Health security

Economics of mass hypnosis

Anatoly Kashpirovsky, a psychotherapist, hypnotist, star of Soviet-Russian television has recently celebrated his 80-year anniversary. Known for his television shows of mass hypnosis on Central television, he opened the banknote-strewn road to show business to a whole range of gurus of varying degrees of fame, dexterity of tricks and financial success. Realnoe Vremya discussed with well-known economists Andrey Movchan and Nikita Krichevsky the issues of the monetization of hypnosis and extrasensory perception to try to find out whether the difference between spiritual and mental practices from the stars of showbiz and popular political talk shows on contemporary Russian television is big.
Source : https://realnoevremya.com/articles/3738-about-how-business-of-mass-hypnosis-and-paranormal-services-works

Source : https://realnoevremya.com/articles/3738-about-how-business-of-mass-hypnosis-and-paranormal-services-works

Innovations & technologies

Intelligence Technology Is a Double-Edged Sword

From the outer space environment of the moon to the virtual realm of cyberspace, technology challenges have the potential to vex the intelligence community. Many of the tools that the community is counting on to accomplish its future mission can be co-opted or adopted by adversaries well-schooled in basic scientific disciplines. So U.S. intelligence officials must move at warp speed to develop innovations that give them an advantage over adversaries while concurrently denying foes the use of the same innovations against the United States.

Over the past few decades, the U.S. intelligence community has excelled at keeping up with technology advances to where they are key enablers to espionage and counterespionage, offers Bob Gourley, co-founder and chief technology officer of OODA LLC. But now, technologies are changing so quickly that adversaries are able to even the score. And they are learning what the United States has been adept at doing—turning national security technology against its host.

Gourley uses the acronym CAMBRIC to describe the future of information technology. While the word in common usage refers to a finely woven cloth, the acronym’s letters stand for cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), mobility, big data, robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT) and cybersecurity. The intelligence community is directly in the crosshairs of its elements, he says.

EMP security

Feds fear EMP 'meltdown' of nuclear power plants

The federal government’s new focus on preventing disaster in a natural or terrorist electromagnetic pulse attack is drawing attention to a lack of testing and preparation at the nation’s nuclear power plants, where a resulting meltdown could cause radiation deaths.

Tucked into the back of a new report from the Electromagnetic Defense Task Force compiled to highlight the EMP threat to U.S. infrastructure and military installations, the nation’s nuclear regulators admitted that the electric generating plants are not prepared for an attack.

What’s more, they don’t know how deadly an attack would be or how far the radioactive “plume” from a meltdown would extend and suggested instead that deaths would first come from an inability to find food and clean water.

“If all engineered and proceduralized mitigation measures failed and a meltdown were to occur, there is a very large uncertainty in off-site consequences,” said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in response to the concerns raised in the report, provided to Secrets.

Weapons

US ARMY DOUBLES DOWN ON DIRECTED ENERGY WEAPONS

The US Army really, really wants to add directed energy weapons — laser cannons, essentially — to its arsenal.

Army officials just awarded contracts to weapons developers Northrop Grumman and Raytheon to develop directed-energy weapons to attach to the tank-like Stryker combat vehicle, according to Defense News. The Army wants lasers to disable drones, rockets, and vehicles — a sign of the high-tech turn modern warfare has taken.

“The time is now to get directed energy weapons to the battlefield,” Lt. Gen. L. Neil Thurgood, director of directed energy development, said in a statement reviewed by Defense News. “The Army recognizes the need for directed energy lasers as part of the Army’s modernization plan. This is no longer a research effort or a demonstration effort. It is a strategic combat capability, and we are on the right path to get it in soldiers’ hands.”

Confessions of spy

Official Secrets: How a Real-Life Spy Tried to Stop the Iraq War

Former British intelligence officer Katharine Gun didn’t set out to become a whistle-blower. But, in 2003, when she came across an email suggesting that the United States and the U.K. governments were intending to blackmail members of the United Nations to authorize an invasion of Iraq, Gun—then just 28—felt morally obligated to leak the letter.

“At the time, I was really focused on the Iraq invasion issue,” Gun told Vanity Fair this month, ahead of the August 30 premiere of Official Secrets, an intelligence thriller recounting this terrifying chapter of her life and starring Keira Knightley. “I was very much aware of what the leaders of our countries, Tony Blair and George W. Bush, were saying at the time.… I had bought a couple of books which had been rushed into print at that point—one called War Plan Iraq and the other was called Target Iraq.… I was convinced that there was nothing Iraq had done [to warrant the invasion]. When I saw the red flag…it was like, Oh, my gosh, this is so explosive. They’re lying about what their motives are…that immediately made me think, I have got to get this out. If people knew about this, nobody would support this invasion.”

