There seems to be a strong divergence in American governmental perception behind Chinese and Russian command of cyberspace and their general cyber interaction with state authority. On the one hand, there is the assumption that this is a natural manifestation of the growing desire on the part of Russia and China to achieve global superpower status. On the other hand, there are the counter-arguments that emphasize China's and Russia’s own perception of inability to operate effectively...
Do not concern yourself with whether or not you find your opinions in the majority or minority. Majority or minority is irrelevant. Find your truth through research, logic, evidence, and reflection, deep across all levels. How many do or don't believe in it is immaterial.
The world needs less sheep. The problem is not how big or small your flock is. The problem is you are SHEEP.
Many cyber experts state that the United States is woefully ill-prepared for a sophisticated cyber-attack and that each passing day brings us one step closer to a potential virtual Armageddon. While the problems hindering the development of an effective and comprehensive cyber deterrence policy are clear (threat measurement, attribution, information-sharing, legal codex development, and poor infrastructure to name several), this piece focuses on one aspect of the debate that heretofore has been relatively...
The Intelligence Community, regardless of regime type, has famously always tried to co-opt and ultimately adopt advancements and evolutions in technology, especially in terms of media. Newspapers, radio, and television have long been appropriated in order to influence, massage, and outright manipulate messages and events important to the national interest. Often the question is not so much whether a country’s intelligence community engages in such activity but rather how explicit and open will...
... global stage? Some of this is undoubtedly tied in with what President Obama is most personally comfortable with. Another explanatory variable has affected not just Obama the politician but Democrats as an entire party – defending against the accusation of being foreign policy weaklings. This was arguably the biggest lesson learned from the Democratic failure of 2004, when Vietnam war veteran, Purple Heart winner, and long-time Foreign Affairs Senate stalwart John Kerry lost to Bush. A Democrat ...
... why the West won’t as well.
Putin is violating international law by interfering with Ukrainian affairs.
One of the most successful movie franchises in history, The Pirates of the Caribbean, is actually a fantastic teaching tool for this accusation. In the very first film, when Elizabeth was taken aboard the Black Pearl to face the dreaded Captain Barbosa, she was dismayed to learn he was not going to follow the so-called holy Pirate’s Code. To which, rather bemusedly, Captain Barbosa ...
... because the West and Kiev wants that question obliterated from the news doesn’t mean it is any less relevant to the actual people in the eastern half of the country.
And so here we sit. Eastern Ukraine remains unsettled. More casualties mount. Accusations fly about Russian subterfuge as authorities in Kiev violently struggle to preserve its larger territorial mass. How it will all play out, for better or for worse, is beyond anyone’s guess. But in the meantime I will wonder if this Ukrainian ...
The debate over the applicability or non-applicability of international law to cyber war and the need for a cyber-specific international treaty might be irrelevant. Both camps, pro and con, argue about the need for cyber war to have the Law of Armed Conflict or some new international legal project properly cover the cyber domain. Both camps, however, misread how the structure of the cyber domain precludes strategically ‘piggy-backing’ on conventional norms of war. International laws on...
Though Syria has somewhat fallen off the media radar in the West because of a Malaysian plane crashing into the Indian Ocean and Crimean referendum consequences booming across Europe, an on-going conflict and crisis continues in a critically important region of the world. The problems in Syria remain poorly understood in the West across the board, but especially so when it comes to understanding Russian strategy on Syria vis-à-vis the United States. The common US position has simply dismissed...
... century, many civil conflicts were fought within and among the riparians along the Nile River Basin (NRB), most notably Burundi, Chad, the Congo, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Sudan. Scholars noted that ethnic and religious differences were two of the primary causal factors behind these conflicts, but the potential of a new conflict stimulus is rapidly emerging: the contest over rights to the region’s main fresh water resource, the Nile River. While some scholars are skeptical about the relevance of resource ...