The 2004 Battle That Saw American Troops Involved in the Heaviest Urban Combat They'd Seen Since Vietnam

Samantha Franco

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The Second Battle of Fallujah took place between November 7 and December 23, 2004, as part of the Iraq War. It's considered the heaviest urban combat involving American troops since the Battle of Huế in 1968. Fought exclusively against insurgents, it's also considered the bloodiest American engagement to have occurred during the conflict.

Impetus for the First Battle of Fallujah

Before the Second Battle of Fallujah came the first, provoked by insurgents who'd captured and killed four private military contractors from Blackwater. Their bodies were burned and hung from a bridge in the city, in what the insurgents saw as an act of superiority. On the American side, some likened the incident to the Battle of Mogadishu during the Somali Civil War .

American political leaders knew a significant military response was required and thus ordered the 1st Marine Division to retake Fallujah. The battle commenced on April 28, 2004, under the codename Operation Vigilant Resolve , and ended in an agreement that saw control of the city placed in the hands of a locally-run Iraqi security force.

The future of intelligence analysis: US-Australia project on AI and human machine teaming

William Usher, Dr Alex Caples, Katherine Kurata and Nandita Balakrishnan

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Rapid advances in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies since late 2022, particularly the deployment of Generative AI (GenAI) chatbots powered by large language models (LLMs), have demonstrated the potential for AI to revolutionize how states conduct intelligence work. AI technologies are very likely to continue to rapidly advance given the large amount of investment from the private sector and nation states, with some experts predicting we will see the advent of artificial general intelligence (AGI) – a type of AI that achieves, or surpasses, human-level capacity for learning, perception, and cognitive flexibility – by the end of this decade. Even if this ambitious goal is not fully met, the LLMs available within the next three years will probably far surpass the capabilities of systems we use today and will be able to solve complex problems, take action to collect and sort data, and deliver well-reasoned assessments at scale and at speed.

There are opportunities for U.S. and Australian IC leaders to collaborate on the development and responsible deployment of AIs for intelligence analysis. Potential areas for cooperation include articulating ethical and analytic standards for the use of AI systems, exchanging findings from AI testing and evaluation programs, sharing best practices in the management of humanmachine teams, and piloting the use of AI to tackle discrete intelligence analysis problems on a shared high-side data cloud.

From Vegas to Chengdu: Hacking Contests, Bug Bounties, and China’s Offensive Cyber Ecosystem

Eugenio Benincasa

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Introduction

The Chinese government has created an elaborate multifaceted “hack-for-hire” ecosystem that is unlike anything we have ever seen before. The system grants Chinese security agencies exclusive access to zero-day vulnerabilities (box 1) identified by China’s top civilian hackers, and allows Beijing to subsequently outsource its espionage operations to private contractors. The author’s understanding of the various facets of China’s hack-for-hire ecosystem draws from prior research and sources, including:

• U.S. Indictments (2014-2024): Since 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice has been unveiling indictments against Chinese citizens engaged in malicious cyber activities, laying bare the inner workings and coordination of China’s offensive cyber ecosystem, which is characterized by a web of relationships between China’s intelligence agencies, private companies, and academia.
• Intrusion Truth (2017-2023): Since 2017, the anonymous group Intrusion Truth has exposed over 30 Chinese cyber operatives linked to six Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). Predominantly based on open-sourceinformation, Intrusion Truth revealed connections between China’s IT sector, academia, and the nation’s intelligence agencies.

Israel’s Pager Attack Was a Tactical Success Without a Strategic Goal, Analysts Say

Patrick Kingsley

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Israel’s attack on pagers and other wireless devices belonging to Hezbollah was a tactical success that had no clear strategic effect, analysts say.

While it embarrassed Hezbollah and appeared to incapacitate many of its members, the attack has so far not altered the military balance along the Israeli-Lebanese border, where more than 100,000 civilians on either side have been displaced by a low-intensity battle. Hezbollah and the Israeli military remained locked in the same pattern, exchanging missiles and artillery fire on Wednesday at a tempo in keeping with the daily skirmishes fought between the sides since October.

