pools of shadow. The plazas were studded with neem and arjuna trees, and the design studios had sloping skylights, so that the sun was permitted only oblique entry. Most modern sections of India’s cities are all about harshness, their greenery exfoliated and the surfaces paved with naked tar and concrete. Doshi, by contrast, once said that he admired Le Corbusier’s ability “to create a soft light that makes people’s faces glow.”

China’s Forced Labor Problem

By Peter Bengtsen

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In China, forced labor is sensitive topic. Years pass between the odd case of forced labor that sees the light of day in local media. Local labor NGOs rarely approach incidents of serious coercion in forced labor terms. Nobody knows the real extent, and surprisingly few, from China as well as abroad, prioritize exploring this issue. Within the last decade, a handful of cases amounting to forced labor in China have been brought to light, all with certain characteristics in common pointing to a need for closer scrutiny.

Diplomats, 'Net greybeards work to disarm USA, China and Russia’s cyber-weapons

By Simon Sharwood

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Black Hat Asia The USA, China and Russia are doing all that they can to avoid development of a treaty that would make it hard for them to conduct cyber-war, but an effort led by the governments of The Netherlands, France and Singapore, together with Microsoft and The Internet Society, is using diplomacy to find another way to stop state-sponsored online warfare. The group making the diplomatic push is called the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace (GCSC). One of the group’s motivations is that state-sponsored attacks nearly always have commercial and/or human consequences well beyond their intended targets.

CHINA REVEALS UNMANNED TANKS DRIVEN BY REMOTE CONTROL, WITH EYE TOWARD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

BY JOE DIFAZIO

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China tested unmanned tanks this week in hopes of eventually arming the vehicles with artificial intelligence, according to Chinese state-run newspaper Global Times on Wednesday. Footage of the tests was shown on state television. It depicted converted unmanned versions of a Soviet-era Chinese tank driven by remote control. This was the first time the Chinese public has been shown testing of the unmanned version of the vehicle, according to Reuters. The original Type 59 first entered into service in China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at the end of the 1950s.“A large number of due-to-retire Type 59 tanks can be converted into unmanned vehicles if equipped with artificial intelligence,” said Liu Qingshan, editor of Tank and Armored Vehicle, to the state paper.

Foreign Fighters who Travelled to Syria and Iraq Since 2011

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Saudi Arabia Goes Shopping for a Nuclear Deal

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Saudi Arabia will strive to develop a civilian nuclear energy program due to the need to diversify its energy mix away from oil. But Saudi Arabia's push for ownership of the nuclear fuel cycle will open up the possibility that Riyadh will use its greater nuclear capabilities to satisfy its security imperatives, including defending itself from its biggest nemesis, Iran.

The United States will weigh its desire to maintain leverage over Saudi Arabia by helping it develop a peaceful civilian nuclear program against its concerns about Riyadh's security motives.If an agreement is not reached, Saudi Arabia will look to other nuclear powers such as Russia, whose limits on enrichment ownership are weaker than those of the United States. 

Why Offense is the Best Defense Against Russia and Iran in Syria

by Tony Badran

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In January, the Trump administration unveiled its strategy for Syria. In an address at the Hoover Institution, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson laid out five key objectives, in the process, made clear that the top priority was containing Iran. The US, he said, would deny Iran the “arch” it is building from Tehran to the Mediterranean, and it would prevent Iran from using Syria as a springboard from which to threaten neighboring countries.

Russian Analytical Digest No 214: The Armed Conflict in Eastern Ukraine

By Nikolaus von Twickel, Gwendolyn Sasse and Mario Baumann for Center for Security Studies (CSS)

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The three articles in this edition of the RAD look at 1) the “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, arguing that though they may be best described as Russian puppet states, Moscow’s denial of formal ties to these entities makes a comprehensive analysis difficult; 2) the attitudes and identities of the Donbass region’s population, including both the Russian and Ukrainian controlled areas; and 3) key factors driving the recurrence of violence in eastern Ukraine and the potential for peacekeeping efforts to address them.