Outer space

How America's Spooks Seek to Spy on Distant Satellites

On August 30, 2017, a video appeared online showing footage of every satellite operator’s worst nightmare: an anomaly. It’s the word space types use when they mean a bad thing, especially one they perhaps don’t understand and may want to downplay.

In the video, an orb—a satellite known as Telkom-1—hovers in the center of the frame while stars streak across the screen in the background. It glows quietly as the seconds tick by. Then, seemingly without warning, the satellite spews a cloud of debris. It flares, and then a slower plume of pieces detaches and floats lazily away.

“When that point of light starts shedding things to the left, right, bottom, it’s clear it had an event,” says Gerard van Belle, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, using another favorite aerospace euphemism. “There’s a lot of questions.”

Arms trade

Turkey discussing purchase of Russian fighter jets, says Erdogan

Turkey is holding talks with Russia on the purchase of Russian military equipment, namely Sukhoi fighter jets, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday, the NTV channel reports.

"Our cooperation with Russia [in the sphere of arms acquisition] is already implemented within the framework of the S-400 missile systems deal. However, after what we have witnessed at the air show [MAKS-2019], our ministries - the Ministry of Defense, the Defense Industry Directorate - carried on the negotiations with the Russian side," Erdogan said in response to whether any additional steps have been made after Erdogan was shown the Su-57 fighter jet during the 2019 MAKS Air Show.

Erdogan pointed out the "prospects of expanded cooperation in the sphere of defense industry." "For example, combat and reconnaissance drones. We take certain mutual steps in this area," he said.

Regarding Turkey’s potential exclusion from the US F-35 fighter jet program and the search for alternatives like Russian-made Sukhoi aircrafts, Erdogan noted that "these planes are very different from each other."

Electronic warfare

Russia testing fundamentally new electronic warfare system

Russia’s Radio-Electronic Technologies Group (KRET) is holding state trials of a next-generation electronic warfare system, Adviser to the KRET First Deputy CEO Vladimir Mikheyev said at the MAKS-2019 international aerospace show on Thursday.

"Based on the experience of operating existing systems, we are now developing a principally new electronic warfare system. It is at the stage of state trials. As soon as they are over, the system will go into production," he said.

KRET produces several electronic warfare (EW) systems.

The Krasukha mobile EW system is designated to protect command posts, groupings of forces, air defense capabilities and vital industrial and administrative facilities. The system analyzes the signal type and impairs enemy radar stations by powerful jamming emissions. As a result, enemy aircraft lose their capability to detect targets and aim their precision weapons against them.

The Rtut-BM tracked EW system is designated to protect manpower and military hardware, as well as the areas of troop’s amassment, mobile and stationary command centers against missiles, shells, mortar projectiles and guided high-explosive munitions equipped with radio fuses on an area of 50 hectares.

Drug trafficking

China claims fentanyl progress in trade call, sources say

U.S. and Chinese officials held a “working-level” call Thursday evening in which Beijing said it was making progress in restricting outbound fentanyl shipments, according to three sources familiar with the matter, homing in on a personal policy focus of President Donald Trump as it tries to get the White House to rollback tariffs.

In the call, these sources said, Chinese officials again reiterated a desire for relief on tariffs, with 15% tariffs set to hit $112 billion goods on Sunday, and existing tariffs to rise on an additional $250 billion in goods a month later.

It’s unclear whether President viewed the evidence China provided – which could not be learned by CNBC – as sufficient progress. As he departed the White House for Camp David on Friday evening, he told reporters the next round of tariffs is still on.

Cybersecurity

Russian police take down malware gang that infected 800,000+ Android smartphones

Russian authorities have arrested members of the TipTop cybercrime group, believed to have infected more than 800,000 Android smartphones with malware since 2015.

The group operated by renting Android banking trojans from underground hacking forums, which they later hid inside Android apps distributed via search engine ads and third-party app stores.

TipTop has been active since 2015, and operators have been making between $1,500 and $10,500 in daily profits, according to Group-IB, the cyber-security firm who helped Russian authorities track down the gang's members.

TIPTOP PRIMARILY USED HQWAR BANKING TROJAN

The group's favorite malware was the Hqwar (Agent.BID) banking trojan, which they rented and used in most of their campaigns.

Hqwar is capable of reading SMS messages, recording phone calls, and initiating USSD-requests. However, it's primary function is to show fake login screens on top of legitimate banking apps, and steal victims' login credentials.

