Against the drones

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Just a few months ago, a head of state was attacked with off-the-shelf consumer drones — an apparent first. It happened in broad daylight on August 4 in Venezuela. (There's video below). According to police, the drones exploded and missed their target, presumed to have been the embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

The Caracas episode is far from the first to illustrate the dangers of off-the-shelf drones. It’s not even the first time that a drone has come in close contact with a head of state. So why has it taken so long to develop countermeasures?

What’s more, the multidrone tactics on display in Venezuela show that it's insufficient to design and deploy defenses against single-drone attacks.

Experts today aren’t yet united on exactly what made the drones miss Maduro that Saturday afternoon in Caracas. His interior minister said the military diverted one electronically, but he did not elaborate on what that meant. The other C4-packing drone, he said, crashed on its own. It makes little difference whether those things he said are true; generals, diplomats and agency officials the world over are deeply concerned about this technology.

Blockchain is not a magic bullet for security. Can it be trusted?

Adrien Ogée
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Up to 10% of global GDP could be stored on blockchains by 2025, according to the World Economic Forum. From product identifiers, medical records to land registries, academic degrees and insurance contracts, blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) are already functioning in many sectors.

What blockchain promises is no less than the technological backbone of the 21st century’s renaissance of the social commons, giving back power to the people. In this century more than ever, power comes from data. Blockchain promises to give control of data back to the people. But this requires one element: trust in the technology, trust that it does what it’s supposed to do.

The paradox here is that blockchain removes the need to trust the intermediary – i.e., notaries, insurers and bankers – by requiring us to trust the technology. But how likely are we to trust the technology if it is breached repeatedly?

THE HORRIFYING SCIENCE OF THE DEFORESTATION FUELING AMAZON FIRES

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BEING A RAINFOREST, the Amazon isn’t supposed to burn out of control, unlike California’s drier landscape, which is built to burn and burn explosively. Yet here we are, watching swaths of the Amazon go up in flames. And we can easily nail down the cause: humans. Deforestation is what’s driving these blazes, and there is some horrifying science behind that.

Since the 1970s, 20 percent of the Amazon has been deforested, totaling about twice the area of California. But deforestation isn’t an organized shrinking of the rainforest, paring it down from the edges in. Humans carve out farmlands, sometimes leaving a neat edge where the forest meets the fields, or even creating islands of forest surrounded by crops or grazing fields for cattle. Indeed, agriculture is far and away the primary driver of deforestation in Brazil.

You might think that well, things could be worse, at least these can operate like actual islands—self-contained spots of green in a sea of agriculture. And you wouldn't be alone.

Controlling Cognitive Domains

Joanne Patti Munisteri

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What is now categorized as the “cognitive domain” includes areas of influence in all sectors of society. Cognitive domain(s) should not be restricted to influence and information operations, social engineering and ‘winning hearts and minds’ approaches, but expanded to include all areas where ideological attacks are possible. 

“The cognitive war is a mostly hidden war, because it rarely involves direct confrontation or kinetic action. It involves a war of ideologies. If we fail to not only counter punch in this domain but build a sustained and proactive foundation to advance in the cognitive domain, we will have no other option then an eventual kinetic conflict. Kinetic capabilities can dictate an outcome but sustained long-term outcomes will remain solely dependent upon the ability to influence, affect, change, or impact the cognitive domain.”

Why India needs to 'fortify' Kashmir

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'If Islamic extremists regain power in Afghanistan, Pakistan will lead them to Kashmir as a fighting arena again. India needs to fortify Kashmir and prepare against these Islamic extremists before they come again.'

Dr Satoru Nagao is a visiting fellow at Hudson Institute, the Washington DC-based think tank. His research area is US-Japan-India security cooperation.

A former second lieutenant in the Japanese Army, he was awarded his PhD by Gakushuin University in 2011 for his thesis titled 'India's Military Strategy', the first such research thesis on this topic in Japan.

"Pakistan faces a serious economical and financial problem. Thus, without money, Pakistan cannot do a big military operation against India," Dr Nagao tells Rediff.com's Archana Masih in an e-mail interview.

Afghans Want the Right Peace Deal, Not Just an End to Violence

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Belquis Ahmadi

Afghans are hopeful that a peace deal between the Taliban and the U.S. will bring them a step closer to the end of the country’s four decades of conflict. This protracted state of war has resulted in the loss of countless lives; mass displacement; and the destruction of infrastructure and the education and justice systems. Afghans will feel the consequences for generations to come. Given the price Afghans have paid and continue to pay, one might assume that they would eagerly welcome and accept any deal that brings an end to the ongoing war. But is that really the case and is it really that simple?

