Information warfare

Integrity Initiative: Foreign Office Funded, Staffed by Spies, Housed by MI5?

It’s the afternoon of December 11 and I've just been aggressively turfed from the offices of the Institute for Statecraft, an until recently virtually unheard-of think tank, secreted in the basement of Two Temple Place - a crenellated Gothic-style mansion overlooking the River Thames.

Things started promisingly, as Simon Bracey-Lane — a research fellow at the Institute — welcomed me in the foyer with a warm hello and handshake. His demeanour shifted seismically mere seconds later when I revealed I was a journalist.

"You need to leave right now!" he intoned urgently, eyes wide and face rapidly growing pale, "you haven't arranged to see us! Go! Right now! Please leave immediately! Leave!"

Stopping short of physically expelling me from the building but invading my personal space to such a degree he may as well have done, I made for the exit, Simon shadowing me every step of the way and relentlessly repeating his menacing entreaties to depart until I was safely outside and the office's heavy oak front door slammed firmly shut.

I wasn't overly surprised by his response — despite receiving millions from taxpayers, the Institute plainly doesn't like outsiders and goes to enormous efforts to conceal its true location from public view. Still, the organization may perhaps need to become comfortable with prying eyes in short order — for it's now at the epicenter of a international political scandal of potentially historic proportions.

Financial safety

Russia shuts down foreign forex platforms specializing in moving money offshore

The Bank of Russia has revoked licenses of five out on nine foreign exchange dealers operating in the country – Alpari Forex, Forex Club, Fix Trade, Trustforex, and Teletrade Group. The decision comes into force on January 27.

All the companies are subsidiaries of foreign firms that use aggressive advertising to lure Russian clients and focus on moving their money offshore, according to the regulator.

The forex platforms now have a month to cease operations in Russia’s securities market and pay off their customers, the regulator said announcing the measure on Thursday. Liabilities of the five forex platforms deprived of licenses amount to 35 million rubles ($504,000) and have some 2,000 clients, only 470 of whom are active, according to department head of the Russian Central Bank Larisa Selyutina.

Terror threat

'UK, US look at jihadist groups as useful, are they as against terrorists as they pretend to be?'

A Times' article portraying Chechen jihadists as freedom fighters because they are anti-Russian is an attempt to whitewash a connection between the Ukrainian government and terrorist groups, former US diplomat Jim Jatras told RT.

The British newspaper published a highly controversial interview with a Chechen who is fighting against anti-government forces in Eastern Ukraine. The head of his battalion earlier admitted that his fighters waged jihad in Syria and that the leader was even part of a terror group committing atrocities in Russia.

"Some of the battalion's gunmen admit to having honed their combat skills at Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) training camps in Iraq and Syria," the article says.

Former US diplomat Jim Jatras, commenting on the timing of the article to RT, said that the editorial decision to let this information out now is perhaps because "somebody just discovered the significance of it" especially in light of President Trump's announcement to withdraw US troops from Syria after Islamic State's defeat.

Defense

During a time of chaos, the next Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan brings his corporate style to America's largest bureaucracy

From his firm handshake, precise manner of speaking and efficient introductions, it's clear Patrick Shanahan is a businessman.

Before taking the No.2 spot in the Pentagon, Shanahan spent just over 30 years at one of the nation's top defense companies. People close to the former Boeing executive say his departure from the highest echelons of the corporate world was motivated by his father, a Vietnam War veteran and Bronze Star recipient.

And so, a little over a year ago, he left the aerospace giant, where he helped develop the 787 Dreamliner, and became the 33rd deputy secretary of Defense.

He often describes his job as the Pentagon's chief operating officer, and his boss, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, as the chief executive officer.

"The secretary has the traditional role of being, you know, like, the CEO, if we were talking in terms of business vernacular. Really, up and out," he said gesturing the directions with one hand. "And my job is really down and in."

Financial safety

Federal employees prepare for a long shutdown

A quarter of the federal government will likely begin the new year out of work or working without pay.
For the 380,000 federal employees on furlough and the other 420,000 working without pay, this means it's time to start making plans for how to pay January bills without the promise of their next paycheck as part of the government remains shutdown.
The US Office of Personnel Management tweeted out sample letters for federal employees to send to their creditors, mortgage companies or landlords. The letters suggest that employees ask to pay a reduced amount or create a payment plan in the coming months because they are out of work and not getting paid during the shutdown.
Each sample letter ends with, "I appreciate your willingness to work with me and your understanding during this difficult time."
The sample letter for employees to send to their landlords suggests they offer to trade services like painting or carpentry work "in exchange for partial rent payments."

