Cybersecurity

The cybersecurity sector is booming — but so are our enemies

What’s been more beneficial for the U.S. economy? President Trump and his economic policies — or China and Russia? At least for the cybersecurity sector, many firms should be thanking our adversaries for a growing business.

Several cybersecurity startups are making tremendous gains in this field, despite some setbacks in IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) and investor anxiety. The recent announcement by CrowdStrike shows the seriousness of digital warfare: The latest Silicon Valley unicorn (startups with a valuation over $1 billion) just raised $200 million to achieve a $3 billion valuation. That’s a whole lot of zeros for a business that’s about ones and zeros.

Combined with two other rising superstars, Tanium and Tenable, billions of dollars are in play to defend and protect our growing reliance on connecting everything to the internet. Even Symantec, which recently was hit hard by an audit investigation, is still a force to be reckoned with. Especially with the latest discovery of yet another threat-actor with a very insidious approach.

Immigration security

Trump’s New Plan for Immigrants: Jail Them on Military Bases

The Trump administration’s plan for immigrant families on the southern border involves holding them together on military bases for a prolonged, uncertain period of time.

President Trump’s executive order issued Wednesday seeks to keep families together in detention while both parents and children await decisions on their immigration and criminal court cases. With Immigrations and Customs Enforcement facilities already at or near capacity, the order requires the Secretary of Defense to make “any existing facilities available for the housing and care of alien families” and to ”construct such facilities if necessary.”

Among the likely facilities are three in Texas, the Army’s Fort Bliss and Dyess and Goodfellow Air Force Bases. The Department of Health and Human Services visited those sites before Trump’s order to determine their fitness for operating on-base facilities. Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas is also under consideration.

Law enforcement

ICE JUST LAUNCHED A $2.4M CONTRACT WITH A SECRETIVE DATA SURVEILLANCE COMPANY THAT TRACKS YOU IN REAL TIME

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has signed a $2.4 million contract with a little-known surveillance company that mines communications data and provides "real-time" tracking.

Data published on the U.S. government's spending website shows the Department of Homeland Security contracted Pen-Link Ltd. (PenLink), a software company that develops communications surveillance collection systems, on June 4 with ICE listed as the contracting subagency.

PenLink provides software that allows enforcement bodies to collect and analyze "massive amounts of social media and internet communications data," as well as collect wiretap intercepts "in real-time" for "tracking" and "live monitoring," according to its website.

Julian Sanchez, a privacy and surveillance expert with the Cato Institute, said the company appears to specialize in telephone data analysis and geolocation data mining and tracking that could potentially determine where people are "within a block" of a cell tower. 

Innovations & technologies

'Stealth sheet' hides hot objects from prying infrared eyes

Infrared cameras are the heat-sensing eyes that help drones find their targets, even in the dead of night or through heavy fog.

Hiding from such detectors could become much easier, thanks to a new cloaking material that renders objects—and people—practically invisible.

"What we have shown is an ultrathin stealth 'sheet.' Right now, what people have is much heavier metal armor or thermal blankets," says Hongrui Jiang, the Lynn H. Matthias Professor and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Warm objects like human bodies or tank engines emit heat as infrared light, and the new stealth sheet, described June 15, 2018, in the research journal Advanced Engineering Materials, offers substantial improvements over other heat-masking technologies.

"It's a matter of the weight, the cost and ease of use," says Jiang.

Measuring less than one millimeter wide—roughly the thickness of 10 paper pages—the thin sheet absorbs approximately 94 percent of the infrared light it encounters. Trapping so much light means that warm objects beneath the cloaking material become almost completely invisible to infrared detectors.

Weapons

US intelligence report: China will have the world's most powerful naval gun ready for war by 2025

China is currently testing the world's most powerful naval gun and people with direct knowledge of a U.S. intelligence report say it will be ready for war by 2025.

Railguns use electromagnetic energy instead of gunpowder to propel rounds, and China's is capable of striking a target 124 miles away at speeds of up to 1.6 miles per second, according to the report. For perspective, a shot fired from Washington, D.C., could reach Philadelphia in under 90 seconds.