Female delegates during the opening ceremony of the Grand Assembly, April 29, 2019. An expected agreement between the U.S. and the Taliban to smooth future negotiations raises concerns that women may lose some freedoms.

For many Afghans, peace is not simply the cessation of violence. They want equal rights for all citizens codified in the constitution and they want a governance structure with institutions to protect those rights. While the broad contours of the U.S.-Taliban deal—a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces and a commitment by the Taliban to reject al-Qaida and other militant groups operating in their territory—have been widely discussed for months, the particularities and conditionalities of the agreement remain unknown.

Iran's Cooperation with the Taliban Could Affect Talks on U.S. Withdrawal from Afghanistan

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by Ariane M. Tabatabai

In late 2018, as it became clear that the United States was contemplating a withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Iranian military announced that it was taking charge of the security of the border between Afghanistan and Iran. This indication of Tehran's increased concern resulted from the prospect of renewed instability and insecurity.

Just a few weeks later came an exchange of visits between Tehran and Taliban delegations. Iranian and Taliban representatives weren't meeting for the first time but, in a departure from the past, the Iranians publicized these meetings.

How did Iran's recently publicized relationship with the Taliban come about? And how might it affect the future of U.S.-Taliban talks?Share on Twitter

Alongside these developments, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif acknowledgedthat his country had some level of cooperation with the Taliban. He also summarized Iran's current thinking on the Taliban: “It would be impossible to have a future Afghanistan without any role for the Taliban.”

How did Iran's recently publicized relationship with the Taliban come about, and how might it affect the future of U.S.-Taliban talks?

The Dictators’ Last Stand

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By Yascha Mounk

Why the New Autocrats Are Weaker Than They Look

It has been a good decade for dictatorship. The global influence of the world’s most powerful authoritarian countries, China and Russia, has grown rapidly. For the first time since the late nineteenth century, the cumulative GDP of autocracies now equals or exceeds that of Western liberal democracies. Even ideologically, autocrats appear to be on the offensive: at the G-20 summit in June, for instance, President Vladimir Putin dropped his normal pretense that Russia is living up to liberal democratic standards, declaring instead that “modern liberalism” has become “obsolete.” 

Conversely, it has been a terrible decade for democracy. According to Freedom House, the world is now in the 13th consecutive year of a global democratic recession. Democracies have collapsed or eroded in every region, from Burundi to Hungary, Thailand to Venezuela. Most troubling of all, democratic institutions have proved to be surprisingly brittle in countries where they once seemed stable and secure.

Beijing Is Shooting Its Own Foot in Hong Kong

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By Antony Dapiran

As protests continue to rock Hong Kong, Beijing’s efforts to contain the unrest and impose its narrative on the unfolding events, both at home and abroad, are beginning to have an impact—but perhaps not in the way that the Chinese leaders intended. Hong Kong just celebrated its first tear gas-free weekend in a month. Vast crowds—police estimated 128,000 protesters within Victoria Park alone, while organizers said a total of 1.7 million people marched on the day—braved tropical downpours in an entirely incident-free and peaceful march that demonstrated that enthusiasm for the movement has not waned.

This proved inconvenient for Beijing, as the official propaganda machine has continued to portray the protesters as violent rioters unrepresentative of the wider Hong Kong community. Beijing’s official media is becoming increasingly shrill and unhinged, with the state news agency Xinhua and tabloid the Global Times adopting Cultural Revolution rhetoric in depicting four key Hong Kong pro-democracy figures as a “‘Gang of Four’ endangering Hong Kong.”

Trump’s trade war with China is all about national security

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By Myron Magnet

Anyone who says that President Trump is unable to learn on the job hasn’t been paying attention to how much his insight into a host of key problems has deepened over three years. But the president would do us a favor if he would clearly explain, above all, just how his thinking about China has changed since he took office. That intellectual evolution lies at the heart of what might make him a more consequential president than even those who voted for him ever imagined.

He started out as a mossbacked mercantilist, fuming about the trade imbalance between the world’s two biggest economies. Why was China selling us so many pots and pans, lightbulbs, TVs and computers, while buying a much smaller dollar amount of pork bellies, cars and tractors? Surely improper currency manipulation and state subsidies must account for so large a trade deficit, and surely, he imagined it was sucking the wealth right out of our nation.

