Recently I wrote an article on Vibrant India for a Think Tank. It has not passed the exacting standards of couple of Think Tanks.
May like to read it here.
3 April 2017
*** Pakistan Is No Friend to America
C. Christine Fair
At every turn, Pakistan empowers terrorists abroad while persecuting dissenters at home.
Since the earliest years of the so-called global war on terrorism, Pakistan has played a double game. With one hand, it has taken some $33 billion from the United States in the name of partnering with it to fight Islamist militancy in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Yet, with the other hand, it continued to kill Americans and their Afghan partners, as well as NATO and non-NATO allies in Afghanistan, through its varied proxies such as the Afghan Taliban, the Jalaluddin Haqqani network, Lashkar-e-Taiba and others. And increasingly, it seems likely that Pakistan colluded to protect Osama bin Laden—the very reason why the United States invaded Afghanistan in the first place. While Pakistan has tenaciously maintained the viability of these so-called Islamist militant assets, it has prosecuted a brutal campaign of violence and threats of violence against Pakistanis who are fighting for a saner Pakistan, one that it is at peace with itself and its neighbors.
It is well known that Pakistan harbors the Afghan Taliban, and that it provides every kind of imaginable amenity to the organization, inclusive of political, military, diplomatic and financial support. It is also well known that Pakistan affords similar perquisites to other groups that the United States and the United Nations consider to be terrorist groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad and the Haqqani network, among others. However, the degree to which Pakistan’s civilian and/or military leaders actively sought to protect bin Laden remains a serious question.
*** Russia Stirs the Hornet's Nest
Forecast
Russia will keep trying to exploit divisions in the western Balkans, traditionally a theater of competition for many world powers.
Russian influence will continue to spread in some of the Balkans' most turbulent areas, including Serbia, northern Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia.
By stoking tensions in the region, Moscow could engineer a series of crises too challenging for the West to contain.
Analysis
The Balkan Peninsula has long stood at the edge of empires. The region, with its jumble of ethnicities, religions and political movements, has been a playing field for competing world powers throughout its history. Russia began to vie with the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires for influence over the area in the 19th century. During the Cold War, Yugoslavia became a battleground between the Soviet Union and the West, despite its officially nonaligned status following World War II. While the West tried to woo the country with economic aid, the Soviets played to its ruling Communist Party, and the two sides continued in deadlock through the 1980s. Once the country dissolved in 1991, however, the tides turned. The collapse of the Soviet Union left Moscow in no position to see Yugoslavia's constituent states through their transition to sovereignty, leaving that task to the European Union. The West has dominated the Balkan states' economic and security relationships ever since.
*** Exclusive! How India reached out to the Afghan Mujahideen
'It was a mission undertaken in darkness in every sense -- literally, because Afghanistan had no electricity at that time; and, metaphorically because Delhi historically dealt only with the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and the foreign ministry's vast archives had nothing to offer on the culture and politics of the northern tribes in the Hindu Kush.'
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar, who played a stellar role in beginning India's systemic dealings in Afghanistan in 1994, reveals for the first time how he undertook that most important and risky mission.
One thing I learnt early enough in South Block was that as head of a territorial division, the success of a policy initiative almost always would lie in slipping it in innocuously when the superiors were overworked. Even if the idea were heretical, the chances of it finding habitation depended on the timing.
That was how the saga of India's systemic dealings with the Afghan Mujahideen began in 1994.
The fifteenth anniversary of the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, the legendary 'Lion of Panjshir,' becomes an appropriate occasion to reminisce.
But, first, it is necessary to summon some history from the attic of the mind. Circa 1991, it wasn't particularly difficult for an Indian diplomat to bump into an odd Afghan Mujahideen representative accidentally at an embassy reception in Islamabad.
** Behind a Mysterious Budget Increase, the National Security Need for ‘Make-In-India’ Chips
BY MANOJ JOSHI
The National Security Council Secretariat, headed by top spy Ajit Doval, may have received a staggering 311% increase in funds this year to tackle issues at the intersection of cybersecurity and nuclear weapon delivery systems.
