Monthly Archives: November 2021

For the first time since the start of the pandemic, the number of new daily Covid cases in Germany has exceeded 60,000, according to the country’s disease control and prevention agency, the Robert Koch Institute.

Authorities fear that in reality the figure is even higher, as not all cases are immediately reported or detected. Just a week ago, the number of daily infections across Germany surpassed the 50,000 mark.

Read more

Among the country’s Covid hotspots are Thuringia, Saxony and Bavaria. In the latter region, hospitals are so overwhelmed with Covid patients that they have had to put off any non-emergency surgery.

Against this grim backdrop, lawmakers in the Bundestag on Thursday backed a new set of measures aimed at containing the spread of the disease. The package was proposed by Germany’s Social Democrats, the Green and Free Democratic parties, which are expected to form a new coalition government as early as next week.

If passed by the upper house, the rules would include mandatory daily Covid testing for employees of, and visitors to, care homes, regardless of vaccination status. Germans would also be required to show proof of full vaccination, recovery or a fresh negative Covid test in order to enter their workplace or use public transport.

On top of that, those caught selling and forging fake certificates and tests could face up to five years behind bars. Just like the Covid regulations currently in place, the new plan gives some leeway to regional authorities in terms of restrictions so that, for instance, the banning of recreational, cultural, and sporting events will be at their discretion. However, things like travel bans, curfews and massive closures of businesses would now be off-limits to local government.

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

This piece was first published by RUSI in London.  The views do not represent those of RUSI.

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE –The international community is coming under increasing pressure to recognise the Taliban and to unfreeze Afghan funds held by the IMF or to risk a humanitarian crisis over the winter and a resurgence of international terrorism.

As Afghanistan heads deeper into winter the desperate need is to avoid a humanitarian crisis. The World Food Programme has launched an appeal to feed up to 23 million people and Médecins sans Frontières have followed suit in the healthcare field. Fortunately, the distribution mechanisms are in place inside Afghanistan; what is needed is for the international community to ensure that UN humanitarian programmes are fully funded. This will require Western capitals to get over the shock of their recent defeat. It goes without saying that hunger and health should not be used as instruments of political leverage.

Meanwhile, it is becoming ever more apparent that the Taliban do not have the skills to administer a country which is far more complex than the Afghanistan of 1996 – when they began their previous and disastrous spell in office. They will need international assistance to stabilise the economy, get people back to work and, in time, continue the gradual infrastructure improvements which have been underway since 2002. China will doubtless be willing to assist in some areas but Beijing has already made clear that it is adopting a cautious, gradualist approach. However, there are emerging indications that the Taliban’s intransigent views are beginning to relax; such as their approval of the polio vaccination scheme and their willingness to work with UN humanitarian agencies.

The Taliban will also need outside help in defeating the threat from the Islamic State’s Khorasan Province (ISK). Already the Taliban are finding it difficult to counter similar asymmetric tactics which they used so successfully against Western forces. This is likely one of the subjects which CIA Director William Burns discussed with the Taliban during his visit on 24 August and where there is a mutual interest.

What can the international community (not just the West) realistically expect from the Taliban, following the militant group’s stunning victory? Maximalist demands will inevitably get short shrift.

---

The Cipher Brief hosts private briefings with the world’s most experienced national and global security experts.  Become a member today.

---

First, the Taliban should form a more inclusive government. According to multiple sources, the Taliban were intending to form such an administration had Ashraf Ghani not fled the country on 15 August. I am sceptical that this was ever their intention but former president Hamid Karzai and former reconciliation chief Abdullah Abdullah may have remained in Kabul on this understanding and Fatima Gailani, a former negotiator, insists this was the Taliban’s intention.

An inclusive government would need to include women and non-Taliban representatives from the Hazara, Uzbek and Tajik communities. It need not comprise the failed politicians and bloodstained warlords of the past, least of all Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Abdul Rashid Dostum. It is surely time for a new generation of more technocratic Afghans to become involved in government. Some may be persuaded to return from abroad but they will need assurances for their safety.

Second, the international community should insist on female education at all levels be restored and for women to play a fuller role in society. The Taliban will baulk at this but they only need to look at Pakistan where women play an important role in an avowedly Islamic, if not Islamist, society.