Though sophisticated economists countered that it benefits rather than impoverishes us to have another country sell us goods we want for less than it would cost us to make them, Trump sensed the social costs of this imbalance with an acuity the economists lacked. It was killing our factory towns, weakening our social fabric and transferring abroad important skills and capabilities that we might someday regret having lost, especially if we needed to scale them up quickly. The gain in these transactions was easier to quantify than the loss.

U.S. SAYS CHINA IS BLOCKING TRILLIONS IN OIL AND GAS, WILL SEND NAVY FOR ASIA DRILLS

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BY TOM O'CONNOR 

The United States has accused China of preventing Southeast Asian countries from accessing trillions of dollars worth of untapped oil and gas reserves in the South China Sea as the Pentagon planned to hold its first exercise with regional powers near the strategic region.

In a press statement, State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said Thursday that the "United States is deeply concerned that China is continuing its interference with Vietnam's longstanding oil and gas activities in Vietnam's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) claim" following recent incursions there by Chinese survey ship Haiyang Dizhi 8 and an armed escort. Beijing has laid vast claims to the South China Sea and does not recognize boundaries established there by a number of Southeast Asian nations who are supported by the U.S.

The most recent incident occurred last week near Vanguard Bank, a Vietnam-administered outpost in the contested Spratly Islands, and Ortagus attributed the move to China "pressuring Vietnam over its work with a Russian energy firm and other international partners."

Beijing Is Shooting Its Own Foot in Hong Kong

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By Antony Dapiran

As protests continue to rock Hong Kong, Beijing’s efforts to contain the unrest and impose its narrative on the unfolding events, both at home and abroad, are beginning to have an impact—but perhaps not in the way that the Chinese leaders intended. Hong Kong just celebrated its first tear gas-free weekend in a month. Vast crowds—police estimated 128,000 protesters within Victoria Park alone, while organizers said a total of 1.7 million people marched on the day—braved tropical downpours in an entirely incident-free and peaceful march that demonstrated that enthusiasm for the movement has not waned.

This proved inconvenient for Beijing, as the official propaganda machine has continued to portray the protesters as violent rioters unrepresentative of the wider Hong Kong community. Beijing’s official media is becoming increasingly shrill and unhinged, with the state news agency Xinhua and tabloid the Global Times adopting Cultural Revolution rhetoric in depicting four key Hong Kong pro-democracy figures as a “‘Gang of Four’ endangering Hong Kong.”

Mohammed bin Salman’s Collapsing Coalition in Yemen Means Trouble for Trump

By Alexandra Stark

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Growing tensions between long-standing allies Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates could lead to southern secession in Yemen and harm the White House’s pressure campaign on Iran.

On Aug. 7, fighting broke out in Yemen’s de facto capital, the port city of Aden. The battle pitted the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a coalition of secessionist militia forces that has been supported and trained by the United Arab Emirates, against the internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, which is backed by Saudi Arabia.

The dispute brings to light long-subsumed tensions between Emirati and Saudi objectives in Yemen. This in turn has exposed a broader rift between the regional policy approaches of these two key U.S. security partners, which could enmesh Washington in yet another regional dispute and complicate the Trump administration’s stance on Iran.

While Saudi and Emirati leaders have tried to play down the rift, the recent fighting in Aden demonstrates that Saudi and Emirati approaches to the Yemen conflict have differed since the beginning of the coalition’s intervention in Yemen’s civil war, in March 2015. Saudi Arabia’s overriding priority is securing its southern border against the Houthis, who have received support from Saudi Arabia’s regional rival, Iran. It has therefore focused its efforts on fighting the Houthis in the north and supported the Hadi government as the sole governing entity deserving of international recognition.

Return and Expand?

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PDF file 1.2 MB 

With the end of its territorial caliphate, the Islamic State will almost certainly attempt a comeback. Such efforts will require money. The authors examine the group's history as an insurgency and a self-styled caliphate, drawing from the literature, the group's documents, and interviews with individuals who lived under the caliphate, with a focus on how the group has financed itself. The Islamic State has prided itself on drawing from local funding sources rather than external donations. As a territorial caliphate, it could openly levy taxes and fees and sell oil from fields it controlled to cover its expenses. Now that it can no longer rely on such sources, the group will go with activities that it has used successfully in the past, as an insurgency. Criminal activities will prove useful, with its members seeking to extort, kidnap, steal, smuggle, and traffic to obtain the money they need to finance the group's activities. On top of this, the Islamic State likely has detailed information on the population it once ruled, and it appears to have sizable assets in reserve. As an insurgency, rather than a territorial government, its expenses are far lower than they were at the peak of its power. Accordingly, the United States will need to stay involved with counter–Islamic State activities across several lines of effort, including counterfinance and potentially including military action.