To Russia With Cauti

By Scott Stewart

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Tensions between the West and Russia are ratcheting up in the wake of the nerve agent attack on Sergei Skripal. The heightened hostilities will make day-to-day operations more challenging for foreign companies, nongovernmental organizations and journalists working in Russia. In addition to the threat of government surveillance and harassment, foreigners will likely be the targets of increased violence from nationalists and nationalist gangs.

INSIDE ISRAEL’S SECRET RAID ON SYRIA’S NUCLEAR REACTOR

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After the raid, Israel kept silent—and so did Assad. Syria didn’t want to admit it had violated its international commitments. Israel, for its part, figured out that if it said nothing in public, Assad would swallow his pride and not retaliate. Privately, Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and intelligence contacted or met their allies in the West—the U.S., UK, France, Germany—and in the Arab world (Egypt and Jordan) to share with them the information behind the raid. Olmert also personally called Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Israel’s calculation that Syria would not strike back proved correct, and the world seemed relieved that someone had removed a potentially serious threat to peace.

Can Syria's Kurds Hold the Ground They've Gained?

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Turkey's offensive in Afrin reveals the limits of Kurdish aspirations for autonomy in northern Syria. The United States protects Kurdish fighters in Syria as part of the Syrian Democratic Forces, but that protection will not last. Syrian Kurds will be exposed to a permanent threat from both Ankara and Damascus, one that threatens the future existence of their semi-autonomous Rojava region.

Don’t Underestimate North Korea’s Cyber Efforts

BY ELIZABETH VAN WIE DAVIS

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Cyber operations in North Korea (DPRK) are more diverse, aggressive and capable than often realized. According to the cyber security firm FireEye, “There is no question that DPRK has become increasingly aggressive with their use of cyber capabilities. They are not just focused on espionage — we’ve seen them use it for attack, we’ve seen them use it for crime. …They are showing up in places outside South Korea [and] continuing to expand capabilities.” DPRK cyber warriors regularly exploit so-called zero-day vulnerabilities — undiscovered flaws in operating systems that allow a breach of defenses.

Counterterrorism Measures and Civil Society

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To combat the global threat of terrorism, countries have passed and implemented numerous laws that inadvertently or intentionally diminished the space for civil society. States conflate terrorism with broader issues of national security, which is then used as a convenient justification to stifle dissent, including civil society actors that aim to hold governments accountable. As the global terror landscape becomes more complex and dire, attacks on the rights to the freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly only increase. This report analyzes the impact of counterterrorism efforts on civic space, examines its manifestations in various socioeconomic and political contexts, and explores various approaches to disentangle and reconcile security and civil society. It features case studies on Australia, Bahrain, Burkina Faso, Hungary, and India.

COUNTERING RUSSIAN AGGRESSION IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

Lionel Beehner and Liam Collins

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Over the past year, the United States has dusted off its international relations textbooks from the Cold War era and prioritized “revisionist powers” like the Russian Federation and China in terms of reshaping its military strategy and doctrine. The 2008 Russia-Georgia War, nearing its ten-year anniversary, is worth reexamining to understand how these “revisionist powers” will fight in the twenty-first century.

Strategy in Postmodern Times

By Julian Koeck

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After the fall of the Soviet Union, many intellectuals and politicians saw the climax of modernity itself. From now on, many thought, western democracy and capitalism would lead humanity into a golden future. No one conveyed this idea more elegantly than Francis Fukuyama in his book The End of History and the Last Man. The nations of the second and third world simply had to follow their western idols to become part of this paradise. Two decades later, we are healed from such glorious illusions. The Western World itself has changed (and keeps changing). The truths of modernism had to make room for postmodern doubt and new evolving dogmata. This does not change the core of what strategy is, but it makes things more complex and quite different for the strategist.

‘FACEBOOK IS WHY WE NEED A — DIGITAL PROTECTION AGENCY — IT’S NOT JUST THE CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA DEBACLE, ETHICS DON’T SCALE,’ ONE TECHNOLOGIST ARGUES

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‘FaceBook Is Why We Need A — Digital Protection Agency — It’s Not Just The Cambridge Analytica Debacle, Ethics Don’t Scale,’ One Technologist Argues Paul Ford posted a feature article, March 21, 2018, with the title above to Bloomberg.com. Mr. Ford is a writer, computer programmer, and co-founder of Postlight, a digital product studio based in New York that specializes in mobile, and web development. Mr. Ford begins, “Over and over the last 20 years, we’ve watched low-cost, or free Internet communications platforms spring from the good intentions, or social curiosity of tech folks. We’ve watched as these platforms expanded in power and significance, selling their influence to advertisers. Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, Google they grew so fast. One day, they are a lovable new way to see kid pix, next thing you know — they’re re-configuring democracy, governance, and business,” he wrote.