Third, all neighbouring countries, as well as the wider world, want Afghanistan to commit to removing all terrorist bases and terrorists from its soil; not just ISK and Al-Qa’ida but also the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), anti-Iranian and anti-Indian groups, and Central Asian militant movements including the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.

Fourth, the Taliban should commit to allow people to join their families in exile if they wish and also cease the continuing search for and punishment of those Afghans who served the Afghan government and Western allies since 2001.

---

Go beyond the headlines with expert perspectives on today’s news with The Cipher Brief’s Daily Open-Source Podcast.  Listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts.

---

In an ideal world there would also be a fifth request: to remove Haqqani network members from the Taliban administration. However, that pass was sold when the US negotiator Zalmay Khalilzad engaged with the Haqqanis in Doha – another result of that calamitous dialogue. Furthermore, the current reality is that the Haqqanis control both Kabul and its airport and Sirajuddin Haqqani holds the key position of interior minister.

Instead, the Haqqanis need to be persuaded to prevent Al-Qa’ida regrouping in Afghanistan. Sirajuddin’s father was close to Osama bin Laden and the group retains its Al-Qa’ida connections. Pakistan is already using the Haqqanis to bring the TTP to the negotiating table. It remains to be seen how successful this will be. It is doubtful that the Haqqanis would be willing to take military action against a group from a similar area in the tribal borderlands. However, the Haqqanis could be useful as intermediaries, if not as enforcers.

Meanwhile, the wider Taliban, usually referred to as the ‘Kandaharis’, are increasingly exasperated by the entryist Haqqanis. Although they have worked together, there was never much love lost between the two. The Kandaharis have always distrusted the Haqqanis’ proximity to the Pakistani military. Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, Mullah Abdul-Ghani Baradar, whose willingness to negotiate with the Kabul government in 2008 and 2010 earned him eight years in a Pakistani prison, has been sidelined. There will doubtless be a reckoning

A lasting regret of the US’s careless withdrawal is that Washington did not conclude a broader settlement for Afghanistan involving China, Iran, Russia, India and the Central Asian Republics. From now on it is essential to include all the neighbours in the discussion of recognition and the conditions required. But first the Afghans must be helped to survive the winter.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

The post What Stands Between the Taliban and Recognition appeared first on The Cipher Brief.

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

Objects, including spacecraft, could pierce through the universe using several black holes as a ‘shortcut’, a new study suggests.

The new theory posited by French physicist Pascal Koiran marks a break from earlier research in the field of black hole studies. Previously, it was thought that a so-called ‘wormhole’ composed of two black holes would be prone to instantly collapse, thus making it impossible for an object to successfully travel all the way from one side and out the other. However, by employing different metrics, the French scientist’s new model has arrived at a very different conclusion: “We show that the particle reaches the wormhole throat for a finite value t′1 of the time marker t′.” In essence, that means an object, for instance, a spacecraft, could pass through this wormhole portal intact and reach some far-away region of the universe, taking far less time than would be needed if traveling conventionally.

Read more

The study in its entirety will see the light of day in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Modern Physics D, though an abstract has been available since early October.

Yet, there are too many ifs as to whether this purely theoretical model has any bearing on the way the universe actually works. For starters, to create such a time-and-space tunnel you would need a regular black hole and a so-called white hole, which is essentially a black hole in reverse. While black holes never let anything out, their ‘twins’ never let anything in. So, according to Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity and Nathan Rosen’s additions to it, if you were to connect the two, they would make up a bridge across time and space. However, if the laws postulated by another branch of physics, thermodynamics, are anything to go by, such a construct would be highly unstable. Perhaps more importantly, the very existence of white holes has yet to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. At present, they remain a pure theorization, thus putting any talk of space-and-time portals on rather shaky ground.

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

One of our favorite very specific image genres of funny pictures is cat moms that look completely unprepared for the realities of parenthood. Scroll down to see the best examples!

The post Cats That Look Completely Unprepared For The Realities of Parenthood first appeared on .

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

Sports goods retailer Decathlon has said it won’t be selling canoes in its stores in northern France anymore because the light vessels are increasingly being used by migrants trying to cross into England.

“Given the current context… the purchase of canoes will no longer be possible” in Decathlon stores in Calais and Grande-Synthe, outside Dunkirk, the French retailer announced.