Although the attack on Tuesday was an eye-catching demonstration of Israel’s technological prowess, Israel has not so far sought to capitalize on the confusion it sowed by initiating a decisive blow against Hezbollah and invading Lebanon. A second wave of blasts was heard across Lebanon on Wednesday, reportedly caused by exploding walkie-talkies and other devices, but the Israeli military did not appear to be preparing for an imminent ground invasion.

And if the pager attack impressed many Israelis, some of whom had criticized their government for failing to stop Hezbollah’s strikes, their core frustration remained: Hezbollah is still entrenched on Israel’s northern border, preventing tens of thousands of residents of northern Israel from returning home.

Second Wave of Blasts Hits Lebanon as Hand-Held Radios Explode

Euan Ward, Aaron Boxerman, Hwaida Saad and Michael Levenson

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A second wave of deadly blasts rocked Lebanon on Wednesday, as hand-held radios that had been covertly turned into explosive devices and carried by Hezbollah members blew up across the country, killing at least 20 people, wounding more than 450 others and shocking the nation.

It was the second coordinated attack against Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group backed by Iran, and the explosions came as the country was burying its dead from the day before, when pagers exploded, killing at least 12 people and injuring 2,700 more, officials said.

Hezbollah blamed Israel for the pager attack, and American and other officials said Israel had hidden tiny explosives in a shipment of Taiwanese-made pagers imported into Lebanon.

The Israeli military neither claimed nor denied responsibility for the pager explosions, and it did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the latest attack. But Israeli officials issued statements on Wednesday signaling their intent to take more aggressive action to push Hezbollah forces away from Israel’s northern border.

Hezbollah pager attack puts spotlight on Israel's cyber warfare Unit 8200

Jonathan Saul, Steven Scheer and Ari Rabinovitch

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The mass pager attack against Hezbollah in Lebanon has turned the spotlight on Israel's secretive Unit 8200, the Israel Defense Forces' intelligence unit, which a Western security source said was involved in planning the operation.

Israeli officials have remained silent on the audacious intelligence operation that killed 12 people on Tuesday and wounded thousands of Hezbollah operatives. At least one person was killed on Wednesday when hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated.

A senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters that Israel's Mossad spy agency was responsible for a sophisticated operation to plant a small quantity of explosives inside 5,000 pagers ordered by Hezbollah.

One Western security source told Reuters that Unit 8200, a military unit that is not part of the spy agency, was involved in the development stage of the operation against Hezbollah which was over a year in the making.

Paging Conflict in Lebanon

Greg Priddy

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Lebanon today witnessed another round of hundreds of explosions, this time of handheld radios issued by Hezbollah, one day after a similar episode involving pagers. Twelve people have been confirmed dead in the pager blasts, with around 2,800 injured. Today’s blasts will add to that. Israel has not denied responsibility, and sources quoted anonymously have said the United States was informed in general terms by Israel that an operation was about to be carried out in Lebanon. For the United States, which has for nearly a year been trying to contain the war in Gaza and prevent the low-level exchanges of fire in southern Lebanon from escalating into a broader regional conflict, this is a most unwelcome development. It raises the question: why does Israel appear to be trying to goad Hezbollah into escalation in Lebanon? And why do it right now?

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is in Cairo for yet another round of negotiations between Israel and Hamas, mediated by the United States, Qatar, and Egypt. However, it has become quite apparent that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want a lasting cease-fire in Gaza, which would lead the two extreme-right parties in his coalition to bring down his government and lead to a focus on the “day after” in Gaza, where the United States would likely push against an Israeli reoccupation. It also would, however, likely lead to an end to Hezbollah’s attacks on the northern border areas of Israel, for now.

The Israel vs. Hezbollah War of 2024 Is Getting Closer to Reality

Seth J. Frantzman

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The Israel Defense Forces are increasingly focused on the prospect of a large conflict developing with Hezbollah in northern Israel. The chances for a major war increased on September 17 when thousands of pagers used by Hezbollah members exploded in Lebanon, killing more than two dozen people and wounding thousands. This was an unprecedented toll for Hezbollah to suffer in one day. The group has vowed to retaliate in a way that Israel cannot “imagine.”

