The children of families who were affected by the massive earthquake which devastated large parts of south-west Haiti in August this year are receiving free hot meals at school as part of an initiative by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) to support the recovery of the country’s most vulnerable communities.
Scientists have used an AI tool to identify which animals are most likely to contract and spread mutated versions of Covid-19. The model highlighted both pets and wild animals as likely reservoirs for the virus.
Using information about their habitats and various biological traits, researchers at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York developed the machine learning tool to figure out which animals had the particular ACE2 protein that the coronavirus was most likely to latch onto.
Out of 5,400 tested, the scientists narrowed it down to 540 mammalian species.
Some of its predictions have been previously documented as transmission risks, for instance, dogs, cats and bats, while farm animals like pigs and exotic zoo animals were surprise additions.
Other expected additions are minks, Sunda pangolins, and 35 species of bats – which are together ranked among the top 10% of animals most likely to spread the virus, in line with lab results.
The study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society journal, also ranked water buffalo, a number of primates, including gorillas and 76 rodent species as being more susceptible to infection.
The researchers taught the AI to identify patterns between rates of transmission and some 60 ecological and biological traits collected by earlier studies, including the overlap between the animal and human habitats as well as their respective lifespans, diets, and sizes.
Previously, the specific amino acid sequences had only been mapped out in around 300 species, including about 143 mammals — and figuring out which ones are more prone to infection is key to predicting the spread of the virus, researchers said.
Arinjay Banerjee at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada told the New Scientist that the results will help researchers “track viral infections and the possible emergence of animal-adapted coronavirus variants” around the world. Barbara Han, who led the study, said predictions needed to be followed up with systematic surveillance and lab studies.
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Scientists have used artificial intelligence to “predict” formulas for new designer drugs, with the stated goal of helping to improve their regulation. The AI generated formulas for nearly nine million potential new drugs.
Researchers with the University of British Columbia (UBC) used a deep neural net for the job, teaching it to make up chemical structures of potential new drugs. According to their study, released this week, the computer intelligence fared better at the task than the scientists had expected.
The research team used a database of known designer drugs – synthetic psychoactive substances – to train the AI on their structures. The market for designer drugs is ever-changing, since their manufacturers are constantly tweaking their formulas to circumvent restrictions and produce new “legal” substances, while cracking their structure takes months for law enforcement agencies, the researchers said.
“The vast majority of these designer drugs have never been tested in humans and are completely unregulated. They are a major public-health concern to emergency departments across the world,” one of the researchers, UBC medical student Dr. Michael Skinnider has said.
After its training, the AI was able to generate some 8.9 million potential designer drugs. Afterwards, researchers ran a data sheet of some 196 new drugs, which had emerged in real life after the model was trained, and found that more than 90% of these have been already predicted by the computer.
“The fact that we can predict what designer drugs are likely to emerge on the market before they actually appear is a bit like the 2002 sci-fi movie, Minority Report, where foreknowledge about criminal activities about to take place helped significantly reduce crime in a future world,” senior author Dr. David Wishart, a professor of computing science at the University of Alberta, has said.
Identifying completely unknown substances remains an issue for the AI, the research team has noted, but they hope it might potentially help with that task, since the computer was also able to predict which formulas of designer drugs were more likely to be created and hit the market. The model “ranked the correct chemical structure of an unidentified designer drug among the top 10 candidates 72 percent of the time,” while throwing in spectrometry analysis, which is an easily obtained measurement, bumped the accuracy to some 86%.
“It was shocking to us that the model performed this well, because elucidating entire chemical structures from just an accurate mass measurement is generally thought to be an unsolvable problem,” Skinnider stated.
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Cipher Brief Expert Rob Dannenbergis a 24-year veteran of the CIA, where he served in several senior leadership positions, including chief of operations for the Counterterrorism Center, chief of the Central Eurasia Division and chief of the CIA’s Information Operations Center. Dannenberg is a member of the Board of Advisors to the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center and is a senior fellow at the GWU Center for Cyber and Homeland Security. He is now an independent consultant on geopolitical and security risk, after serving as the managing director and head of the Office of Global Security for Goldman Sachs, and director of International Security Affairs at BP.
