Cyber Wargame - An Indian Scenario

Maj Gen P K Mallick, VSM (Retd), Consultant, VIF

Immediately after the first gulf war in the early 1990’s the theories of Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) and Information Warfare were being studied all over the world as a new kind of warfare. During that time, a course on Information Warfare was conducted at the National Defense University of USA. The course participants were from senior officers of the armed forces, representatives of Department of Defence and Department of State and policy makers from the government. Rand Corporation of US was conducting this course. Continue reading.......

The unexpected trip: The future of mobility in India beyond COVID-19

Source Link

The coronavirus has introduced unexpected complications within India’s automotive and mobility sectors. For OEMs and other stakeholders, it is time to think about new and innovative business models.

COVID-19 has presented India with an unprecedented economic, humanitarian, and healthcare challenge. The lockdown measures have helped contain the spread of the coronavirus but exacted an immense economic toll, with economists now predicting that the country’s gross domestic product will shrink between 1.5 percent and 5 percent during the 2021 fiscal year.1

On the business side, India’s automotive and mobility sectors are among the hardest hit. Following the pattern seen in countries where COVID-19 spread earlier, lockdown measures and other restrictions have limited travel and left many consumers unable or unwilling to purchase vehicles. Adding to the pain, the coronavirus took hold just as automotive OEMs and mobility players were attempting to recover from a precipitous drop in annual sales in 2019.

When looking beyond the immediate challenges, however, the picture is not as bleak. Over the long term, as COVID-19 is controlled and India enters the next normal, we expect that automotive and mobility players will return to their former strength. Although many challenges lie ahead, the coronavirus could accelerate some beneficial trends. For instance, electrification will increase in select segments, such as two-wheel (2W) and three-wheel (3W) vehicles, and shared mobility could also increase because of the growth of various use cases, such as last-mile delivery, ride hailing, and rentals. As they prepare for the future, a solid understanding of the changed landscape can help OEMs and other stakeholders update their strategies for the Indian market.

Battle in the Himalayas

By Jin Wu and Steven Lee Myers

Source Link

China and India have stumbled once again into a bloody clash over some of the most inhospitable terrain on Earth.

A deadly brawl last month killed 20 Indian border troops and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers, punctuating a decades-old border dispute that has become one of the world’s most intractable geopolitical conflicts. It has inflamed tensions at a time when the world is consumed by the coronavirus pandemic, and it has scuttled recent efforts by the two Asian powers to set aside their historical differences.

In the weeks since, the two sides have tried to walk back from the brink, with military commanders and senior diplomats negotiating quietly to disengage. By late last week, satellite photographs indicated that Chinese troops had pulled out of one disputed area where a brawl sparked the latest tensions.

Even so, the broader dispute between the world’s two most populous nations, both armed with nuclear weapons, remains unresolved and dangerous. It involves a region called Ladakh, a sparsely populated area, high in the Himalayas, with close historical and cultural ties to Tibet. It was divided in the years after India gained independence from Britain in 1947 and the Communist Party established the People’s Republic of China two years later.

Afghan Warlord’s Promotion Highlights the Bankruptcy of America’s Longest War

BY EMRAN FEROZ
Source Link

When Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, his main political opponent, signed a power-sharing deal in May, it ended eight months of bitter post-election dispute. It also came with a disturbing price tag, one hashed out among rounds of backroom deals, tense negotiations, and desperate U.S. attempts to keep the government from imploding. Abdul Rashid Dostum, Ghani’s vice president until last year and one of the country’s most notorious warlords, demanded a promotion to the rank of marshal, only awarded twice before in Afghan history. Ghani, who’d long vowed to clean out the warlords, complied. 

Dostum, whose militias are believed to have carried out one of the most notorious war crimes in modern Afghan history during the early days of the U.S.-led invasion, embodies much of what’s gone wrong in contemporary Afghanistan—and especially the failed promise that the U.S. invasion would help create a cleaner, more transparent, more democratic state. Dostum still stands accused of torturing and ordering the rape of a political rival while in office as recently as 2016. After swift Western condemnation, Dostum fled to Turkey, where he enjoys a good relationship with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It wasn’t his first flight to Turkey: In 2008, too, he’d sheltered in Ankara amid similar accusations that his men had abducted, beaten, and sexually assaulted a political opponent. 