This year’s Union budget appeared to be a mostly humdrum affair when it came to India’s defence interests. Although the total sum allocated towards our defence sector was a hefty Rs 2.7 lakh crore, it was only a modest increase of 5.6% when compared to last year.
What raised eyebrows, however, was the staggering 311% increase in the outlay of the National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) – its budget went up from Rs 81 crore to Rs 333 crore. The one line explanation given read “The provision is for meeting the administrative expenses of the National Security Council Secretariat.”
A certain parsimony has been a rule of thumb with regard to budgets relating to defence, so why this generosity? Behind this lies a complicated story.
The NSCS officially services the National Security Council (NSC) whose members are the prime minister and the home, defence and finance ministers. While the composition is essentially similar to the Cabinet Committee on Security, the NSC is advised by the National Security Adviser (Ajit Doval) and in that sense, he is the head of the NSCS.
DEBATING THE NUCLEAR LEGACY OF INDIA AND ONE OF ITS GREAT COLD WAR STRATEGISTS
YOGESH JOSHI
When discussing strategic thinkers of the 20th century, we tend to think about figures such as Henry Kissinger, George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau, and Thomas Schelling amongst others. The legacies of all of these men are often contested and debated, as they were – in various ways – central to America’s strategic direction during the Cold War. Kissinger in particular sparks passionate debate whether one is discussing the Vietnam War, U.S. policy in South Asia, ties between the United States and China, or human rights.
Not only are these individuals all Westerners — they are all Americans. The reasons to look beyond the American experience of strategy-making should be obvious, yet it happens too rarely. Debates over legacies and strategic choices in other nations — particularly large ones — deserve more attention than they receive. And as the debate ignited by Vipin Narang when he recently suggested that India may no longer be committed to a doctrine of no first-use of nuclear weapons is indicative of the need to expand our scope. His claim hinges on the recent writings of Amb. Shiv Shankar Menon, one of India’s foremost contemporary strategic thinkers. This issue serves to underline the relevance of such non-Western strategic thinkers to the prevailing threats to global peace and stability. For this reason, such figures should receive increased scholarly attention and scrutiny. Moreover, given the questionable record of U.S. strategy since the end of the Cold War, the biggest beneficiaries of such an expanded discourse might be Americans themselves.
Revisiting India’s Nuclear Doctrine
G. Balachandran and Kapil Patil
Ever since the release of India’s nuclear doctrine in 2003, there have been occasional appeals for its review. Such appeals in the past were limited and went largely unnoticed without generating any meaningful discussion. However, the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP's) 2014 election manifesto promising to “update and review” the country’s decade-old nuclear weapons’ doctrine has triggered a serious debate.
In principle, there is nothing wrong in revisiting the doctrine. It is a product of the human mind and cannot, therefore, be held to be infallible and beyond review or revision. However, such revision or review must be based on sound and valid reasons, such as:
A legally or administratively mandated periodic review, such as the congressionally mandated quadrennial defence review in the United States.
Major changes in the external environment; for example, the major arms limitation/control treaties between the United States and Russia.
A change in the adversary’s capabilities.
Emergence of new threats such as nuclear and WMD terrorism.
Failure of the doctrine under practical conditions.
Under which preceding category or categories would the proposed Indian doctrinal review fall?
India’s nuclear power promise is fading despite the deal with US. Here’s why
Brahma Chellaney
It is often said that China could become the first country in the world to age before it gets rich. India faces no such spectre. However, India has already become the first important economy in the world to take on onerous climate-related obligations before it has provided electricity to all its citizens.
This reality has greatly accentuated India’s energy challenge, which is unique in some respects. Consider the scale of its challenge: Before its population stabilises, India will add at least as many people as the US currently has. Even if India provided electricity to its projected 1.6 billion population in 2050 at today’s abysmally low per capita energy consumption level, it will have to increase its electricity production by about 40% of the total global output at present.