The two cities overlook the Strait of Dover, which is the narrowest point in the English Channel. Thousands of migrants have been using this spot in recent years to try to make the dangerous 34-kilometer-long sea journey from France to the UK.A lot of canoes aren’t being purchased for their original sporting purpose, Decathlon complained.

Read more

They “could be used to cross the Channel” and as a result of this, “people’s lives would be endangered,” it pointed out.

“We are committed to never putting our customers at risk in the use of our products, whatever the circumstances,” the company said. 

The initiative to remove canoes from the shelves came from the stores themselves and was backed by the head office, according to the retailer. However, Decathlon will keep selling the vessels online and in its other shops across France.

Last Thursday, two canoes were found adrift in the Channel near Calais, while two migrants were rescued from the water. The next day, three more people were reported missing after attempting to get to England using canoes.

Tensions between London and Paris are high after a record number of migrants – 1,185 – were able to cross the Channel a week ago. 

Britain said it was “unacceptable” that France had let so many people slip through, but the French government insisted they were “neither their collaborators nor their assistants” and blamed the soaring crossings on the smugglers and the UK’s labor market, which makes the country attractive to people eager to “work at low cost.”

Like this story? Share it with a friend!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

France’s education minister has announced plans to boost the teaching of ancient Greek and Latin in an effort to fight the proliferation of wokeism and “develop the culture” of the country’s younger generations.

Speaking on Monday, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, a leading figure in France’s war on woke, said that ancient Greek and Latin would become available to sixth formers pursuing vocational courses next year, as well as middle school students. 

Blanquer wants sixth formers to have the opportunity to “develop their culture” by reading ancient philosophers while gaining the technical qualifications that the economy demands. 

Read more

Speaking at a charter signing, alongside counterparts from Italy, Greece, and Cyprus, the minister claimed their joint commitment to the promotion of the classics came at a time when ancient languages were being threatened by American wokeism.

The targeting of the dead languages has been most prominent in the US with Princeton University announcing this summer that it would no longer require classics students to study ancient Greek and Latin; the two vernaculars are often considered the core pillars of the discipline.

Dan-el Padilla Peralta, an associate professor of classics at Princeton, claimed the ancient languages had been used as a justification of slavery, colonialism, and fascism for 2,000 years.

In a similar move, a Massachusetts high school boasted that it had removed Homer’s Odyssey from the school curriculum as it conflicted with the anti-racist agenda it wanted to teach. “Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum this year,” a teacher wrote on social media. 

Blanquer told Le Point that such interpretations of the classics were “completely mind boggling.” “To stick categories and a contemporary world view on writings dating back two millennia is an abyssal absurdity,” he added, noting that these civilizations brought us “openness and a search for the universal.”

The minister believes that ancient languages are a common bond for contemporary European nations, noting that the “common linguistic fund” would help spread “common values.”

Blanquer also claimed the classics respond to a demand for logos (language as a tool for reason), in a world where “a lack of reason is spreading like wildfire.”

Last month, the education minister set up a think tank dedicated to President Emmanuel Macron’s war on wokeism.

The liberal or woke agenda, which some in France claim is an Anglo-Saxon import, is likely to be a major feature in the 2022 presidential election, where Macron’s main competitor is likely to hail from the far right of the political spectrum.

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

As part of a special series on climate in partnership with The Intelligence Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Cipher Brief Expert and Senior Editor Kristin Wood, The Cipher Brief is focusing on the national security implications of climate change. 

This report is derived from a half-day conference in April 2021 co-sponsored by the Intelligence Project and the Environment and Natural Resources Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, along with the Center for Climate and Security and The Cipher Brief. It explores the requirements of the U.S. IC to fulfill the mission prescribed by President Biden, DNI Haines, and Secretary Kerry. The IC must rise to challenge, unshackled from the past, to re-imagine its role in combatting climate change.

The Authors

The Report

The U.S. Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Avril Haines, has stated that climate change needs to be at the center of U.S. foreign policy and national security. It is a threat multiplier that impacts every function of government and society: territorial integrity, economic well-being, social stability, and military capabilities are all impacted by climate change, directly and indirectly. However, in addressing climate change, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is currently unsure of its mission space and hitherto has been relying on boilerplate responses to it. In an exclusive discussion, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, Secretary John Kerry, who should be a principal consumer of intelligence about climate change within the U.S. government, stated that the U.S. IC must deliver significantly more.

