Security

There will be an exciting debate on the threat of cyberwar! A panel of four distinguished guests (including Harvard professor John Zittrain, founder the Berkman Center for the Internet and Society) will square off against each other in favor of and against the motion: “The Threat of Cyberwar Has Been Grossly Exaggerated.” The debate...
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Saudi Arabia is surrounded by some of the most unstable and dangerous countries in the Middle East, as the Kingdom shares a 814-kilometer boundary with Iraq, 1,458-kilometer boundary with Yemen, 2,510-kilometer coastline on the Gulf and the Red Sea with Iran — which is only a five-minute jet fighter flight away. So, Saudi...
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Iran is trying to become the indispensable power in the region,1 but has not been able to translate its geopolitical assets — from being at crossroads between the Caspian, the Gulf, the Arab world and the subcontinent2 — into political advantages leading to regional hegemony. The Iranian nuclear program unites most countries in the...
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James Fallows has a highly relevant article about China’s new “cyber warrior” culture and leanings towards asymmetric warfare in this month’s Atlantic. After that, be sure to check out Fallows’s blog entry on the same subject rounding up reactions to the imagery of a “digital Pearl Harbor” and whether or not that really is a...
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Last month I complained, far too prematurely, that in the wake of revelations about Chinese cyberattacks against Google services, international rhetoric was largely ignoring the insidious underlying signals about the dangers of Chinese cybermilitary prowess. Since then, of course, news outlets have seen a deluge of commentary about the next “digital war,” enhanced by...
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A fourth part in the Afghanistan series Thirty years ago this Christmas Eve will be the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It’s interesting to think that the United States will succeed where the Soviets failed. Newsweek has an interesting article on avoiding making the same Soviet mistakes. Questions abound: How much...
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As most people know by now, President Obama has decided to send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. The decision was made in part for political reasons and it is doubtful anyone is truly happy with it; on the right, there are those who do not believe he provided the military with the...
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Every couple of months, a news organization does a special feature on the threat of cyber warfare — armies of hackers, both from private groups and trained military personnel, digging into top secret files of foreign governments with just a few swift keystrokes. Most recently, 60 Minutes featured an analysis of the threat of...
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As was widely reported today, President Obama chaired a Security Council meeting that passed a resolution on the non-proliferation and disarmament of nuclear weapons – specifically targeted, of course, at Iran (and to an extent, North Korea.) The resolution, which was passed unanimously, was a crucial step in sparking international collaboration towards an eventual...
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