Climate security

Brace yourself for a brutal winter: Experts say disruptions in the polar vortex could cause temperatures to plummet in parts of the US

The Eastern United States could be in for a blast of frigid weather.

Activity in an Arctic climate pattern could send the polar vortex barreling towards more southern latitudes to envelop parts of North America, Europe, and Asia.

The phenomenon has led to extreme winter weather in recent years, including record low temperatures in the US back in 2014 and last year’s ‘Beast from the East’ in the UK.

While there’s still time for things to change, the models currently suggest a split in the high-altitude polar vortex will ring in the New Year, creating the potential for ‘more severe winter weather’ in the Eastern US in the weeks to follow.

The latest predictions come from Dr Judah Cohen, of Atmospheric and Environmental Research (AER), and are supported by models from several other researchers shared in the last few weeks.

The polar vortex is an atmospheric circulation pattern that sits high above the poles, in a layer of the atmosphere called the stratosphere.

This structure can weaken as a result of abnormal warming in the poles, causing it to split off into smaller ‘sister vortices’ that may travel outside of their typical range.

As of the end of December, the models show the polar vortex situated above Scandanavia could break apart to become two or even three vortices, bringing colder weather to the mid-latitudes and warmer weather in the Arctic.

Laser

The Air Force's 'Laser' Future: Firing Laser Weapons from F-35s, F-15s and C-130s?

The Air Force will one day fire high-tech laser weapons from drones and fighter jets to destroy high-value targets, conduct precision strikes and incinerate enemy locations from the sky.

The first airborne tests are expected to take place by 2021, Air Force officials have said. The developmental efforts are focused on increasing the power, precision and guidance of existing laser weapon applications with the hope of moving from 10-kilowatts up to 100 kilowatts. Air Force weapons developers are also working on the guidance mechanisms to enable laser weapons to stay on-track on a particular target.

Air Force leaders have said that the service plans to begin firing laser weapons from larger platforms such as C-17s and C-130s until technological miniaturization efforts can configure the weapon to fire from fighter jets such as an F-15, F-16 or F-35. Given the state of current technology, cargo planes are better equipped in the short term to transport the requisite amount of mobile on-board power needed for airborne lasers.

The Air Force Research Laboratory is already working on a program to develop laser weapons for drones and manned aircraft to arm air platforms by the mid-2020s. When it comes to drone-fired lasers, there does not yet appear to be a timetable for when they would be operational weapons - however weapons technology of this kind is moving quickly.

Corruption

El Chapo Trial Shows That Mexico’s Corruption Is Even Worse Than You Think

It is no secret that Mexico’s drug cartels have, for decades, corrupted the authorities with dirty money. But as bad as the graft has been, the New York trial of Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug lord known as El Chapo, has suggested that the swamp of bribery runs even deeper than thought.

In two months of testimony, nearly every level of the Mexican government has been depicted as being on the take: Prison guards, airport officials, police officers, prosecutors, tax assessors and military personnel are all said to have been compromised.

One former army general, Gilberto Toledano, was recently accused of routinely getting payoffs of $100,000 to permit the flow of drugs through his district.

Even the architect of the government’s war on Mr. Guzmán and his allies — Genaro García Luna, the former public security director — was suspected to have taken briefcases stuffed with cartel cash.

Innovations & technologies

The first “social network” of brains lets three people transmit thoughts to each other’s heads

The ability to send thoughts directly to another person’s brain is the stuff of science fiction. At least, it used to be.

These tools include electroencephalograms (EEGs) that record electrical activity in the brain and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), which can transmit information into the brainIn recent years, physicists and neuroscientists have developed an armory of tools that can sense certain kinds of thoughts and transmit information about them into other brains. That has made brain-to-brain communication a reality.

In 2015, Andrea Stocco and his colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle used this gear to connect two people via a brain-to-brain interface. The people then played a 20 questions–type game.

An obvious next step is to allow several people to join such a conversation, and today Stocco and his colleagues announced they have achieved this using a world-first brain-to-brain network. The network, which they call BrainNet, allows a small group to play a collaborative Tetris-like game. “Our results raise the possibility of future brain-to-brain interfaces that enable cooperative problem-solving by humans using a ‘social network’ of connected brains,” they say.

Economic security

Border closure could cost billions

Closing the U.S. border with Mexico, which President Trump threatened to do in a Friday tweet if Democrats do not approve funding for his wall, could cost the economy billions of dollars, say analysts who have studied the issue.