Rare Earth Processing Plant Opens in Colorado

By Mandy Mayfield

Source Link

A new pilot plant that will process rare earth elements necessary for many critical U.S. military weapons systems opened in June, as part of an effort to end China’s monopoly on the important resources.

The pilot plant is a joint venture between USA Rare Earth and Texas Mineral Resources Corp. The two companies previously funded a project on Round Top mountain in Hudspeth County, Texas, which features 16 of the 17 rare earth elements.

“Our objective is to set up a domestic U.S. supply chain without the materials ever leaving the United States,” said Pini Althaus, CEO of USA Rare Earth.

The elements are necessary for the creation of a number of weapons systems including the Lockheed Martin-made F-35 joint strike fighter, Tomahawk cruise missiles and other munitions.

USA Rare Earth previously held two grants with the government. One was with the Defense Logistics Agency where the company successfully demonstrated high-purity separation of three rare earth elements, Althaus said.

The World Is Falling for China’s Hong Kong Trap

By Andrei Lungu

Source Link

The Chinese leadership’s decision to introduce national security legislation in Hong Kong has attracted global attention and condemnation. This move was unsurprising, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been trying to tighten control of the autonomous city over the past years and the lack of a national security law has been a sore spot for almost two decades. Yet it was also unexpected – it came at a moment when, as the report of a well-known think tank with ties to the country’s Ministry of State Security described, China faces the most difficult geopolitical environment since 1989, with anti-China sentiment at its highest.

Introducing national security legislation in Hong Kong less than a year after massive protests and a resounding electoral defeat, just four months before Legislative Council elections — all while the COVID-19 pandemic has focused the world’s attention and criticism on China, countries everywhere are rethinking their China policies and exploring how to shorten supply chains, and the United States government is hitting China in almost every way it can — makes no sense. Chinese leaders certainly understood that such a move would be bad for their country from a diplomatic, geopolitical, or economic point of view. Yet they did it anyway. Why?

Why now? Understanding Beijing’s new assertiveness in Hong Kong

Ryan Hass

Source Link

An hour before the toll of the midnight bell on July 1, 2020 — the 23rd anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover to China from British rule — Hong Kong authorities promulgated a new national security law that had been sent from Beijing. The law gave sweeping new powers to authorities to crack down on acts of “secession, subversion, terrorism, or collusion with foreign or external forces.” Chinese authorities defended the decision as necessary for returning stability to Hong Kong. Outside of mainland China, most commentators lamented the new law as a heavy-handed effort by Beijing to impose its authoritarian impulses on Hong Kong. They warned that by eroding Hong Kong’s unique attributes — its free speech, free assembly, and legal transparency — Chinese authorities were mortgaging Hong Kong’s dynamism in pursuit of greater societal control.

China’s opaque policymaking process makes it difficult to determine what precisely prompted Beijing to act on Hong Kong now, and it remains too early to draw final conclusions. What drove Beijing to impose the new national security law on Hong Kong? Why now? What are the potential implications for everyday life and commerce in Hong Kong? What will be the impact on U.S.-China relations?

WHAT CAUSED BEIJING TO IMPOSE A NATIONAL SECURITY LAW ON HONG KONG?

If China Invades, Taiwan Could Target Shanghai And Beijing With Cruise Missiles

David Axe
Source Link

If Beijing pulls the trigger and sends its forces streaming across the Taiwan Strait, the war could end quickly. Chinese rockets could pummel Taiwanese forces into submission, clearing the way for tens of thousands of Chinese marines to rush ashore on the plains of southwestern Taiwan.

That’s the best-case scenario for China. The worst-case scenario is that the invasion gets hung up on Taiwan’s fortified island of Penghu, the U.S. Navy sends in two or three aircraft carrier battle groups and the war drags out for many bloody weeks.

If that happens, Taiwan could do more than merely defend its islands and beaches. It could strike back at China with a growing arsenal of long-range, supersonic cruise missiles that could reach as far inland as Beijing.

There was a time, not long ago, when Taiwan’s armed forces were both more sophisticated than China’s and, in key categories such as missile-armed warships, more numerous.

The World’s Most Technologically Sophisticated Genocide Is Happening in Xinjiang

BY RAYHAN ASAT, YONAH DIAMOND
Source Link

Two recent disturbing events may finally awaken the world to the scale and horror of the atrocities being committed against the Uighurs, a mostly secular Muslim ethnic minority, in Xinjiang, China. One is an authoritative report documenting the systematic sterilization of Uighur women. The other was the seizure by U.S. Customs and Border Protection of 13 tons of products made from human hair suspected of being forcibly removed from Uighurs imprisoned in concentration camps. Both events evoke chilling parallels to past atrocities elsewhere, forced sterilization of minorities, disabled, and Indigenous people, and the image of the glass display of mountains of hair preserved at Auschwitz.

