Month: November 2020

Fear? Spanish born philosopher Seneca[1] formulated it, more than 2000 years ago. Banks, de Nevers, and Wallerstein[2] put it somewhat more cautiously

It is not known to what extent the policy choices in combating terrorism are driven by the fear of a terrorist threat rather than by terrorism itself.

Perhaps the greatest of all motivations are love and fear. I wrote about love in a previous blog. As far as cyberthreats are concerned, not only this but the complexity of the question is terrifying too. Mandel describes en detail seven attributes of each of the cyber attackers and the cyber targets. One might think that just as much caution is required in traditional warfare. However, the conflict takes place in and around the virtual space and thus motives and consequences can only be assessed with conventional methods to a limited extent. And if you don’t know where the danger comes from and what it aims at, you should heed the advice from Mandel’s book[3]:

As a result, public and private cybersecurity decision-makers must strive to resist the temptation of giving in to calls for immediate drastic retaliation in response to any cyber intrusion and instead prudently and dispassionately assess what should be done to promote global restraint.

Is cyberterrorism perhaps less bloody or costly than the RAF or ETA, which is at least well known to Europeans? Hope is deceptive. As to details released by Downing Street on Wednesday[4], the defense budget will receive £ 16.5 billion in additional funding over the next four years, in addition to the plans in last year’s ruling Conservative Party election program. The British Ministry of Defense currently has an annual budget of £ 40 billion, so defense spending will increase by around 10 percent a year over the four-year program. A substantial part goes into the fight against cyber terrorism. Some European states have also pushed through massive increases in their defense budget, not entirely independent of the perceived American threat of troop withdrawal.

Fear… The proliferation of the use of artificial intelligence in the military (and other armed services) is less about competition between the great powers, but rather a lucrative global project for the corporate and government elites to maintain control over the restless population at home and abroad. And there he comes again: Big Brother.  On the other hand, cyber and robotic systems can also have the advantage of being able to subtract human cruelty from the calculation: say, subtracting people from targeting decisions and programming ethical constraints on robots, for example, to prevent unnecessary attacks on hospitals and schools. Unfortunately, there have been plenty of cold-headed massacres throughout history, and there can be no doubt that there will be people who can override robots. W. Singer[5], a political scientist at the New America Foundation who specializes in 21st-century warfare, believes that only machines operating with non-lethal weapons should be automated.

With a bit of an outlook on world politics, it’s also interesting if Mr. Biden insists on a policy of “democracy exports” in the post-Soviet region, the confrontation between Washington and Moscow could deepen, or Mr. Putin could commit himself to desperate steps until a new president is inaugurated. And we have already seen what Russian trolls can do.

Fear! A horrifying example is the 2017 short film Slaughterbots, made by civilians worried about the future of human life: in this, terrorists massacre a school with small smart drones controlled by a remote control next to a van.

[1] “Peior est bello timor ipse belli”

[2] William C. Banks, Renée de Nevers, and Mitchel B. Wallerstein, Combating Terrorism: Strategies and Approaches, Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2008, Chps. 1&2 (pp. 1-62)

[3] Robert Mandel, Optimizing Cyberdeterrence: A Comprehensive Strategy for Preventing Foreign Cyberattacks, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017, Chapter 8

[4] Beale, Jonathan. 2020. “Defence Funding Boost ‘Extends British Influence’, Says PM”. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-54988870.

[5] Singer, Peter Warren. 2010. Wired For War. New York: Penguin Books.

While a lot of focus in cybersecurity is rightfully on securing federal systems, a vulnerability that is becoming even more obvious are a nation’s cities. In 2018, the city of Atlanta was the victim of the SamSam ransomware attack. It brought critical services to a halt and erased important city data, like videos from police officers’ dashboard cameras. Atlanta was the largest city affected, but nearly 200 other cities and companies were victims of the SamSam attack, including Newark, NJ.

An inspector’s report before the attack took place revealed incredible vulnerabilities in Atlanta’s systems including 2,000 vulnerabilities marked as “severe” and 100 servers running an old version of Windows Microsoft had stopped supporting 3 years earlier. The SamSam virus relied on “brute force” rather than more common phishing attacks. This meant it was looking for weak or default passwords to gain access.

A few days ago, the city of Saint John in Canada revealed it was the victim of a ransomware attack and had yet to determine whether to pay the ransom. While it did not believe personal information had been compromised in the attack, it encouraged residents to monitor their bank accounts and acknowledged some city services would be unavailable or running on analog processes until they could regain access and secure the systems.

Atlanta was able to keep critical infrastructure like water and emergency services running in part because it was prepared to go to manual backup processes. It is essential that cities be prepared for cyber attacks crippling key systems, but it is also evident that city and state governments need to take cyber security more seriously. A city government, especially of a major city like Atlanta with one of the world’s busiest airports, is a tempting target. Gaining access to city records could also make it easier to target persons of interest who happen to reside in those cities.

