Articles

116 Items

an alert from the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

AP/Jon Elswick

Journal Article - Foreign Affairs

The End of Cyber-Anarchy?

| January/February 2022

Joseph Nye argues that prudence results from the fear of creating unintended consequences in unpredictable systems and can develop into a norm of nonuse or limited use of certain weapons or a norm of limiting targets. Something like this happened with nuclear weapons when the superpowers came close to the brink of nuclear war in 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis. The Limited Test Ban Treaty followed a year later.

people look at a destroyed houses near the village of Barisha, in Idlib province, Syria, after an operation by the U.S. military which targeted Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the shadowy leader of the Islamic State group.

Ghaith Alsayed

Newspaper Article - The New York Times

Intelligence From al-Baghdadi Raid, Including 2 Prisoners, Could Reveal Trove of ISIS Clues

| Oct. 28, 2019

Delta Force commandos took two Islamic State fighters as prisoners and a trove of intelligence from the now-destroyed compound where AbuBakral-Baghdadi, the world’s most wanted terrorist, had been hiding, officials said Monday.

Nigerian schoolgirls sitting in presidential palace

(AP Photo/Azeez Akunleyan)

Journal Article - Quarterly Journal: International Security

“We Have Captured Your Women”: Explaining Jihadist Norm Change

| Summer 2019

In Pakistan and Nigeria, jihadist entrepreneurs have capitalized on external trigger events not only to successfully challenge established religious doctrine and norms, but to adopt radically new norms, including the use of gendered violence.

A funeral ceremony in Kobani, Syria

Wikicommons

Journal Article - E-International Relations (E-IR)

Societal (In)Security in the Middle East: Radicalism as a Reaction?

| Apr. 24, 2019

Societal insecurity, stemming from historical and functional realities has emboldened the identity-based gap of states vs. societies in the Arab region. The division of the Ottoman Empire into new states without much attention to identity lines, created a historical identity challenge in those states. On the other hand, Arab ruling elites’ efforts to enforce state-centred identities failed to prevent the challenge of conflicting identities. Later on, their functional inefficiencies emboldened the identity dichotomy.

As a result of threats perceived by Arab societies against their collective identity as well as separate challenges facing each state, the state-society gap continues to challenge state identities. Collectively perceived threats create and strengthen collective frameworks intended to address those threats. And among other frameworks come radical and terrorist organisations.

Photo of Mark Zuckerberg preparing to resume testimony about user data on Facebook.

(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Magazine Article - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

America Needs to Align Technology with a Public Purpose

| Nov. 25, 2018

The arc of innovative progress has reached an inflection point, writes Ash Carter in The Atlantic. "Recent technological change that has brought immeasurable improvements to billions around the globe now threatens to overwhelm us. Making this disruption positive for all is the chief challenge of our time. We ourselves—not only market forces—should bend the arc of change toward human good. To do so, we must reinvigorate an ethos of public purpose that has become dangerously decoupled from many of today’s leading tech endeavors."

tenth grader attending a class how to investigate a computer network that has been hacked in Beit Shemesh, Israel.

AP

Journal Article - Cyber, Intelligence, and Security

Four Big "Ds" and a Little "r": A New Model for Cyber Defense

| June 2017

This article argues that cyberthreats are not fundamentally different from other asymmetric threats, and it provides a conceptual model for developing a response by drawing on classic principles of military strategy, the "four Ds"— Detection, Deterrence, Defense, and Defeat—as well as resilience (the little "r"). The authors offer a model for how countries can create policies addressing each of these principles that will enhance the security of national cyber systems.