The increasing effects of climate change are arising at a moment when the nature of intelligence itself is undergoing a revolution—from the collection of hidden secrets to collation of non-obvious (but knowable) data frequently hiding out in the open. This watershed in intelligence and national security requires bold, innovative, ideas for the U.S. IC to adapt and anticipate security threats derived by climate change. It must establish its mission space and alter its own architecture to ensure it is providing its customers with intelligence about them needed. Its mission will not be about spies disseminating secrets to policymakers; rather, it will require a new intelligence and national security paradigm that must reach across society, allowing the general public to consume climate intelligence and hold policymakers to account.

Background

The twenty-first century presents globalized threats that will require globalized solutions, the greatest of which is climate change. As the Covid-19 pandemic has demonstrated, no country is immune from actor-less threats like novel disease outbreaks and climate change. When combined with other security threats like transnational terrorism and ubiquitous cyberattacks, it becomes clear that existing national security frameworks are insufficient. New relationships and lines of communication will need to be forged, both within the U.S. government, in the private sector, and internationally with allies and adversaries. The U.S. IC needs to determine the requirements of its customers regarding climate change and how its unique collection and analytical capabilities fit into this new mission space.

The IC has incorporated climate change into its analysis and threat assessments for decades, but climate has not received the attention it requires given the magnitude of the threat it poses. On January 27, 2021, President Biden issued an executive order on tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad, establishing that “climate considerations shall be an essential element of United States foreign policy and national security.” The order also called for the Director of National Intelligence to prepare a National Intelligence Estimate on the national and economic security impacts of climate change within 120 days.

The Climate Change, Intelligence, and Global Security conference at Harvard’s Belfer Center earlier this year, brought together senior climate experts, current and former intelligence officers, and leaders in the private sector and academia to discuss the climate threat and generate innovative ideas on role the IC will play in combatting that threat. Led by Paul Kolbe, Director of the Intelligence Project, Kristin Wood, Intelligence Project Non-Resident Fellow, and Erin Sikorsky, Deputy Director of the Center for Climate and Security, the conference facilitated an urgent opportunity for productive dialogue on the climate threat.

Climate change as a threat to international security

Policymakers and the public need to understand that climate change impacts seemingly unrelated challenges and magnifies existing threats. The direct effects of climate change are readily apparent around the world—melting glaciers, rising sea levels, thawing permafrost, longer droughts, hotter heat waves, persistent wildfires, torrential rains, and catastrophic storm systems. These effects create disastrous consequences for humans like crop failures, fishery collapses, water insecurity, and the inundation of coastal regions, all of which lead to mass migration and displacement. These situations lead to fragile states and regions where increased conflict over scarce resources allows malign actors thrive. In this way, climate change is a threat multiplier that touches every aspect of international security.

Professor John P. Holdren, the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, noted that the big picture on how climate change will impact the planet is clear, but the detailed effects are difficult to predict with precision and confidence, in part because we do not know exactly how human societies will react. This uncertainty exacerbates the security threat posed by climate change. We know it will increase the number of displaced persons in the world, but we do not know when they will be displaced, how many there will be, or where they will go.

Climate change also impacts the effective functioning of the U.S. military: to meet traditional security threats and protect Americans at home and abroad. U.S. bases around the world function as launching pads for everything from quick tactical operations to large-scale disaster relief missions. When severe weather damages those bases or limits their ability to operate at full capacity, America’s security is put at risk. Disasters like the flooding at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, headquarters for U.S. Strategic Command, and Hurricane Michael’s destruction of Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida show that this threat knows no geographic bounds. Their effects are costly as well—the Air Force requested nearly $5 billion to rebuild those two bases alone.

The overall impacts of climate change on international security are inevitable, consequential, and predictable. Previously the U.S. government has undertaken more extensive, and expensive, actions on the basis of proportionally less intelligence about security threats. The U.S. IC must give climate change the proportional attention it deserves.