India’s domestic energy resources are exceptionally modest in comparison to population size and the demands of a fast-growing economy, with energy demand projected to rise 90% just over the next 13 years. And, unlike China, India does not share common borders with any energy-exporting country and thus must rely on imports from beyond its neighbourhood, making it vulnerable to unforeseen supply disruptions.
Pakistan increasingly becoming a single-issue country for India: Former NSA Shivshankar Menon
Thanks to "Pakistan's decline into irrelevance, Indian motives to address India-Pakistan issues are diminishing," says India's former National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon, who feels that the tragedy is that Pakistan is increasingly becoming a single-issue country in Indian discourse, and that issue is “the zero-sum one of security"
And, he says, as Pakistan becomes ever closer and more tied to China, "India-Pakistan relations will bear the imprint and will probably pay the price".
However, Menon, key foreign policy strategist in the previous UPA government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, says there is no alternative to talking to Pakistan to resolve outstanding issues because not talking is to allow terrorists to have a "veto on the relationship" and submitting to the "agenda of terrorists and their sponsors".
"If you don't talk, you are actually giving the terrorists and their sponsors what they want, because they don't want talks... They want to control the dialogue. They want to have a veto on the relationship. So, I don't see why you should allow them to do that," Menon, who also served as Foreign Secretary and ambassador to important capitals, including Islamabad. Beijing, Colombo and Tel Aviv, told the author in a chat at his New Delhi residence.
Tibet’s Independence Flames Burn Bright in 2017 too
By Dr Subhash Kapila
Tibet’s independence flames burn still bright, in 2017 too, notwithstanding that the fires of unceasing Tibetan self-immolations in China Occupied Tibet escape global notice.
On the 58th Anniversary of the Tibetan National Uprising on 10thMarch 1959 against China’s brutal ethnic and cultural genocide inflicted on Tibet, the global community including the United States and India must bow their heads in remorse that China for reasons of geopolitical expediency has been allowed to perpetuate its military shackles on the spiritual kingdom of Tibet..
The United States and the West have in recent decades gone-in for military interventions on humanitarian grounds in countries ranging from the former Yugoslavia to Iraq and Syria to protect human rights and democracy. They maintained that they resorted to these humanitarian military interventions as their consciences were pricked by the inhuman atrocities inflicted by dictatorial regimes.
Strangely, the collective consciences of the United States and the Western countries have never been pricked in the last seven decades of ethnic and cultural genocide that China has incessantly inflicted on China Occupied Tibet. Why are their consciences stands so benumbed that beyond muted protest utterances, the United States and the West continue to subordinate their moral consciences to China’s strategic sensitivities?
China´s Blue Water Navy Strategy and its Implications
By Yoji Koda
Will China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN), which has grown into a local giant, also become a blue water armada that operates continuously in the Pacific and/or Indian Oceans? Yoji Koda believes that this influence-expanding goal has a major drawback – i.e., maritime chokepoints that are vulnerable to interdiction by a number of other nations, most importantly the United States.
In recent years, China has been challenging existing and established international maritime norms, represented by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), customary international law, and international standards for conduct at sea. It has done so by making extensive, unilateral territorial and maritime claims and through heavy-handed maneuvers in its surrounding waters, especially in the South China Sea (SCS) and the East China Sea (ECS).
China’s recent willingness to take extraordinarily strong unilateral step to exercise its influence in maritime affairs is fundamentally related to its national objectives. In general, these seem to be: (1) preserving the Chinese Communist Party’s untrammeled authority; (2) protecting China’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity; (3) promoting social welfare and people’s quality of life; (4) building and maintaining a strategic nuclear posture that is comparable with that of the United States; and (5) constructing its own global expeditionary capabilities, which have been a U.S. monopoly for decades.
