Chinese overseas police stations known as ‘police service centers’ are a controversial component of China’s hybrid influence strategy.  These Chinese overseas police outposts form a global policing network known as ‘Overseas 110’ extending China’s influence through diaspora communities. These extraterritorial outposts underscore fears of Chinese Communist party (CCP) repression of Chinese dissidents abroad. 

Overseas Police Influence

Since the publication of a report by the Spanish NGO Safeguard Defenders, which identified 54 overseas police service centers operated by Chinese police from Fuzhou and Qingtian county, existence of these outposts have been confirmed by Dutch and Irish authorities. The Netherlands has confirmed two unofficial ‘police stations’ which the Dutch foreign ministry says are illegal. The Chinese foreign ministry rejects that position. A Chinese overseas service center operated by the Fuzhou Police in Dublin was ordered to close by Irish authorities; the Chinese government complied with the request. In addition, Portugal is now investigating reports of Chinese police service centers in Lisbon and Porto. 

In Australia, a key venue for Chinese competition with the West, China has established an overseas police service center in Sydney. That center was set up by the city of Wenzhou in 2018. China claims these service centers provide administrative support such as renewing visas, passports, and drivers licenses that are usually handled by consular official. The use of police and prospect of applying extraterritorial criminal jurisdiction over dissident Chinese nationals overseas challenges both state sovereignty and international conventions and human rights norms. The RCMP is also investigating the presence of a ’clandestine’ Chinese police station operating in Toronto. Like the others mentioned in various reports, there are concerns these outposts are used to target overseas dissidents.

In addition to these overseas police service centers, China has mobilized their police to extend influence through police training and assistance missions and more importantly joint overseas patrols. These joint-patrols by sub-national police agencies, such as the  

Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau extend China’s hybrid influence and challenge the sovereignty of the states where they operate.  These CCP United Front or unrestricted warfare hybrid influence initiatives also compete with efforts to forge support among rival nations, such as NATO and the Five Eyes alliances. 

Countering the Threat

It is imperative to reiterate that the Chinese are using a whole of society approach to extend their influence. This includes exploiting disinformation, corruption, transnational crime and illicit economic flows, as well as integrating the police into their comprehensive influence strategy. Local, and national police join the military (People’s Liberation Army – PLA), and all of its components, as well as the Chinese Coast Guard to project both hard and soft power and influence. These efforts directly compete with the efforts of the United States and its Allies-—including NATO and the Five Eyes partners (especially Australia and New Zealand). 

While police liaison initiatives are  widely embraced by many nations, consider the FBI’s ‘Legats’ or legal attachés or Australian Federal Police (AFP) international liaison missions, these overseas police service centers with direct contact with overseas Chinese communities and foreign nationals and raise the specter of CCP covert operations organized by the United Front Work Department that targets dissidents through the efforts of prominent members of diaspora Communities. 

Efforts to counter Chinese police influence can include expanded international law enforcement training by the United States, European Union (CEPOL), and NATO (Stability Policing Centre of Excellence), and the CoESPU – Center of Excellence for Stability Police Units. Next, stability policing can be a powerful adjunct to military efforts, integrating expeditionary policing and law enforcement (Expol) and stability policing into the armamentarium for global security reform. Police and law enforcement should be integrated into the overall global security equation.  

NATO, the US, and Australia, should be at the forefront of countering China’s police influence efforts by building a network of police and law enforcement resources to counter Chinese influence operations. Further research and policy analysis should explore these opportunities and seek to integrate these efforts into measure to check corruption, strategic (and transnational organized) crime, and hybrid influence activities. 

This essay is the second in a two-part series. The first essay “Chinese Overseas Police: a tool for Influence Operations” ran on 28 October 2022. 

John P. Sullivan  Retired cop with a doctorate - policing - intelligence - counterterrorism - transnational organized crime - urban operations - hybrid influence

Global Policing Networks: ‘Overseas 110’ 

These police posts, leverage the reach of China’s diaspora community.  While centrally co-ordinated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), they rely upon police from  Chinese cities and provinces such as the Fuzhou city police, which has established 30 outposts in 21 countries.  Known as ‘Overseas 100’ after the Chinese emergency contact number, these nodes reinforce China’s influence operations abroad. The initiative reportedly started as a pilot project in 2019 by the Qingtian county police in Zhejiang province to assist Chinese overseas nationals with administrative and consular tasks. These overseas ‘police service centers’ are tools of persuasion and coercion with officials able to exert influence on the families of expatriates at home. Some of this pressure has reportedly resulted in the forced repatriation of up to 230,000 overseas Chinese. These police service centers operated by Fuzhou and Qingtian county police act as intelligence outposts, taking tips from members of diaspora communities and performing open source intelligence collection. 