Israel has deployed brigades and divisions in northern Israel in strength. Throughout the war in Gaza, which began with the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the IDF has focused on the possibility that a significant conflict will develop with Hezbollah. In fact, when Hamas attacked on October 7, many assumed it was only the opening move of a larger attack by Hezbollah and Iranian-backed proxies in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq. For this reason, Israel has been on alert in the north for eleven months. One outcome of that alert was the decision in October 2023 to evacuate more than 60,000 Israelis from their homes. The evacuation took place along the line of Israeli communities that are on the Lebanese border.

Will the pager operation deter Hezbollah and Iran, and is Israel prepared for war if not?

David Horovitz

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Tuesday’s detonation of thousands of Hezbollah pagers across Lebanon and into Syria was a spectacular feat of intel, technology and execution — the starkest of contrasts to the abject failures that enabled Hamas to carry out its October 7 invasion, mass murder, rapes, and abductions.

The exploding pagers operation — widely reported to have been carried out by Israel, though not acknowledged here as such — had apparently been devised to serve in the near future as an opening salvo in a major ground offensive to deplete and deter Hezbollah. This, in turn, would aim to create the conditions for a restoration of security in the north and the return of the tens of thousands of Israelis who have been forced from their homes for almost a year.

In such a scenario, the impact of the vast, coordinated wave of explosions could have been extraordinarily significant — not only in directly putting a proportion of Hezbollah terrorists out of action, but also broadly complicating communications and logistics within the world’s largest and most potent terrorist army at the moment of truth.

Why Israel Should Avoid a Major War with Hezbollah

Ehud Eilam

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The sophisticated attack on Hezbollah this week in which Israel is suspected of detonating pagers carried by Hezbollah members could bring a serious escalation in the attrition war between the two sides that started following the Hamas terror strike on Oct. 7, 2023.

Israel is fighting a war on several fronts, mainly against Hamas in Gaza but also Hezbollah in Lebanon, to reestablish the deterrence that failed it last year. The terrorist organization has fired rockets, missiles and attack drones into Israel since the Hamas rampage, resulting in some 60,000 Israelis currently evacuated from their homes in the northern part of the country.

What is occurring now between Israel and Hezbollah, and by extension its patron Iran, is a type of attrition war, in which both sides are trying to wear down the other, though without the commitment of large numbers of forces.

Several reasons to avoid a major war

One of the options Israel is weighing is ending the fight by conducting a large-scale war in Lebanon. But this would be a huge gamble and a grave mistake, for several reasons.

First, Hezbollah is the strongest non-state actor in the Middle East. The Israel Defense Force (IDF) is much more powerful than Hezbollah — Hezbollah does not have an air force, armor corps, heavy artillery or navy. However, Hezbollah has up to 200,000 missiles, rockets and drones that can cover all of Israel.

Talk of US Iraq withdrawal is disconnected from ISIS threat- Opinion

Cameron McMillan and Bradley Bowman

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The bulk of U.S. forces will depart Iraq over the next two years, leaving only a residual force in the semiautonomous region of Kurdistan to provide security to Iraqi Kurds and sustain U.S. forces in Syria, according to Iraqi officials cited in a Sept. 12 report in the Washington Post.

That follows, and at least partially contradicts, previous reporting from Reuters, and Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder could not provide clarity Thursday when asked.

A premature U.S. departure from Iraq that ignores the advice of military leaders and conditions on the ground risks repeating the mistakes of past withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan and catalyzing an ISIS resurgence.

Under the U.S.-Iraqi Higher Military Commission, the United States and Iraq have agreed to discuss a transition to a “new phase of the bilateral security relationship,” though it remains unclear what that relationship would look like and how the U.S. force presence in Iraq would be impacted.

While the details of the future U.S. military posture in Iraq remain murky, the consequences of a premature withdrawal are clear.

