Blocking exports and raising tariffs is a bad defense against industrial cyber espionage, study shows
Supply-chain decoupling doesn’t stop rival nations from hacking each other and can make it worse. A cyber-espionage expert explains what does work.
True Costs of Misinformation | The Global Spread of Misinformation Laws
Between 2010 and 2022, 80 countries enacted new legislation or amended existing laws in an attempt to curb the spread of misinformation online. This sharp and global adoption of misinformation laws, however, cannot be explained by the sudden emergence of false or misleading information, as these problems have existed for a very long time.
Creating and Implementing a Liability Regime for Software Vendors
Insecure software is a national security risk, costs the U.S. billions of dollars annually, and exposes users’ information to malicious actors. Software developers (vendors) who fail to securely develop their products currently face few legal repercussions, even if they engage in industry-agreed bad practices.
Gotta Track’em All: Data Privacy and Saudi Arabia’s Pokémon Go Acquisition
In a given month, more than 100 million people open Pokémon Go—the app that allows users to superimpose the world’s most profitable media franchise onto reality using only their smartphone. Using their phone camera and a flick of the wrist, they captured tiny digital monsters at the park, at the office, sometimes in active minefields, and, yes, in the bathroom.
Who else was watching?
Primer on the Costs of Cyber Espionage
Cyber espionage is the use of cyber tools and techniques to gather intelligence or steal sensitive information from targeted entities. This form of espionage poses significant risks to national security, economic stability and corporate integrity. Given the complex and often hidden nature of cyber espionage activities, accurately measuring their costs presents a significant challenge.
Strategic Authoritarian Narratives in the Sahel
In recent years, countries in the Sahel region of Africa have faced widespread insecurity and instability. Stretching across the northern tier of sub-Saharan Africa, Sahel countries Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso have all experienced a series of military coups and rising levels of right-wing extremism.
Technical infrastructure as a hidden terrain of disinformation
While social media disinformation has received significant academic and policy attention, more consequential forms of intentional manipulation target the underlying digital infrastructures upon which society depends.
Disinformation and Identity-Based Violence
Disinformation spread via digital technologies is accelerating and exacerbating violence globally. There is an urgency to understand how coordinated disinformation campaigns rely on identity-based disinformation that weaponizes racism, sexism, and xenophobia to incite violence against individuals and marginalized communities, stifle social movements, and silence the press.
State-sponsored cyber attacks and co-movements in stock market returns: evidence from US cybersecurity defense contractors
As cyber threats become increasingly central to international politics, state-sponsored cyber attacks have become an instrument of geopolitical leverage.
Exporting Autocracy: How Foreign Influence Operations Shape Democratic Attitudes
What impact do foreign authoritarian influence operations (FIOs) have on democracy? Through an examination of democratic attitudes in 15 African countries between 2009 and 2023, we present preliminary but compelling evidence that autocrats export authoritarianism.
Misinformed about Misinformation: On the polarizing discourse on misinformation and its consequences for the field
For almost a decade, the study of misinformation has taken priority among policy circles, political elites, academic institutions, non-profit organizations, and the media.
Mythical Beasts and Where to Find Them
The Mythical Beasts project addresses this meaningful gap in contemporary public analysis on spyware proliferation, pulling back the curtain on the connections between 435 entities across forty-two countries in the global spyware market. These vendors exist in a web of relationships with investors, holding companies, partners, and individuals often domiciled in different jurisdictions.
Secret Cyber Wars: Why States Are Increasingly Turning to Economic Espionage and How Cyber Proxies Play a Key Role
In September 2001, operatives for Procter & Gamble were caught diving in dumpsters outside a Unilever facility in Chicago in search of documents and other discarded items containing confidential information about Unilever’s hair care products business. To avoid litigation and the negative publicity that often accompanies such disputes, the companies quietly reached a negotiated settlement where Procter & Gamble agreed to not use any of the information obtained. This early example illustrates the ongoing vulnerability companies face regarding data security. In today’s corporate environment where digital data storage is the norm, companies now have to be wary of not only paper documents but also discarded storage devices like hard drives, USBs, and even old office equipment that might store digital data.
Book Review Fight for the Final Frontier: Irregular Warfare in Space
A seasoned scholar, strategist, and expert in space policy and strategy, Dr. John J. Klein is well-versed in applying strategic theory to the space domain. In his new book, Fight for the Final Frontier: Irregular Warfare in Space (2023), Klein argues that irregular warfare, in both its military and nonmilitary forms, is a vital and underutilized concept for understanding malicious activities in space and the nature of space warfare. His argument draws on a diverse list of strategic theorists, historians, and contemporary policy analyses. Klein weaves these sources together persuasively, providing an accessible overview of a technologically demanding subject. Policy generalists and students, along with veteran analysts of space policy, will benefit from his account.
Book Review - Cyber Threats & Nuclear Weapons
As the world’s infrastructure becomes increasingly interconnected, more critical systems are exposed to cyber threats. A cyber threat is a malicious act intended to steal, damage, or disrupt digital data. Cyber threats seek to turn potential security vulnerabilities into attacks on systems and networks.
Markets Matter - A Glance into the Spyware Industry
The Intellexa Consortium, a complex web of holding companies and vendors for spyware and related services, have been the subject of recent, extensive sanctions by the US Department of the Treasury and the focus of reporting by the European Investigative Collaborations among others. The Consortium represents a compelling example of spyware vendors in the context of the market in which they operate—one which helps facilitate the commercial sale of software driving both human rights and national security risk. This paper addresses an international policy effort among US partners and allies, led by the French and British governments, as well as a surge of US policy attention to address the proliferation of this spyware.
Small Satellites and International Security
Orbiting satellites perform many tasks: communications, broadcasting, weather forecasting, earth observation, intelligence-gathering, and scientific research. The first satellite, launched in 1957, was a modest metal sphere containing a simple radio transmitter. Since then, satellites have grown in size and complexity. Many are visible to anyone with a reasonably powerful backyard telescope.
Who spies on whom? Unravelling the puzzle of state-sponsored cyber economic espionage
Traditional conceptions of state-sponsored cyber economic espionage suggest that countries with different product profiles should experience high levels of espionage between them. However, this is not what we observe empirically. This article offers new insights into the strategic calculations that underpin state-sponsored cyber espionage and challenges scholars and policymakers to rethink the dynamics of international economic competition and security in the digital age.
New Technology and Nuclear Risk
In 2006, two leading scholars of the nuclear era warned that the age of mutually assured destruction (MAD) was ending. Seventeen years later, the authors are doubling down on these claims, arguing that the outbreak of new conventional conflicts has changed nuclear decision making, increasing the threat of coercive nuclear escalation. In an age of new technology, this warning is more pertinent than ever. The rapid introduction of emerging technologies and their weaponization raises concerns about maintaining strategic stability.
Cyber economic espionage: a framework for future research
The study of economic espionage has been dominated by scholarship focused on its legal and legislative aspects. However, economic espionage has important political economy dynamics that have largely gone unexplored. This is unfortunate because recent technological advances and changing dynamics of interstate economic competition mean there is much scope for a progressive research agenda focused on the political economy of cyber economic espionage. This chapter outlines key under-researched areas where the most progress is possible. I advocate for studies focused on examinations of the motives of cyber economic espionage, its conduct, how governments respond to it and how it is influenced by economic interdependence.