I’m often surprised at how many people lack awareness of basic cyber security measures, like keeping software up to date and using strong passwords and two-factor authentication. While everyone could benefit from learning foundational concepts, city employees should receive advanced training and city infrastructure should be held to higher standards. Working for a major tech company has certainly taught me a lot about cyber security, but the key thing I learned is that while it’s certainly important to have secure code and strong firewalls, the primary way systems are breached is through front-line employees. Leaving devices unlocked and unattended, weak passwords, or offering potentially sensitive information to someone posing as a fellow employee without verifying their identity, and of course, clicking links in suspicious emails are all common ways employees can compromise security, and much easier for bad actors than hacking a system’s code.

Two Iranian citizens were indicted in US court over the SamSam attacks, but are almost certain to never appear. Protecting the federal government is critical to our national defense, but we shouldn’t forget to protect our cities and the critical services they provide.

I find it horrifying and laughable that QA Khan circulated hundreds of catalog brochures for nuclear weapon components at one point in our recent history. It seems the stuff of a Hollywood action flick starring Charles Bronson and Lee Van Cleef.

On a more sobering and equally alarming note, the readings this week mention a scenario from the late 1990s when members of Congress held a private meeting where U.S. General Alexandar Lebed revealed that eighty-four 1 kiloton Soviet suitcase nuclear devices were missing and unaccounted for.

The Alison readings from this week further describe the reality that approximately  200 unique sources of fissile material exist, from where terrorists might acquire support for developing a nuclear bomb. It appears that if a group of actors has the technical knowledge and earnest motivation, they can likely carry out the most destructive and heinous acts: the detonation of a nuclear device.

In this context, global security and the propensity for cataclysmic destruction hinges on a delicate balance. This merits the following questions: What mechanisms and policy initiatives deter nonstate actors sourcing nuclear weapon components from the web of illicit supply networks encompassing Lybia, North Korea, Pakistan, China, and others? And what role will the United States and Europe play in this effort under President Biden’s administration?

The readings this week also point to the rapid evolution of Cyberwarfare. Ten years ago, the threat of cyberattacks was contained to the destruction of data and digital networks. After Stuxnet, the barrier between the physical world and cyber domains has been significantly eroded. Today, cyber offensives have the potential to destroy critical infrastructure and supply chains.

Unlike nuclear weapon development programs, which the U.S. and others can suppress in countries like Iran, cyberwarfare capabilities are difficult if not impossible to suppress. Counterattack measures might be the best and only deterrent to cyber engagements. However, when the U.S. launches a cyber offensive against an advisory it runs the high-risk that those same capabilities can be quickly duplicated and directed back towards the U.S. at a later date.

When cyber offensives are directed towards IP theft, it causes major concerns for U.S. national security. For example, Chinese cybercriminals stole Pentagon secrets describing details behind strategic weapons systems like the Patriot missile and F-35 fighter jet programs, as mentioned in the readings this week. I am left wondering how the U.S. stops cyber offensives designed to steal our strategic IP.

The Trump administration’s continued refusal to give President-elect Biden and his Transition Team access to the Presidential Daily Briefing is unsurprising in its pettiness but stunning in its abject disregard for national security – particularly at the height of a public health crisis and corresponding economic downturn that has left the United States especially vulnerable. At the direction of the president, the head of the General Services Administration has refused to certify the results of the presidential election, blocking Biden’s access to daily briefings and classified intelligence.

Vice President-elect Harris is in a strange position given that she is a sitting senator and receives regular classified briefings but is bound by congressional rules not to share the information with Biden – creating an unprecedented information gap between the two. Luckily, Biden has access to some of the best minds in the world of policy and academia (Rice, Powers, Blinken, McCrystal, and a deep bench of experts who served the Obama and Clinton administrations). Nonetheless, these experts are not currently serving in government and thus have no access to real-time classified reports or cable traffic.

This is extremely unsettling amidst a shake up and purging of top officials at the Pentagon, DHS, and intelligence agencies, a drawdown in Afghanistan, and reports that Trump was seriously considering (though apparently dissuaded from) a strike on Iran to cap off four turbulent years in office. To say nothing of the need for close coordination to combat COVID-19 and organize a countrywide vaccine distribution.

I recognize this has subject has little connection to the readings assigned for this week, however, it’s a pressing security issue of immediate concern. There is a deep and tragic irony that in an election year in which we saw so little foreign meddling, the U.S. has managed to do so much harm to itself by sowing distrust in the democratic process, disregarding norms, and dispensing with decency.

The Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan, who are fighting to get control over this region. In the last two decades, Armenians have had control only because it served Russia’s interest, the war has modified the balance of interests in the region, bringing unfavorable conditions for Moscow, because it has created openings for regional interventions by Turkey, the United States, and others. Therefore, Russia encourages Azerbaijan military offensive, a powerful security rationale that implies a strong Russian interest in deterring a war that might change the regional status quo. Preserving a favorable status quo, by strategic logic is the central security interest of a regional hegemon like Russia.

Currently, Russia is aiming to create insecurity among the Armenian population that they cannot survive as a state without them. Moreover, in order to increase the feeling of the threat Russia allowed Azerbaijan to get back all its territories around Nagorno-Karabakh, making it harder defending in the future, Azerbaijan’s victory also underlines the military vulnerability of Armenia itself. Russia will look to persuade Armenia’s population and leadership to agree to closer integration with Russia.

 

This article by the Inter Press Service starts off by asking an interesting question: “will overwhelming fire power and WMDs become obsolete if biological weapons, currently banned by a UN convention, are used in wars in a distant future?” The answer a yes, according to Dr Natalie J. Goldring, a Senior Fellow and Adjunct Full Professor with the Security Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Basically the article points out how the whole world has been under “siege” by the virus. Over 58 million people have contracted the virus and almost 1.5 million have died of it. It also draws our attention on how the pandemic has also destabilized the global economy with world poverty and hunger skyrocketing to new highs. And all this, without “a single shot being fired” in an eight-month long war against a spreading virus.

Furthermore, the article is showing that “if a terrorist group were able to carry out the complex tasks of creating and using biological weapons, an intentional release of a biological weapon could be even more deadly than COVID-19”. That is why, it is important that countries with vetoes at the UN must prevent the development of this type of weapon and also assist the rest of the world in increasing their capacity to respond to infectious diseases.

But there is another aspect the article is addressing. It states that, “Countries with large military forces often threaten to use those forces to achieve foreign policy and other goals.” And therefore, by continuing to develop and deploy these weapons, States increase the risk of nuclear theft and give other countries incentives to develop nuclear weapons in response. So, it is imperative that those in the circle of power find an equilibrium in the “talking and doing” of what they stand for.

http://www.ipsnews.net/2020/11/potential-weapon-kills-1-5-million-worldwide-without-single-shot-fired/

Today the U.S has announced that it will withdraw 2,500 American troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq by Jan 15, 2021. Just five days before president- elect Joe Biden would holds inauguration in the white house.

The United states has approximately 4,500 US troops in Afghanistan and 3,000 troops in Iraq. Secretary of defense Christopher Miller has announced that it is no reduction in capability and that this is policy plan would not change neither U.S objectives neither goals. However, Mark Esper which was previous defense secretary before getting fired last week has been pushing back on this plan and asserting that the preconditions on the ground have not yet been met.

 

One more major hot topic agenda added to president elect Joe Biden to deal with once he’s in office. Joe Biden will face dramatic foreign and domestic issues from the Covid pandemic to racial divisions, economic recession, Iran, china and all the other typical foreign issues. Essentially, if this plan does not turn out to be a good decision it will cause sever damaging. If Al-Qaeda or ISIS are seeking this reduction of 2,500 troops to exert influence by bloody means then this would be a huge problem to Joe Biden will have to face. Al-Qaeda already supports the decision as well with the U.S. agreement with Taliban[1]. This plan typically falls within President Trump’s policy of Isolationism and NATO members are warning from this plan. Whether this plan will have a positive or negative effect is only a matter of little time that we would be able to see and estimate.

[1]Barbara Starr, “ US announces further drawdown of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq before Biden takes office.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/17/politics/afghanistan-iraq-withdrawal-pentagon/index.html

 

From this week’s readings, I gained a new perspective on nuclear weapons, and the various ways countries pursue the development of nuclear weapons programs.

I had always assumed the path to develop a nuclear weapon capability was all more or less the same. Countries without a nuclear opinion want one if for nothing else then as a prestigious status symbol and keeping up with the international Jones’s.  And while most countries are eager to have nuclear weapons, the notion of mutually assured destruction is a deterrent from actually using them.

However, in the reading by Scott Sagan and Benjamin Valentino, I realized that the historical notion of nuclear weapon deterrence should not be assumed to last forever. The authors describe the “logic of consequence” in the reading might not hold up against shifting international norms, divergent ideologies, and regional political instability.

What stood out to me the most from this week’s reading is the various pathways countries pursue to develop nuclear weapons programs. It’s one thing to think about why a country might pursue a nuclear weapon, but there seems to be much more utility in studying how they go about developing them.

The Narang reading points to four typologies: hedging, sprinting, hiding, and sheltered. The hedging pursuit seems the least destructive to international peace. If countries can develop their nuclear weapons programs without completing an actual nuclear weapon capability, then perhaps mutually assured deterrence remains relevant to preventing the use of nuclear weapons.