Hezbollah vows revenge after deadly pager attack on members - analysis

SETH J. FRANTZMAN

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Hezbollah has vowed to avenge the death and wounding of its members in the pager attack on September 17 and the subsequent incident of exploding radios that took place the next day. It’s not clear how many Hezbollah members were killed, but the number appears to be more than two dozen. Hezbollah says it will retaliate in a way that Israel cannot yet imagine, according to a report at the Hezbollah media Al-Manar.

The Lebanese-based terrorist group has an equation that it looks to for attacks on Israel. In essence this means the group follows certain “rules” in the war it launched on October 8 when it began attacks on the Jewish state to support Hamas in Gaza. Hezbollah has carried out attacks on northern Israel, usually at a depth of a few miles. Whenever it believes Israel has carried out a strike in Lebanon that represents an escalation, Hezbollah then escalates proportionately. It couches this in claims that it is merely responding.

Throughout the 11 months of conflict, Hezbollah has said that certain incidents go beyond the tit-for-tat strikes. For instance, the killing of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut in July was a redline. Shukr was only killed because of the Hezbollah attack on Majdal Shams, which killed 12 children and teens. However, Hezbollah didn’t apologize for that attack and pretended it was not responsible. As such, it then opened an “account” to pay back Israel for the killing of Shukr. Retaliation came on August 25 when Hezbollah tried to launch thousands of rockets at Israel. Israel preempted that attack with airstrikes and only several hundred rockets were launched.

Strategic Surprise—Always?

Azar Gat

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The Complete Success of Strategic Surprises in the 20th Century

A strategic surprise is a surprise at the very beginning of a war. This is in contrast to operational or tactical surprises during a war, which have a mixed record—some succeed and some fail.

It is agreed that the failure to recognize an impending attack is usually attributed not only to the intelligence agencies per se, but also to the underlying political conception and military command. As in other cases of strategic surprises in the 20th century, the failures of October 6, 1973, and October 7, 2023, were not confined to intelligence shortcomings alone. They also involved the political leadership, beyond just the level of formal responsibility. In this context, some have argued that heads of government have a better understanding than the intelligence agencies of the adversary’s leaders, culture, and goals. This argument was particularly true of the Israeli cabinet in 1973. As members of Israel’s founding generation, they, especially the then Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan, had extensive political and military experience. However, it is doubtful whether this argument applies to all other cases, or to the events of October 7, 2023. Nevertheless, it does not change the fact that the prevailing political conception in Israel of Hamas played a significant role in that failure.

US Combatant Commanders Detail Range Of Emerging Threats, Highlight Role Of Partnerships In Maintaining Edge

Joseph Clark

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Partnerships are key to defending against a rapidly evolving threat landscape and assuring the United States’ advantage for the long term, senior Defense Department leaders said this week.

The commanders of U.S. Northern Command, U.S. Cyber Command, U.S. Space Command and U.S. Transportation Command detailed a complex range of threats posed by U.S. adversaries as a part of a panel discussion during the Air, Space & Cyber Conference hosted by the Air & Space Forces Association just outside of Washington.

“What we face today is a variety of threats in all domains, from multiple adversaries and from all avenues of approach,” said Northcom commander Air Force Gen. Gregory M. Guillot.

That multifaceted threat environment, he said, has evolved significantly in recent years, and stands in stark contrast to one where Northcom was primarily concerned with air threats posed by the Soviet Union.

“And these threats can threaten us from much further away than even just a couple of years ago,” Guillot added, noting the persistent and rapidly growing adversarial capabilities in the space and cyber domains.

Lebanon: Walkie-Talkie Blasts Kill 20, Injure 450 In Second Wave Of Blasts

Najia Houssari

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Explosions in Beirut and other parts of Lebanon were apparently a second wave of detonations of electronic devices, state media said on Wednesday.

The report said walkie-talkies and even solar equipment were targeted a day after hundreds of pagers blew up.

At least 20 people were killed and 450 were wounded, the Health Ministry said.

A Hezbollah official told the Associated Press that walkie-talkies used by the group exploded.

