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.
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
Calder Walton, Asst. Director, Belfer Center’s Applied History Project and Intelligence Project, Harvard University
Calder Walton is Assistant Director of the Belfer Center’s Applied History Project and Intelligence Project. Calder’s research is broadly concerned with intelligence history, grand strategy, and international relations. The
Sean Power, Masters in Public Policy Candidate, Harvard Kennedy School
Sean Power is a Masters in Public Policy 2021 candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to HKS, he managed the analyst program at Kobre & Kim LLP, where he assisted on matters involving government enforcement defense and internal investigations.
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.
Germany has been plunged into a “nationwide state of emergency” because of its current high level of Covid infections, acting health minister Jens Spahn has said. He also refused to rule out further lockdowns.
“The situation is serious, the dynamic is unbroken,” Spahn told a press conference Friday.
“The incidence has increased fivefold in four weeks. We see sadly high values in the death rate. We are in a national emergency.”
Spahn refused to rule out the possibility of another lockdown, saying that, in such a drastic health situation, “we can’t rule anything out.”
The head of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Lothar Wieler, added to the gloomy picture by saying that “all of Germany is one big outbreak,” with an estimated half a million active Covid cases in the country – and numbers rising. For the third day in a row, more than 50,000 cases have been registered in the country, while the death toll in Germany since the start of the pandemic is above 98,700, according to figures compiled by the RKI.
Wieler added that, with many hospitals already overwhelmed, more should be done to tackle the spread of the virus. Besides obvious measures such as vaccination and wearing masks, he also suggested closing poorly ventilated bars.
On Thursday, lawmakers in the Bundestag approved new measures in the fight against coronavirus, including requirements to prove vaccination status, a negative test, or proof of recovery from infection before employees can access communal workspaces or use public transport. The measures will have to be passed by the upper house before they can take effect.
Neighboring Austria announced on Friday that it would enter full lockdown as of Monday, November 22.
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Nadya Zafira, an international relations student at Indonesia’s Gadjah Mada University, won a writing competition for her letter to UN chief António Guterres, in which she addressed the inequalities laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how indigenous communities and youth are marginalized in global conversations on climate crisis.
The EU must quickly seal its external borders to stem the flow of migrants who are no longer welcome in the 27-member bloc, according to Slovenia’s interior minister, whose country currently holds the presidency of the EU Council.
Speaking at the ‘Sarajevo Migration Dialogue’ on Thursday, Interior Minister Ales Hojs said EU countries were preoccupied recently with the coronavirus pandemic, the fall of the government in Afghanistan, and now a migrant crisis on the Poland-Belarus border, which he said was a hybrid war waged by Minsk against the EU.
“All three have additionally contributed to the increase in numbers of illegal migrants moving towards Europe and the Balkans, destabilizing the European Union,” Hojs told reporters.
The Slovenian minister said the current situation was similar to the 2015 influx of refugees and migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, when the EU admitted over one million people across its borders.
This time the situation is different, Hojs said, warning that “there is no more ‘refugees welcome.’”
“I believe that external borders must be secured, even with fences if necessary,” Hojs said, saying that he supported a plan for Brussels to finance the building of fences to reinforce the bloc’s borders.
He said it was important to strengthen cooperation and partnership across the EU in order to better manage migration and maintain security.
Thousands of migrants have been trying to cross the Belarus-Poland border in an attempt to reach the EU. They have been stranded at barbed-wire fencing with Polish border guards repelling their attempts to cross. Warsaw has accused Belarus of orchestrating the crisis to destabilize the EU and “weaponize” migration in an effort to have sanctions lifted.
A spokesperson for Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko claimed on Thursday that Germany agreed to open a humanitarian corridor for 2,000 refugees on the border.
Clinics in the Austrian region of Salzburg have set up a special assessment team tasked with identifying Covid patients who have a higher chance of survival; the rest may soon have to take a back seat.
Amid a dramatic spike in Covid cases, medical personnel warn they may soon have to make the heart-wrenching choice of which patients get life-saving treatment and which ones will have to wait, Austrian media report. Intensive care units in the Salzburg region are packed, with the number of patients treated there setting a new grim record on Tuesday, reaching 33. The region ranks amid Austria’s hardest-hit, logging more than 1,500 new infections per 100,000 residents in a week. In an emotional plea for help to the local government, the head of Salzburg’s hospitals warned that soon clinics would likely not be able to guarantee the existing level of standards in terms of medical treatment. A representative for the city clinics likened the situation to “running into a wall.”
The region’s governor, Wilfried Haslauer, announced on Tuesday that some of the Covid patients whose condition was no longer life-threatening would be transferred from hospitals to rehabilitation centers to make room for more serious cases.