The Genocide Convention, to which China is a signatory, defines genocide as specific acts against members of a group with the intent to destroy that group in whole or in part. These acts include (a) killing; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm; (c) deliberately inflicting conditions of life to bring about the group’s physical destruction; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Any one of these categories constitutes genocide. The overwhelming evidence of the Chinese government’s deliberate and systematic campaign to destroy the Uighur people clearly meets each of these categories.

It’s too early to count Hong Kong out just yet

Source Link

Reaction to the imposition of a national security law on Hong Kong has clouded the vision of the city’s future as a financial and transport hub. But the potential fallout from Beijing’s move cuts both ways, prompting some to think the gloomy rhetoric is premature.

Australia has just followed Canada’s response in cancelling its extradition treaty with the city as well as holding out the prospect of extensions of student and temporary visas as a path towards citizenship.

There is no question that in many eyes Hong Kong is facing reputational damage to perceptions of its creditworthiness in terms of faith in its judicial system, and to its role in global law enforcement.

That said, even after taking into account Washington’s downgrading of the city’s special trade and economic relationship, it is arguable that it will remain a financial hub and attractive centre for initial public offerings.

Securing Japan from Chinese ‘Predatory Economics’

By Titli Basu

Source Link

Where does Tokyo stand in crafting an effective economic security strategy? 

Beijing has systematically integrated economic and financial instruments into its foreign policy with the objective of advancing its grand strategic ambitions. From the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to Made in China 2025, Beijing shrewdly incorporated geoeconomic tools of statecraft into its grand strategic thinking. China’s coercive economic maneuvering employs trade, investments, technology, internationalizing of currency and even weaponization of resource supply chains toward geopolitical ends. 

Thus, reorienting Japan’s economic security strategy constitutes a top priority for Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. The objective is primarily to secure cutting edge technologies including next-generation 5G networks; strengthening foreign investment regulations in “core industries” in 12 strategic sectors; blocking COVID-19 bargain hunters grabbing key businesses; protecting intellectual property and averting forced technology transfers; fortifying self-sufficiency in strategic metals and mineral resource supply; managing China’s plans for a digital yuan; and better strategizing developmental aid in the Indo-Pacific. From instituting an economic unit at the National Security Secretariat (NSS), conceiving a U.S.-Japan economic security dialogue, and joining forces with other democracies in a D-10 (the G7 plus India, Australia and South Korea) framework for 5G and the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence — Japan’s strategic thinking on economic security is manifesting. 

Be Realistic About Countering China

By Daniel Davis

Source Link

A number of media reports in early July carried the news that the United States would begin to redeploy some combat troops from Europe and the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific region. The reason for the buildup, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said, was that China has become “the most significant geopolitical challenge since the end of the Cold War.” Contrary to O’Brien’s fears, a clearheaded analysis of the economic, military, and diplomatic realities involved do not justify actions that risk sparking a military conflict between China and the United States.

Sometimes, pressuring an adversary makes sense. Flexing our considerable military muscles can be just the thing to convince an opponent they should reconsider their actions or face the fury of our power. But the circumstances must warrant such behavior, because the consequences of war are so great. A war with China today -- even one we eventually won -- could cripple our military and devastate our economy for years to come. It is therefore of paramount importance that we examine what is genuinely at stake in the Western Pacific for the United States and consider whether taking actions that could risk a war are warranted.

Spoiler alert: they aren’t.

That’s not to say, however, that there aren’t real challenges in our relations with China.

Fire in the Caucasus: Can It Be Extinguished?

By Stephen Blank

Source Link

On July 12, fighting broke out again in Nagorno-Karabakh. This war between Armenia and Azerbaijan remains unresolved. Thus, fighting periodically breaks out, causing loss of lives and property and inflaming the ever-tense political situation in the Caucasus. Predictably, once the latest episode of firing began, both sides blamed the other as has always happened. But beyond these negative outcomes, a return to outright war could bring Russian forces further into the Caucasus and lead to serious challenges involving Turkey who supports Azerbaijan and Iran who supports Armenia. Indeed, in 1993 when Turkey threatened to intervene. General Evgeny Shaposhnikov, President Yeltsin’s military advisor, warned that it could unleash World War III. The periodic resumption of fighting also reflects the utter impotence of the so-called Minsk Group, established by the OSCE and comprising the U.S. France and Russia, to achieve anything.

