*** India's 2017 Joint Armed Forces Doctrine: First Takeaways

Source Link

By Ankit Panda

This week, India’s latest Joint Armed Forces Doctrine was made public. The document offers insight into the principles that guide the Indian military’s approach to warfighting. Released by Admiral Sunil Lanba, the chairman of the Indian chiefs of staff committee, the document focuses on India’s conception of its national security and its strategy for managing threats across the “full spectrum of military conflict.” In this sense, the document addresses the principles guiding the Indian military’s approach to everything from nuclear war to internal security and counter-insurgency. The document will merit sustained and serious scrutiny. Below, I highlight a few (early and provisional) takeaways that jumped out to me on a first read.

One of the first and most obvious observations that has already drawn headlines in the Indian press is that the doctrine explicitly acknowledges that so-called “surgical strikes” will, going forward, be a formal part of India’s retaliatory toolkit against “terror provocations.” India claimed to demonstrate this last September, after the deadly Uri attack, in which Pakistan-based militants killed more than a dozen Indian Army soldiers. Moreover, there is evidence of operations by Indian forces across the Line of Control (the de facto border demarcating India- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir) going back to the early 2000s. Nevertheless, insofar as the joint doctrine document is intended for consumption across India’s western border, the explicit mention of “surgical strikes” is a signal.

How H-1B Visa Changes Could Benefit Indian Professionals

Source Link

President Trump has issued an executive order directing some U.S. agencies to review the nonimmigrant, H-1B work visa policies, which at present allow companies to hire “skilled” foreign workers when employers say they cannot find qualified Americans. Trump has questioned the impact of the program, saying that it represses American wages by paying foreign workers less. The U.S. issues 85,000 H-1B visas annually, and extends or reissues another 100,000 visas, according to Forbes. Last year, nearly 127,000 visas went to Indian nationals, about 21,700 to Chinese workers and 2,540 to Mexicans to round out the top three.

Should the review lead to curtailing the visas, on first glance it looks likely to hit Indian professionals — and Indian tech companies in particular — the hardest. But in this opinion piece, Ignatius Chithelen argues that some Indian visa holders could actually end up ahead. He is the author of Six Degrees of Education: From Teaching in Mumbai to Investment Research in New York, and the founder and managing partner of Banyan Tree Capital Management.

SC-Appointed CoA Needs To Be Sacked For Failure To Protect Indian Cricket’s Clout And Revenues

R Jagannathan

Source Link

The Supreme Court should make amends for its foolhardiness in weakening Indian cricket by insisting that nothing less than the old revenue formula can be accepted by the CoA.

If it does not do that, it will have failed to protect Indian cricket’s interest. Which is what it set out to do when it started meddling with the BCCI.

It is difficult to see why the Supreme Court, which took an enormous interest in the affairs of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), should not share a part of the blame for the diminution of India’s clout and revenues in the world of cricket.

This conclusion cannot be avoided given the sorry figure India has cut at the recent meeting of the International Cricket Council (ICC), where members voted 9-1 to cut BCCI’s revenue share from around $570 million negotiated some years ago to just over half that number, around $290 million. A compromise formula may still get the BCCI some more money, but it would still not be as much as what was agreed earlier.

This is about surrender when only tough negotiations were required.

How to to Stabilize Afghanistan What Russia, Iran, and the United States Can Do

By Scott Worden

The Afghan military, backed by some 8,400 U.S. troops, is struggling to shore up its ranks after a devastating attack killed over 100 soldiers on a military base in Mazar-i-Sharif, marking a morbid beginning to another summer fighting season. This time around, though, the Afghans and their American partners have two more forces to contend with: Russia and Iran. 

Both countries stepped up their support of the Taliban over the winter, possibly as a hedge against persistent American indecision about how deeply to stay involved, and for how long. Left unchecked, Russian and Iranian support could enable the Taliban to win the long-term occupation of a provincial capital this summer, which would further erode Afghan government legitimacy. To head off such an outcome, the new Trump administration must consider an approach that brought some success in the aftermath of the 2001 U.S. invasion: rebuilding a regional consensus with Russia and Iran—as well as China, India, Pakistan, and the Gulf states—to stop funding proxies and support stability in Afghanistan.