Lebanon’s official news agency reported that solar energy systems exploded in homes in several areas of Beirut and southern Lebanon, wounding at least one girl.

The new blasts hit a country thrown into confusion and anger after Tuesday’s pager bombings, which appeared to be a complex Israeli attack targeting Hezbollah members that caused civilian casualties, too.

It's Time to Think About the Endgame in Ukraine | Opinion

Mihai Razvan Ungureanu and Dan Perry

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The stakes for Ukraine could not be higher as the U.S. presidential election looms on the horizon. While former President Donald Trump may seem disinterested in the intricacies of Ukraine's struggle against Russian aggression, his potential return to the White House would have profound consequences for the war, essentially forcing Ukraine to agree to terms it otherwise would not.

His running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, in recent days outlined a foreign policy vision that all but guarantees a win for Russian President Vladimir Putin, advocating for a peace plan that would freeze the conflict along current battle lines, effectively handing Russia control of its occupied territories while forcing Ukraine into neutrality, meaning a promise to join neither NATO nor the European Union. He also suggested that Europe and not Russia (nor the United States) should bear the costs of a reconstruction estimated at close to a trillion dollars.

While this seems like a capitulation, it aligns with a new Republican isolationism that stems from a combination of war fatigue, economic populism, and skepticism toward international institutions. There's a growing inclination to prioritize domestic issues such as the economy and immigration rather than being the world's policeman—and disdain toward global alliances like NATO, with many seeing these commitments as burdens that benefit foreign nations at the expense of American interests.

Is Ukraine’s Offensive Working? Perhaps

Doug Livermore

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It’s very difficult to understand the progress of a military operation, even if you’re there. If you’re somewhere else, it’s even tougher, given that both sides highlight success and downplay failure. When, for example, was the outcome and significance of the Battle of the Bulge understood? It took a while.

So it’s early to declare Kursk a success or failure, or even a draw. Even so, there are signs emerging from reliable analytical sources that Ukraine’s operation is having at least some effect on its most important aim — to siphon Russian forces from Eastern Ukraine to Kursk and so weaken its successful offensive in Donbas.

Estimates suggest there is a substantial movement of forces into Kursk Oblast. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) cites Ukrainian estimates that troop numbers rose to around 40,000 from about 11,000 at the start of the incursion. The Ukrainians say another 20,000 are on the way.

ISW stated that Ukraine has “forced the Russian military command to redeploy elements from Ukraine to Kursk Oblast and commit newly generated forces from within Russia to the area instead of the frontline in Ukraine.”

The Dangers of Uncontrolled Immigration

Rafael L. Bardají

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As of June 7, 2024, for the first time in the history of Spain, the prison population of young people born abroad exceeds that of young Spaniards in prison, at a ratio of 60 to 40. If we include those born in Spain with Spanish nationality but to foreign parents, that ratio skyrockets to over 70/30. And if we distinguish by categories of crimes, we will find that most convictions for rape and sexual assault fall on foreigners, following an exponential increase in this type of crime in recent years.

Europe—and Spain—are historically accustomed to large population movements, and perhaps for this reason, they view the new wave of immigrants arriving on their shores with a certain benevolence and naïvety. Past migrations occurred within the same civilization, religion, and culture, while the new migratory wave almost always and predominantly comes from Muslim countries and sub-Saharan Africa, which are very distant, if not opposed, to the liberal values, gender equality, and freedoms of the Western world. This fact is overshadowed by a benevolent perspective that grants every immigrant the right to come to Europe, to enjoy the welfare state built and paid for by Europeans over decades, and to welcome them as if they were all refugees fleeing from armed conflicts.

Seizing The High Frontier

Mark Albrecht, Trey Obering, Mira Ricardel & William Schneider

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In his acceptance speech, Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump highlighted two significant initiatives for America’s future national security: establishment of a United State Space Force, created during his Presidency, and the need for a strategic defense system to shield the homeland from missile attacks. Taken together they constitute a clear, compelling and urgent objective for America to seize the ultimate “High Frontier.”

A combined and integrated space superiority and missile defense system will ensure the United States controls the high frontier to protect against attacks by China and Russia today and into the future.

