This week, Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil announced that its employees would begin returning to Algeria to resume activities related to its gas production in the country. Less than a year ago, members of the Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) organization thrust Statoil’s operations onto the front page with a significant terrorist attack against its In Amenas gas production facility. Continue Reading
For more than a decade, parties interested in the problem of computer, information or cyber security have warned of a digital doomsday, the electronic Pearl Harbor event. The general prognostication around such event, most recently invoked at the highest levels of the U.S. government at a speech by departing defense secretary Leon Panetta last year, is that society should be concerned by mass disruption of the communications infrastructure and all of the other infrastructure pieces connected to it. If Pearl Harbor was the greatest intelligence failure in U.S. history, then allow us to offer that the Snowden leaks are the greatest intelligence failure our country has seen in the digital age. Continue Reading
The White House has concluded that there is “very little doubt” that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons against its own people. With President Obama reaching out to British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President François Hollande over the weekend, discussion has shifted to what should or can the United States and its allies do in response. Continue Reading
In the third of a seven-part Baker Institute Viewpoints series, we evaluate the impact that a new wave of civil unrest will have on international politics.
Turkey, Brazil, then Egypt: Once again, discontent has led to major popular protest — and, in the case of Egypt, the removal of a democratically elected leader and replacement by a military-backed interim government. And just as before, the Internet and social media have served as a facilitator of these movements. Continue Reading
It has been a month since the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers began releasing articles based upon leaked information reputedly from a source inside the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). I have waited to say much about the NSA leaks,… Continue Reading
Next week will bring the first bilateral summit between President Barack Obama and the newly installed Chinese President Xi Jinping. This meeting comes with new allegations of cyber espionage undertaken by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) against not only U.S.… Continue Reading
One of the fundamental questions for the Mexican government under President Felipe Calderón has been how to develop its intelligence capabilities to defeat the narco-cartels that have sown so much internal insecurity in Mexico. There is a lesson to be learned from a 2009 challenge by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Defense Department’s research and development arm. Continue Reading