Islamic State Released A Detailed Guide For ‘Lone Wolf’ Terrorists Wanting To Stab Police Officers More Than 3 Months Ago…..And, It Is Still Available On The Internet/Worldwide Web
Ian Gallagher had an article on the Daily Mail Online’s website (March 25, 2017), which will no doubt make some people’s blood boil. He writes that the Islamic State (ISIS) posted a guide on the Internet more than 3 months ago which was a tutorial potential ‘lone wolf’ terrorists could use when they decide to carry out a terrorist attack against non-believers — anywhere in the world. The “depraved guide” was prepared by ISIS’s Syrian-based ‘recruiters’ and, “could well have been seen by Khalid Masood, in the weeks before,” he went from the planning stage, to the execution phase last week in Britain.
The ISIS/militant jihadi group first posted their ‘how to kill infidel’s’ video on a messaging service called, the Telegram, which Mr. Gallagher adds is becoming increasingly favored by militant jihadists. “Sickeningly,” Mr. Gallagher writes, the video contains “an image and detailed instructions for where to stab someone if they are wearing body armor.” Of note, Scotland Yard revealed on Friday that the London policeman, Keith Palmer, who was fatally stabbed as he stood guard outside the Parliament in Westminster last week was wearing body armor at the time of the attack.
“Initially,” Mr. Gallagher notes, the video “was available to 250 private members, many of whom are ISIS recruiters, who then spread it on social media, where it has been seen by thousands. It remains on a website easily accessible on the open web. Last week it emerged that [an ISIS] guide to mounting [carrying out] a car [and truck] terror attack — were also available on Google and Twitter.”
Lessons From Singapore: What Nation-Building Means For Counter-Terrorism
Jaideep A Prabhu
Counter-terrorism cannot be neatly bifurcated into policies and enforcement. The state and citizens cannot have divergent approaches in fighting terror. To avoid such a scenario, a strong, unified nation is needed-something India lacks, something Singapore created.
With the world's attention on counter-terrorism firmly held in the Middle East and Central Asia by ISIS, al Qa'ida, and the Taliban, Singapore appears an unlikely and distant theatre in the global struggle against terrorism. Yet globalisation has come to terrorism too, and the tiny Southeast Asian city-state sits amidst a sea of threats from several regional and international groups. To combat this emergent danger, Singapore has evolved its own unique procedures that are philosophically interesting and may hold lessons for the rest of the international community.
At a conference on counter-terrorism hosted by the India Foundation in Delhi last week, Singaporean Minister of Home Affairs Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam explained some of the novel methods his country employs to counter the scourge of terrorism to an audience of experts and dignitaries from Israel, Russia, France, Britain, and several other countries. Shanmugam does not see the response to terrorism as neatly bifurcated into governance and enforcement, nor does he see the two as an either/or choice. Of course, Singapore broadly applies the carrot-and-stick principle but the degree to which the city-state demands its citizens to take responsibility and be partners in counter-terrorism is astonishing...at least in an era of irresponsible blame games, scare-mongering, and increasing anomie.
Strategic Trends 2017
In 2016, events such as “Brexit” and the election of Donald Trump in the US have shocked the liberal system, not only because of their specific impact on European and global order, but also because of the sudden speed with which these fundamental changes are occurring. The four chapters of “Strategic Trends 2017” offer early, but informed analyses on the current state and future direction of a very fluid Euro-Atlantic security system. While the foci of the chapters vary and address today’s security challenges from various perspectives – from the OSCE world, Trump’s America, European defense onto NATO – there are some common themes. While analyzing current trends, all authors emphasize historical processes and old problems that have been gestating for years. This is why the impact on the security policies of European states, of NATO and the EU has been so immense: discussions about marginal modifications of the existing architecture are no longer sufficient.
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The Most Reputable Companies Worldwide
by Dyfed Loesche
A recent survey of corporate reputations finds that Swiss producer of luxury watches, Rolex, has the best standing worldwide 2017. The survey by the Research Institute measures the reputation of the world's most highly regarded and familiar multinational companies in 15 countries.
