Page 9 - Thomas Rid News Today

U.S. national security can no longer be defined predominantly in hard-power terms. Strategic competition with Russia and China is playing out aggressively in other domains.

Russia is in the Mediterranean to stay. As long as the Kremlin remains locked in a tense standoff with NATO, it will aim to prevent the alliance from dominating the region.

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Source: Getty Summary:  Russia has long struggled to overcome its inability to retain talent for homegrown innovation and R&D. As a result, Russia’s global activism leans heavily on tried-and-true tactics. Related Media and Tools If you enjoyed reading this, subscribe for more! Thank you! Summary How will the Kremlin’s tool kit evolve as emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deepfake forgeries become more wi...

A School for Spooks: The London University Department Churning Out NATO Spies Published: April 17, 2021 LONDON — Last week,  MintPress exposed how the supposedly independent investigative collective Bellingcat is, in fact, funded by a CIA cutout organization and filled with former spies and state intelligence operatives. However, one part of the story that has remained untold until now is Bellingcat’s close ties to the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, an institution ...

In Punishing Russia for SolarWinds, Biden Upends U.S. Convention on Cyber Espionage © suzanne cordeiro/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images WASHINGTON—President Biden’s decision this week to punish Russia for the SolarWinds hack broke with years of U.S. foreign policy that has tolerated cyber espionage as an acceptable form of 21st century spycraft, analysts and former officials said. In announcing a suite of punitive measures against Moscow, including financial sanctions and diplomatic expu...

Senators Raise Security Concerns Over Selling Personal Data May 5, 2021 Twitter Get Permission Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is one of the lawmakers raising national security concerns about the collection of personal data. A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has sent a letter to Google, Twitter, Verizon, AT&T and online advertising firms and networks raising national security concerns about the selling of citizens personal data, which could end up in the hands of foreign governments. In the letter,...

Putin Authorized Smear Campaign Against Biden, US Intelligence Concludes Less hacking, more laundering: 2020 tactics show evolution of Russian information warfare efforts. With President Vladimir Putin’s authorization, the Russian government used Ukrainian proxies, individuals linked to President Donald Trump, and the U.S. media to “denigrate President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party” through the promotion of tailored “narratives,” the U.S. intelligence community...

Dr. Robert W. Gehl, F. Jay Taylor Endowed Research Chair of Communication at Louisiana Tech, and colleague Sean Lawson, Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Utah, recently presented research based on their forthcoming book, Social Engineering: How Crowdmasters, Phreaks, Hackers, and Trolls Created a New Form of Manipulative Communication, to a Department of Defense-sponsored speaker series, the SMA (Strategic Multilayered Assessment) Speaker Series. Gehl and Lawson present...

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace January 26, 2021 Source: Getty Summary:  When combating influence operations, focusing on discouraging misleading digital market techniques is a more versatile, effective strategy than focusing on whether foreign or domestic actors are involved. Related Media and Tools If you enjoyed reading this, subscribe for more! Thank you! About the Project The Lines in the Sand paper series, produced by Carnegie’s Partnership on Countering Influence Operations...

Advertisement A Twitter account supposedly linked to Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei posted what appeared to be a death threat to former U.S. President Donald Trump. While the account stands suspended at the time of filing this article, the inflammatory tweet in Farsi seems to be calling for “vengeance” against a golf-playing individual resembling Trump for his decision to assassinate top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Qasem Soleimani last January. Not really. The story �...