Russia’s support for the Taliban has altered the regional dynamic that fuels the war. Since the end of 2016, Russia has reportedly been providing arms to the Taliban operating in northern Afghanistan. Russian officials have also reportedly met with Taliban representatives in Russia and Tajikistan. Meanwhile, over the past year Moscow has held discussions with Islamabad and Tehran about their mutual interests in supporting the Taliban. Russia’s sudden cooperation with the Taliban is particularly surprising, given the bloody fighting between their Soviet and Mujahedin predecessors in the 1980s. 

US drone strike kills 7 in northwest Pakistan

Source Link

Two Pakistani intelligence officials say an overnight suspected U.S. drone strike has killed seven militants in a tribal region near the Afghan border.

The officials said Wednesday’s strike in Zuwai village in North Waziristan was the first since 2014 when the Pakistan army launched a major military operation there. The officials said Thursday no high value militant was killed in the strike.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to media on the record.

Pakistan’s tribal regions have been the scene of CIA drone strikes and Pakistani operations, forcing militants to flee toward Afghanistan and set up sanctuaries there.

Pakistan and the Panama Papers Verdict

Rana BanerjiMember, Governing Council, IPCS, & former Special Secretary, Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India 

The long awaited Panama Papers verdict on 20 April, 2017, by the five-judge bench of Pakistan's Supreme Court has stopped short of disqualifying Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and given him a temporary reprieve by ordering investigation by a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) of officials, including those from the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI), within 60 days, under Court supervision.

The 3-2 split verdict suggests that while there may have been enough substance to justify that Sharif may not have been either `sadiq’ (honest) or `ameen’ (trustworthy), thus meriting disqualification under Articles 62 and 63 of their Constitution, this power could not be exercised by the Supreme Court in its `original jurisdiction’ powers under Art 184(3), as it did not relate to a question of public importance related to a Fundamental Right. It purports though, that there were enough grounds to believe that the prime minister and his family members had obfuscated the money trail about the off-shore accounts and especially, the transaction pertaining to purchase of the Mayfair flats in London. 

The JIT has been tasked to work on a `thirteen point’ list of items pertaining to the money trail covering the setting up of the Gulf Steel Mill in Dubai; subsequent sales in Saudi Arabia and Qatar; and details of purchase transactions of the Mayfair flats. The judgment virtually dismisses the veracity of the Qatari Sheikh, Jabbar al Thani’s bailout letters about the money transactions. It also opens up the possibilities of re-opening of the Hudaibiya Paper Mills money laundering investigations of the early 1990s by either the Federal Investigation Authority (FIA) or the National Accountability Bureau (NAB). The role of NAB Chief Qamar Zaman in not challenging the September 2014 Lahore High Court verdict exonerating the Sharifs in the Hudaibiya case has been castigated. The JIT’s would now be `a criminal investigation’, which would have to be placed before a fresh bench of the Supreme Court to finally decide on the matter.

South Asia is not the most dangerous place on Earth

Source Link

Ramamurti Rajaraman

Nuclear weapons are arguably among the most dangerous inventions of man. The scale and rapidity of the destruction they can cause is unparalleled, as evidenced by the two occasions that they were used on civilian populations and by the numerous tests conducted on testing ranges. It follows that any country choosing to possess nuclear weapons is creating an existential threat, not only for its adversaries but also for itself and for its general neighborhood. Such places are all very dangerous to be in.

Given the immensity and gravity of this danger, it might seem silly and ghoulish to quibble over which nuclear weapon country is a greater danger than the others. Nevertheless, in the 70-year history of nuclear weapons such comparisons have often been made by diplomats, national leaders, scholars, and the media. Motivations have varied. Mostly they come from genuine concern for the safety of that region and of the world in general. But sometimes it is part of the thrust and parry of diplomatic engagement, or a strategic step to name and shame a country. It can also be a strategy for individuals and nongovernmental organizations specializing in that region to enhance the importance of their scholarly niche and ensure the next tranche of grant money.

How is China feeding its population of 1.4 billion?

Source Link

Food security is critical to the well-being of all countries. Fragile states are often those that are the most food insecure, as limited access to basic staples can undermine a country’s social and economic stability.