Defining and Understanding the Next Generation of Salafi-Jihadis

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As the first members of Generation Z, or Gen Z (those born between 1997 and 2012), enter adulthood, how might Salafi-jihadism manifest differently in Gen Z than in previous generations? How will the political upheavals of the Middle East, socioeconomic trends throughout the Muslim world, and rising digital connectivity affect susceptibility to radicalization in Gen Z?

In this Perspective, the authors explore the unique characteristics and expected drivers of Salafi-jihadism in Gen Z, elucidate potential threats and challenges from the next generation of Salafi-jihadis, and put forward recommendations for counter violent extremism programming to address the future threat. A review of the literature suggests that many of the overarching factors that drove past generations of Salafi-jihadis will remain salient in the coming generational cohort, although the manifestations of these factors will vary across localities. However, Gen Z's unprecedented familiarity with and connection to the internet and modern technology differentiate these members from previous Salafi-jihadis and portend an adaptive, tech-savvy future terrorist threat.

Germany Is an Economic Masochist

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By Simon Tilford

Europe’s biggest economy could easily stop its own slide into long-term stagnation—but it would prefer not to.

For much of the last 10 years, Germany has been lauded for its successful adjustment to globalization, its sound management of public finances, and its political stability. Some have even breathlessly talked of a new Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle). Now fears are mounting that worsening global trade tensions and China’s slowdown spell serious trouble for the country’s export-dependent economy threatening to return the country to the “sick man of Europe” status it held in the early 2000s.

The situation is less dramatic. German’s economic performance has not been as good over the last 10 years as is often claimed, but the German government could now easily take steps to boost the economy should it choose to do so. There is little to indicate that it will do enough, however, thanks to a deep-seated belief in Germany—spanning the political spectrum—that deficit spending would be counterproductive economically and unpopular politically.

Seen over the last 10 years, the German economy has performed relatively well in comparison with similar European economies such as France and the United Kingdom, but it has done no better than the United States. Moreover, over the last 20 years, Germany has grown largely in line with other large European economies (bar Italy, which has done terribly) and on many measures less well than the United States. There has certainly been no Wirtschaftswunder.

Europe Alone

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By Alina Polyakova And Benjamin Haddad 

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in early 2019, former Vice President Joe Biden had a reassuring message for European politicians, diplomats, and military leaders worried about American disengagement: “We will be back.” Biden’s speech was met with applause and relief. Wait out the tenure of U.S. President Donald Trump, he seemed to be saying, and sooner or later, leaders can return to the transatlantic consensus that defined the post–World War II era. Patience is the name of the game.

Biden was feeding a common but delusional hope. A new U.S. administration could assuage some of the current transatlantic tensions by, say, removing tariffs on European steel and aluminum or rejoining the Paris climate agreement. But these fixes would not deal with the problem at its root. The rift between the United States and Europe did not begin with Trump, nor will it end with him. Rather than giving in to nostalgia, U.S. and European leaders should start with an honest assessment of the path that led them to the current crisis—the first step to building a more mature and forward-looking transatlantic partnership.

The Three Political Outcomes That Await Italy

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Italy's coalition government has collapsed, but the country might not be going to early elections just yet. After almost 15 months in power, Italy's coalition government between the anti-establishment Five Star Movement and the right-wing League officially ended on Aug. 20, when Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte presented his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella. Conte's decision came two weeks after League leader Matteo Salvini demanded an early general election due to policy disagreements with the Five Star Movement. But this is not the end of Italy's political crisis, because it's now up to Mattarella and the political parties in Parliament to decide what happens next.

Mattarella is holding consultations with the leaders of the parties on Aug. 21 and 22 to determine if there is support for a new government that would avoid an early general election. Based on those discussions, one of three outcomes likely awaits Italy: a new government, an early general election or, less likely, a resurrection of the agreement between the Five Star Movement and the League.

