Author: M Barbu

Russia’s Underperforming Military (and Our Own)

In Washington, wide agreement exists that the Russian army’s performance in the Kremlin’s ongoing Ukraine “special military operation” ranks somewhere between lousy and truly abysmal. The question is: Why? The answer in American policy circles, both civilian and military, appears all but self-evident. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has stubbornly insisted on ignoring the principles, practices, and methods identified as necessary for success in war and perfected in this century by the armed forces of the United States. Put simply, by refusing to do things the American way, the Russians are failing badly against a far weaker foe.

Detecting disruption in closed systems

Executive summary

Disruption is a natural part of life. It can appear in many forms including natural disasters, economic crashes, and social conflicts. The world’s resiliency to disruptions, particularly natural disasters has greatly improved over the past few decades. This resiliency is, in large part, due to enhanced detection and warning capabilities enabled by extensive data sets and commercial analytics.

Dragon tails: Preserving international cybersecurity research

Notably, these data show less of a gap between the United States and China or the European Union, and greater representation of the European Union overall. Part of this gap originates from the narrower timeframe of the bug-bounty platform data. The datasets gathered by this paper from vendors show, consistently, US dominance of contributions in earlier years, followed by increasing representation of other countries—particularly China—as their IT sectors develop and the disclosure pipelines become more accessible to non-US researchers. Filtering this paper’s datasets for just 2021 reflects that shift, bringing parity to the United States and China points similar to that in the bug-bounty platform numbers, though the EU still lags. This might reflect selection bias in the countries with which the bug-bounty platform has developed strong relationships. Figure 1 shows the contributions tagged to the United States and China over time in the Apple dataset, illustrating the changes in composition over time.

Russia post-Putin: What happens if the president suddenly dies?

PM Mishustin would become acting president and elections would be held, but experts say the substance of a post-Putin Russia is tough to predict.

In recent months, the health of Russian President Vladimir Putin has been the subject of much speculation, with claims that he has cancer, Parkinson’s, or has even survived an assassination attempt.

What is behind the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict flare-up?

Dozens of Armenian soldiers have reportedly been killed in renewed border clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Dozens of Armenian soldiers have reportedly been killed in renewed border clashes between Armenia and Azerbaijan, in the worst fighting seen since the hostile enemies were embroiled in a 2020 war over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Questions loom over Ukraine’s counteroffensive in Kharkiv

Ukraine has managed to turn the tide of war, at least for now. What may happen next?

The speed of the Ukrainian military’s counteroffensive in the eastern Kharkiv region is nothing short of breakneck.

Three dozen towns and villages have been liberated from the Russian forces who fled eastwards and offered little or no resistance, analysts say.

Iran and Russia: The New Alliance

Significantly, Russia and Iran’s cooperation extends to the military and space fields, with Russia recently helping Iran to launch a new satellite into space.

Iran’s Khayyam satellite “will greatly enhance Tehran’s ability to spy on military targets across the Middle East… [and give] Tehran “unprecedented capabilities, including near-continuous monitoring of sensitive facilities in Israel and the Persian Gulf.” — The Washington Post, August 4, 2022.

US Economy: Turned Left, Road Straight To Socialism – Analysis

The great Ludwig von Mises once said: “In essence, economic history is a record of failed government regulation because of an arrogant disregard for the laws of economic science.”

The current state of the economy is a consequence of the dirigist economic policies of all the governments of the last two decades, from Bush Jr. through the Biden administration. The current tossing and turning of the government between two threats they themselves have created – inflation and recession – is a clear confirmation of the indisputable correctness of von Mises’s assertion.

Russia, Ukraine, And The West: Peculiarities Of Current Positioning – Analysis

Russia, from an economic point of view, is tactically not in as vulnerable a position as one might have expected a couple of months ago. Despite this, in strategic terms, economic, technological and social degradation seem to be an inevitable scenario for Russia in the coming years, according to the theory of the reverse spiral.

Azerbaijan Launches Wide-Ranging Attacks Against Armenia

Azerbaijan carried out a wide-scale attack against targets in Armenia, an unprecedented escalation of the long-running conflict on to Armenian territory.

Armenia’s defense ministry reported attacks, starting around midnight September 13, targeting cities all along the southern part of Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan, including Vardenis, Sotk, Artanish, Ishkhanasar, Goris and Kapan.