At the same time, If an increased number of countries want to develop a hedging strategy for a nuclear weapons program, how is such activity monitored and controlled by the international community? While technical hedging may not pose significant risk factors, hard hedging or Insurance hedging is easy. Their potential to include dual-use delivery vehicles has the potential to pose significant threats.

As Narang points out, as a country moves closer to developing a capable nuclear weapon program, the level of regional instability increases. This includes economic turmoil and the increased potential for violent military confrontation. Narang mentions that the level of duress a country experiences influence the rate at which they might pursue a functional nuclear weapon.

From the readings, it appears the motivating drivers of nuclear weapons development programs are ouroboros in nature.

Could a revitalized international deterrence strategy for the 21st Century include a responsibility from the United States, Russia, and China to prevent duress from occurring within a country?

I found this table really insightful in thinking about how a country’s nuclear weapon strategy changes over time.

For example, as the table above illustrates, Iran appears to have changed their approach several times over the decades from Technical Hedging in 74′-78′; to  Hiding strategies between 81′-03′; and their current strategy of  Hard hedging.

Thinking along the lines of how a country purses it’s nuclear weapons interests could be a useful framework to analyze shifting geopolitical power balance between nations and drill down to understand a specific country’s broader military and economic strategic pursuites. IN other words, a given country’s nuclear strategy may be closely correlated to its overarching military and economic strategy, and as its nuclear strategy changes, so do geopolitical regional balances.

 

 

 

I found this article from the Guardian to be quite interesting given we are discussing nuclear weapon ands related topics in class at the moment. What really drew my attention to this article is the entity which is supporting the UN Anti Nuclear Treaty and its perhaps what who we least expect to get involved in things such as this.

In the United Kingdom, the leadership of the Church of England is calling for the UK to join other 50 nations in the international treaty that seeks to ban nuclear weapons in hopes that it would bring about a peaceful future for all of humankind. The treaty is scheduled to be initiated in January 22 of the new year as 50 nations have approved of it. However the major nuclear powers of the world have gotten on board including the United States as they described this a “strategic error.” Also worth nothing in the article that my current  employer the International Committee of the Red Cross was mentioned in the article as the President of the ICRC, Peter Maurer, praised this moment as “a victory for humanity, and a promise of a safer future.”

The treaty is poised to play a pivotal role deterrent effect on the proliferation of nuclear arms. The bishops of the church of England stated “For so many of the nations of the world to speak clearly of the need to ban these weapons of mass destruction is an encouraging and hopeful sign.” They have called on the UK to join this effort as well as the UK has yet to sign it as a means of “to give hope to all people of goodwill who seek a peaceful future.” While they do that nuclear weapons will not go away overnight, they see this as a step “on the journey towards becoming a nuclear-free world.”

While reading this article, I think back to Isaiah Wall of the United Nations that is right across the street from UNHQ. I pass it all the time going to UNHQ to take care of work tasks and the wall quotes the passage from the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 2, verse 4: “”They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” While the dream of a nuclear weapons free world is still fresh in the minds of nations around the world and the UN, it is still far from reach given that all nations are yet to come on board with this concept. Who knows what significance this anti nuclear treaty will bring to the world, only time will tell. But just because of nuclear weapon free world is far from reach at the moment, does not mean its impossible to achieve and to have hope in it, just ask the clergy of the Church of England.

One of the scariest potential fallouts of a nuclear-armed Iran is the ultimatum it would issue to Iran’s geopolitical rival Saudi Arabia. It ostensibly leads to a Saudi Arabia which would see no other alternative than to acquire the bomb themselves. There is reason to believe that the refractory period between a hypothetical first Iranian nuclear test and a successful test for their Saudi counterparts may be shorter than commonly believed.

Perhaps the closest case-study which most resembles the nuclear proliferation issue between Saudi Arabia and Iran is the situation that arose between geopolitical foes Pakistan and India. India successfully tested its first nuclear test – codenamed “Smiling Buddha” – in May 1974. The test coincided with talks with the Pakistanis aimed at normalizing the relations between the two countries. The nuclear revelations quickly led to Pakistan withdrawing from the talks and resolving to commit to a nuclear program of its own. However, it took Pakistan twenty-four years to get its hands on the bomb.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have always enjoyed a close relationship, with some policy analysts going as far as characterizing it as a “special relationship.” It has been reported that Saudi Arabia even played the role of a financial backer in Pakistan’s nuclear program. There are legitimate fears that Pakistan may export a nuclear device to the Saudis in the event that Iran gets the bomb. MBS made several state visits to Pakistan immediately following the ratification of the JCPOA agreement which drew the ire of the Saudis. In addition, an unspecified military cooperation agreement was signed between the two countries in early 2016.