EXPERT PERSPECTIVE — The images from Kabul are demoralizing and depressing—unless you are sitting in the Kremlin, where they are certainly being viewed in a quite different light. Probably something close to giddiness and glee.
From Russian President Vladimir Putin’s perspective, this likely reinforces his view that President Joe Biden and his national security team are weak and naïve. ‘This is Obama’s third term’, Putin must be thinking. And of course, the images of US helicopters desperately trying to evacuate thousands from Kabul also resonate in Kiev, Tbilisi, and probably Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius and beyond—think Taipei. The appalling mismanagement of the withdrawal from Afghanistan will have consequences that will affect American credibility globally and linger well beyond the end of Biden’s presidency.
A first order consequence concerns Russia.
It is highly likely there was practical cooperation between the Kremlin and the Taliban in the preparation for the American withdrawal and this may have included direct support to Taliban forces. We don’t need to revisit the narrative of Russian bounties for dead American soldiers in Afghanistan, but the evidence of Russian energetic engagement with the Taliban in recent months is manifest and the fact the Russian embassy in Kabul is currently protected by Taliban fighters is significant.
For both Russia and the Taliban there was a clear shared strategic objective: Get the Americans and their allies out of Afghanistan and ideally in the most humiliating fashion possible. The Russian-Taliban honeymoon may not last long, but for the moment it has served both sides well.
For over a decade and a half of his tenure as Russia’s president, Putin has been preaching the gospel that you can’t trust the Americans to back you in the long run or when the chips are down, but you can count on the Russia he leads (think the Russian intervention in Syria and support for Assad or their intervention—whether acknowledged or not—in Libya on the side of Khalifa Haftar among other examples). This messaging is important in current times and reinforces Putin’s narrative about the decline of the West and the waning relevance of western liberal systems of governance.
In recent years, Chinese President Xi Jinping has picked up the trumpet to echo this message that American power is in decline and that American security guarantees cannot be relied on in East Asia and beyond.
Putin has been Russia’s Czar for over two decades without meaningful interruption and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. He has seen US Presidents come and go and he has been quick to size them up and adjust his moves accordingly. He was genuinely scared of what George W. Bush might do in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and the speed and efficacy of the US response made a deep impression on him. He adjusted his approach to the US to one of partner and ally against Islamic extremism (Putin was also busy consolidating his control over the Russian Federation in the immediate post-Yeltsin period).
Putin also sized up then-President Barack Obama after Obama’s failure to act when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad blithely crossed the “no use of chemical weapons” red line. That opened the door for the annexation of Crimea as well as the Russian military intervention in Syria (and later Libya). Joe Biden was Vice President at the time. Putin likely has a very good book on Joe Biden and was quite confident of what the end result for the US in Afghanistan would look like. Putin may even have a better feel for Joe Biden than many realize, if any of the Hunter Biden material is true. One leader’s assessment of another, matters in geopolitical relations. Putin has a high level of confidence in his ability to read his international opposition.
As recently as July 2021 President Biden said, “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of the US embassy in Afghanistan.” He went on to add, “The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.” President Biden made these statements knowing perfectly or should have known—from intelligence briefings and expert commentary—as well as historical precedent—that when the US announces a withdrawal of forces with a hard deadline, in this case 9/11, our adversaries use the time to prepare for their offensive military action. Our Afghan allies knew this as well and prepared accordingly. Now the Taliban will celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the September 11 attacks in the US embassy in Kabul, probably with their ISIS and Al Qaeda friends as honored guests. If you think the videos from Afghanistan have been troubling to this point, just wait for the anniversary celebrations.
Perhaps of more near term geopolitical significance, Putin will use the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan to support a narrative that Russia needs to defend its interests from the spread of Islamic extremism from Afghanistan by strengthening “security and counterterrorism” cooperation with Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan. Does anyone want an excuse to get – and keep – those pesky Americans out of Central Asia and start rebuilding that corner of the Soviet Union?