Russia and China have boldly and systematically pursued space dominance. From the Chinese testing our defense networks by flying high altitude surveillance balloons over the United States and actively threatening U.S. assets in space, to Russian anti-satellite (ASAT) testing and cyber interference in satellite communications in Ukraine, these two increasingly aggressive challengers clearly regard space as the next arena for leverage and strategic advantage.

It is time for the United States to seize the high frontier. We have the lead today, but without a focused and concerted effort that lead can vanish.

Can Low-Cost Weapons Save the U.S. from Running Out of Missiles in the Next War?

Sébastien Roblin

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Defense company Anduril unveiled a new family of cruise missile weapons called Barracuda in mid-September, which it began developing on its own initiative. The company says that all three significant variants have already been flight-tested. The current focus is on subsystem development and funding the company’s planned ‘hyper-production’ facility.

Barracuda is pitched as a “low cost but performant,” weapon that is “…simple to manufacture, software-designed, mass producible,” the company’s Chief Strategy Officer Chris Brose said at a press briefing. The public unveiling was accompanied by anime-inspired promotional video, see above.

Low-Cost Weapons: What Washington Needs for the Next War?

Does the U.S. military need the very best weapons money can buy—or the most cost-effective ones it can quickly build in quantity? As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine voraciously consumes munition supplies across the planet, many argue it’s time to tilt in the latter direction.

The Ukrainian Way of Digital Warfighting Volunteers, Applications, and Intelligence Sharing Platforms

Stefan Soesanto

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Introduction

The Ukrainian military situational awareness platform Delta (Дельта) is at the heart of this CSS report. Initially developed in 2015 by Aerorozvidka (Аеророзвідка – then military unit A2724), the platform is currently owned, maintained, and upgraded under the auspices of the Center for Innovation and Development of Defense Technologies within the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (Центром інновацій та розвитку оборонних технологій Міністерства оборони України).

Starting from the war in Donbas in 2014 to the Russian invasion in 2022, the origin and evolution of Delta provide a near perfect case study to trace the development of digital warfare thinking in Ukraine. For this CSS cyber defense report, Delta serves as the red thread to introduce to the reader a host of digital platforms, mobile applications, and Ukrainian volunteer groups that helped to shape Delta. As the war in Ukraine has entered its third year, the story of Delta provides a window into Ukraine’s miltech revolution. This report provides analysts, researchers, and policymakers with a comprehensive understanding as to (1) what opportunities and stumbling blocks volunteer groups had to overcome in their bottom-up push for change, (2) why and how Aerorozvidka pushed for the adoption of a concept known as ‘network-centric warfare’, and (3) how Russia has reacted to Ukraine’s digital warfighting efforts

Safeguarding Subsea Cables: Protecting Cyber Infrastructure amid Great Power Competition

Daniel F. Runde, Erin L. Murphy, and Thomas Bryja

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Subsea fiber-optic cables, a critical information and telecommunications technology (ICT) infrastructure carrying more than 95 percent of international data, are becoming a highly consequential theater of great power competition between the United States, China, and other state actors such as Russia. The roughly 600 cables planned or currently operational worldwide, spanning approximately 1.2 million kilometers, are the world’s information superhighways and provide the high-bandwidth connections necessary to support the rise of cloud computing and integrated 5G networks, transmitting everything from streaming videos and financial transactions to diplomatic communications and essential intelligence. The demand for data center computing and storage resources is also expected to increase in the wake of the artificial intelligence revolution. Training large language models takes enormous, distributed storage to compute, and if those networks are globally oriented, they will require additional subsea capacity to connect them. These geopolitical and technological stakes necessitate a consideration of the vulnerabilities of subsea systems and the steps the United States can take to fortify the digital rails of the future and safeguard this critical infrastructure.

Undersea Cables: Why Do They Matter?

Subsea cables are critical for nearly all aspects of commerce and business connectivity. For example, one major international bank moves an average of $3.9 trillion through these cable systems every workday. Cables are the backbone of global telecommunications and the internet, given that user data (e.g., e-mail, cloud drives, and application data) are often stored in data centers around the world. 