Role of U.S. intelligence in addressing climate change

Climate change poses an existential, global, non-state security threat, making it fundamentally different from past threats. Its unprecedented nature will require unprecedented thinking by the U.S. IC and requirements from it. Former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Sue Gordon stated clearly that it is not enough to just say that the U.S. IC should focus more on climate— rather, the challenge lies in determining what its specific contribution will be, and then evaluating what changes need to occur to make that contribution happen. Answering these questions will require difficult, but necessary, upfront work. Without that work, the U.S. IC is likely to lead with its current capabilities, rather than identifying and developing capabilities needed to meet the nature of the new threat we face.

The U.S. IC must play to its strengths in carving out its climate mission. Intelligence is no longer just about stealing secrets; it is about providing policymakers with decision advantages to influence events, which is the same as the past, but with a key difference that doing so now requires mastery of is a vast eco-space of openly-available information. To accomplish its mission, the U.S. IC must leverage its analytic tradecraft to present objective assessments about climate change to policymakers. This means collecting intelligence, assessing it, removing bias, and delivering timely and relevant assessments to customers. The U.S. IC must also leverage its global relationships with partners and competitors in performing these tasks. These relationships lie below politics and can help elicit understanding that allows policymakers to distinguish facts on the ground from prevailing political rhetoric of the day.

The U.S. IC’s workforce and technology will need to advance and adapt to serve the climate mission. It does not need to have the foremost climate experts, but it does need to have dialogue with them, and develop its own climate expertise. Like other threats, the IC needs personnel that are devoted to understanding this new threat and understand its place in larger risk frameworks. Predictive models are critical to understanding climate science, and the IC should invest more resources into artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities (AI/ML) that can inform them. Intelligence professionals will not need to advance science, and scientists will not need to assess national security; but collaborations between the IC and the federal science community are necessary and will benefit both by allowing them to identify and meet shared objectives.

Climate change intelligence cannot be siloed. As DNI Haines promised, it must be integrated into traditional security threat assessments, and those emerging threats from other globalized challenges, bio-hazards, cyber capabilities, and weaponized information, if we want to understand how they interact and manifest around the globe. Compared to the twentieth century, when intelligence was dominated by governments, the twenty-first century offers more democratic forms of intelligence: the private sector offers major capabilities to collect and analyze intelligence. It has disrupted and transformed the nature of intelligence. The IC’s advantage in this new environment will come from thinking deeply about these issues and using its unique analytical and collection capabilities to identify patterns and trends others might overlook.

The future of intelligence cooperation and climate change

Climate change is an indiscriminating challenge unlike anything humanity has encountered before. Understanding how it is different helps illustrate the need for intelligence cooperation among states, large and small, to combat it. Carol Dumaine, Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, noted that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted many of the ways in which the climate threat is unique. It is non-state, non-adversarial, non-linear, boundary-less, and its root causes can be found in human economic activity. Unlike pandemics, however, combatting climate change will require something we have never done: decades of consistent cooperation across states with an eye towards tackling a systemic problem that will persist for centuries.

The U.S. IC needs to determine how it will work with other countries to combat the shared threat of climate change. The big first step is determining what the security collective is trying to accomplish. One area ripe for collaboration is foresight and early warning systems. During the Cold War the famous “red telephone” connected the White House and the Kremlin, enabling direct communication to avoid nuclear brinksmanship. Similar innovate thinking will be needed on climate change cooperation. Lt. Gen. Richard Nugee, Climate Change and Sustainability Strategy Lead for the UK Ministry of Defence, emphasized that the biggest danger on climate change is not a morass of bureaucracy, but instead a lack of imagination in understanding its impact and generating solutions for it.

Relying on existing partnerships, such as the Five Eyes alliance or NATO, will not be sufficient. Those agreements will play a role, but they do not include some of largest contributors to greenhouse gases or the countries that will suffer the largest initial impacts from climate change. Intelligence communities are by nature competitive and adversarial, but when it comes to climate change they will need to be cooperative. The U.S. IC needs to identify areas of cooperation even with adversaries like China and Russia. Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow and former Director of the Intelligence Project, tasked the U.S. IC to look for a peace dividend—areas where collaboration on climate will yield multilateral benefits. Even though spying will still exist, as it always had, we cannot let espionage stand in the way of climate collaboration.