Decades of near double-digit GDP growth have enabled China’s leaders to make considerable strides in increasing food access across the country. Yet China’s economic boom has generated a new set of demographic demands and environmental strains that have affected its agricultural capacity. This feature explores China’s domestic production, the changing dietary demands of its public, and the role international trade plays in China’s food security.

Four decades of rapid economic growth has fueled a dramatic reduction in China’s undernourished population. Undernourishment is defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations as the condition of an individual not acquiring enough food to meet the minimum dietary energy requirements for a year, and therefore serves as a key indicator for conditions of chronic hunger. According to the FAO, China’s undernourished population rate fell from 23.9 percent in 1990 to 9.3 percent in 2015. This reduction has occurred concurrently with rising per capita income levels that have soared by more than two-thousand percent over the same period.

What do we know (so far) about China's second aircraft carrier?

Source Link

Five years after commissioning its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, China launched its second carrier – the Type 001A – on April 26, 2017. Unlike its Soviet-built predecessor, the Type 001A is China’s first domestically built carrier. Both carriers are similar in size and use a STOBAR (Short Take-Off But Arrested Recovery) system for the launch and recovery of aircraft. Although similar to the Liaoning, the Type 001A features some notable enhancements and represents an important step in China’s developing aircraft carrier program.

KEY FACTS 

The control tower island of the Type 001A is approximately 10 percent smaller than that of the Liaoning. 

It displaces roughly 65,000 – 70,000 tons, a few thousand more tons than the Liaoning. 

It features the advanced Type 346 S-band AESA radar system. 

Its airwing is expected to be slightly larger than that of the Liaoning, featuring around 8 additional aircraft. 

The Type 001A may have an internal arrangement that is better optimized than the Liaoning’s. 

It is expected to be commissioned around 2020. 

COMPARING THE TYPE 001A AND THE LIAONING

Outlines derived from satellite photos demonstrate the similarities between the carriers.

Chinese, Russian hackers adapting latest Shadow Brokers exploits, tools

Source Link

by Tony Ware

Mentions of exploits and tools released by the Shadow Brokers hacker group have been cropping up increasingly on Chinese- and Russian-language websites, indicating that weaponization is imminent.

Shadow Brokers, most known for the August 2016 release of NSA tools and exploits, released its latest batch of malware April 15. Reverse engineering and reporting by security researchers, such as threat intelligence company Recorded Future, identified the exploit framework (named FUZZBUNCH), the SMB malware (ETERNALBLUE) and the privilege escalation tool (ETERNALROMANCE), as well as the DOUBLEPULSAR kernel payload. 

This release has resulted in broad interest among top-tier dark-web cyber communities centering on malware trigger points and setup tutorials for the new exploits. Malicious actors may reuse or repurpose these toolsets to take advantage of underlying vulnerabilities.

The research, including links to alerts and critical system patches that could help minimize vulnerabilities, can be found at RecordedFuture.com.

Expert details ‘centrality of information’ to China’s cyber ops, security strategy

Source Link 

by Brad D. Williams

An expert on China provided members of Congress a broad overview Wednesday of current Chinese military and strategic thinking, including China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) focus on “informationization” (xinxihua) and “informationized warfare” (xinxihua zhanzheng). The expert also outlined the Chinese “integrated” view of cyber, network, electronic, space and kinetic warfare.

Dean Cheng, senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, gave oral and detailed written testimony to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. The hearing occurred on World Intellectual Property Day, with opening remarks from Subcommittee Chair Ted Yoho, R-Fla., noting China’s “systematic and widespread theft” of American intellectual property.

The hearing’s oral testimony leaned toward trade and economic issues in what Yoho characterized as the “most consequential bilateral relationship in the world,” but discussion regularly reverted to China’s ongoing cyber espionage and its continued use of soft-power tactics to outmaneuver the U.S.

Chinese and Russian Cyber Communities Dig Into Malware From April Shadow Brokers Release

Source Link

As of April 15, the Chinese cyber community had begun to investigate the most recent release of malware from the Shadow Brokers group. Security researchers and cyber actors reversed several of the tools and were particularly interested in the exploit framework (named FUZZBUNCH), the SMB malware (ETERNALBLUE), and the privilege escalation tool (ETERNALROMANCE).

Chinese-speaking actors additionally focused on the unique malware trigger point and some claimed that the patches for CVE-2017-0143 through -0148 were insufficient because they did not address the base code weaknesses.