“It would affect the U.S. economy massively and very negatively,” said Chris Wilson, deputy director at The Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, and the co-author of a study on the border economy.

“There’s about a billion dollars of commerce that crosses the border every single day, so every day it’s closed we’re losing out on hundreds of millions of dollars,” he added.

Trump threatened to close down the border as part of a broader fight with Democrats over building a border wall and funding the government.

“We will be forced to close the Southern Border entirely if the Obstructionist Democrats do not give us the money to finish the Wall & also change the ridiculous immigration laws that our Country is saddled with,” Trump wrote in the Friday tweet.

Cybersecurity

WannaCry still lies dormant on thousands of computers

Why it matters: Even after 18 months, WannaCry still poses a significant threat to businesses worldwide. According to Kryptos Logic, over half a million computers are still infected. The ransomware has been mostly eradicated in the United States and United Kingdom, but remains a widespread problem in other parts of the world.

It has been a year and a half since the initial WannaCry ransomware outbreak, and the malware still poses a threat to thousands of computers. Recent data shows that hundreds of thousands of computers are still infected with the malicious software even though it is currently dormant.

The malware is inactive thanks to security researcher Marcus Hutchins at Kryptos Logic. Bleeping Computer notes that Hutchins found a bit of code in the ransomware that referenced an odd domain. The domain was unregistered, so he registered it only to discover that he had activated a kill switch.

WannaCry periodically pings this address. As long as the sinkholed domain is up and running the software will not encrypt files. If it were to go down, then the malware would kick in and begin causing trouble.

EMP

"Friendly" EMP generator to help protect electronics against electromagnetic attack

Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons might be a staple of movies and video games, but they pose a very real threat. With just about every facet of modern society reliant on electronic devices, Sandia National Laboratories has developed a "friendly" EMP generator to make sure military and civilian equipment can withstand such potentially devastating bursts of electromagnetic energy.

First studied in earnest during the early US atomic weapon tests in the 1940s and '50s, an EMP is one weapon of mass destruction that, fortunately, has yet to be used in war or by terrorists. The principle is that detonating a nuclear weapon high in the atmosphere can generate a massive burst of radio energy that can overload electricity grids, and electric and electronic circuits and burn them out.

Over the decades, a lot of research has gone into EMPs and it makes for very unpleasant reading. A single EMP attack against even a country the size of the United States would have a devastating effect.

Weapons

Russia says its new weapon is 27 times faster than the speed of sound

Russia’s new strategic weapon has rendered any missile defenses useless at a small fraction of their cost, officials said Thursday.

The Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle flies 27 times faster than the speed of sound, making it impossible to intercept, Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov told Russian state television.

The new weapon “essentially makes missile defenses useless,” he said.

Borisov spoke a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw what he described as the conclusive successful test of the Avangard and hailed it as a reliable guarantee of Russia's security for decades to come.

In Wednesday’s test, the weapon was launched from the Dombarovskiy missile base in the southern Ural Mountains. The Kremlin said it successfully hit a practice target on the Kura shooting range on Kamchatka, 3,700 miles away.

The Defense Ministry released footage from the test launch, in which a ballistic missile could be seen blasting from a silo in a cloud of smoke, but it hasn't released any images of the vehicle itself.

Putin said the Avangard will enter service with the Russian Strategic Missile Forces next year.

The test comes amid bitter tensions in Russia-U.S. relations, which have been strained over the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria and the allegations of Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Communication security

5G Technology Arms Race Between US and China is the Real Deal – Security Expert

5G is a technology arms race between the US and China, and I think this is the real deal. Because this is something where you look at the China "2025 plan" and you look where 5G is going, now there definitely needs to be a line in the sand here in terms of 5G but remember we saw there were the Broadcom, Qualcomm [position] that ultimately got block for national security. So this is really about 5G and I think how the Trump administration handles this. They need to handle this whole situation with "kid gloves" especially as it leads to how it could potentially impact world rural carriers and it ultimately plays into the China-US negotiations. And this continues to be, in our opinion, the main risk for a lot of US tech stocks in terms of any type of reciprocal type of a situation where China maybe comes back at Apple. 

Foreign policy

Trump comes clean… from world’s policeman to thug running a global protection racket

Trump is not scaling back US military power; he is rationalizing it like a cost-benefit analysis, as perhaps only a real-estate-wheeler-dealer-turned president would appreciate. Trump is not snubbing US militarism or NATO allies, nor is he letting loose an inner peace spirit. He is as committed to projecting American military as ruthlessly and as recklessly as any other past occupant of the White House. The difference is Trump wants to do it on the cheap.