Negotiations remain quite stalled. Indeed, Azerbaijan's President, Ilham Aliyev, threatened on July 9 to leave the negotiations because nothing is happening there. From here, it looks like Aliyev had good reason for making this statement. Previously analysts tended to agree that neither Baku nor Yerevan was prepared to reveal to their domestic constituencies the sacrifices they would both have to make for peace to occur. Neither are the great powers inclined to push them to do so. Clearly, no member of the Minsk Group thought this issue deserved serious priority, so it continued to erupt periodically as it did earlier this month. In fact, Russia continues to exploit the situation, selling arms to both sides, aggravating tensions so that it can pose as Armenia's only loyal defender, exercise a chokehold on its economy, and obtain a permanent base there at Gyumri for its own purposes.

The Renewed Dependency on Mercenary Fighters

By Mirco Keilberth, Maximilian Popp, Christoph Reuter und Adam Asaad

Source Link

Muhammad was 17 when the war started in his home country of Syria. He was getting ready to begin pursuing an engineering degree in the city of Homs. Adnan, meanwhile, was 30 years old at the time and was working in Homs as a carpenter. His third child had just been born.

Muhammad and Adnan fought on different sides in the civil war in Syria. Muhammad served in the military of dictator Bashar Assad and was eager for stability, while Adnan joined the rebels because of his faith in the revolution. Both dreamed of living in a peaceful, united country.

Now, nine years later, they are once again facing each other across the front lines - but not in Syria. The two are fighting some 2,000 kilometers away from home. In Libya.

In the North African country, Prime Minister Fayez Sarraj is battling the warlord Khalifa Haftar for power in the country. Sarraj is primarily supported by Turkey, while his opponent is backed by Russia. Adnan is making his money as a mercenary in Sarraj's militia network, while Muhammad has joined Haftar's Libyan National Army. And both are asking themselves the same question: How did it come to this?

RIP JCPOA: Why the Iran Nuclear Deal Won’t Be Revived

Judah Grunstein 

Source Link

A series of mysterious explosions have rocked Iran over the past several weeks, including in two locations known to be military and nuclear sites. Although it remains unclear what—or who—is causing the blasts, it is becoming increasingly reasonable to assume they are not mere coincidences. Meanwhile, a leaked document this week purportedly revealed the outlines of a 25-year strategic partnership agreement being negotiated by Iran and China, by which Beijing would provide Tehran with much-needed investment and great-power patronage in return for heavily discounted oil.

Both developments highlight the wisdom of the now-teetering Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but also its limitations and the obstacles to any future efforts to revive the agreement. .

The Undeclared War Against Iran

by Paul R. Pillar

Source Link

Aseries of violent attacks, involving explosions and fires, has been hitting Iran. The incidents have been too frequent and intense to be random accidents. They are part of an organized effort. 

Caution is always advisable in attributing responsibility for such unclaimed acts, especially for all of us outside the government channels that possibly have better information about what is going on. But circumstances point strongly, as some mainstream press reporting reflects, to either or both of two suspects: the Netanyahu government in Israel, and the Trump administration in the United States. 

Both of those suspects have track records that point that same way. The most conspicuous relevant act by the Trump administration was its assassination in January, with a drone-fired missile at the Baghdad airport, of Qassim Suleimani, one of the most prominent political and military figures in Iran. The Israeli record of aggressive acts against Iran has included a series of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Those murders were part of a larger, longstanding Israeli campaign of assassinations throughout the Middle East. That campaign is in turn part of an even larger Israeli record of aggressive acts throughout the region—including, over the past couple of years, scores of aerial attacks in Syria.

The Risk of Too Many Freedom of Navigation Operations

By Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis (Ret.)

Source Link

For the second time since June, a U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer conducted a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) in the Caribbean Sea off the coast of Venezuela last Wednesday. For the first time in three decades, U.S. warships in May conducted FONOPs in the Barents Sea near Russia’s northern coast. And with increasing regularity, U.S. Navy warships press the envelope of challenging Chinese maritime claims with FONOPs as close as 12 nautical miles from Chinese-claimed territory.

