by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 24, 2016 | News
U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden has warned Chinese President Xi Jinping that Japan could acquire nuclear weapons “virtually overnight.”
Mr. Biden said that he had urged Mr. Xi to push North Korea to abandon its missile and nuclear- weapons developments. But it is highly unlikely that China will push its fellow dictatorship to do s0.
The vice president was referring to Pyongyang’s recent nuclear test and missile launches in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Mr. Biden said North Korea is building nuclear weapons that can strike as far as away the U.S. mainland. “And I say, so we’re going to move up our defense system,” suggesting that America will deploy an advanced U.S. missile interception system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, in South Korea.
The vice president quoted Mr. Xi as saying, “Wait a minute, my military thinks you’re going to try to circle us.”
Japanese Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshige Seko asserted June 24 that Japan “can never possess nuclear weapons.”
To read The Japan Times’s story on this, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 24, 2016 | Initiative
New research is being used to try to determine, via an algorithm, the links between “chatter” in extremist groups’ online places and their “real world” terror attacks.
The Washington Post reports:
“The study, published last week by the journal Science, identifies hardcore pro-Islamic State groups on social media by searching for key words, such as mentions of beheadings, and zeroing in on specific community pages and groups. These groups trade operational information, such as which drone is being used in an attack or how to avoid detection, as well as fundraising posts and extremist ideology.”
To read The Post’s article, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 24, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
The European Union and the United States have agreed on changes to an important data-transfer agreement. The pact includes stricter rules for companies holding information on Europeans and clearer limits on U.S. surveillance.
E.U. member nations are expected to vote on the revised E.U.-U.S. Privacy Shield in early July.
Reuters reported that “Cross-border data transfers by businesses include payroll and human resources information as well as lucrative data used for targeted online advertising….”
However, revelations of mass U.S. surveillance practices three years ago intensified distrust of such huge big U.S. tech companies as Facebook, Google and Apple.
“Brussels and Washington rushed to hammer out the data pact after the E.U.’s highest court last year struck down the previous system, Safe Harbor, on concerns about mass U.S. surveillance practices, threatening data flows that are key to billions of dollars of business,” Reuters reported.
“For 15 years Safe Harbor allowed both U.S. and European firms to get around tough E.U. data transferral rules by stating they complied with European privacy standards when storing information on U.S. servers.”
To read the Reuters article, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 23, 2016 | News
In this video, James Stavridis, dean of the Fletcher School for Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, explains in this video why cyberinsecurity is the biggest threat to the United States.
To see and hear him, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 23, 2016 | News
Reuters reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued Idris Dayo Mustapha, a British man it said hacked into several American investors’ online brokerage accounts and made unauthorized stock trades.
A federal judge froze his assets after the lawsuit was filed.
To read the Reuters story on this case, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 23, 2016 | News
Facebook czar Mark Zuckerberg covers his laptop camera and microphone with tape. You probably should too.
To read The Guardian’s story on this, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 20, 2016 | Initiative
U.S. officials say that at least one Chinese military ship tailed the USS John C. Stennis , an aircraft carrier, daily during its recent cruise through the South China Sea. But The Washington Post, in another of its frequent updates on tensions in the sea, said that no hostile incidents were reported.
The P0st reported that “Despite lingering suspicions, the two navies have been gradually expanding contacts and have agreed to protocols to avoid unintended incidents at sea.’’
To read The Post story, please his this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 20, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
China is pressing ahead with efforts to make it easier for dictatorships like that of Chinese President Xi Jinping to censor information on the Internet under the guise of “cybersovereignty’’. Cybersovereignty is a concept used to try to maintain the power of dictatorships through the suppression of opposition voices.
Stephenie Andal warns in The Diplomat: “Yet while control measures such as the Great Firewall (Beijing’s central censorship apparatus) remain a great source of concern for cyber scholars, the overwhelming focus on the domestic aspects of Chinese cyber policy dangerously ignore the broader, international implications inherent in China’s move towards cybersovereignty, which I argue, we should see as nothing less than an innovative and bold push to reshape the global contours of cyberspace in China’s favor. We might do well to subvert our scholarly bias of China as playing second fiddle to other global power players (most prominently the United States), especially in areas of innovation, cyber policies, and digital communications, and explore the possibility of a China that…is playing a strategic ‘long game’ with highly forward-thinking digital policies. This presents to us a much more complex and challenging picture of a China intent on ‘leading the pack’ in a post-utopian cyber age, with thinking that may be as innovative as it is dangerous.’’
She concludes:
“China’s drive for cybersovereignty should be seen as a calculated power play by Beijing to seize on the moment of transition that the global Internet is in at present, a time when growing geographical and political cleavages in the global cyber terrain are becoming increasingly apparent. The inclusion of the term ‘multilateral’ (in reference to Internet governance) in an outcome document approved recently at the U.N. General Assembly, reflects China’s growing power on the global cyber stage and its sway over future approaches to how to govern and shape the global Internet….’’
To read Ms. Andal’s column in The Diplomat, please this this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 17, 2016 | Initiative
It might surprise readers that this not done long ago: Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives are pushing to have North Korea designated a state sponsor of terrorism, with Iran, Sudan and Syria, eight years after the Communist dictatorship was taken off the list to ease the way for aid-for-disarmament negotiations that soon collapsed because of North Korean violations.
A bill approved by a House committee June 16 would ask the State Department to report to Congress within 90 days on whether a list of acts by North Korea, including assassinations of dissidents and weapons sales to such militant groups as Hamas and Hezbollah, constitute support for international terrorism.
To read the full story, please hit this link.