A New Government 

What Russia Thinks About Multilateralism

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ALEXANDER GABUEV

Summary: While many in the West wring their hands over the plight of the postwar rules-based international order, it is often assumed that Russia would welcome a new era of unilateralism and great-power politics. But in reality, the Russian leadership's perspective on multilateralism is more complicated than that.

When Russians hear paeans to the “rules-based” order, their standard rejoinder is to ask who is actually writing the rules. In fact, that same question now encapsulates the Kremlin’s attitude toward Western-championed multilateralism.

The way Russia sees it, the United States will not hesitate to act unilaterally when it needs to, and it is precisely this double standard that has eroded global rules. Whenever Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov appears on the international stage, he tirelessly recounts America’s purported violations of international law, from the 1999 bombardment of Yugoslavia and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, to the 2011 airstrikes that helped topple Muammar el-Qaddafi’s regime in Libya.

The Story of Boris and Václav, or How to Break Up the UK

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THOMAS DE WAAL

Boris Johnson could end up being the English leader who allowed the breakup of the UK to achieve Brexit. There are lessons in the dissolution of two other unions, the USSR and Czechoslovakia, and the role played by Boris Yeltsin and Václav Klaus.

“I don’t mind if Scotland breaks away.”

The words chilled me. I was talking over lunch in London to a businessman close to the Conservative Party. It was six months before the EU referendum of 2016, and, as an argument against Brexit, I raised the risk of Scotland voting again for independence and breaking up the United Kingdom. (The Scots had voted against independence in 2014, when Brexit was not on the agenda.) My interlocutor said he was not bothered. The Scottish economy was tiny, he said, the Scots would have to sink or swim, and the English would do fine without them.

For three years, the main line of the anti-Brexit argument in the UK has been that leaving the EU will badly harm the economy. A bigger danger, of another Scottish independence referendum and a messy breakup of the UK, has lurked further back in the shadows.

Only now is the alarm being raised. Former prime minister Gordon Brown is warning starkly not just of the ambitions of the Scottish National Party, which advocates independence, but of the narrow “English nationalism” of Tories who, like my businessman, would be quite happy to see Scotland go. Even if he does not admit it, Boris Johnson’s Brexit strategy is leading Tory England in that direction.

Kremlin Analytica: Russian Elite Sets Sights on AI

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Sergei Kiriyenko.

A new experiment in the use of artificial intelligence will be monopolized by the Kremlin. It could have major political consequences in Russia.

A new experiment has been launched in Russia to harness artificial intelligence (AI), which the Kremlin hopes to use to its political advantage. 

Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, plans to create a new platform that it will use to conduct experiments in AI and big data in partnership with the Moscow city municipality under a special legal framework, Kommersant newspaper reported on August 13.

Data—payments, parking tickets, health screenings, fines, and federal and regional information system records—will be anonymized and made available to solve problems in federal and municipal government. A council will be set up to oversee the experiments, consisting of Sberbank CEO German Gref, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, two Kremlin representatives—first deputy chief of staff and former prime minister Sergei Kiriyenko and presidential aide Andrei Belousov—and experts in this field. The only cabinet member on the council is Deputy Prime Minister Maxim Akimov, whose portfolio includes the digital economy.

The G-7 Gathers in Biarritz for a Dysfunctional Family Reunion

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Stewart M. Patrick 

This weekend, leaders from the G-7 will convene for their annual summit, this time in Biarritz, France. French President Emmanuel Macron, who is spearheading France’s G-7 presidency this year, bills the meeting as a chance to relaunch multilateralism, promote democracy and tame globalization to ensure it works for everyone. More likely, the gathering will expose the political, economic and ideological fault lines threatening Western solidarity and international cooperation. 

What a difference five years makes. Back in 2014, the G-7 gained a new and unexpected lease on life after Russia seized Crimea and earned itself an ejection from what was then the G-8. The rejuvenated G-7 seemed poised to resume its onetime role as an intimate forum for policy coordination among like-minded, advanced market democracies, as distinct from the more heterogeneous and unwieldy G-20. ...

The U.S. Will Find Few Takers in the Western Pacific for Its Missiles

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The United States will continue its efforts to deploy land-based intermediate-range missiles in the western Pacific, including Japan and South Korea.

China and Russia, however, will explore various avenues to dissuade regional U.S. allies from acceding to Washington's wishes.

Overall, Washington will have few problems in deploying the missiles in places like Guam, but it will have a hard time convincing foreign allies to host them.