Weapons

Report: New U.S. Hypersonic Weapons are Coming Soon

Washington, D.C.) Pentagon and industry developers are now testing a new series of hypersonic weapons prototypes as part of a large-scale effort to fast-track the weapons to service. The U.S. acceleration of the weapons, which includes air flights, ground-firing, wind-tunnels, simulation and various kinds of prototyping, is widely discussed as much needed response to Russian and Chinese progress in the area of hypersonics.

Flight tests, demonstrations, ground testing and advanced air-vehicle configuration prototyping are all providing data for an Air Force, DARPA and Raytheon hypersonic weapons program called Hypersonic Air-Breathing Weapons Concept, or HAWC. DARPA statements on the program, citing program manager Andrew Knoedler, identify key areas of developmental emphasis to include “hydrocarbon scramjet-powered propulsion to enable sustained hypersonic cruise.” DARPA information, mirrored by Raytheon weapons developers, explains that “sustaining” speeds at 5-times the speed of sound is a technical characteristic to hypersonic weapons...and the HAWC in particular.

Arctic

Refreezing the Arctic: How to bring the ice back with geoengineering

THE Arctic is in a death spiral. The top of our world is heating up faster than anywhere else on the planet, setting new records for the speed and area of ice melt. We are on track this year to have one of the lowest summer sea ice coverages so far. It is a huge problem, because what happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic.

What’s more, the Greenland ice sheet, which alone contains enough water to raise global sea levels by 6 metres, is disappearing. The frozen Arctic soil and sediment, or permafrost, is melting, releasing more and more carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. This year, vast wildfires in the peatlands of Siberiahave blazed for more than a month, and the Arctic warming is playing havoc with weather systems in the northern hemisphere too. But if you prefer to think simply in terms of money, the economic impact of unmitigated Arctic warming by the end of this century was recently estimated to be $67 trillion. As US congressman Jerry McNerney says: “When it comes to the Arctic, we’re in deep shit.”

You’ve heard the slogans: we are living in a time of climate emergency. But it is no good declaring an emergency without summoning help. So here it is: let’s refreeze the Arctic. There are several imaginative ideas to manipulate its climate system to get the ice back. They won’t be cheap or easy, but some researchers argue that the crisis in the north is …

Nuclear security

First Soviet Nuclear Bomb Test: How It Happened

 On Thursday, the world marks 70 years since the test of the first Soviet nuclear bomb at the Semipalatinsk test site.

On 29 August 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested its first atomic bomb, RDS-1.

This historic event was the culmination of long and difficult work. Soviet physics started working on nuclear fission in the 1920s. Since the 1930s, nuclear physics became one of the main directions of Russian physical science, and, in October 1940, for the first time in the Soviet Union, a group of scientists came forward with a proposal to use atomic energy for weapons purposes, submitting a request to the Red Army’s department for inventions "about using uranium as an explosive and toxic agent."

The war that broke out in June 1941 and the evacuation of scientific institutes, which dealt with the problems of nuclear physics, interrupted the work on atomic weapons in the country. But in the fall of 1941, the obtained intelligence information revealed that the United Kingdom and the United States carried out intensive scientific research seeking to develop methods for using atomic energy for military purposes and to produce explosives of enormously destructive power.

This information forced the Soviet Union to resume work on uranium. On 28 September 1942, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin approved the resolution of the State Defence Committee on the organisation of work on uranium, according to which the research on the use of atomic energy was resumed.

Military

Strength of British military falls for ninth year

The size of Britain's armed forces has fallen for the ninth consecutive year, new Ministry of Defence figures show.

The Army, the RAF and the Royal Navy have all seen a decline in the number of fully-trained personnel - with the Army experiencing the biggest fall.

Labour said the government was "running down" the UK military - calling it a "crisis" in recruitment and retention.

The Ministry of Defence said the armed forces continued to meet all their operational requirements.

The latest figures showed the Army was more than 7,000 troops short of the government's target of 82,000.

In July there were 74,440 full-time and fully-trained troops, down from 76,880 last year.

Military

Here's why the Russian military has so many serious accidents

While every military has accidents, the Russian military appears to be more accident-prone than other great powers.

"There's a tendency for accidents to happen in Russia," Jeffrey Edmonds, a Russia expert at CNA, told INSIDER.

Edmonds, a former CIA analyst and member of the National Security Council, said that the problem appears to be that Russia often combines a willingness to take risks with an outdated military infrastructure that simply can't support that culture, creating an environment where accidents are more likely.

Read more: Russia's military has been rocked by a string of explosions and fires in recent weeks that have left dozens dead or wounded

In recent weeks, many people have been killed or wounded in various Russian military accidents, including a deadly fire aboard a top-secret submarine, an ammunition dump explosion at a military base, and a missile engine explosion at a military test site.