Railguns have long appeared on Russian, Iranian and U.S. military wish lists as cost-effective weapons that give navies the might of a cannon with the range of a precision-guided missile.

The rounds used in China's railgun cost between $25,000 and $50,000 each, according to the intelligence assessment. Though not an exact comparison since the weapons have different technologies, the U.S. Navy's Tomahawk cruise missile has an estimated price tag of $1.4 million each.

Economic security

Dow drops about 200 points on trade worries, extends losing streak to 8 days

Stocks fell on Thursday as fears of an impending trade war between the U.S. and China dragged investor sentiment lower.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 196.1 points to 24,461.70, with Intel and Caterpillar as the worst-performing stock in the index. The Dow also posed an eight-day losing streak, its longest since March 2017. The S&P 500 declined 0.6 percent to 2,749.76 as energy shares fell 1.9 percent.

The Nasdaq composite pulled back 0.9 percent to 7,712.95, erasing earlier gains, led by declines in Amazon and Alphabet. Amazon shares fell 1.1 percent after the Supreme Court ruled that states can force online shoppers to pay sales tax.

Asteroid security

America Isn't Ready to Handle a Catastrophic Asteroid Impact, New Report Warns

We’ve long said that humans generally worry about the wrong asteroids. Tabloids love to publish headlines about “potentially hazardous asteroids,” a category created by NASA that can be a bit misleading. The truly worrisome rocks are the smaller ones that we aren’t tracking.

The US National Science and Technology Council knows about this problem—and thankfully, it plans to do something about it, according to a report the council released yesterday.

A 2005 congressional mandate stated that NASA would try to keep track of 90 percent of the near-Earth objects larger than 460 feet (140 meters). We’re only a third of the way there, reports Quartz, and even then, our existing catalogue might be flawed, according to a recent paper. But before something can be tracked, it must be documented, and even that effort is behind scheduled, according to the new report:

Since 2005, the number of NEOs catalogued in this range has almost tripled, while the total number of catalogued NEOs has increased by almost five times. Nevertheless, according to a 2017 report from NASA’s NEO Science Definition Team, current observational capabilities are suited to only finding less than half of all 140 meter objects by 2033, and planned improvements will still fall short of the timeline that Congress directed.

Navy

Expert predicts China may shortly have a third aircraft carrier

China might soon have its third aircraft carrier, said military expert Song Zhongping, after a picture showing three aircraft carriers was made public in a news piece by China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation (CSIC) on Wednesday.

Song told Global Times that the three aircraft carriers shown could be China’s original aircraft carrier Liaoning, with the first domestically-developed aircraft carrier alongside a new one with electromagnetic aircraft launch systems.

The picture shows that one of the carriers is equipped with three electromagnetic aircraft launch systems, which suggests high speed launch capabilities, high frequency take-offs and quick responses.

A giant “island”, or command center on the deck explains that the warship is a conventionally-powered carrier rather than a nuclear-powered one. However, Song added that according to the “unwritten rules” of the People’s Liberation Army, a nuclear-powered carrier is probably already under development since the warship with electromagnetic launch catapults has now been exposed.

Poll results

Voters More Focused on Control of Congress – and the President – Than in Past Midterms

The new survey by Pew Research Center, conducted June 5-12 among 2,002 adults, including 1,608 registered voters, finds that, unlike in recent midterms, voter engagement is high among members of both parties. Overall, 51% of registered voters say they are more enthusiastic about voting than usual, the largest share expressing increased enthusiasm about voting in a congressional election in at least 20 years.

A majority of voters who favor the Democratic candidate in their district (55%) say they are more enthusiastic about voting than usual, up sharply from 2010 and 2014. At about this point in 2006, when Democrats won majorities in both the House and Senate, somewhat fewer voters who backed the Democratic candidate (47%) said they were more enthusiastic about voting.

