Publications & Research

This essay highlights permanent features of Israel’s strategic position in light of the October 7, 2023, attacks. Therefore, it recalls relevant history because each generation has to learn that history and because it illuminates the fact that Israel’s room to maneuver diplomatically and politically is limited. Finally, the essay emphasizes again the asymmetrical reality that Israel cannot afford to lose a war.

Surveillance against adversaries is an essential part of the intelligence mission, and it was necessary for the Intelligence Community to develop both a responsive collection capability as well as an appropriate legal regime as well. Fundament to this legal regime is the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) for collection of foreign intelligence in the U.S. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks new provisions have been added, including Section 702 that allows collection against foreign targets located outside the U.S. for national security purposes and has been subject to criticism, largely from civil liberties organizations and privacy advocates. Section 702 permits the targeting of non-U.S. persons located outside the United States, while U.S. persons or persons located here may not be the intended targets of the collection, they are subject to what is known as “incidental collection” such as when they communicate with non-U.S. persons who are the targets of the collection.

The prospect of cyberattacks and cyberwarfare has become a major national security challenge. The Intelligence Community and Defense Department that have largely failed to respond to this threat and the prospect of a “Digital Pearl Harbor” looms while these agencies are not collecting, monitoring or analyzing the data effectively, building adequate defenses, or able to respond effectively. Existing efforts are buried as classified special access programs that obscure the fact that the emperor has no clothes. Within the $90 billion spent annually on intelligence programs there is more than enough for the needed programs. The nation cannot rely on out-of-date programs and technologies to meet the evolving threat, or that simply do not exist.

Significant cyber threats now come from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea who recruit skilled personnel; develop malicious code; and prepare for hostile cyber operations. They expanded their cyber capabilities in intelligence collection, espionage, deception, and cyber warfare where the prospect of a major attack or “Digital Pearl Harbor” could devastate the nation’s financial sector in a non-kinetic attack. The financial sector has focused on “low hanging fruit” and less on the capabilities of adversaries for a major cyberattack. The U.S. has been complacent about this risk of major cyberattack, and the idea that the commercial sector and private industry would solve many cyber problems has proved invalid while the government has focused on “incident reporting” rather than detecting hostile code before it is used. This leaves open the prospect of a major intelligence failure with catastrophic consequences.

The surprise attack by Hamas on Israel was the result of major failure by a combination of Israeli intelligence, military security planning and readiness, and high-level policymaking. What was Israel’s 9/11 it involved the most significant intelligence failures since Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack that started the 1973 October War. There is no way to know at this point of time how much Israeli intelligence is to blame versus the failures of Israel military commanders to provide adequate defenses and readiness, and the actions of its political leaders in trusting Hama’s apparent moderation.

All modern nations now confront the reality of devastating attack using information and communications technologies, drawing an analogy to Pearl Harbor. The effects of a digital version of Pearl Harbor would be even more extensive, devastating, and difficult to recover from than the original. While the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor involved a kinetic attack, a determined adversary can now cause substantial damage with non-kinetic cyber weapons operating remotely, making Pearl Harbor look like child’s play. They may offer the cyber equivalent of a first nuclear strike.

Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has confronted the international community with fateful questions: whether the minimum world public order constructed after World War II is to survive, whether nuclear powers are free to commit aggression, and whether any state that is not an ally of a nuclear power is fair game for attack.

China poses the most significant cyber threat to the United States and its allies. Here China recruits skilled personnel, organizes their cyber operations, and integrates these activities in support of their military and intelligence services through their Military-Civil Fusion (MCF) program. This continues China’s longstanding interest in information and now the MCF program has greatly expanded China’s its cyber capabilities in intelligence, espionage, deception, and cyber warfare.

China’s President Xi Jinping has made a point of emphasizing the importance of law in China and the promotion of the rule of law at the base of Chinese Communist Party governance and power. Like any law, Chinese law expresses national policy. In China, management and control of cyberspace and law go hand in hand, and cyber law proceeds from the big picture to data security, protection of personal information, and management of network product security vulnerabilities.

A 1960s research project at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) began a technology revolution never anticipated and the most significant paradigm change since the invention of movable type. Today, most communications and information operations take place on systems connected to the Internet infrastructure. Dependence on this infrastructure makes users vulnerable to hostile attacks by criminal enterprises and foreign intelligence and military organizations.

Looking at China’s cyber operations, this study utilizes a large body of open source data collected by the Margin Research team. It examines China’s strategy, tactics, and operations in cyberspace as well as Internet communications in Chinese software development and cyber operations. China’s interest in cyber grew rapidly in response to what it observed in U.S. military operations, beginning with Operation Desert Storm in 1991. By 2013, China emphasized cyberspace as a crucially important area in the struggle with principal competitors and adversaries such as the United States and the West more generally.

The current debate about content moderation is part of a broader debate about the power of contemporary technologies, and the Big Tech companies that use these technologies, to influence individual behavior and perceptions. Platform providers exert great influence in shaping the information to which users are exposed. At present unregulated corporations control most of the ways people interact with each other and receive information in ways previously unimagined. Social media reflect this reality as they have become part of daily life, something unthinkable just a generation ago. Allegations of political bias, manipulation, and narrative control by the largest platforms have made people look at social media in a different light. Conservatives and liberals both see these platforms display overt biases towards one political affiliation or the other. No consensus has emerged about how to define the policy issues much less address them.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) came into being on July 1, 2002 and 123 states ratified the treaty although none of the largest states including China, India, Russia, or the United States — is a party to the treaty. The idea is that perpetrators of heinous violations of the laws of war, the prohibition on genocide, and the international law prohibition on aggression should be held accountable as a matter of criminal law.