Putin’s use of terrorism risk as justification for military action is well-rehearsed and goes back to the Moscow apartment bombings (which the FSB almost certainly organized) in September 1999, which Putin used both to consolidate political power and to justify the brutal military campaign in Chechnya. Putin is acutely aware of the risks of Islamic extremism spreading from Afghanistan to Central Asia, the Caucasus, and into the Russian Federation. In fact, Russian, Uzbek, and Tajik troops conducted exercises in July, which appear to have been designed to prepare to respond to cross border incursions from Afghanistan. This is only the first step in his plan for consolidation of Russian power and influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus.
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Some might ask – given the risk of the spread of Islamic extremism from Afghanistan to the Russian Federation – why would Putin would want to partner with the Taliban? Those who ask this question are misunderstanding the depth of Putin’s enmity toward the United States and the West and everything for which we stand. Putin views the world as a “zero sum” game. What hurts the US must serve Russia’s interests. The debacle in Afghanistan clearly qualifies. A short-term deal with the Taliban is a risk with taking in Putin’s mind. Putin plays on the superpower chessboard using the only tools he has at hand, military power, cyber and disinformation capability and US ineptitude and lack of strategic thought. He has taken clever advantage of President Trump’s four years of thoughtless estrangement of US allies around the world.
Beyond the propaganda value and regional leverage our withdrawal has given adversaries like Russia and China, there is the impact of our withdrawal on the many nations among our allies who contributed to the Afghanistan mission. The images of Afghans clinging to a departing US Air Force C-17 and falling to their deaths will not fade easily. How easy will it be to assemble their support when we inevitably have to go in again to deal with a resurgent Al Qaeda, a globally ambitious Taliban, or an even more dangerous embedded ISIS in the hills of Afghanistan?
We should also consider the impact on Pakistan. Pakistan has nurtured Islamic extremism in Afghanistan for decades. While a part of the Pakistani security establishment partnered with the US effectively after 9/11, other parts simultaneously were nurturing relations with extremists including the Taliban. The “Great Game” is still being played in that part of the world, and neither the Pakistanis, nor the Indians or Chinese have forgotten it.
Pakistan also still certainly chafes from the US raid to kill bin Ladin in Abbottabad a little over ten years ago. One wonders if the waning of US influence in Islamabad has opened the door for Islamic extremists to enter the security establishment there. Pakistan is a nuclear power and has in recent years, increased its development of tactical nuclear weapons. Does the Taliban now have a path to nuclear weapons? This is an important question and it’s answer casts a shadow over our withdrawal from Afghanistan.
The Biden Administration, for all its vaunted claims of “return to competence” in Washington, has fallen flat in its first serious challenge. One could argue that Biden’s capitulation on Nord Stream 2 and Putin’s mocking rejection in Geneva of charges of US election interference and cyberattacks on the US, foretold the debacle in Afghanistan. The challenge for the US now will be to manage the airlift of those Afghans who were willing to partner with the US and carefully look for opportunities to rebuild the credibility of US security guarantees around the world.
Taiwan and South Korea would seem good places to start.
At the same time, we need to recognize that Afghanistan will once again become the training ground for those who hope to replicate 9/11 attacks on the US. A strong and robust intelligence capability will be essential in mitigating that risk.
Read more expert-driven national security insight, perspective and analysis in The Cipher Brief
Australia’s Defense Minister derided a senior Chinese diplomat’s comments as “silly” and “comical,” after the latter dubbed Canberra’s trilateral nuclear-powered submarine pact with the US and UK a threat to peace.
During a television interview on Friday, Peter Dutton said acting Chinese Ambassador Wang Xining was “probably reading off a script from the Communist Party” when he warned that Australia would become the “naughty guy” if it procured the stealth-combat vessels through the AUKUS deal.
Wang, who is China’s most senior representative to the country after the previous ambassador’s term ended last month, told The Guardian on Thursday that Australia would be labeled a “sabre-wielder” rather than a “peace defender.” He said the Australian public “should be more worried” about the impact of the security pact their nation had made with the UK and the US.
There’s zero nuclear capacity, technologically, in Australia, that would guarantee you will be trouble free, that you will be incident free. And if anything happened, are the politicians ready to say sorry to people in Melbourne and in Adelaide?