"Sooner rather than later" — that's the United States' desired timeline to deploy conventional land-based intermediate-range missiles in the western Pacific, according to U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper. And now that the United States is out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, there are no treaty clauses — or technical impediments — preventing it from placing missiles in the region to check the rise of China. Such considerations, however, are just half the battle: Facing recalcitrance from regional allies concerned about becoming a target for China and Russia, as well as the latter powers' carrot-and-stick approach to ensure the weapons don't appear near their shores, the United States will find it a far tougher task to actually deploy the weapons in the western Pacific.

Tracking Foreign Direct Investment in Latin America and the Caribbean

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How did foreign direct investment in the region change from 2017 to 2018?

Why Trump Fails at Making Deals

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By Michael Hirsh

His fumbles with China, Iran, North Korea, India, and now Denmark are evidence of what the people who know him best have long said: The U.S. president is actually a poor negotiator.

It is at the very core of his appeal. Since Donald Trump’s improbable run to the White House began in 2015, the real estate magnate has managed to win over U.S. voters—even many who allow they don’t like him personally—by arguing that he’s a master negotiator who will swing a lot of new deals for the American people.

But as the third anniversary of the president’s election approaches, evidence is mounting that Trump has mastered very little internationally. On the contrary, his various high-profile efforts at restarting negotiations with China, Iran, North Korea and other nations have—at least since the signing of his much-mocked makeover of NAFTA in 2018—all run aground. And this week Trump proved himself a dubious dealmaker yet again. He called off his visit to a close U.S. ally, Denmark—a country with a prime minister who’s also a natural political ally, because she’s as anti-immigrant as he is—ostensibly because the Danes refused to consider selling him Greenland (which, technically, may not be Denmark’s to sell anyway, since it is a semi-autonomous territory with its own prime minister).

Business Travel: Pre-Trip Planning and Preparations

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With the launch of Stratfor Worldview Enterprise, business leaders from a variety of backgrounds share their opinions on geopolitical risks and business strategies.

In this blog post, the second in a series, Thomas Pecora stresses the need for being aware ahead of any business travel by knowing what emergency, safety and communications systems are in place. He is director of Pecora Consulting Services, which provides consulting services in security vulnerability and threat assessments in Asia and the United States, as well as personal safety and crime prevention and avoidance, and travel security skills training. Pecora is also author of the memoir, Guardian: Life in the Crosshairs of the CIA's War on Terror, and served 24 years as a CIA senior security manager. He managed large complex security programs and operations in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, Europe, the Middle East and in war zones.

The first step to a safe journey, whether it is across town or across the world, begins with knowledge. Business travelers need information to make good decisions and to take specific actions that will increase their chances for a safe and productive trip, especially if their destination is overseas. Conducting some pre-trip research and preparation will dramatically improve your ability to deal with an emergency and will significantly increase your personal safety and give you peace of mind.

5 times in history enemies shot down a US drone

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By: Cal Pringle  

On Aug. 20, the United States linked the downing of an MQ-9 Reaper over Yemen by Houthi forces to Iran. Iran has supplied Houthi fighters with weapons and missiles in the past and the attack on the Reaper, reported by CNN, follows a summer of forces exchanging fires and downing drones.

Most notably, this summer included the June 20 shoot-down of a U.S. RQ-4 Global Hawk over the Strait of Hormuz by Iran. But these events are not entirely uncommon.

Unmanned aircraft have been a part of U.S. military operations since World War II and have led to leaps and bounds in mission capabilities. Drones allow the armed forces to undertake missions that would be too risky or impossible with manned aircraft, and uncertainty as to their presence in future military conflict is all but guaranteed. Countries around the world will increasingly operate on the drone axis, developing capabilities to both employ and combat against drones. After the expensive, high-profile destruction of a Global Hawk in Iran, some historical context of the destruction of U.S. drones by hostile forces is in order.

5G: Speed Isn’t Everything; DoD, FCC Need To Work On Spectrum

By BRYAN CLARK

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To protect the content of 5G transmissions, the Pentagon should accelerate development of mobile applications using end-to-end encryption. Today’s military radios or encrypted email only encrypt a message in transit. The message exists in an unencrypted form in the receiving server.

The blazing download rates of 20 gigabits per second promised by 5G advocates will be the exception, rather than the rule. The real benefit of emerging 5G architectures is how they could improve coverage, latency, and speed to mobile users from a teen streaming HD video in a downtown Minneapolis coffee shop to a Marine platoon at an advance base in the Philippines. Realizing these benefits, however, will require the U.S. government to focus on its broader goals for 5G and to rethink how it secures sensitive communications.