Cyberwars

U.S. military carried out secret cyberstrike on Iran to prevent it from interfering with shipping

American military cyber forces in June knocked out a crucial database used by Iran’s elite paramilitary force to target oil tankers and shipping traffic in the Persian Gulf hours after that force shot down a U.S. surveillance drone, according to U.S. officials.

The retaliatory strike by U.S. Cyber Command against the system used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was approved by President Trump, who that same day called off a military airstrike against Iran because killing Iranians would not be “proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone.”

U.S. Cyber Command did not address questions on the secret operation. “As a matter of policy and for operational security, we do not discuss cyberspace operations, intelligence, or planning,” Elissa Smith, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement.

Climate security

Europe Is Warming Even Faster Than Climate Models Predicted

Over the past seven decades, the number of extreme heat days in Europe has steadily increased, while the number of extreme cold days has decreased, according to new research. Alarmingly, this trend is happening at rates faster than those proposed by climate models.

For most Europeans, this new study will hardly come as a surprise. This summer, for example, temperatures in southern France reached a record 46 degrees Celsius (114.8 degrees Fahrenheit), with similar temperature extremes happening at other locations on the continent.

Indeed, Europe is getting progressively hotter, and the data bears this out. What’s disturbing, however, and as new research published today in Geophysical Research Letters points out, this warming trend is occurring faster than the projections churned out by most European climate models. And as the new paper also notes, the observed increases in temperatures “cannot be explained by internal variability.” In other words, this warming trend is the result of human-caused climate change.

Ruth Lorenz, the lead author of the new study and a climate scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, and her colleagues analyzed temperature extremes in Europe from 1950 to 2018. On average, the number of days with extreme heat across Europe more than tripled during the timeframe analyzed, while the temperature of heat extremes went up 2.3 degrees Celsius (4.14 degrees Fahrenheit) on average.

Nuclear security

Rutgers Study: Nuclear Winter Would Threaten Nearly Everyone on Earth

If the United States and Russia waged an all-out nuclear war, much of the land in the Northern Hemisphere would be below freezing in the summertime, with the growing season slashed by nearly 90 percent in some areas, according to a Rutgers-led study.

Indeed, death by famine would threaten nearly all of the Earth’s 7.7 billion people, said co-author Alan Robock, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick.

The study in the Journal of Geophysical Research–Atmospheres provides more evidence to support The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons passed by the United Nations two years ago, Robock said. Twenty-five nations have ratified the treaty so far, not including the United States, and it would take effect when the number hits 50.

Lead author Joshua Coupe, a Rutgers doctoral student, and other scientists used a modern climate model to simulate the climatic effects of an all-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia. Such a war could send 150 million tons of black smoke from fires in cities and industrial areas into the lower and upper atmosphere, where it could linger for months to years and block sunlight. The scientists used a new climate model from the National Center for Atmospheric Research with higher resolution and improved simulations compared with a NASA model used by a Robock-led team 12 years ago.

Economic security

New recession warning: The rich aren’t spending

The rich have cut their spending on everything from homes to jewelry, sparking fears of a trickle-down recession that starts at the top.

From real estate and retail stores to classic cars and art, the weakest segment of the American economy right now is the very top. While the middle class and broader consumer sections continue to spend, economists say the sudden pullback among the wealthy could cascade down to the rest of the economy and create a further drag on growth.

Luxury real estate is having its worst year since the financial crisis, with pricey markets like Manhattan seeing six straight quarters of sales declines. According to Redfin, sales of homes priced at $1.5 million or more fell 5% in the U.S. in the second quarter. Unsold mansions and penthouses are piling up across the country, especially in ritzy resort towns, with a nearly three-year supply of luxury listings in Aspen, Colorado, and the Hamptons in New York.

Corruption

Corruption and terrorism: The case of Kenya

Around the world, corruption poses a major threat, contributing to many of the crises that have plagued economies and democraciesover the past decade. One aspect of corruption that receives too little attention is the link between corruption and the success of terrorism. Research has shown that high levels of corruption increase the number of terrorist attacks originating in a country. This impact has been felt in key battlegrounds against extremism, including Afghanistan, Nigeria, Iraq, and Kenya, at times derailing efforts to defeat terrorism.

To illustrate the ways in which corruption can impact and distort a counterterrorism campaign, we look to the case of Kenya, a key recipient of U.S. counterterrorism aid that suffers from severe corruption. Since 2006, Kenya has been a prime target of al-Shabab, an al-Qaida affiliate originating in Somalia. In the past several years, high-profile attacks including the 2013 Westgate shopping mall siege, the 2015 shooting at Garissa University College, and this January’s hotel bombing in Nairobi have galvanized the fight against al-Shabab. Yet, little progress has been made.