However, Dutton “dismissed” the comments and countered that “most Australians [would] see through [their] non-productive nature.”
“We don’t see it from any other ambassador here in Australia. It’s quite remarkable,” the minister told the Nine Network, adding that “this type of diplomacy” was seen elsewhere in the world too.
“These provocative comical statements – it’s just so silly. It’s funny,” he added.
In September, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the deal to obtain at least eight nuclear-powered vessels as part of its new defense alliance. The pact angered not only China but also France, which claimed it had been “stabbed in the back” after Canberra unilaterally scrapped a multi-billion-dollar diesel-electric submarine contract with Paris.
Last weekend, Dutton had irked Beijing by stating that he could not conceive of a situation in which Australia would hesitate to support the US should armed conflict with China break out over Taiwan. Under its ‘One China’ policy, Beijing has pledged to reunify the island with the mainland.
Wang warned Australian politicians on Thursday not to do anything that would be “destructive to our relationship.”
Extinction Rebellion has targeted Colombian diplomatic missions across several EU countries, including France and Italy, demanding that the nation address deforestation, coal mining, and indigenous peoples’ rights.
The hard-line climate activist group staged simultaneous protests outside several of Colombia’s diplomatic missions on Tuesday, calling on Bogota to protect biodiversity and stop deforestation. It also urged the country’s government to take action against the El Descanso open-pit coal mine, which is said to be threatening the Yukpa indigenous people.
The French branch of the activist group targeted the Colombian Embassy in Paris, vandalizing its entrance. Footage from the scene shows activists dousing the mission’s entrance in black paint, while plastering placards over its walls.
Action de @xrFrance a l’ambassade de Colombie à #Paris pour dénoncer l’inaction du gouvernement Colombien pour la protection de la biodiversité et des peuples indigènes. pic.twitter.com/1hpf3vVxK4
Another protest held outside Colombia’s consulate in Milan, Italy, saw that mission vandalized too. The building’s entrance was covered in fake blood, with a pile of a black substance, which looked like charcoal or coal, left by its doors.
#ATENCIÓN| Así se vive la Minga Internacional en el Consulado de Colombia en la ciudad de Milán, Italia, donde defensores del medio ambiente alzan su voz por el respeto a la vida y del territorio ancestral del Pueblo Yukpa.
— Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia – ONIC (@ONIC_Colombia) November 16, 2021
Demonstrations also took place outside Colombia’s missions in Germany’s capital, Berlin, as well as in Madrid, Spain. Those protests appeared to be more civil, with activists rallying outside of the missions without vandalizing them.
Greece will soon prohibit unvaccinated residents from entering a litany of public spaces, the country’s prime minister has announced, claiming its current Covid outbreak is largely fueled by those who haven’t received the jab.
Starting next week, the unvaccinated will be barred from entry to restaurants, cafes, theaters, bars, gyms and museums, among other indoor public places, PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Thursday, noting that a negative Covid-19 test will no longer be accepted as an alternative to proof of vaccination.
“This is indeed a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” he said as he announced the move in a televised address, adding “Greece is mourning unnecessary losses because it simply does not have the vaccination rates of other European countries.”
The new rules are set to take effect on Monday, and will require Greeks to present vaccine certificates to businesses and other indoor establishments to be allowed inside. Those attending religious services mark a rare exception, however, as they will only be asked to present a negative test in order to enter a church or other place of worship.
In a bid to encourage booster vaccinations among the elderly – a population much more vulnerable to Covid-19 – citizens over the age of 60 will be made to renew their certificate after a period of seven months.
While officials had hoped to hit a full vaccination figure of 70% for Greece’s population of 11 million by autumn, the number currently stands at about 62%, according to Reuters. As its weekly case counts continue to soar to record highs, the country reported 7,317 new Covid-19 infections and 63 deaths on Thursday, bringing the totals to more than 860,000 cases and some 17,000 fatalities since the pandemic kicked off in late 2019.