Yet enthusiasm among Republican voters is almost as high; 50% of voters who prefer the GOP candidate say they are more enthusiastic than usual, which is comparable to the level of Republican enthusiasm in 2014 (45%) and 2010 (55%). And in 2006, just 30% of voters who favored the Republican candidate indicated they were more enthusiastic about voting.

Economic security

Trump Turns Tide on Chinese Theft by Trade

After decades of artfully swindling American experts and businesses, the Chinese government is beginning to face a reckoning. Last week, President Trump announced that tariffs in response to China’s systematic theft of U.S. intellectual property will commence on July 6th.

The levies of twenty-five percent will apply at first to $34 billion in Chinese imports, later expanding to $50 billion. That will only affect about ten percent of what America imports from China each year, but the move marks a fundamental turning point. At long last, something is being done about trade and intellectual property theft by China.

Ever since commerce between China and the West began in earnest, foreign officials and businessmen have been unable to resist the allure its huge market of would-be consumers—currently numbering 1.4 billion. This siren’s call continues to be answered despite unending evidence that China would never allow “barbarians” a major stake in its domestic economy, and indeed wants handsome compensation just for access to this market.

Cybersecurity

Beijing Wants to Rewrite the Rules of the Internet

In late April, just days after the Commerce Department announced the denial order against ZTE, Xi Jinping, the president of China, gave a major speechlaying out his vision to turn his country into a “cyber superpower.” His speech, along with other statements and policies he has made since assuming power, outlines his government’s ambition not just for independence from foreign technology, but its mission to write the rules for global cyber governance—rules that look very different from those of market economies of the West. This alternative would include technical standards requiring foreign companies to build versions of their products compliant with Chinese standards, and pressure to comply with government surveillance policies. It would require data to be stored on servers in-country and restrict transfer of data outside China without government permission. It would also permit government agencies and critical infrastructure systems to source only from local suppliers.

China, in other words, appears to be floating the first competitive alternative to the open internet—a model that it is steadily proliferating around the world. As that model spreads, whether through Beijing’s own efforts or through the model’s inherent appeal for certain developing countries with more similarities to China than the West, we cannot take for granted that the internet will remain a place of free expression where open markets can flourish.

Electronic surveillance

Unit 8200: Israel’s cyber spy agency

In some ways, 8200 is Israel at its best and worst: a high-tech incubator that trains some of Israel’s smartest young people but effectively excludes minority Arabs — 20 per cent of Israel’s population — because so few do military service, which is compulsory for Jewish Israelis.

Unit 8200 also snoops on Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank or naval and air blockade in the Gaza Strip, according to a whistle-blowing leak that created a stir last year. In an open letter in September 2014, published by Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper and broadcast on Channel 10, a group of 43 serving and former 8200 reservists revealed what they said were coercive spying tactics being used on innocent Palestinians, including the collection of embarrassing sexual, financial or other information. One of the whistle-blowers, in a statement released along with the letter, described his “moment of shock” when watching The Lives of Others, the 2006 film about the Stasi’s pervasive spying in East Germany.

Nuclear security

Trump Wants a New Low-Yield Nuclear Weapon. But the US Has Plenty Already.

The Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), released in February of this year, calls attention to the composition of the US nuclear arsenal and its adequacy as a deterrent. The NPR calls for a new lower-yield submarine-launched nuclear warhead, arguing that it is needed to “counter any mistaken perception of an exploitable ‘gap’ in U.S. regional deterrence capabilities.” We decided to put together the chart in Fig. 1 to illustrate the range of nuclear weapons already available in the US arsenal.

One thing that this visual immediately makes clear is that it would be difficult to perceive any real gap in US capabilities—the existing arsenal certainly does not lack for nuclear options for any occasion.

Weapons

Russian Army Gets the Weapons of the Future Today

The combat experience that Russia’s Terminator-2 tank support combat vehicle (BMPT-72) has gained in Syria has proven to be invaluable. It is being used to develop a new Terminator-3 version that will soon equip the tank support system to do things like attacking unmanned aerial vehicles (drones). Other armored vehicles and dismounted infantry in difficult terrain remain high-priority targets.