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This chart shows companies with the best reputations according to Global RepTrak 2017.
CTC Sentinel 10 (3)
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This edition of the CTC Sentinel looks at 1) the threat posed by the so-called Islamic States’ (IS) virtual entrepreneurs, who use social media and other tools to link up with radicalized individuals in the West; 2) what the 1 January 2017 attack on the Reina nightclub tells us about the threat IS poses to Turkey; 3) the role German foreign fighters are playing in Syria and Iraq; 4) the changing nature of jihadism in Australia, particularly since IS called for spontaneous attacks against the West; and 5) the wealth the Taliban and other groups are accruing from illegal mining in Afghanistan.
CECOM commander on the biggest challenge for the future
As commanding general of Army Communications-Electronics Command, Maj. Gen. Bruce Crawford has a big job: He oversees the supplying and sustainment of all things communications-related for the service. That’s a huge range of things, “whether it sits on a soldier, or it’s in a helicopter, or it’s in a plane, or it’s in a tank, or someplace else on the battlefield … once it’s fielded, I do sustainment for that. No matter how long it sits in the inventory,” according to Crawford.
The result is a myriad of competing priorities, logistical challenges and key goals in communications and IT that boost Army readiness. A significant piece that might not immediately spring to mind when it comes to CECOM is training soldiers to operate in cyberspace. Crawford discussed those topics and more in a recent interview with C4ISRNET Editor Amber Corrin.
Tell us a little about CECOM and your job there. What’s at the top of your to-do list?
When you think about the business side of the Army, about 70 percent of the cost of everything we buy is in sustainment. It’s not just tactical communications, though, it’s also all of my [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] platforms. When you think about where we’ve come after 15 years of continuous combat, the ability to see ourselves and see the enemy has become one of those things not only needed up at our major headquarters, but it’s needed forward on the battlefield, down at the company level. So you’ve seen exponential growth in terms of the requirement for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capability in our formations.
SOME NEW, SOME OLD, ALL NECESSARY: THE MULTI-DOMAIN IMPERATIVE
WILLIAM DRIES
“War is both timeless and ever changing. While the basic nature of war is constant, the means and methods we use evolve continuously.” – Marine Corps Doctrine Publication 1
I deployed to the Middle East in 2008 as part of a large U.S. Air Force expeditionary operation. Our group and its squadrons had many challenges: bedding down and feeding hundreds of people flowing in and out of theater, sustaining combat operations for different types of aircraft, and keeping up a non-stop tempo of diverse missions in a fight against terrorists and insurgents. However, we weren’t worried about our base getting attacked with long-range missiles. We knew our radios and computer networks wouldn’t be jammed or disrupted. We had no doubt that our outfit’s huge logistics requirements would be satisfied. While the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and other enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan posed a constant danger to soldiers and marines on the ground, they presented little threat to operations in the air and space, at sea, or in cyberspace. However, those days are gone. The U.S. military faces a new reality – one with “multi-domain” challenges to our preferred way of fighting. As such, the way the U.S. military builds its force, integrates its planning, and synchronizes its operations must change, and it must change quickly.
The Pipe Dream of (Effective) Multi-domain Battle
By A.J. Shattuck
America is rapidly losing its military advantage to other nations. Russia and China exist in a gray zone between near-peer and peer competitor. While neither possesses the full power-projection capabilities of the United States, both countries’ militaries have harnessed the ability to nullify American advantage in key aspects of warfighting. This advantage is seen most notably in the modernization and procurement of new weapons systems to establish anti-access and area denial (A2/AD) zones that prevent the United States from operating without acquiescence.