The new restrictions in Greece mirror similar policies implemented elsewhere in Europe, with Austria, Germany, Italy, France, the Czech Republic and Slovakia each imposing limits on public life for the unvaccinated. Though the Austrian government recently imposed a full lockdown for millions of residents who have not received the shot, some officials in that country are pushing for even harsher policies, including a national stay-at-home order on the jabbed and non-jabbed alike.
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The EU Commission has released draft legislation aimed at tackling the destruction of woodland by introducing import restrictions on products not certified as ‘deforestation-free’.
The draft proposal, which the commission hopes will become binding rules for all member states, seeks to limit the import of beef, cocoa, coffee, palm, soy, and wood if it is not proven “deforestation-free.”
Outlining the legislation, the EU commissioner for climate action policy, Virginijus Sinkevicius, called it a “ground-breaking” proposal that will help fight “illegal deforestation” and “deforestation driven by agricultural expansion.”
Our proposal to fight deforestation will help us protect 1/3 of 🌎 lands.
We don’t only target illegal deforestation but 𝙖𝙡𝙡 deforestation driven by agricultural expansion.
We start with 6 products that must be deforestation-free 👉🏼 beef, wood, palm oil, soya, coffee, cocoa. pic.twitter.com/Cs9POoydNX
The bill comes after nations at the COP26 summit agreed to work to end deforestation by 2030. It would impose two criteria on imports, requiring items to have been produced in accordance with the origin country’s laws, and not on land that has been deforested or degraded since the start of 2021.
It is not clear when the rules would come into effect; legislative proposals by the commission have to be debated and considered by both the EU Parliament and the Council of the EU before they are passed. The implementation of measures could potentially impact the EU’s trade relations with countries like Brazil, where clearing of the Amazon rainforest hit a new record in October.
During the recent COP26 climate summit, 110 world leaders – whose countries contain around 85% of the world’s woodland – committed to ending and reversing deforestation by 2030, pledging around £14 billion ($18.84 billion) of public and private funds towards the goal.
The number of musk deer in Mongolia has plummeted by some 83 per cent since the 1970s, landing them on the country’s red list of critically endangered species. A UN-supported biodiversity initiative is helping to stop the deer from disappearing altogether.
When The Washington Post reported this week that CIA Director William Burns slipped into Afghanistan on Monday to meet with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar, it was described as the highest-level face-to-face encounter between the Taliban and the Biden Administration. WaPo cited anonymous sources for the information and the CIA offered no immediate comment on the reporting. If the reporting is accurate, it doesn’t answer any immediate questions about why the President would dispatch the CIA director for such a meeting.
What we do know, is that the unexpected advances of the Taliban that have dominated the headlines over the past week and a half were initially blamed on an intelligence failure by many. Early on, Cipher Brief Expert and former Acting Director of CIA John McLaughlin tweeted that “The ‘intelligence failure’ drumbeat is starting. People should be careful about the charge if they have not actually seen/read the intelligence…”
So, what intelligence did the US have that would have led to a different outcome in Kabul and throughout the country?
The New York Times reported last week that “classified assessments by American spy agencies over the summer painted an increasingly grim picture of the prospect of a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan and warned of the rapid collapse of the Afghan military, even as President Biden and his advisers said publicly that was unlikely to happen as quickly.” The paper cited current and former US government officials, saying, “By July, many intelligence reports grew pessimistic, questioning whether Afghan security forces would muster serious resistance and whether the government could hold on in Kabul, the capital.”
On August 15, The Wall Street Journal reported that administration officials said they knew that a “total capitulation of the Taliban was a possibility, and they planned their withdrawal efforts accordingly.” But they also cited an administration official, saying “it wasn’t so much a failure in intelligence in which the administration based its decision, but rather, a change in circumstances brought about by the swift U.S. withdrawal.”
But private sector analysts were watching as well. Here’s an inside look at what The Cipher Brief has been publishing since January with key outtakes from Cipher Brief Expert Tim Willasey-Wilsey:
“The Afghans themselves are also monitoring the Washington newsfeeds in forensic detail and will be encouraged by Sullivan’s statement. Recently, all too many conversations in Kabul have been about when to leave and which route to take. Some wealthier Afghans already have their money in Dubai and children in foreign universities. Some even have passports and property in the United States, UK or Germany. For those who are less fortunate, the discussions are about which route to take out. The Uzbekistan border is favoured because a visa costs just $30 and there is a variety of onward routes via Turkey or Russia to the West whereas the routes via Iran or Pakistan are more restrictive or liable to interference.”