Iraq: Proving Ground For Multi-Domain Battle

Source Link

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

ARMY WAR COLLEGE: The brutal ground war in Iraq holds vital lessons for sophisticated future operations in the Pacific, Australian Maj. Gen. Roger Noble said today. Military pundits often draw a sharp distinction between what they consider low-tech warfare against irregular forces, as in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, and high-tech war against states like China and Russia. But when Noble went from a tour in Iraq last year to the Hawaii headquarters of US Army Pacific, he said, the cutting-edge concepts of Multi-Domain Battle that USARPAC is experimenting with forcefully reminded him of coalition operations against Daesh, the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

“Last year, we saw the future,” Noble told the Army War College here. “We came back and read Multi-Domain Battle (and thought) ‘we saw version 1.0 in Iraq.'”

Multi-Domain Battle calls on the services to break out of their traditional comfort zones and extend their reach into each other’s domains so they can support each other and attack the enemy from multiple angles at once. That requires the military to develop not only new weapons — from cyber tools like Stuxnet to shore-based anti-ship missiles — but new systems of command, control, and communication to bring the disparate efforts together.

The Drumbeats Don’t Add Up to Imminent War With North Korea

Source Link

By MARK LANDLER

WASHINGTON — President Trump summoned all 100 members of the Senate for a briefing by his war cabinet on the mounting tensions with North Korea. An American submarine loaded with Tomahawk missiles surfaced in a port in South Korea. Gas stations in the North shut down amid rumors that the government was stockpiling fuel.

Americans could be forgiven for thinking that war is about to break out. But it is not.

The drumbeat of bellicose threats and military muscle-flexing on both sides overstates the danger of a clash between the United States and North Korea, senior Trump administration officials and experts who have followed the Korean crisis for decades said. While Mr. Trump regards the rogue government in the North as his most pressing international problem, he told the senators he was pursuing a strategy that relied heavily on using China’s economic leverage to curb its neighbor’s provocative behavior.

Recent American military moves — like deploying the submarine Michigan and the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson to the waters off the Korean Peninsula — were aimed less at preparing for a pre-emptive strike, officials said, than at discouraging the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, from conducting further nuclear or ballistic missile tests.

Europe’s China Pivot

Source Link

By Robert Manning

“The future has already arrived,” sci-fi writer William Gibson famously quipped, “it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” Few in the United States noticed when a freight train arrived in London in January 2017, completing a 7,500 mile journey from China, yet this train, its route an echo of the ancient Silk Road, just may have offered a glimpse of the future.

China is already the world’s largest trading nation, with some $3.9 trillion in two-way trade in 2016. The European Union, with its $17 trillion economy, roughly the size of that of the United States, looms large in China’s ambitious but still inchoate vision of connecting both ends of the Eurasian landmass with a 21st century version of the old Silk Road. And to the degree the United States retreats from the post-World War II multilateral system it created, the China-EU relationship could influence the balance of the emerging polycentric order.

Donald Trump’s “America First” posture, his cheerleading of Brexit, and his swift rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership spurred Europe and Asia to rapidly scramble in pursuit of multilateral deals to offset the U.S. retreat. In a letter to leaders of the 27 EU member states earlier this year, European Council President Donald Tusk described Trump, along with an assertive China and an aggressive Russia, as one of three external threats to Europe’s future. Tusk argued that “[w]e should use the change in the trade strategy of the U.S. to the EU's advantage by intensifying our talks with interested partners, while defending our interests at the same time.”

An Onslaught of Islamist Violence Is Europe's New Normal

Source Link

by Sam Westrop

Police secure the Champs Elysées after the April 20 shooting. 

Last Thursday, in an attack that has started to feel routine, Karim Cheurfi opened fire on French police on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, killing a police officer. Cheurfi then wounded two others before he was shot and killed. Police later found a note in which he expressed support for the Islamic State, which later declared him their "soldier."

Following similar attacks in London, Stockholm, Paris, Nice, Berlin and Israel, Europe is waking up to the fact that these abrupt acts of murder — using knives, guns and cars — are the new norm.

