China is still circling Taiwan, conducting daily military exercises, months after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the country. Now that tensions are rising, with various diplomatic conversations between the US and China happening, Biden says he’s ready to deploy US troops if and when the need arises.
Executive summary
The number of cyber operations launched from Russia over the last few years is astounding, ranging from the NotPetya malware attack that cost the global economy billions, to the SolarWinds espionage campaign against dozens of US government agencies and thousands of companies. Broad characterizations of these operations, such as “Russian cyberattack,” obscure the very real and entangled web of cyber actors within Russia that receive varying degrees of support from, approval by, and involvement with the Russian government. This issue brief describes the large, complex, and often opaque network of cyber actors in Russia, from front companies to patriotic hackers to cybercriminals. It analyzes the range and ambiguity of the Russian government’s involvement with the different actors in this cyber web, as well as the risks and benefits the Kremlin perceives or gets from leveraging actors in this group. The issue brief concludes with three takeaways and actions for policymakers in the United States, as well as in allied and partner countries: focus on understanding the incentive structure for the different actors in Russia’s cyber web; specify the relationship any given Russian actor has or does not have with the state, and calibrate their responses accordingly; and examine these actors and activities from Moscow’s perspective when designing policies and predicting the Kremlin’s responses.
No matter how noble its stated intentions, the “Great Reset” is at its heart a program for driving political power away from individual citizens and toward the controlling interests of a small international class of financial elites…. For citizens to reclaim power, they must not only embrace the basics of free markets once again but also rekindle a fondness for questioning the motivations of political authorities.
In recent days renewed clashes have broken out between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the South Caucasus. Fighting between these two countries is nothing new. Since the early 1990s, what started as a “hot war” transformed into a long-lasting “frozen conflict” over Armenia’s occupation of Azerbaijani territory in the Karabakh region. In 2020, the situation boiled over and the second Karabakh war left Azerbaijan victorious, Armenia defeated, and Russia with a peacekeeping role in the region.
Russian political scientist and sociologist Greg Yudin believes that Armenia should stay away from a “falling building”, that falling building being Russia.
Yudin said in a thread on Twitter on Friday, September 16 that Azerbaijan’s recent attack on Armenia provides evidence of a catastrophic collapse of Russian foreign policy in a “hugely important region.”
The Biden administration is mulling whether to grant Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sovereign immunity in a case related to the 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi. The journalist’s fiancé and a non-profit organization he helped found filed the lawsuit in a Washington district court.
Observing today’s world and all conundrums of postmodernism, along with pluralism and the tyranny of choice, one can witness an “era of gaps”, where great lack of common denominators is a contemporary hazard. The situations redefine diligence and empowers individuals to act like agents of change, not solemnly passive receivers. “Now in the era of artificial intelligence, a new underreported challenge has emerged – when will humans become obsolete? If one believes that this question is yet another example of philosophical melodrama, it is important to consider that society will soon have to redefine what it considers to be life itself” (Bajrektarević, 2020).
An Israeli firm has supplied anti-drone systems to Ukraine through Poland, Israeli media revealed yesterday.
According to the Hebrew news website, Zman Yisrael, a source in the firm said that the equipment was being sold to Poland to circumvent Israel’s refusal to sell advanced arms to Ukraine.
Israeli political and security circles are concerned about the possible fall of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi amid the ongoing internal crises that Cairo has been facing, an Israeli newspaper reported.
Two persons active in financing ISIS sleeper cells were arrested in the SDF operation, according to North Press.
On Tuesday, the General Command of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) revealed they carried out a security operation in cooperation with the U.S.-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS against collaborators with the Islamic State (ISIS) in the east of Hassakeh, northeastern Syria.