Developments in communications and information technology, along with the introduction of new media, have had an enormous impact on almost all aspects of modern life. In law, areas such as law enforcement, national security, intellectual property, privacy, contracts, and tort law are affected. The rapid evolution of cyberspace has left vulnerabilities to fraud, abuse, and crime, as well as a new venue for warfare and espionage. Both statute and case law are moving to catch up to these new developments and address the challenges posed in meeting the security and privacy demands of society. This volume presents not only a background for understanding these critical issues, but various points of view from experts and case materials.

Henry Kissinger: Pragmatic Statesman in Hostile Times explores the influence of statesman Henry Kissinger in American foreign relations and national security during 1969 to 1977.

On August 3, 1914, the eve of British entry into World War I, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey told a friend that “[t]he lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.” I begin this reflection on the European Union with this famous observation because it encapsulates the whole point of the European project launched in the wake of World War II. Grey went on to note “that a great European war would be a catastrophe on an unprecedented scale, and that this would be so obvious to all the Great Powers that, when on the edge of the abyss, they would call a halt and recoil from it.”

In the 1960s ARPA initiated cyberspace with no sense that it would evolve into the largest media revolution in history, and there was no need for a national strategy or policy for this resource. The world has since seen radical changes never anticipated – at DARPA or anywhere else. The connected world evolved where communications and information technology support all sectors. Along with a myriad of benefits, cyberspace has also become a domain for crime, espionage, and warfare. Now there is a compelling need for national policy and strategy to address both existing and emerging cybersecurity problems. Meeting this need requires a strategy consistent with national policy guidance as well as an understanding of the threat environment and technology path.

The digital revolution has created a world where analog paper files and other antiquated media have largely been replaced by digital data. Neither the government nor the private sector anticipated the speed of this technological revolution, nor did they anticipate demands for privacy and security, or provide adequate technical solutions in a timely manner. In the digital world, users are no longer in control of their personal data or what is being done with it, and are increasingly demanding levels of privacy and security that simply did not exist before. Often users look to technical solutions, such as encryption, as an effective means of meeting this challenge. As an unintended result, criminals and hostile actors face greatly reduced costs in hiding their activities from legitimate U.S. Government surveillance, effectively “going dark.”

Cyber espionage, cyberwarfare, and attacks on vital domestic systems are among the most serious and dynamic threats facing the United States. Current policy, organization and programs have failed to meet these growing threats and need to be radically changed to successfully manage these critical challenges. The Trump administration will take America’s cybersecurity into the next generation, but can only succeed by building a stronger bi-partisan political consensus concerning these threats and making needed organizational and policy changes. The following plan includes several essential actions that should be taken within the first 100 days of the Trump Presidency, and defines a long-term path to meet these challenges.

Recent history has seen both the rapid evolution of cyberspace, accompanied great expansion in terms of users and capabilities. These new technologies have also led to a virtual explosion in the amounts of data resident systems worldwide – often referred to as "big data." The era of big data has also brought a set of challenges in terms of security and privacy that increasingly affect the lives of Americans.

The struggle against terrorism - more specifically, the effort to prevent terrorist attacks - has raised difficult legal and policy issues including so-called targeted killing, or killing of specific individuals because of their involvement in terrorist organizations and operations. As we shall see, this form of targeted killing involves domestic and international legal authorities and policy and prudential issues.

Guarding national security in cyberspace has become a core interest for many nations connected to the Internet. Indeed, the growing dependence on fast evolving information technology and continuous occurrence of cyberattacks against nations demonstrate the need for solid security strategy in cyberspace. South Korea is not an exception in this regard. Notwithstanding cybercrimes on various scales, South Korea has undergone major cyberattacks in recent years.

Whilst many states have had a long experience of internal terrorism, the events of 9/11, and the sub- sequent transport attacks in Madrid and London have all highlighted the international nature of the present terrorist threat and the increasing need for effective cross-border police and judicial cooperation to counter it. These events provided an impetus for a wide range of political and legal initiatives undertaken by the European Union (EU) and elsewhere (Den Boer 2003), and have shone a light on the pre-existing bi and multilateral arrangements for doing so. Among these are located Counter Terrorism Liaison Officers (CTLOs), who, along with non-specialist or criminal police liaison officers (LOs), are a little researched and little understood area of international police cooperation.

In recent years the vast expansion of cyberspace, not only in terms of user but content and applications, has brought about a set of new threats and challenges never anticipated by the net’s designers. At the outset of this technological revolution access to the net was only through a few connected mainframe computers; there was literally nothing to steal or attack; and no infrastructure was connected to the net. Cybersecurity was simply not an issue.

The rapid evolution of cyberspace has clearly been one of the greatest technological revolutions in recorded history. What began as a Defense Department experiment at the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, later DARPA) in the late 1960s has transformed almost all aspects of life with new technologies as well as related applications available on a myriad of new devices. Since the transition from the ARPAnet to the Internet in 1989, there has been an explosive growth in e-mail, the web and net-based applications of a magnitude never anticipated.

Transnational organized crime is a pressing global security issue. Mexico is currently embroiled in a protracted drug war. Mexican drug cartels and allied gangs (actually poly-crime organizations) are currently challenging states and sub-state polities (in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and beyond) to capitalize on lucrative illicit global economic markets. As a consequence of the exploitation of these global economic flows, the cartels are waging war on each other and state institutions to gain control of the illicit economy. Essentially, they are waging a ‘criminal insurgency’ against the current configuration of states. As such, they are becoming political, as well as economic actors.