Over the last five years, there has been a noticeable change in jihadist methods. During the 2000s, Al Qaeda and other violent Islamist groups were preoccupied with large explosions –terrorist acts that took months of planning, networks of contacts, sources of funding, and supplies of explosive material. The effects, when successful, produced enormous casualties and made for dramatic television. But these plots were also ripe for discovery by law enforcement: large money transfers were noticed, explosive materials were tracked, conspirators were surveilled and Muslim informants exposed whole Islamist cells.

Kremlin Reels From US Missile Strike on Syria

By: Pavel K. Baev

The nearly five dozen Tomahawk cruise missiles that the United States fired on Friday night (April 7) at the Syrian Al-Shayrat airbase produced far more political resonance than kinetic impact. Nonetheless, Russian President Vladimir Putin found himself on the receiving end of the shockwave. He was quick to condemn that “act of aggression.” At the emergency session of the United Nations Security Council, the Russian representative elaborated on the “breach of international law”—only to hear from Ambassador Nikki Haley about US readiness to take more “balanced” measures of the same kind and to hold Russia responsible for crimes committed by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime (Newsru.com, April 7). Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev posted on his Facebook page a vitriolic comment on the Donald Trump administration’s “extreme dependency on the opinion of the Washington establishment,” which brought US policy in the Syrian conflict to “the verge of a military clash with Russia” (Interfax, April 7). Yet, no amount of angry rhetoric can camouflage the sharp deterioration of Russia’s international profile and its position in the Middle East.

Keeping America´s Innovative Edge: A Strategic Framework

Download 

English (PDF, 70 pages, 1.76 MB)

Given the rise of China and India as key technological competitors to the US, this report provides a strategic framework that’s designed to preserve America’s innovative edge. After diagnosing four distinct drivers of US innovation – R&D universities, human capital and intellectual property – the report’s authors focus on five key policy objectives the country should pursue, including the creation of sustainable entrepreneurial environments for startups and the promotion of commercialized research.

The Roads to Power: The Infrastructure of Counterinsurgency

By Laleh Khalili 

In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, a Judean leader tries to stoke a rebellion against the Romans. He tells a small crowd, “They’ve bled us white, the bastards,” and asks his comrades, “What have the Romans done for us?”

The other men reply by cataloging Rome’s great building projects, transportation networks, and bureaucratic systems. The agitator, played by John Cleese, responds: “All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”

I have always found the scene resonant yet deeply inadequate. The idea that an imperial power constructs the groundwork for civilization must have been familiar to the members of Monty Python—all of whom were educated at British institutions that once trained men to rule the colonies. In its celebration of empire, the scene says nothing about how these collateral benefits were first and foremost designed to extract resources and move the soldiers and materiel needed to control them. It ignores the way militaries use infrastructure to pacify intransigent populations and incorporate conquered peoples and places into global systems of rule.

Auftragstaktik: Decentralization in Military Command

Source Link

By Kevin Kallmes

Many 20th century theorists who advocated central planning and control (from Gaetano Mosca to Carl Landauer, and hearkening back to Plato’s Republic) drew a direct analogy between economic control and military command, envisioning a perfectly functioning state in which the citizens mimic the hard work and obedience of soldiers. This analogy did not remain theoretical: the regimes of Mussolini, Hitler, and Lenin all attempted to model economies along military principles. [Note: this is related to William James’ persuasion tactic of “The Moral Equivalent of War” that many leaders have since used to garner public support for their use of government intervention in economic crises from Great Depression to the energy crisis to the 2012 State of the Union, though one matches the organizing methods of war to central planning and the other matches the moral commitment of war to intervention, but I digress.] The underlying argument of the “central economic planning along military principles” was that the actions of citizens would be more efficient and harmonious under direction of a scientific, educated hierarchy with highly centralized decision-making than if they were allowed to do whatever they wanted. Wouldn’t an army, if it did not have rigid hierarchies, discipline, and central decision-making, these theorists argued, completely fall apart and be unable to function coherently? Do we want our economy to be the peacetime equivalent of an undisciplined throng (I’m looking at you, Zulus at Rorke’s Drift) while our enemies gain organizational superiority (the Brits had at Rorke’s Drift)? While economists would probably point out the many problems with the analogy (different sets of goals of the two systems, the principled benefits of individual liberty, etc.), I would like to put these valid concerns aside for a moment and take the question at face value. Do military principles support the idea that individual decision-making is inferior to central control? Historical evidence from Alexander the Great to the US Marine Corps suggests a major counter to this assertion, in the form of Auftragstaktik.

