"Both the public and the private sector are collecting and using personal data at an unprecedented scale and for multifarious purposes. While data can be put to beneficial use, the unregulated and arbitrary use of data, especially personal data, has raised concerns regarding the privacy and autonomy of an individual. Some of the concerns relate to centralisation of databases, profiling of individuals, increased surveillance and a consequent erosion of individual autonomy."
In “The U.S. Needs to Talk to the Taliban” a New York Times op-ed run on March 19, Borhan Osman mistakenly reduces the popularly elected National Unity Government (NUG) of Afghanistan to one of the internal “factions.” To the contrary, the NUG enjoys a broad popular mandate and support. Like any democracy, Afghanistan is hardly devoid of political differences, which underpin the very essence of democracy: recall tensions in the U.S. two-party system or in the multiparty coalition governments of Europe.
Recent news reports on the alleged arrest and detention of 50 Uyghur women married to Pakistani men from Gilgit Baltistan and a resolution passed by the Gilgit Baltistan Legislative Assembly (GBLA) demanding the federal government in Pakistan take steps to release these women exemplify the escalating on-ground mistrust between the so-called “iron-brothers.” Gilgit Baltistan is significant for both China and Pakistan since the region serves as the gateway to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which has seen a $62 billion investment by the Chinese.
The Trump administration is hardly the first to give Africa short shrift in its national security considerations. The continent received a measly three paragraphs in the 2015 National Security Strategy, mostly concerning epidemic diseases and intrastate conflict, with bare mentions of economic and political engagement. But the stakes are higher now. China is spreading its economic influence across the continent, and securing the production of minerals key to modern electronics. The Africa-sized gap in U.S. strategic thinking must be closed with comprehensive policy before it threatens the interests of Americans and Africans alike.
President Trump has just practically declared a trade war against China (Trump Declares War On China's Unfair Trade Practices). There have been many publications over this matter (Did Donald Trump really just launch a trade war with China?). It's time for me to chip in my two cents: it's a bad thing for both America and China! War, a trade war or otherwise, is bad! War should be used only as the last resort - the only solution to a well-defined problem!
As a signpost along the course of history, there is no ritual more pregnant with uncertainty than the handshake portrait. At some points, it has proved to be a marker of renewal: Robert E. Lee surrendering to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, in 1865. At others, it has been the prelude to disaster: a smiling Neville Chamberlain extending his hand to Adolf Hitler, in 1938. The medium and the wardrobe change, but the essential dynamic stays the same: powerful, sometimes villainous, figures balancing the weight of self-interest, dignity, and mutual suspicion. When the history of Asia in the twenty-first century is written, the portrait of Kim Jong Un’s surprise encounter with Xi Jinping this week may take its place in the pantheon. Kim had not left the country or met with another head of state since coming to power, more than six years ago. Despite relying on China for trade and weapons, he had flouted Beijing’s entreaties to drop his nuclear program and had even gone so far as to test missiles on days when Xi was trying to host solemn occasions, a gesture that seemed either calculated or unconcerned with Xi’s embarrassment.
In the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, western firms like Apple and Intel made large profits by investing in China to take advantage of the cheap labour, often at terrific human cost. As China's economy grew, and the population became wealthier, western firms were then able to profit by selling their products back to the wealthier children of the same labour force which made them. The Chinese government saw this happening, and wanted western firms benefiting from the Chinese market to give something back. It established a system of approving foreign investments on the condition the businesses involved agreed to partner with local firms and transfer knowledge and skills to the local Chinese market.
The specter of water wars has long loomed large in political and popular imaginations. With the end of the Cold War, fresh concerns emerged that future wars would be fought not over ideology but over natural resources. The alliteratively appealing phrase of “water wars” began rolling off the tongue as United Nations leaders and politicians made bold claims about the inevitable carnage that resource scarcity would bring. Climate change heightens these concerns as the gap widens between what science tells us is necessary and what politics tells us is feasible.
The U.S. military isn’t alone in its plans to pour money into drones, ground robots, and artificially intelligent assistants for command and control. Russia, too, will be increasing investment in these areas, as well as space and information warfare, Russian Army Gen. Valery Gerasimov told members of the Russian Military Academy of the General Staff last Saturday. In the event of war, Russia would consider economic and non-military government targets fair game, he said.
In this era of machine meritocracy, the traditional systems of learning and education must be changed to match the reality of a future dominated by phenomena such as blockchain and artificial intelligence. Self-education at home is already a reality, as web-based learning through the likes of Khan Academy, Coursera, TED, Wikipedia and YouTube are among the most prominent free knowledge hubs in the world.
As Putin has become the longest-serving Russian leader since Stalin, the country’s economic and political stagnation is drawing more and more comparisons to the Leonid Brezhnev era. Putin’s political system cannot survive the stresses imposed by major reforms needed to improve the economy, creating a deepening dependency on foreign policy in all its forms to secure legitimacy and, more importantly, money. By all appearances, his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, is tightening his control of the state and policy. This dynamic poses problems for the Kremlin’s most important relationship with a non-Western power.