Few details are available so far. Like its predecessors, the new vehicle’s armor protection will be equivalent to that of a main battle tank, with armaments allowing it to engage virtually any enemy weapon system or unit and to fire at multiple targets at the same time. Automation makes it possible to reduce the number of crew members from 5 to 3.

The new weapon system is likely to share its chassis, sensors, armor, and active protection system with the new Armata T-14 main battle tank. According to Russian media reports, the main armament will be a 57-mm. gun already used by the Russian Navy. Its rate of fire is 300 rounds per minute, its range — 16 km., and its altitude — over 4 km. The projectile can penetrate armor over 100 mm. thick. Because the firing range of its machine gun and automatic grenade launcher are 60-140% greater than that of the American Bradley IFVs and Stryker wheeled armored vehicles and anti-tank systems, this system can reliably protect tanks and infantry while remaining safely out of reach.

Immigration security

Immigration Divides Europe and the German Left

After causing a growing split between EU countries, the immigrant crisis is now threatening to bring down Merkel’s own Christian Democratic (CDU) government. Her own interior minister, Horst Seehofer, from the conservative Bavarian Christian Social Union, has declared that he “can’t work with this woman” (Merkel) on immigration policy and favors joining together with Austria and Italy in a tough policy to stop migration.

The conflict over immigration affects even the relatively new leftist party, Die Linke (The Left).

A good part of the European left, whatever its dissatisfaction with EU performance, is impregnated with its free movement ideology, and has interiorized “open borders” as a European “value” that must be defended at all costs. It is forgotten that EU “freedom of movement” was not intended to apply to migrants from outside the Union. It meant freedom to move from one EU state to another. As an internationally recognized human right, freedom of movement refers solely to the right of a citizen to leave and return to her own country.

Flight security

FBI warns about sexual assaults on airline flights

The FBI is warning about a serious federal crime that’s on the rise, even though many incidents are probably not being reported: sexual assaults.

While sexual assaults on airline flights are still relatively rare, agents said, the number of reported cases has increased in recent years.

In 2014, 38 cases of in-flight sexual assault were reported to the FBI. Last year, that number increased to 63 reported cases, but officials believe the crimes are significantly under-reported.

There have already been 10 reports of sexual assaults on flights that landed at BWI Marshall Airport in 2018, sources said. Those numbers are in line with what other airports around the country have been seeing.

The attacks usually involve inappropriate touching ranging from “grazing a body part to even more graphic acts,” said Brian Nadeau, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Baltimore division.

Conspiracy theory

End of the WORLD: Biblical prophecy claims Rapture is coming TODAY on summer solstice

The Rapture is an event many Christians believe marks the return of the son of God – and all the believers will disappear from Earth up to Heaven in the "twinkling of an eye".

But this happens after a tribulation period – seven years that are first of peace and unity around the world and then three and a half years of war and global pandemics.

And Steve Fletcher, who monitors events that could signal the end of mankind, believes the Rapture starts today.

He said: “Time is up and all hell breaks loose after June 21, 2018.”

He explained a number of factors had allowed him to pinpoint the end of times – which coincides with Summer Solstice, the ending of spring and the starting of summer.

Immigration security

In reversal, Trump orders halt to his family separation rule

Bowing to pressure from anxious allies, President Donald Trump abruptly reversed himself Wednesday and signed an executive order halting his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents when they are detained illegally crossing the U.S. border.

It was a dramatic turnaround for Trump, who has been insisting, wrongly, that his administration had no choice but to separate families apprehended at the border because of federal law and a court decision.

The order does not end the “zero-tolerance” policy that criminally prosecutes all adults caught crossing the border illegally. But, at least for the next few weeks, it would keep families together while they are in custody, expedite their cases and ask the Defense Department to help house them. It also doesn’t change anything yet for the some 2,300 children taken from their families since the policy was put into place.

The news in recent days has been dominated by searing images of children held in cages at border facilities, as well as audio recordings of young children crying for their parents — images that have sparked fury, questions of morality and concern from Republicans about a negative impact on their races in November’s midterm elections.