Before a mistake or miscalculation results in an armed clash involving a U.S. naval vessel – which could draw the United States into a serious conflict – we need to examine the utility of aggressive FONOPs.

The ultimate purpose for any military operation away from U.S. shores ought to be the security and prosperity of the country. Any operation or action contributing to that objective should be given serious consideration, but anything that has an unacceptable chance of harming U.S. interests should be rejected. FONOPs, as currently practiced, are increasing the chances the United States will one day stumble into a war.

The nature of work after the COVID crisis: Too few low-wage jobs

David Autor and Elisabeth B. Reynolds

Source Link

David Autor and Elisabeth Reynolds ask whether the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the conventional wisdom about automation and inequality in the United States over the past four decades. They make four projections about a rapidly automating post-COVID-19 economy: increasing telework, city de-densification, large-firm consolidation, and forced automation, all of which have significant, negative consequences for low wage workers and economic inequality. On a more hopeful note, they conclude that rising inequality is not the only possible path forward, with the immense government investment of the past months suggesting the possibility of large-scale interventions to alleviate the costs of automation.

How the pandemic is changing the economy

Wendy Edelberg and Jay Shambaugh

Source Link

The COVID-19 public health crisis, the economic shock triggered by the pandemic, and public policy, business, and individual responses to the pandemic together have provoked the sharpest and fastest economic downturn in U.S. history. Both the pandemic and the fiscal policy response have ebbed and flowed, and the economy remains fragile. Wendy Edelberg and Jay Shambaugh discuss how the current crisis fits into historic context and what will be the long-lasting economic consequences. In particular, policymakers will need to address increasing concentration among businesses, accelerating automation, and stark reductions in labor force participation among certain groups. An effective response will require renewed emphasis on antitrust enforcement, changes to the labor market to ensure that those with less education are not left behind, and support for parents, caregivers, and those with compromised health to help keep them attached to the labor market in the face of enormous challenges.

What American Century?

BY JEREMI SURI
Source Link

One problem with arguments that bemoan or cheer the end of the “American Century” is that there never was one. Despite the United States’ moment of economic and atomic predominance after World War II, the United States immediately faced strategic challenges from the Soviet Union, and soon from Communist China, among others. If anything, American citizens felt less safe from foreign adversaries in 1945 than they had a decade earlier.

The Cold War meant that deadly conflict continued. Five years after the Japanese surrender at Tokyo Bay, American soldiers were again in combat in Asia. Between 1950 and 1953 more than 33,000 Americans died on the Korean Peninsula, which remained divided near where the conflict had started. Hostile, aggressive governments in North Korea, China, and North Vietnam redoubled their efforts to undermine U.S. interests, especially around Japan. U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy frightened a majority of Americans into believing that communists were infiltrating all aspects of domestic society. Some American Century.

Pressure from Trump led to 5G ban, Britain tells Huawei

Toby Helm

Source Link

The British government privately told the Chinese technology giant Huawei that it was being banned from Britain’s 5G telecoms network partly for “geopolitical” reasons following huge pressure from President Donald Trump, the Observer has learned.

In the days leading up to the controversial announcement on Tuesday last week, intensive discussions were held and confidential communications exchanged between the government and Whitehall officials on one side and Huawei executives on the other.

As part of the high-level behind-the-scenes contacts, Huawei was told that geopolitics had played a part, and was given the impression that it was possible the decision could be revisited in future, perhaps if Trump failed to win a second term and the anti-China stance in Washington eased.

U.S. Sees Russian Push to Consolidate Foothold in Georgia

BY JACK DETSCH
Source Link

Russia is using frozen conflicts in Georgia’s breakaway regions to further undermine the Caucasian nation’s stability and the viability of its bid to join the European community, according to a State Department report obtained by Foreign Policy, using physical obstructions to harden borders and prevent access. 

In a yearly report to Congress sent in May marked “sensitive but unclassified,” the State Department said open-source reporting indicated that Russia provided up to $275 million in 2019 to finance the vast majority of state budgets in both South Ossetia and Abkhazia—breakaway republics that comprise about one-fifth of Georgia and which Russian forces have occupied since a five-day war in August 2008. 

“Russia has continued to use the conflicts involving Abkhazia and South Ossetia to undermine the independence and stability of Georgia, limit the country’s attractiveness as a potential economic partner, and complicate its EU and NATO aspirations,” according to the report, seen by Foreign Policy. “Russia has not fulfilled its obligations under the 2008 ceasefire agreement, including the withdrawal of its forces to pre-conflict positions, nor has Russia fully implemented its commitment to permit free access for humanitarian organizations in the regions it occupies.”