America’s Answer to Growing Threats
To fight back against the shrinking capability gaps, the US Army, in cooperation with the US Marine Corps, unveiled the warfighting concept known as multi-domain battle (MDB). This concept identifies five domains in which warfare occurs: land, air, maritime, space, and cyberspace. In MDB, powers seek to achieve temporary windows of advantage in a given domain of battle by effectively harnessing the strength of joint integration and cross-domain fires. This means providing small units with capabilities previously reserved for echelons above brigade. Most readers will have heard of MDB rumblings in the depths of the Pentagon or from the mouths of top Army brass at AUSA symposiums or similar events.
Senators press Mattis, Tillerson on India defense deals
By: Joe Gould
WASHINGTON — A bipartisan pair of key senators are pressing the Trump administration to approve two defense deals between the U.S. and India, arguing that U.S. jobs hang in the balance.
Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Mark Warner, D-Va., jointly sent letters to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. The lawmakers pressed, in one letter, to approve co-production of Lockheed Martin’s F-16 in India and, in the other letter, to approve the export of General Atomics’ Guardian, a nonlethal maritime version of the MQ-9 Reaper.
The two lawmakers co-chair the U.S.-India caucus, while Cornyn is the No. 2 Republican in the Senate and Warner is vice chairman on the Senate Intelligence Committee. For the defense industrial base, the F-16 deal would help sustain the existing fleet, they argue, while the potential Guardian sale is worth $2 billion.
Calling a potential F-16 deal “a historic win,” they urged Mattis and Tillerson “to weigh in forcefully with the White House on the strategic significance of this deal, both to America’s defense industrial base and to our growing security partnership with India.”
On the Likelihood of Large Urban Conflict in the 21st Century
by Sean M. Castilla
Zeravani soldiers conduct urban combat training near Erbil, Iraq, February 2017.[i]
The Chief of Staff of the Army, General Milley, recently said “future war will be largely fought in urban terrain,” and that the Army is currently “suboptimized for urban capabilities.”[ii] In recent years several articles have explored how to go about ‘optimizing’ for future combat scenarios in megacities – urban centers with populations of 10 million persons or more. [iii] Despite this growing emphasis on megacity contingencies, many question the premise of U.S. participation in megacity conflict.
As Major John Spencer (Modern War Institute at West Point) recently noted, the counterargument is that megacity terrain is too challenging in terms of scale and complexity, and consequently it should be considered an “impossible mission and, therefore, not one we will undertake.”[iv] Like Major Spencer, I reject this notion.
This logic is flawed for four reasons. First, humans, and by extension sources of human conflict, are concentrating in urban areas. Second, our potential adversaries will continue to leverage complex terrain, such as large urban areas, to negate U.S. advantages.
Formless Warfare: An Innovative Concept to Gather More Information, Analyze it Faster, and Strike Harder
By Michael Kim and Charles Schultz
Artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous systems, and global drone proliferation all point to the future possibility of ‘formless warfare’, argue Michael Kim and Charles Schultz. This type of conflict, if it indeed comes to pass, will feature a new warfighting system that links intuitive, deep learning forms of AI with drones that function both as munitions and platforms.
“If I determine the enemy's disposition of forces while I have no perceptible form, I can concentrate my forces while the enemy is fragmented. The pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless: if it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot discern it nor the wise make plans against it.”
-- Sun Tzsu, Art of War
On March 21, 2013, in a conference hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, LTG H.R. McMaster stated that there are four main continuities in war and warfare: 1. War is an extension of politics, 2. War is a profoundly human endeavor, 3. War is uncertain, and 4. War is a contest of wills.1 These thoughts reflect those established by Clausewitz in the early 19th century and continue to reverberate throughout the US Army’s development of doctrine and capabilities. Although it is fair to say that war will continue to be a human endeavor, history has shown that the instruments used to carry out this “contest of wills” can drastically change. This paper presents a vision of future warfare by extrapolating technological trends and uniting them under an operational concept that, when followed, allows the US to remain the sole dominant military force in 2030-2050.
After attack, UK calls for backdoor to encryption app
by Gregory Katz
LONDON (AP) — Westminster Bridge attacker Khalid Masood sent a WhatsApp message that cannot be accessed because it was encrypted by the popular messaging service, a top British security official said Sunday.