Why Facebook is Mapping the Entire World’s Population

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Alex Heath

Facebook has the goal of eventually saturating the entire world’s population with its services.

That strategy was on display Tuesday, when the social network announcedthat it had used artificial intelligence and satellite imagery to build a hi-res population map for the entire continent of Africa.

The next step? Facebook told Cheddar that within “months” the company will have mapped the entire world’s population.

GOOGLE TRACKS YOU EVEN IF LOCATION HISTORY'S OFF. HERE'S HOW TO STOP IT

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IF, LIKE MOST people, you thought Google stopped tracking your location once you turned off Location History in your account settings, you were wrong. According to an AP investigation published Monday, even if you disable Location History, the search giant still tracks you every time you open Google Maps, get certain automatic weather updates, or search for things in your browser. There's a way to stop it—but it takes some digging.

The problem affects anyone with an Android phone and iPhone users running Google Maps on their devices, according to the AP report, which researchers at Princeton University verified. That's more than two billion people.

The Google support page for managing and deleting your Location History says that once you turn it off, "the places you go are no longer stored. When you turn off Location History for your Google Account, it's off for all devices associated with that Google Account." The AP's investigation found that's not true. In fact, turning off your Location History only stops Google from creating a timeline of your location that you can view. Some apps will still track you and store time-stamped location data from your devices.

When the Army could get new electronic warfare units

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By: Mark Pomerleau

The Army could start fielding its new electronic warfare platoons in spring 2020, a top service official said Aug. 21.

These platoons are part of major force updates the service is undertaking in order to better compete with nations such as Russia and China. They will reside within military intelligence companies and serve as brigade assets.

“We do not have any organic electronic attack capabilities across echelons in the Army,” David May, director of the capability development integration directorate at the Cyber Center of Excellence, said Aug. 21 at TechNet Augusta.

As previously reported, 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division out at Fort Lewis in Washington was designated as the pilot unit for these new EW platoons.

Since then, this brigade has participated in a series of live environment tests, May told C4ISRNET, including the Joint Warfighter Assessment. The unit will also go to the National Training Center for a full rotation, allowing soldiers and electronic warfare personnel to practice against a world class force as well as participate in Cyber Blitz in September.

In addition, the Cyber Center of Excellence will supplement these live experiments and demonstrations with modeling and simulation at its battle lab.

A Gulf Between Sudan's Military and Civilians Dims Hopes of Stability

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Successful negotiations on a transitional process between the military council and the civilian opposition in Sudan are increasingly unlikely, as security forces stick to their plans and repress civilian opponents.

While the military council will face significant diplomatic backlash over its chosen strategy, its support from the Gulf states, Russia and China will likely allow it to weather the storm.

With little potential for compromise between the military and protesters demanding radical democratic reform, lasting instability in the form of demonstrations, repression and economic woes will likely shape the future of Sudan.

Editor's Note: This assessment is part of a series of analyses supporting Stratfor's upcoming 2019 Third-Quarter Forecast. These assessments are designed to provide more context and in-depth analysis on key developments over the next quarter.

Not so long ago, Sudan's stakeholders looked set to agree on a common path to the future. In the wake of the ouster of longtime President Omar al Bashir at the beginning of April, the Transitional Military Council and the Declaration of Freedom and Change Forces, an alliance of civilian opposition parties, agreed to form a legislative body, a Cabinet and a sovereign council to wield executive power until elections. But after the pair fell out over the composition of the latter body, security forces conducted a bloody raid on the main protest site in Khartoum on June 3, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 demonstrators.

‘Desperate Need For Speed’ As Army Takes On Chinese, Russian, ISIS Info Ops

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

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The Army wants to move much faster in cyberspace against espionage, subversion, and disinformation -- but that means accepting higher risks.

TECHNET AUGUSTA: The Army wants to expand its fledgling cyber branch into an information warfare force that can do everything from jamming insurgent radio stations to fighting Chinese cyber espionage and protecting US elections from online subversion.

It’s a tremendous task, even within the Army — and the implications of information operations go far beyond the military, touching sensitivities central to a democracy. At a minimum, the service’s new strategy requires:

Reorganizing Army Cyber Command into an Information Warfare Command, at the same time as it relocates its HQ from Fort Belvoir outside DC to Fort Gordon, South Carolina, just 10 miles from here.