Here’s what he said to reporters on Air Force One before touching down in Iraq:

“The United States cannot continue to be the policeman of the world. It’s not fair when the burden is all on us, the United States… We are spread out all over the world. We are in countries most people haven’t even heard about. Frankly, it’s ridiculous.” He added: “We’re no longer the suckers, folks.”

Middle East

Let down by U.S., Syrian Kurdish leaders look to Russia and Assad

Alarmed by a U.S. decision to leave Syria, Kurdish leaders who run much of the north are urging Russia and its ally Damascus to send forces to shield the border from the threat of a Turkish offensive.

Their call for a return of Syrian government forces to the border, which Kurdish fighters have held for years, points to the depth of their crisis in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s abrupt decision to withdraw forces.

While little has changed on the ground yet - U.S. forces are still deployed and Trump says the pullout will be slow - Kurdish officials are scrambling for a strategy to protect their region from Turkey before the United States leaves.

Talks with Damascus and Moscow appear to be the focus for the Kurdish leadership. Their worst fear is a repeat of a Turkish attack that drove Kurdish residents and the YPG militia out of Afrin city in the northwest earlier this year.

Immigration security

FBI: Record number of illegal immigrants tried to buy guns this year

The FBI this year has turned away a record number of cases of illegal immigrants trying to buy guns, according to a new report of background checks.

The National Instant Criminal Background Check System said that it rejected 7,836,600 planned purchases from “illegal/unlawful alien” as of 2018. And that was at the end of November. Christmas purchases of guns are typically high and were not included.

That number has been increasing in recent years.

Illegal immigrants rank at the top of those on the FBI’s “prohibited category.” 

International security

National security after Mattis should alarm Americans of all political parties

The Mattis letter makes two primary points about U.S. national security.

The first is a fundamental statement of support for U.S. relationships with critical allies and security alliances now under attack by the current president.

Mattis recognizes that for decades the U.S. has functioned best in confronting international security challenges when it upheld its national values and acted within a coalition of strong and committed democratic nations. The U.S. has other important, even vital, relationships in the world, but none are as critical to the nation’s security as the bond with the democracies in Europe and elsewhere that share American democratic values. In that regard, the strongest security coalition for the U.S. is with Canada and the major European democracies committed to NATO.

The second major point in the Mattis letter is a clear definition of friends and adversaries.

As Mattis point out, there should be no confusion today about who are America’s friends and who are the nation’s adversaries. Russia, China and other authoritarian governments opposed to democracy around the world are the primary security threats to the United States. This is a direct rebuttal of the Trump administration’s failure to confront Russian attacks on U.S. elections and democracy in Europe and elsewhere.

Outer space

On National Security | Optimism and caution sums up the outlook for 2019

It’s that time of the year when predictably hyperbolic headlines flood our inbox, when analysts dust off their crystal balls and try to prognosticate what is to come.

In the military space business, there are strong reasons to believe that 2019 could be a pivotal year. The biggest development to watch will be the space reorganization at the Department of Defense. Right now, the odds appear to be stacked against the Trump administration’s plan to establish a Space Force as a separate military service. But politics is notoriously unpredictable.

Aside from the space reorganization, one major question that aerospace executives would like to see answered in 2019 is whether the increased rhetoric about space becoming militarized and contested translates into a different way of doing business.

“Are we going to see a change in behavior on the part of the customer?” asked Robin Lineberger, leader of the global and U.S. aerospace and defense sector at the consulting firm Deloitte.

Space is becoming an important part of the overall defense industry ecosystem, and global tensions could pose a threat to space assets such as satellites. Given these trends, Lineberger noted, DoD must accelerate the development of resilient space systems. The expectation is that 2019 “will be the year when they start to take real action on process to enable alternative, agile and simpler ways to develop capabilities.”

Military industrial complex

Russian authorities to take additional measures to develop new weapon systems, says Putin

The Russian authorities will take additional measures to develop new weapons systems for the national army and navy, President Vladimir Putin said at the National Center for Defense Management.

Earlier on Wednesday, the President arrived to the center to watch the test launch of the Avangard hypersonic missile.

"As for this topic in general, I know how the work is organized. Later we will talk with the general designer again, talk with other colleagues. We will take additional measures to unconditionally provide results in all similar issues the General Staff and the Defense Ministry consider promising for the equipment of the army and fleet with the latest weapons systems, including hypersonic weapons," Putin said. His speech was broadcast on the Rossiya 24 TV channel.