In neighboring Upper Austria, the situation is no better, with the number of deaths in intensive care units surpassing figures seen in all the previous Covid waves. Speaking to Austria’s Der Standard paper on condition of anonymity, healthcare workers there said they had free beds “because the infected are dying.”
For the time being, the creation of a so-called ‘triage team’ in Salzburg hospitals is being described as a “precautionary measure.” The panel is made up of six people: one legal expert and five providers from various medical disciplines. If push comes to shove, they will be deciding which patients stand a chance and which treatments have little prospect of success.
We’re starting a new segment on The Cipher Brief’s Open-Source Collection Podcast and adding to the line-up of curated headlines we bring you from around the world with expert insights on today’s news.
The Cipher Brief’s Brad Christian talked with former CIA Officer Marc Polymeropoulos this week about what’s next for the US Government when it comes to investigating ‘Havana Syndrome’, making sure Afghan interpreters aren’t left behind and why a White House visit by Jordan’s King Abdullah was a bigger deal than some may realize.
Cipher Brief Expert Marc Polymeropoulos served 26 years in the CIA before retiring from the Senior Intelligence Service in June 2019. His positions included field and headquarters operational assignments covering the Middle East, Europe, Eurasia and Counterterrorism.
Christian: What’s top of mind for you this week in the world of national security?
Polymeropoulos: Havana Syndrome, CIA’s response to the Afghan withdrawal, and the visit of Jordan’s King Abdullah to D.C. Let’s start with Havana Syndrome.
You saw in the press the last couple of days, the notion that the CIA’s inspector general is conducting a review of CIA’s handling of healthcare, of how officers were coming to them starting in 2016 after these attacks started in Cuba. I think that’s a good thing. It’s a necessary evil. I think a lot of your listeners and readers know that I was affected by this in December of 2017. It caused my retirement in July of 2019. I’ve been very vocal on the need for healthcare for our officers. We have to think about Havana Syndrome in three bins.
The first, is accountability and that’s good. It’s a necessary evil, but we have to look at how the agency responded to officers because that’s critical. The agency workforce is watching. I think the IG review by the CIA is good as well as a look at what’s happening in the House and Senate oversight committees as well.
The second, is continued healthcare for officers, the officers getting to Walter Reed’s National Intrepid Center of Excellence. CIA Director Bill Burns is doing that, so that’s positive.
And then the last piece is culpability. I think you also saw recently in the press, that a senior intelligence service officer who was integral in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, has been named to the task force. So, a lot of stuff is happening on Havana Syndrome, I think all of it is moving in a positive direction. I applaud Director Burns. This is something that I think is going to be at the top of the news cycle for days, weeks, and months to come.
Christian: Do you feel like now there’s a unified awareness at the entire government level outside of CIA? Is Congress focused on this? Is the White House focused on this in the ways that you think they need to be?
Polymeropoulos: What a great question. The White House for sure. Congress has been absolutely integral both in the Senate and the House. They’re about to pass the Havana Act, which is going to provide financial relief for officers affected, but in all US government agencies. I will say that the Department of State has been woefully behind and that’s a big concern of mine. I feel for my State colleagues. There are 41 State Department officers who have been affected by this. Secretary of State Blinken has not even met with them while Director Burns has met with nearly all of the CIA victims, so State’s got a long way to go. I think we’ll look to the White House and to Congress to keep the pressure on.
Christian: These are events that are still occurring, even as they’re being investigated. Tell us a little bit about the latest that’s happened on the attack front.
Polymeropoulos: I think you see what the press reports of what can only be considered a kind of slow-rolling mass casualty event in Vienna, Austria. There were numerous State Department and intelligence officers affected at our Embassy there. Again, this is coming out in the press, so it’s important to note that. But these things are still happening and I think that we have to look back to the old counter-terrorism model that CIA employed so effectively of detect, disrupt, and deter attacks by our terrorist adversaries. We have to apply that same type of mindset to this problem set.
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Christian: The Afghanistan withdrawal, there’s a lot going on there. We’ve seen reports of US airstrikes supporting Afghan forces in Kandahar. This week, it was reported that just under 50 Afghan troops requested refuge in Pakistan when their border posts near Chitral, which is a Pakistani city, was overrun. The Pakistani government let them in. And we’re seeing now an Afghan strategy focusing on protecting the capital regions and maybe ceding some of those provincial capitals.