Poll results


Generic Congressional BallotDemocrats Maintain Their Lead on Generic Congressional Ballot

Democrats maintain a slight lead on this week’s Rasmussen Reports Generic Congressional Ballot.

The latest telephone and online survey finds that 45% of Likely U.S. Voters would choose the Democratic candidate if the elections for Congress were held today. Forty-one percent (41%) would opt for the Republican. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, and nine percent (9%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The Democrats regained their lead over Republicans two weeks ago and have held a four-point lead since then.

Rasmussen Reports is updating the Generic Congressional Ballot findings weekly on Wednesdays at 8:30 a.m. Eastern until the midterm elections in November.

Special Midterm Election Offer: Between June 11 and 24, 2018, you can get 6 months of Rasmussen Reader service for 60% off of the regular monthly price – just $12.00 . Sign up today!

The survey of 2,500 Likely Voters was conducted on June 10-14, 2018 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 2 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Innovations & technologies

Israeli Company Achieved Friend or Foe Identification from 18 Km Distance

New systems that distinguish between enemy and friendly forces were exposed by an Israeli company. Thermal Beacon Ltd. developed high-end, innovative thermal IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) emitters – the MS OMR II c and MK-IV. The first system is mounted on a fighter’s helmet, marking it, and thus distinguishing it from enemy forces. The second system is installed on buildings, vehicles and sailing vessels, enabling accurate identification by friendly forces.

In a recent experiment, the MS OMR II c system identified targets from a distance of 18 km.

Thermal Beacons are infrared emitters being used as an identification device in the thermal spectrum region (mid-IR and long-IR) for use with operatives, vehicles, yachts, pilots, police SWAT teams, search and rescue, emergency services and mountain rescue teams. Designed for outdoor operation, military demands and standards, features include a solid state optical IFF beacon, a compact beacon for thermal observation, and a long working range.

Thermal Beacons radiate in the thermal spectrum (8-12 µm and most efficiently at 3-5 µm) and do not emit radiation in the visible or the near-infrared region, according to the company announcement.

They are used as an identification device in the thermal spectrum region, for persons or vehicles. The MS (Multi-Spectrum) version allows the user to control the spectrum of radiation from only the thermal region, only the near-infrared region (for image intensifiers and SLS), or both thermal and near-infrared regions simultaneously.

Finacial safety

Bitcoin Could Break the Internet, Central Bank Overseer Says

The Bank for International Settlements just told the cryptocurrency world it’s not ready for prime time -- and as far as mainstream financial services go, may never be. 

In a withering 24-page article released Sunday as part of its annual economic report, the BIS said Bitcoin and its ilk suffered from “a range of shortcomings” that would prevent cryptocurrencies from ever fulfilling the lofty expectations that prompted an explosion of interest -- and investment -- in the would-be asset class. 

The BIS, an 88-year-old institution in Basel, Switzerland, that serves as a central bank for other central banks, said cryptocurrencies are too unstable, consume too much electricity, and are subject to too much manipulation and fraud to ever serve as bona fide mediums of exchange in the global economy. It cited the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies -- Bitcoin and its imitators are created, transacted, and accounted for on a distributed network of computers -- as a fundamental flaw rather than a key strength.

Health security

Canada legalizes recreational marijuana after Senate passes 'historic' legislation

The move will make Canada the second country in the world to legalize cannabis for both medical and recreational purposes nationwide. Uruguay was the first to fully legalize the drug.

Bill C-45, also known as the Cannabis Act, was first introduced on April 13, 2017, in a bid to legalize and regulate the recreational use of weed. The bill passed in the House of Commons that November and then passed in the Senate on Tuesday night by a vote of 52-29, with two abstentions.

Medicinal use of the drug has been legal in Canada since 2001.

The proposed legislation allows adults in Canada to legally possess and use up to 30 grams of dried cannabis in public, as well as cultivate up to four cannabis plants at home and prepare products for personal use. Dried cannabis and cannabis oil will become commercially available later this year.