British press reports suggest Masood used the messaging service owned by Facebook just minutes before the Wednesday rampage that left three pedestrians and one police officer dead and dozens more wounded.
As controversy swirled over the encrypted messages, police made another arrest in Birmingham, England, where Masood had lived. The 30-year-old is one of two men now in custody over possible links to the attack. Neither has been charged or publicly named.
Masood was shot dead on the grounds of Parliament.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd used appearances on BBC and Sky News to urge WhatsApp and other encrypted services to make their platforms accessible to intelligence services and police trying to carrying out lawful eavesdropping.
“We need to make sure that organizations like WhatsApp — and there are plenty of others like that — don’t provide a secret place for terrorists to communicate with each other,” she said.
The Legend of Sophistication in Cyber Operations
Ben Buchanan
Executive Summary
In a drumbeat of news stories and corporate press releases, one phrase has dramatically grown in use over the last decade: “sophisticated cyber attack.” These words have been used to describe specific intrusions into telecommunication providers, insurance companies, social media hubs, banks, the Pentagon, a host of security firms, government agencies, research labs, movie studios, and much more. It seems the world is awash in sophisticated network intrusions.
But if everything is sophisticated, nothing is. This paper unpacks “sophistication” in cyber operations, exploring what it means, and what it should mean, for an operation to attain such a status. It examines the incentives for victims and observers to overstate the sophistication of other actors. Additionally, it offers a more rigorous framework for defining the term that takes into account technical and operational factors. But deploying the lens of sophistication by itself can be misleading; this paper also explores the incentives some actors have to deploy less sophisticated capabilities.
Fifty Years of the Outer Space Treaty: Tracing the Journey
Ajey Lele
Developments in the outer space arena post the erstwhile USSR launching the first man-made satellite Sputnik in space on 4 October 1957 have transformed the world significantly. In order to ensure the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes, the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) was set up by the United Nations General Assembly in 1959. Subsequently, this committee led to the foundation of the “Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies”. This treaty is commonly known as the Outer Space Treaty (OST). This treaty was opened for signature on January 27, 1967 as a binding legal instrument. On January 27, 2017, this treaty competes 50 years. Over the years this treaty has largely ensured responsible conduct of space activities. This book attempts to examine and contextualize the treaty and its relevance in the 21stcentury while tracing its journey over the last fifty years.The Rules of the Brave New Cyberworld
William Burns
Donald Trump’s election is the latest and most dramatic manifestation of a moment of staggering global transformation and volatility. The diffusion and fragmentation of power, capital, and politics are fueling profound forces that are shaking the underpinnings of international order: the return of great power rivalry and the rise of conflict after many years of decline; the emergence of new powers; the shift of economic dynamism from West to East and destabilizing economic stagnation and dislocation; and the rejection by societies in many regions of globalization and the embrace of an angry, fortress-like nationalism.
Technology — broadly speaking, the internet, mobile platforms, social media, and computing power — is among the most powerful of these forces, for good and ill.
Technological innovation has contributed to the most significant period of economic growth and poverty alleviation in modern history, increased life expectancies, expanded productivity, ushered in a new era of clean energy, and reshaped global communications and commerce. In half a century, the world has gone from zero digital wireless devices to more than 4 billion, and one-third of the world’s population is now on the internet. An additional 2 billion to 3 billion people will come online in the next three years, marking what will be the fastest period of internet adoption in history.
While the internet has become a critical lifeblood for economies and societies, this also makes it an increasingly contested and volatile global commons. Advanced economies lose billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of jobs a year as a result of malicious cyberactivity, while nearly half of all internet users around the world are chained by government restrictions on internet content, access, and communication. Malign forces prey on the vulnerability of technologically dependent and interconnected societies, recruiting foot soldiers, targeting critical infrastructure, and meddling in politics.
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