MARK ZUCKERBERG APOLOGIZED ON CNN FOR CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA DATA MISUSE—BUT ALSO DEFLECTED BLAME

BY ALEXANDER NAZARYAN

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At least he said he was sorry. Mark Zuckerberg's apology came early in his prime-time interview with CNN's Laurie Segall, after another day of insistent questions about the 50 million Facebook user profiles that data firm Cambridge Analytica may have improperly used to sway the 2016 presidential election. "I'm really sorry that this happened," Zuckerberg said at the opening of the interview, to the certain delight of however many crisis communications professionals had to coach the media-averse 33-year-old billionaire, whose company has 2.2 billion active users around the world. Clad in a gray t-shirt, sitting in front of an appropriately sunny Menlo Park, California, background, Zuckerberg tried to project the image of a well-intentioned young entrepreneur who had been ensnared by malignant forces beyond his control.

Visualization tools could be the future of electronic warfare

By: Mark Pomerleau

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Some in industry believe the future of electronic warfare will have to incorporate a visualization capability for operators and commanders to better plan effects in a non-physical domain. The electromagnetic spectrum environment has become increasingly complex in recent years. Electronic warfare and the jamming of radio signals was a large concern reaching back to the Cold War, and a proliferation of emitters, jammers and overall devices in the past few decades has made understanding and planning effects an even more difficult task for operators and commanders. For that reason, some believe the future of electronic warfare will require the development of visualization tools that conceptualize the non-physical effects in the electromagnetic spectrum.

Resources-strapped agencies are leaving networks vulnerable to cyberattack

By: Jessie Bur  

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Limited resources at federal agencies and critical infrastructure industries are forcing IT departments to prioritize the cybersecurity of certain systems while leaving others more susceptible to breach, according to Jeanette Manfra, National Protection and Programs Directorate assistant secretary for the Office of Cybersecurity and Communications at the Department of Homeland Security. “We cannot apply all of our resources equally across all of our systems,” said Manfra at a Consortium for IT Software Quality event March 20, 2018.

New bill would prepare US for artificial intelligence threat

By: Joe Gould and Aaron Mehta

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U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, introduced legislation Wednesday to prepare the government for the national security impact of artificial intelligence. In this Sept. 28, 2017, photo, Hanson Robotics' flagship robot Sophia, a lifelike robot powered by artificial intelligence, holds an apple in Hong Kong. Sophia is a creation of the Hong Kong-based startup working on bringing humanoid robots to the marketplace. (AP/Kin Cheung)

HOW TO MAKE A CLEAN BREAK WITH THE CLINGIEST SOCIAL NETWORKS

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SOCIAL NETWORKS WALK a fine line between being a useful tool and a crippling addiction. Whether you want your free time back or don’t like your information scattered about on the internet, you may be considering deactivating some accounts. Wanting to delete your account is one thing, but actually being able to hit the delete button is another story. Social media outlets make money off of you and your information, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that they don’t want to let you go. Because of this, the biggest networks have made it overly complicated to delete your account. But if you are set on getting rid of them, here’s what you’ll have to do.

AT&T Won Secret $3.3 Billion NSA Contract Despite More Expensive Bid

Frank Konkel

AT&T was awarded one of the National Security Agency’s most coveted classified tech contracts despite a bid that was $750 million higher than the other competitor’s bid. According to redacted legal documents released March 20, the telecommunications giant bid $2.55 billion on a contract to “technically evolve” the NSA’s IT environment, significantly more than a $1.79 billion bid from DXC Technology. The subsequent bid protest resolved in AT&T’s favor in January. Called Regional Infrastructure Services I, the contract is the second of three massive tech contracts called Greenway that follow-up the agency’s classified Groundbreaker program. The infrastructure services contract is worth up to $3.3 billion over 10 years if all options are exercised, according to the protest documents.