Any collaboration on climate intelligence will certainly require American leadership. That means America needs to treat the climate threat with the seriousness it deserves. Climate change is siloed into a one-page length analysis in the 27-page Annual Threat Assessment issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in April 2021. The six pages focusing on China and Russia make no mention of how those are contributing to climate change or working to combat it. The IC must continually reinforce that climate is a serious and central threat. We cannot wait until the impacts are painfully obvious for every individual across the globe to treat it with the seriousness it requires.

The private sector, intelligence, and climate change

The threat from climate change reinforces the fact that intelligence is no longer a domain solely for governments. Mekala Krishnan, Partner at the McKinsey Global Institute, underscored that the private sector is also seeking to take climate risk out of a sustainability silo and integrate it into all aspects of decision making affected by risk and finance. Companies are thinking about how climate interacts with physical capital, natural resources, labor supply, and food supply—the factors of production in an economy that fundamentally affect our lives and livelihoods. One of the most important factors in a country’s national security is the health of its economy. The U.S. IC needs to be working with the private sector to understand what the economic effects of climate change will be.

In many respects, the U.S. government is still one of the few parties that can afford the costs to collect data on climate change, much like space exploration and early Internet research. The private sector can innovate ways to extract insights from that public data. Harnessing that with government capabilities will require innovative public-private partnerships with a shared strategy to help combat climate change. The U.S. IC must develop a level of transparency on climate data that will allow the private sector to identify where incentives for research and development exist. It will not matter how good the climate intelligence collected by the U.S. IC is if it does not get into the hands of public and private users in the right shape and form.

At the same time, the IC cannot be everywhere at once, collecting troves of climate data at significant cost. Richard Jenkins, CEO of Saildrone, noted that the private sector has the capability to deploy significant private money to develop and test new technologies that advance climate data collection, which the government can purchase at great value and incorporate into climate intelligence analysis. New technology is democratizing intelligence; it will force the U.S. IC to change how it interacts with the private sector— for the better.

Conclusion

In a moderated discussion with Dr. Calder Walton, Secretary Kerry stated unambiguously that the U.S. IC needs to start providing policymakers with a decision advantage on climate change in order for the U.S. government to lead the world on meeting this unprecedented threat. That starts with treating climate change seriously. The U.S. IC will need to determine its requirements, play to its strengths, and adapt its workforce to best serve its mission. It will need to cultivate deeper cooperation with allies and adversaries, develop new relationships with the private sector, and approach climate change with a fresh mindset to seek and find what others overlook.

When it comes to climate change, the U.S. IC should also reframe who its customers are, not just policymakers, to whom it gives secret briefings, but also the public. By publicly disseminating assessments, the U.S. IC can effectively democratize intelligence about climate change, with the public holding policymakers to account for their actions or inactions on the basis of shared intelligence.

The Cipher Brief is proud to be continuing our coverage on Climate with a series of webcast briefings beginning in July 2021.

Read also:

The Climate and US National Security Conversation with Admiral Jim Stavridis (Ret.)

How to Integrate Climate in Future National Security Risk

Russia’s Climate Problem and Opportunity

Why the Intelligence Community Needs a Climate Change Task Force

 

The post Defining the IC’s Mission Space for Climate Change appeared first on The Cipher Brief.

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — On 16 June, US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin met for just under four hours in Geneva. This was Mr. Biden’s first meeting with Mr. Putin during his presidency and Biden is the fifth US President with whom Putin has held a summit.

Expectations for the summit were characterized as low by both sides in advance and assessed a bit more positively after the conclusion of the meeting. The meeting presented an opportunity for both leaders to present grievances and warnings to the other (and show toughness to their domestic constituencies).  Other than presenting the opportunity to blow off steam, the results of the meeting appear modest:  the agreement to return ambassadors to their posts, to resume bilateral arms control discussions, to conduct discussions on “strategic stability” and to hold unspecified consultations on cyber. In typical fashion, Mr. Putin rejected all of Mr. Biden’s assertions about Russian actions and made counter accusations referencing hostile US actions.

Of the deliverables from the summit, cyber will no doubt turn out to be the most problematic area for follow up. Mr. Biden apparently delivered to Mr. Putin a list of 16 US critical infrastructure sectors that should be considered “off limits” for cyberattacks, e.g., “red lines” not to be crossed without the risk of significant retaliation. For his part, Mr. Putin asserted that it is Russia that is the victim of cyberattacks originating from the territory of the US and it’s NATO partners and also is the victim of  attempts to interfere with Russian elections.  The challenge in cyber discussions going forward will center around three areas:  differing interpretations of the relevance of deterrence theory in today’s cyber environment, attribution, and control.