In 2014, Ukraine’s Russian-backed president, Viktor Yanukovych, was ousted from power after refusing to sign an association agreement with the EU. Since then, two parts of Ukraine’s history have been brought to the forefront in Ukrainian politics, and both have been used as symbols of Ukrainian resistance and its fight for independence. The first is the Holodomor, a famine imposed by the Soviet regime in the early 1930s that killed millions of Ukrainians and was intended to eliminate Ukraine’s independence movement. The second is the paramilitary Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, and Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. Both groups were involved in the massacre of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, two regions that were at the time split between Poland and western Ukraine, during the Nazi occupation of Poland.
When I was young and in Buenos Aires, fair city, melancholy city, a friend said to me: “Journalism’s a cheap shot for you.” I never asked what she meant but I never forgot it either. I think she meant that journalism tends to stop where artistic creation begins, and that is the realm of deeper truths. Buenos Aires was awakening to the scope of a national nightmare. Every conversation seemed to end in tears as parents, haunted by terrible imaginings, recalled their children who had been “disappeared” by the military junta. That many of the thousands of corpses were dumped from planes into the Atlantic between 1976 and 1983 was not yet known./arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-mco.s3.amazonaws.com/public/6ZAKT3GO55BRFNZERJGTIRXN5E.jpg)
In this file photo, a concrete pole carrying feeder lines stands outside an electric company substation in the U.S. Hackers likely linked to the North Korean government targeted U.S. electricity grid workers in September 2017, according to a security firm that says it detected and stopped the attacks, which didn't threaten any critical infrastructure. But the attempted breaches raise concerns. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert) IP NETs, a technology that fits well with plug-and-play devices and software, are increasingly the go-to for multiple types of communication. But recent events show that IP NETs have opened communications and operations to truly dire cyber-threats.
Apparently, the age of the old-fashioned spook is in decline. What is emerging instead is an obscure world of mysterious boutique companies specializing in data analysis and online influence that contract with government agencies. As they say about hedge funds, if the general public has heard their names that’s probably not a good sign. But there is now one data analysis company that anyone who pays attention to the US and UK press has heard of: Cambridge Analytica. Representatives have boasted that their list of past and current clients includes the British Ministry of Defense, the US Department of Defense, the US Department of State, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and NATO. Nevertheless, they became recognized for just one influence campaign: the one that helped Donald Trump get elected president of the United States. The kind of help the company offered has since been the subject of much unwelcome legal and journalistic scrutiny. 
Cambridge Analytica talks a big talk. “We can use ‘big data’ to understand exactly what messages each specific group within a target audience need to hear,” Alexander Nix, the company’s chief executive, said at a marketing conference last year, according to The Wall Street Journal. Documents circulated by SCL Elections, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica, claimed to be “experts in measurable behavioral change.” The company claimed its methodology, “enables us to understand how people think and identify what it would take to change their mindsets and associated voting patterns.”
Last Thursday morning, the Atlanta city councilmember Howard Shook walked into his office and immediately began following the urgent recommendation of his I.T. department: “Principally,” he recalled, “turn off everything.” Shook, who represents District Seven, in Atlanta’s northeastern metropolitan area, has three computers in his office, all of which had been infected with ransomware. “Sixteen years’ worth of information—gone,” he told me. “Every e-mail. All our contacts. All our files: city policy, district-specific projects, activities. It’s devastating.” A few days later, his office was given a clean, unused laptop from the city-council inventory. The I.T. department has since provided new passwords and strengthened the e-mail filters “to the point where there’s a lot of stuff that’s probably not getting in that should get in.”/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-mco.s3.amazonaws.com/public/L2FIYX4KRBEA7F2BXF7E465Q6Y.jpg)
By 2025, the Army sees ground troops conducting foot patrols in urban terrain with robots—called Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport vehicles—that carry rucksacks and other equipment. Unmanned aircraft could serve as spotters, according to the Army’s new strategy for robotic and autonomous systems. (US Army) As the political landscape changes in Europe, the Army is considering new ways to solve problems related to weapons of mass destruction, cyberattacks, and electronic warfare. At the AUSA Global Force Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama this week, Jerry Leverich, who works in Army’s Training and Doctrine Command directorate of intelligence, outlined 12 trends and technologies that his organization is watching to help with that role.
AUSA GLOBAL FORCE SYMPOSIUM: Army Futures Command is meant to unify modernization efforts now scattered across the bureaucracy. But to create the new command, the Army must rip some existing organizations apart. The Army’s challenge is to close more gaps than they create. In the Army’s biggest reorganization since the 1970s, AFC will take over unspecified elements of Army Test & Evaluation Command (ATEC), Research & Development Command (RDECOM) from Army Materiel Command (AMC), and 