Joint Staff Must Boost Global Coordination; No New Powers Needed: J5

Source Link

By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.

The military’s geographical Combatant Commands (COCOMs).

ARMY WAR COLLEGE: Global conflicts require global military decisions so the Joint Staff must step up to coordinate operations around the world, said a top aide to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. But, Marine Lt. Gen. Kenneth McKenzie told faculty and officer-students at the Army War College here, the Joint Staff can manage this role without new legal authorities and without undermining the authority of the nine Combatant Commands. In the end, the Chairman’s role will remain that of making recommendations to the Defense Secretary and the President, and it is these two — collectively the National Command Authority — who will make the decisions that cut across combatant commanders’ boundaries.

Was Marx Right?

Source Link

by Philip Pilkington

Well, it looks like The New York Times has opened a bit of a can of worms by asking Was Marx Right?. I generally find that this question to be a bit annoying. Was Marx right about what, specifically? That labour is the True and Only source of value? No, he was wrong on that. That communism was an inevitable outgrowth of capitalism? He’s been wrong on that — so far, at least. That capitalism was prone to financial crises? Yes, he was quite right about that.

I suppose I’ve made my point. Marx said a lot of things. It would be rather unusual if he were right about everything he wrote and it would be equally surprising if he was wrong about everything he wrote. Marx was right about some things and wrong about some things. Although the man had a marked tendency to play the prophet in truth he was really just a man, no matter how much some of his contemporary acolytes may insist to the contrary. He was right sometimes and wrong sometimes.

Anyway, the series gives me an opportunity to clear up a few Marxian myths. The first is propounded by Brad Delong in his piece Marx Was Blind to the System’s Ingenuity and Ability to Reinvent. It runs like this,

Marx could not fully grok that rising real material living standards for the working class might well go along with a rising rate of exploitation and a smaller labor share. Thus he takes a demonstration that labor’s share of income might fall and without noticing turns it into a claim that the working class will starve.

Cyber attacks 10 years on—from disruption to disinformation

Source Link 

by Tom Sear

Today is the tenth anniversary of the world's first major coordinated "cyber attack" on a nation's internet infrastructure. This little-known event set the scene for the onrush of cyber espionage, fake news and information wars we know today. 

In 2007, operators took advantage of political unrest to unleash a series of cyber measures on Estonia, as a possible form of retribution for symbolically rejecting a Soviet version of history. It was a new, coordinated approach that had never been seen before. 

Today, shaping contemporary views of historical events is a relatively common focus of coordinated digital activity, such as China's use of social media to create war commemoration and Russia Today's live-tweeting the Russian Revolution as its centenary approaches. 

In 2017 and into the future, it will be essential to combine insights from the humanities, particularly from history, with analysis from information operations experts in order to maintain cyber security. 

IoT, Automation, Autonomy, and Megacities in 2025

Download PDF file of "IoT, Automation, Autonomy, and Megacities in 2025"

This paper extrapolates from present trends to describe plausible future crises playing out in multiple global cities within 10 years. While predicting the future is fraught with uncertainty, much of what occurs in the scenarios presented here is fully possible today and, absent a significant course change, probable in the timeframe discussed.

It is not hard to find tech evangelists touting that ubiquitous and highly interconnected digital technology will bring great advances in productivity and efficiency, as well as new capabilities we cannot foresee. This paper attempts to reveal what is possible when these technologies are applied to critical infrastructure applications en masse without adequate security in densely populated cities of the near future that are less resilient than other environments. Megacities need and will deploy these new technologies to keep up with insatiable demand for energy, communications, transportation, and other services, but it is important to recognize that they are also made more vulnerable by following this path.

Infographic Of The Day: These Are The Countries Most and Least Prepared For Cyber Attacks

Source Link

From Russia's alleged role in the DNC hacks to this month's revealing Vault 7 leak of nearly 9,000 CIA documents, it should now be clear that keeping data safe is of paramount importance for any organization.

Leaks and hacks are causing irreparable damage across the board – and it is now more essential than ever before for individuals, organizations, and countries to be aware of common cybersecurity threats and how to prevent them.