Why Are We Not Winning The Cybersecurity War

Jothy Rosenberg

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Something is very wrong with our approach to cybersecurity. We are not winning the war. The bad guys keep getting through with more and worse attacks every year. Why is this happening? For one thing, the war is asymmetric. Their malware takes just a small amount of code, but our defense systems have grown to be millions of lines of code. Additionally, since the processors in use today are simple, they can’t tell if they are under attack. And to exacerbate that, all software code is buggy, providing an open door to sophisticated attackers whose main way of attacking is by exploiting the inevitable flaws in all software.

What are the dominant approaches used to defend against sophisticated attackers coming in over a network, and why aren’t they more effective? The most common systems—themselves software—employed are anomaly detection, intrusion detection and signature analysis (anti-virus). Because these are software, they also have bugs, so they are in the sights of the attackers, and this means they actually increase the attack surface. Relying solely on these systems is not working.

The alternative to more and bigger software systems defending our most critical computing assets from attack is hardware-based cyber defense. There are just a few hardware-based mechanisms that are used mostly in embedded devices like robots, factory automation, critical infrastructure, automobiles, medical devices, the Internet of Things and so forth. These hardware-based cybersecurity systems are mostly processor-based mechanisms (usually compartmentalization, which is called SGX by Intel, and TrustZone and now Confidential Compute Architecture by Arm).

From Ransomware to Ransom War The Evolution of a Solitary Experiment into Organized Crime

Max Smeets

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Introduction

Historically, discussions on cyber conflict have primarily centered on the involvement of state-sponsored or affiliated groups. 1 Yet, the growing prominence of criminal actors – specifically, ransomware groups – now demands a shift in attention. Ransomware, a type of malicious activity where hackers lock access to files or systems until a ransom is paid, increasingly threatens both citizen safety and global stability. In 2022, the majority of the U.K’s government’s crisis management “Cobra” meetings were convened in response to ransomware incidents rather than other national security emergencies.2 According to Sami Khoury, the head of the Canadian Center for Cyber Security, the threat from nation-states remains significant but cybercrime, of which ransomware is the most disruptive form, is “the number one cyber threat activity affecting Canadians.”3 The Swiss National Cybersecurity Centre warns that ransomware could pose an “existential threat” to businesses and government agencies.

This report discusses significant milestones in the development of ransomware, and what turned them into a significant threat to human and national security.

It starts with the adoption of better encryption techniques by criminals, enabling them to effectively hold data for ransom. The use of botnets subsequently expanded their operational reach, while there was also a shift away from prepaid card systems in favor of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which provided anonymity and ease of transaction.

Examining the capabilities and risks of advanced AI systems

Chinasa T. Okolo

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In November 2023, the United Kingdom hosted the first global AI Safety Summit, which convened a diverse coalition of world leaders, technologists, academics, and civil society groups to accelerate international action on the safe and responsible development of frontier AI. In addition to producing the Bletchley Declaration on AI safety, the Summit also commissioned a “State of the Science” report to help create international consensus on the present and potential future risks, opportunities, and capabilities of general-purpose AI. The interim version of this international collaboration was unveiled at the AI Seoul Summit in May 2024.

I contributed an analysis on current issues regarding the underrepresentation of non-Western languages and cultures in AI systems, which contributes to the growing AI divide and analyzed various aspects of bias in AI. Such contributions fit within the broader discussion on AI capabilities—assessing and understanding general-purpose AI, risks from such systems, and methods for mitigating such risks—and must be highly considered as global debates continue.

This report underscores the necessity for broader global cooperation in defining AI risks and developing robust mitigation solutions. As the U.K. government prepares for the final report to be published ahead of the AI Action Summit in France in February 2025, there is the need for a concerted effort to improve international cooperation in AI, particularly by including governments, researchers, and civil society advocates from the Global South. Equitable inclusion of diverse perspectives will be crucial to contend with the risks and harms from AI and democratize the benefits of these systems.