Mr. Biden’s firm comments to Mr. Putin on recent cyberattacks against the US such as the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipelines (Mr. Biden is said to have asked Mr. Putin how he would react if Russia’s pipelines were hit?) and his provision of a list of “off limits” US infrastructure entities suggests a deep belief in this administration that Russia can be deterred from engaging in future conduct of cyber operations against US targets or “sanctioning” attacks originating from the territory of the Russian Federation by criminal groups.

Unfortunately, it is highly likely that either Mr. Putin nor those who control the levers of Russian cyber operations agree that deterrence theory applies.  Deterrence only works when both sides know the other is capable of – and willing to – cause significant harm to the other.

The Russian side likely believes (and may have amply demonstrated) that the US is disproportionately vulnerable to cyber risk at every level of its economic, societal, and political infrastructure whereas Russia is not.  There is a reason the use of cyber tools has become a central feature of Russian strategic doctrine. They work and seem a legitimate tool that falls short of conventional war. Hybrid warfare using cyber tools, the Russian side would argue, is no different than the economic warfare Russia is experiencing from sanctions imposed by the US its allies.

For full access to the article, sign up to become a Cipher Brief member for just $10/mo.

---

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” – Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62 No.

Access all of The Cipher Brief’s national-security focused expert insight by becoming a  Cipher Brief Level I Member .  

 

 

The post After Geneva: US – Russia Strategy Moving Forward appeared first on The Cipher Brief.

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — A meeting – albeit virtual – between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping finally happened.  It was a cordial and reportedly candid exchange that hopefully cooled some of the tension between the U.S. and China.

President Biden captured the essence of the meeting with his concern that this tension “does not veer into conflict, whether intended or unintended.”  President Xi said, “China and the U.S. need to increase communications and cooperation” and “respect each other and coexist in peace.”

It’s hard to believe that in 1979, when formal U.S. – China diplomatic relations were established, Chinese President Deng Xiaoping looked to the U.S. as the country that would provide the investment, technology, and unlimited access to our best universities.  And the U.S. didn’t disappoint.  Investment and sophisticated technology flowed to China, with hundreds of thousands of Chinese students enrolling in our universities.  Strategic bilateral cooperation initially contributed to the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, with joint efforts to address international terrorism and nuclear proliferation.

So, during the span of forty-two years, relations have gone from close economic and strategic cooperation to a concern about conflict, intended or unintended.  Understandably, scholars will spend considerable time analyzing what went wrong. 

What is important now is that U.S. – China relations move in a more positive direction.  That tension over China’s aggression against Taiwan, the militarization of islands and reefs in the South China Sea, internment camps for Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the national security law in Hong Kong that suppresses democratic protests and the theft of intellectual property all must be candidly discussed by our diplomats and leaders to avoid misunderstanding and accidental conflict.

President Biden said Washington continues to have a “one China” policy and “opposes unilateral efforts to change the status quo.”  President Xi reportedly said, “Beijing will take decisive measures if the pro-Taiwan independence movement crosses a red line.”

The three communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 specifically states that, inter alia, “the United States decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means; to consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, is a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.”

The challenge for the U.S. and China is to address Taiwan and a myriad of other irritants in the bilateral relationship to ensure that no one issue, or series of issues leads to conflict.  Toning down the rhetoric and pursuing a policy of substantive and sustained communications, especially by our diplomats, would be a necessary first step.

---

The Cipher Brief hosts private briefings with the world’s most experienced national and global security experts.  Become a member today.

---

The annual Economic and Strategic Dialogue with China, led by the heads of State Department and Treasury and their counterparts in Beijing was established to oversee progress in addressing these and other challenging issues.  A forum of this type, with announcements to ensure that the public is kept apprised of the issues and the work being done to resolve these issues, is of value, only if this dialogue is substantive and not just ceremonial.

This virtual presidential summit can be transformative if, in addition to addressing these and other irritants, it also addresses the opportunity to cooperate on a multitude of geopolitical issues that affect the security of the U.S. and China – and the world.