Polymeropoulos: I look at this from a narrow optic. As a former CIA officer who was the base chief in Afghanistan between 2011 and 2012, I ran one of our paramilitary bases in eastern Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan. What is unique about life as a CIA officer out in the field, particularly in the bases, was that there were only a few of us. We had a very small number of Americans, yet we had hundreds, if not over 1,000 Afghanistan indigenous personnel, whether they were troops who were fighting with us or whether they were support personnel. We lived with them. I think this is a little bit different than perhaps big US military’s experience with the Afghan national army.
I trusted my life to these guys. They were armed in front of us all the time. We ate together at the mess hall. We sat around the fire pit together, certainly went on patrols together. So, it’s really personal for me. I remember our Afghan interpreters. I remember our indigenous personnel and I really worry about them. The future, I think is one that certainly is bleak. I don’t support the administration’s decision for a full withdrawal. I don’t understand why we couldn’t have left a residual force, but that policy decision has been made. I think that the things I’m looking to in the near future are even after the end of August, will the US military still conduct airstrikes in support of Afghan forces? There is something about betraying those who really made that pact with us. That’s just something as a CIA officer that’s ingrained in us that we don’t want to do that. So, this is something I really worry about. I remember the faces of our interpreters and indigenous personnel every day. These were great heroes. I think a lot of us at CIA wouldn’t be alive today without their heroism.
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Christian: The third issue you raised was interesting, the visit to D.C. by Jordan’s King Abdullah. It didn’t get a lot of press. But you say it’s a significant story. Tell us why.
Polymeropoulos: President Biden has had a long-standing relationship with King Abdullah. It’s a sign that Jordan is back. We call Jordan the lily pad for the United States for a lot of reasons. I mean, when you think back to 2006 and Jordan’s integral role in the Anbar Awakening, that’s when we were rallying the tribes in Iraq to fight terrorism. When you think about how the US has access to strategic bases in Jordan and when you think about the Jordanian General Intelligence Directorate as one of the US Government’s most critical counter-terrorism partners. But the fact of the matter is that under the last administration, Jordan was not treated well, so it’s really significant that Abdullah was here. I think this is a really good thing. Don’t forget that CIA Director Bill Burns was ambassador in Amman quite some time ago. I think this is a really positive development, not only for the United States going back to an old strategic partner, but also for Jordan as well, which has been a steadfast ally not only during King Abdullah’s reign, but also of course, under King Hussein before him.
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The Swedish government has announced plans to introduce mandatory Covid-19 passes starting next month, amid rising infection rates in Europe. The passes will be required to attend any indoor event with 100 or more participants.
The upcoming introduction of mandatory coronavirus vaccine passes was announced by Health Minister Lena Hallengren on Wednesday.
Citing the ongoing surge in coronavirus cases across Europe – which has not hit the country itself yet – the minister stressed the need to be ready for the new wave of infections, projected to reach Sweden mid-December.
“The spread is increasing in Europe. We haven’t seen it yet in Sweden, but we are not isolated,” Hallengren told a news conference. “We need to be able to use vaccination certificates.”
Starting from December 1, the documents confirming a person’s vaccination status will be a requirement to enter any indoor event with 100 or more people in attendance. Sweden already boasts high vaccination rates, with 85% of its citizens aged over 16 having received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. Over 81% have received two shots or more, public health data shows.
Earlier in the day, the country’s health authorities backtracked on a highly controversial decision to stop testing fully vaccinated people who showed symptoms of Covid. The recommendation was rolled out in October, leading to a 35% decline in Covid-19 tests taken.
“The Public Health Agency has decided to recommend that the regions offer testing to everyone who is 6 years and older who gets symptoms that may be COVID-19,” the health authority said in a statement.
Sweden bucked the trend among European governments in its approach to handling the pandemic, electing not to impose widespread lockdowns. Having relied primarily on voluntary measures and social distancing, the country displayed several times higher death rates per capita than its Nordic neighbors, though it still fared better than many European countries, registering some 1.18 million cases and just over 15,000 coronavirus deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
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All cities and towns in China, as well as “most” villages, will be covered by 5G networks by 2025, the Ministry of Industry in Beijing has announced in a new infrastructure development plan.
Under the plan, the number of 5G base stations per 10,000 people will be increased to 26, and gigabit optical fiber networks will be extended to most urban and rural areas of China, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced on Tuesday.
Digital infrastructure has been defined as a “strategic, basic and pioneering industry to help build a new type of digital infrastructure and support economic and social development,” according to MIIT official Xie Cun.
Information technology will be “deeply integrated” with the economy and society, with the goal of spurring internet innovation and creating a business boom, the ministry added. Meanwhile, the authorities are working on “a new type of supervision system” as well as measures to protect users’ personal information and data.
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.
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