“Saleh will advise Ghani not to take Taliban or Pakistani promises on trust. Instead, Ghani may decide to call Washington’s bluff. He may doubt that Washington is really willing to abandon Afghanistan on 1st May with the risk of a rapid Taliban victory jeopardising all the hard-won advances in areas such as women’s rights and counterterrorism over the past 20 years. The spectre of Al Qaida re-establishing camps in Afghanistan would surely be too much for Biden and Blinken.”
“Even if there were no helicopters from the US Embassy roof, the TV pictures of the Taliban entering Kabul, and of Afghan refugees fleeing their advance could evoke memories of Saigon in 1975. The reimposition of Taliban curbs on women would provoke international opprobrium. And subsequent reports of AQ training camps being re-established in Afghanistan would bring back recent and painful memories. After all the blood and treasure expended in Afghanistan that would be a disastrous outcome.”
“The Afghan government may be able to hold on to power for a few years as the Najibullah administration survived after the Soviet departure. However, there is a danger that there will be a sudden dam-burst in confidence with senior officials and politicians leaving en masse and hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing westwards through Iran, Pakistan and the Central Asian Republics. As the Taliban re-enter Kabul, we could see disturbing scenes of retribution and, in time, the return of Al Qa’ida figures from their hiding-places in the tribal borderlands in Pakistan. Only then will people re-examine this decision and recognise that the Afghan deployments since 2014 have not been that onerous.”
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“According to my sources, the Taliban are convinced they can take Kabul “within days” of the NATO withdrawal and they believe the Afghan army is “in a shambles and demoralised”. Although the Taliban will not disrupt departing US troops (unless attacked) they are not willing to wait until September to continue their campaign against Kabul government forces.”
“But we should not take much comfort from the Najibullah example. The comparisons with today’s Afghanistan are misleading. Najibullah’s government was able to reach and supply all the major towns by military convoy. The Afghan army was deployed to protect towns and road communications. By contrast, in 2021, only the route between Kabul and Jalalabad is reasonably safe. Convoys cannot get through from Kabul to Kandahar, Kandahar to Herat, or Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif. The Afghan army is spread across the country in piecemeal district centres (often surrounded by Taliban-controlled countryside) and have to be resupplied by air. This is not a sustainable model.”
“Furthermore, a number of today’s Afghan leaders, officials and military officers have received offers to relocate to the United States, Germany and elsewhere. As the security situation continues to deteriorate, the gradual trickle of departures is likely to gather pace. In such circumstances, the government could implode quite suddenly.”
“To some, this may evoke images of the 1975 fall of Saigon with the big losers being the Afghans who remain, particularly the women, who face a future of uncertainty and anxiety. There could also be a migration crisis reminiscent of Syria in the last decade.”
“One key indicator is that Afghan security forces have begun to surrender to the Taliban. The procedure is quick and simple. Tribal elders are used to deliver a stark message to Afghan troops often holding positions in district centres. The message is often; “The non-believers are leaving Afghanistan. They are defeated. Your leaders are corrupt. You can surrender now, and we will protect you; or you can fight, and we will kill you.” Recently, the Taliban appear to have honoured their promise not to punish Afghan soldiers who surrender. News of this new-found leniency is likely to encourage other units to follow suit and lay down their arms. In several provinces, including in the north, the Taliban are tightening their grip on those cities which are still held by the government. The Taliban will soon be in a position to cut off food supplies and demand their surrender, possibly offering a similarly lenient dispensation to the population. Now that the Taliban possesses captured armoured vehicles and artillery, their ability to exert pressure on the cities is enhanced. In Kabul, a sense of panic has begun to grip the capital. There are desperate attempts to sell family homes but there are no buyers even when houses are on the market at one tenth of their previous value. Some families have departed to Tajikistan, conscious that several of the land border crossing-points with the Central Asian Republics have been captured by Taliban forces in recent weeks.”