I’ll start with the nuclear issue and the fact that there’s minimal dialogue with China on its nuclear program.  And given recent reporting on the three sites in China with the construction of hundreds of missile silos and the recent DIA report that China, by 2030, will have a nuclear arsenal of 1000 nuclear warheads is of concern.  Ideally, China should be part of New Start arms control negotiations with the U.S. and Russia.  But they previously refused to join in this or any other arms control dialogue.  At a minimum, China should be responsive to a dialogue with the U.S. on nuclear-related issues, to include their recent test of two hypersonic missiles.

A separate but equally important dialogue with China is on cyber, to ensure that the cyber domain is not weaponized and used against our private sector for economic advantage.  Also, to ensure that outer space is used exclusively for peaceful purposes.

There are a multitude of global issues requiring bilateral cooperation.  We recently saw some U.S. – China cooperation on climate change at the Glasgow COPS 26 UN Climate Change Conference.  Obviously, more must be done, but this is a positive first step.

Other issues, like North Korea can and should be addressed now.  China has unique leverage with a North Korea that relies on China for its economic survival.  China can use that leverage to get North Korea to return to negotiations and to convince the North that complete and verifiable denuclearization, in return for significant deliverables, is in North Korea’s interest.

With over five million global casualties and over 760,000 deaths in the U.S. due to COVID-19, it should be obvious that greater bilateral cooperation on this and future pandemics is necessary.

---

Go beyond the headlines with expert perspectives on today’s news with The Cipher Brief’s Daily Open-Source Podcast.  Listen here or wherever you listen to podcasts.

---

Bilateral cooperation on nuclear proliferation, countering international terrorism, the trafficking of narcotics and confronting international organized crime are just some of the global issues that affect the security of the U.S. and China and the global community.  Failure to cooperate on these and other international issues is not only a security imperative, but a moral responsibility of all great powers.

Finally, with the Taliban back in control in Afghanistan, the U.S. and China have a shared goal: ensuring that the Taliban does not permit Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to once again use Afghanistan as a base for its international terrorist operations. China has engaged this Taliban government and should use its significant financial leverage to ensure that all terrorist groups are permanently removed from Afghanistan.

Xi Jinping was just anointed by the Chinese Communist Party as one of its revered leaders, with Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.  The Party congress next year will likely give Xi a third five-year term as the Party’s Secretary General.  There are a multitude of domestic issues requiring Xi’s and the Party’s attention, to include a campaign of “common prosperity” – addressing the disparity of wealth in a China governed by a capitalist system with Chinese characteristics.

Hopefully, President Xi Jinping will work with President Joe Biden to ensure that the two great powers, consumed with domestic issues, will also address the myriad of international issues requiring immediate and long-term attention and avoid a cold war that could veer into conflict.

Read more expert-driven national security insights, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief

The post How to Avoid Cold War with China appeared first on The Cipher Brief.

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !

A cleaner for Israel’s defense minister has been accused of espionage after allegedly offering to place malware on his boss’ household computer for an Iran-linked hacking group.

In a statement on Thursday, the Shin Bet security service said that Omri Goren, a housekeeper for Defense Minister Benny Gantz, and a former bank robber according to Israeli media, corresponded with an unnamed person over social media shortly before his arrest. 

Read more

Goren reached out earlier this month to “a figure affiliated with Iran and offered to help him in different ways, in light of his access to the minister’s home,” the statement read, according to the Times of Israel.

It is understood that Goren offered to spy and place malware on Gantz’s computer on behalf of a hacking group, reportedly called ‘Black Shadow’ and associated with Iran, Tel Aviv’s perennial enemy. It is also said that he provided photos of Gantz’s residence to prove he had access. 

A Central District prosecutor filed espionage charges against Goren on Thursday. If convicted, the accused could face a sentence of between 10 and 15 years, according to the Times of Israel.

The 37-year-old Lod resident has previously served four prison sentences, the most recent of which was for four years. Goren was found guilty of five crimes between 2002 to 2013, two of the convictions were for bank robbery.

The Shin Bet said they would review their processes for staff background checks “with the goal of limiting the possibility of cases like this repeating themselves in the future.”

Speaking on Kan public radio, Gal Wolf, the attorney representing Goren, suggested his client had intended to extract money from the Iranians without carrying out any spying.

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

find more fun & mates at SoShow now !