To Pay for the Pandemic, Dry Out the Tax Havens

BY DAVID L. CARDEN

Source Link

The costs associated with the COVID-19 pandemic and its massive economic fallout are difficult to estimate, but the sums will be enormous. The first U.S. stimulus package alone exceeded $2 trillion. Then there is the loss of life, reduced economic productivity, and the personal financial ruin many will face. More stimulus packages likely will be required. Worldwide, the total costs will be even higher.

The bitter truth is that the costs and consequences of the pandemic likely could have been avoided or dramatically reduced if leaders had done their jobs. In 2013, the World Bank estimated that an annual expenditure of only $3.4 billion would have let developing countries build up a robust pandemic prevention capability, making a global outbreak much less likely. Yet this relatively modest expenditure wasn’t made.

It’s also well documented that many leaders, including U.S. President Donald Trump, were too slow to respond to the pandemic, increasing its human and financial consequences. These failures exacerbated the damage suffered by other countries around the world. With economies struggling and sharply reduced tax revenues for the foreseeable future, how will the world pay for this calamity?

Inventing Bogus Antitrust Arguments To Bring Down Big Tech Is Bad For National Security

Loren Thompson

Source Link

Over the last two generations, the U.S. economy has steadily migrated from the production of goods to the delivery of services. Although U.S. manufacturers still dominate in industries such as aerospace and U.S. farmers remain the most productive in the world, their role is the economy is being eclipsed by services.

There are many reasons for this shift, not the least of which are the income and lifestyle aspirations of American workers. Working on a farm or an assembly line is hard, and many—perhaps most—Americans would rather do something else.

The Internet has made that dream possible for a growing number of people, spawning millions of new enterprises and transforming old ones with its unique capacity to stimulate commerce. It is no coincidence that America’s greatest business successes of the new century—companies like Amazon AMZN -1.3% and Alphabet and Facebook FB +0.5%—all depend on the Internet and focus on providing services.

This is a revolutionary trend in business, and unsettling to some. There is a fear that Internet-based enterprises will destroy jobs, evade taxes, invade privacy, spread vices and otherwise cause disruption. Whatever validity these fears may have, they result from the voluntary choices of consumers rather than the business strategies of Big Tech.

COVID-19 and Future of Cyber Conflict

By Muhammad Faizal bin Abdul Rahman

Source Link

In June 2020, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced that government agencies and businesses were facing a cyberattack campaign from a “sophisticated state-based actor.” Evidently, COVID-19 could not convince geopolitical rivals to put aside their differences and act in solidarity against an elusive common foe. Those caught in the middle of geopolitical tensions, especially smaller states, must prepare for a more contested cyberspace.

Pandemic Entrenches Geopolitical Tensions

COVID-19 has highlighted the interconnectedness of states and societies around the world. Ideally, the pandemic should have roused states from their deep geopolitical bitterness and nationalistic insularity. In reality, the pandemic has fanned the flames of distrust and suspicions that underlie geopolitical rivalries.

Some rival states persist in conducting influence operations and hostile acts against each other, despite the struggle to contain the impact of the pandemic. Such states perceive each other as more significant threats than COVID-19. For example, the United States believes that China is exploiting opportunities from COVID-19 to undermine U.S. economic interests and intimidate regional states that claim the waters of the South China Sea. Conversely, China believes the United States is using COVID-19 as an instrument in its global campaign to rally other states against China’s rise. 

Cyber Warfare is the Future

By Micah Halpern
Source Link

The future of war is cyber warfare.

Enemy against enemy, utilizing hackers to sabotage essential infrastructure facilities throughout the world. Targets are national services — water, electric, sewage, bridges, trains, subways, airports, ship ports, banks, hospitals. And, too often, nuclear sites.

If and when attacks are successful, the results are devastating.

To date, almost all these attacks have been repelled. Almost all. Those that have succeeded, have been cleaned. The most dangerous of hacker attacks are those that go undetected.

Hackers are divided into two groups. Good versus evil. Just like in spaghetti western movies of old, they are called, for the time being at least, white hatters and black hatters. But the groups are fluid, hackers often switch groups and, in so doing, don different hats. For many, it's about the money. They hack for profit and chase the biggest paycheck.