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?
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.
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.
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.
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.