Artillery, Drones, Missiles Will Help FVL Penetrate Air Defenses: FVL CFT

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

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PENTAGON: “We’re not yielding the air domain to anybody, so we’re going to build those capabilities that we need to dominate,” the head of the Army’s aviation Cross Functional Team told reporters yesterday. While Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen heads what’s officially called the Future Vertical Lift CFT, his portfolio extends well beyond the FVL aircraft program itself. Rugen wants: New “modular” missiles with plug-and-play warhead options and longer range; New drone designs “purpose built” to penetrate advanced anti-aircraft defenses; New manned aircraft — the FVL itself — 60 percent faster than current helicopters, with Artificial Intelligence to assist the human crew. 

Raytheon Lasers, Microwaves Target Counter-Drone Market Worth Billions

By COLIN CLARK

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Lasers burn a hole in the target; microwaves fry its electronics. Both types of weapons run off electricity, so the cost per shot is potentially pennies, and the ammunition doesn’t run out as long as there’s gas in the generator. The market for weapons that can shoot down small drones, used by the likes of Hezbollah and Daesh, should rise from almost nothing to “several billion dollars” over the next five years. Raytheon is pushing hard to lock in as much of this market as it can, building both High Energy Laser (HEL) and High Powered Microwave (HPM) weapons that can find, fix and kill or disable the increasingly cheap and capable drones.

CGSC tests board-based strategy game

By Capt. Charlie Dietz

FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kan. -- If you've seen groups of military officers at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College circled around a map using pointers and pushing around tiny plastic pieces lately, don't be alarmed that they are playing Risk or reenacting scenes from Patton. Students ditched the computer screens and PowerPoint slides to gather around tables and evaluate their tactical planning by test-piloting a new board game March 9-15. The hex-style, map-based simulation, titled "Landpower: Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey (GAAT)" was developed last year by Lt. Col. Patrick Schoof, an Army Simulations officer, and Shane Perkins, team leader of four classes, both instructing at the staff college. "Landpower" builds upon a scenario the students have worked through continually during the course, putting their strategies against one another to expose potential gaps and shortfalls they had previously not accounted for.

Why Peace Talks Are Washington's Best Bet in Afghanistan

By Vikram J. Singh

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Every day, 15,000 U.S. forces deployed in Afghanistan fight Washington’s longest war. In 2018, their mission will cost Americans $45 billion in defense spending alone, almost enough to build U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall with Mexico twice. Trump, who had campaigned on getting the United States out of Afghanistan, was well positioned to change course. Instead, he sent more troops to pursue a military victory that will never come.

Pakistan Is Feeling US Pressure. Now What?

DANIEL MARKEY

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After a short trip to Pakistan last week, I return to Washington convinced that the Trump administration’s new coercive approach toward Islamabad is working, at least in the narrow sense that it has grabbed the attention of Pakistani decision-makers and forced them to take notice of U.S. demands. So far, the core elements of the approach include tough talk and tweets by President Donald Trump, a suspension of military assistance, and most recently, a diplomatic move to place Pakistan on a “gray list” at the last meeting of the multilateral Financial Action Task Force. For a Trump administration that is too often adrift, divided, or inept, this coercive effort should be appreciated as a rare foreign policy achievement. When it comes to Pakistan, U.S. policymakers across different agencies and departments have been remarkably united and consistent even in the face of Pakistani intransigence and probing.

US military will not pursue Taliban into Pakistan

BY BILL ROGGIO

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A Pentagon spokesman said that the US military will not conduct hot pursuit of Taliban and allied jihadist fighters from Afghanistan into Pakistan. Additionally, the spokesman said that the military would be fine if the Taliban was operating on the Pakistani side of the border. “We have no authority to go into Pakistan,” Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Mike Andrews toldPajhwok Afghan News. US forces could ask for authority to chase Taliban fighters as they cross the border into Pakistan, but approval for such action “would certainly be the exception and not the norm,” he continued. “Say, for example, we have troops in contact and then the Taliban forces go across the border,” Andrews told Pajhwok. “They are clearly inside Pakistan then. There’s no change with regards to respecting the territorial sovereignty of Pakistan.”