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.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 17, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
An ABI Research press release says:
“Europe is emerging as a global leader in national cybersecurity enforcement. The European Union (EU) and countries connected to the Council of Europe and the European Economic Area, including Norway and Switzerland, have been most successful in implementing binding legal instruments in the area of cybercrime and cybersecurity. With impending EU legislation in place to mandate the protection of critical infrastructure, Europe will spend $35 billion in cybersecurity in this space by 2021, forecasts ABI Research.
“The new Network and Information Security (NIS) Directive demands that critical infrastructure operators—including agriculture, energy, transport, pharmaceuticals, and even water and waste management—address cybersecurity, and will push them toward allocating budget to protect their infrastructure. Non-compliers will face significant financial repercussions.
“Europe remains a lucrative target, as it is a prosperous and highly-connected region,” says Michela Menting, Research Director at ABI Research. “The new directive will force operators to tackle cybersecurity issues in operational technologies, and notably in industrial settings, which is a huge step for many organizations.”
To read the whole statement, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 17, 2016 | Initiative
The New York Times reports that “there is a widespread recognition that the Western alliance has yet to develop a strategy” to counter Russia’s increasingly aggressive actions against NATO members in cyberspace.
“While there are frequent conferences and papers, there are no serious military plans, apart from locking down the alliance’s own networks. Russia, China and Iran have increasingly sophisticated offensive cyberforces; NATO has none, and no established mechanism to draw on United States Cyber Command or its British equivalent.”
To read the entire story, please hit this link.