The minimum legal age to buy and consume pot in Canada will be set at 18, but the bill allows provinces and territories to increase the minimum age.

Immigration security

Trump says he would back both House immigration bills as child separation crisis grows

U.S. President Donald Trump told Republican lawmakers on Tuesday he would back either of the immigration bills making their way through the House of Representatives, as the outcry grew over his administration's separation of immigrant parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Representative Mark Meadows said Trump told Republican members of the House at a meeting on Capitol Hill that they needed to get something done on immigration "right away."

In the meeting, Trump said separating families was "certainly not an attractive thing and does look bad," added Representative Tom Cole.

Congressional Republicans have been scrambling to craft legislation as videos of youngsters in cages and an audiotape of wailing children have sparked anger at home from groups ranging from clergy to influential business leaders, as well as condemnation abroad.

Opinion

Ex-Mossad Chief: Best Part of My Job Was Having ‘a License to Crime’

Former Israeli Mossad chief (2011-2015), Tamir Pardo, spoke to Israel’s foremost TV news magazine (the video is only accessible via Israeli IP addresses), Uvda about his thirty years’ working for Israel’s foreign spy service.  He was continuing a tradition begun by his predecessor, the late-Meir Dagan, who also did an interview with the TV program after he left his job.  In fact, they both did the interviews for the same reason: they were deeply disaffected from their former boss, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Since so much of Israeli intelligence work is done covertly and under the pall of military censorship, preventing the public from having any inkling of what is done in its name, such interviews draw back the curtain slightly on an otherwise taboo subject in the Israeli media.  As a result, the audience for such events is huge and the public hangs on every word.

Pardo didn’t disappoint.  He mixed a combination of striking candor with feigned humility to present a picture of an experienced Israeli spy who’s been humiliated by his former boss, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and driven into a sort of forced exile.

Immigration security

trump and the invasion of the west

The existential question, however, thus remains: How does the West, America included, stop the flood tide of migrants before it alters forever the political and demographic character of our nations and our civilization?

The U.S. Hispanic population, already estimated at nearly 60 million, is predicted to exceed 100 million by 2050, just 32 years away.

And Europe's southern border is more imperiled than ours.

A week ago, the new populist regime in Rome refused to allow a boat full of migrants from Libya to land in Sicily. Malta also turned them away. After a voyage of almost a week and 1,000 miles, 630 migrants were landed in Valencia, Spain.

Why did Italy reject them? Under EU law, migrants apply for asylum in the country where they first enter Europe. This burdens Italy and Greece where the asylum-seekers have been arriving for years.

Poll results

IBD/TIPP Poll: Economic Optimism Rises, But Trump Economy Is No Party

The IBD/TIPP Economic Optimism Index improved in June, but the country's mood remains surprisingly circumspect considering lower joblessness, better wages, and an economy whose growth appears to have accelerated past 3%.

The index edged up 0.3 point to 53.9, solidly above the 50 neutral level, as Americans' view of their personal finances strengthened and the jobless rate matched a nearly half-century low.

Self-described investors were bullish on the economy, with their responses equating to a 57.5 index reading, yet the rest of the country remained slightly pessimistic, slipping further into negative territory at 48.6.

Optimism and pessimism also were linked to income levels in June. Americans earning at least $50,000 were optimistic (55.8) and those earning more than $75,000 even more so (57.6). Yet Americans earning less than $50,000 were somewhat pessimistic (48.9 or lower).

Prediction

Steve Bannon Predicts "Astounding Victory" For House And Senate Republicans In November

In an interview on ABC's 'This Week' former Trump "Campaign CEO" Steve Bannon reveals that he doesn't talk to President Trump anymore but if Trump listens to his "inner voice" he will win an "astounding victory" in the November midterms.

"I talk to him every day through the press and through the media. By the way, he’s got too many guys talking to him right now. All he’s got to do is listen to his own inner voice."

"Write this down," Bannon said. "That’s going to lead to an astounding victory in November. He is going to run the tables in the House and he’s going to pick up a couple seats in the Senate."