In a report, 110 Overseas: Chinese Transnational Policing Gone Wild by the NGO, Safeguard Defenders, 54 police stations or police service centers, run by Fuzhou and Qingtian county police have been identified.  They operate in 30 countries, over five continents.  These include stations in New York, Toronto (with 3 centers), Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, London (with 2), Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Paris (3), Barcelona (3), and Madrid (3), Florence, Rome, Milan, Prague (2) Frankfort, and Stockholm, among others. These police service centers act as intelligence outposts, taking tips from members of diaspora communities and performing open source intelligence collection, act as intelligence outposts, taking tips from members of diaspora communities and performing open source intelligence collection. Chinese government documents show that at least 10 provinces have been given the mandate to establish similar police service centers. 

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Overseas Police Training and Joint-Patrols

In addition to these overseas police service centers, China has mobilized their police to extend influence through police training and assistance missions.  Notably, this includes police ‘management and leadership’ training to the Solomon Islands. In this case, Chinese law enforcement officers are directly engaging the Royal Solomon Islands Police. There are concerns that this training may expand to include embedded Chinese officers as part of a controversial security agreement for 10 Pacific Island nations.

Leveraging police to expand national security influence is a deliberate strategy to enhance both China’s international standing and internal security.  Combined with digital surveillance, Chinese law enforcement fuse traditional and evolving security approaches toward a common, multi-faceted goal. This goal is expanding power and extraterritorial reach. According to a Brookings analysis, “Extending the long arm of the law: China’s international law enforcement drive,” surveillance and security co-operation are cornerstones of this strategy. Tech and police diplomacy merge to extend China’s reach.  In 2016, Yunnan Police College in Kunming formed the China-ASEAN Law Enforcement Academy.  This was reinforced by Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau forged an international presence, including joint-patrols in Italy. Similar joint-patrols were established in Serbia and Croatia, to reinforce the Belt and Road Initiative.  Joint riverine law enforcement patrols were also deployed on the Mekong River.

The joint patrols in Rome and Milan, as well as Zagreb and Dubrovnik, Serbia were aimed at easing security concerns of Chinese tourists. Yet they provide opportunities for abuse and potentially erode sovereignty—or shift the nature of sovereignty to that of a network-state. 

Police Diplomacy or Covert Operations?

Global policing is all about influence. That is, on the benign side, projecting power, building relationships for legitimate enforcement, against crimes of concern to the global commons: piracy, terrorism, transnational organized crime, including money laundering, trafficking in drugs, arms, flora, and fauna–including illegal fishing and the ivory trade. The US and its Allies, embrace ‘global metropolitan policing’ as a means of anticipating and containing threats including terrorism and transnational organized crime. This includes a network of law enforcement liaison (such as FBI legal attaches and NYPD’s international liaison officers). 

On the dark side, global policing can become a tool for oppression, social control and suppressing political dissent becomes a threat to sovereignty and international law, including human rights. According to the Center for American Progress, “The Expanding International Reach of China’s Police,” the CCP is using China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) to influence security sector transformation in favor of Chines priorities. The MPS and its ‘Overseas 100’ initiative alter global norms related to the rule of law and human rights. They do so by fueling 1) unilateral action toward transnational repression (suppressing dissidents, journalists, and critics and enabling illegal rendition operations); 2) forging bi-lateral engagement (joint-patrols, training and capacity building, co-operative agreements); and 3) multilateral engagement through creating new international institutions or co-opting existing institutions.  

Dr. Adam G. Drucker is a Principal (Ecological) Economist with the Alliance of Bioversity International - CIAT and coordinator of a global program related to the “Economics of Agrobiodiversity Conservation and Use.” He has been involved in a wide range of natural resource management issues including: sustainable agriculture and rural development, deforestation, biodiversity conservation, water pollution, climate change, environmental policy development and the use of market-based instruments; and has held a number of positions in Latin America, Africa and Australia with the United Nations, national governments, international NGOs, the University of London and the Dept. for International Development (DFID/UK), the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and Charles Darwin University, Australia.

The statements in the following interview reflect Dr. Drucker’s personal opinions, and should not be taken to necessarily represent the viewpoints of any of the organizations he is, or has been, associated with.  

IR: ”We face an unprecedented global hunger crisis," UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned in late June. "No country will be immune to the social and economic repercussions of such a catastrophe." 

The immediate causes are obvious: Russia’s war with Ukraine along with  COVID-19, conflict, and climate.  The last of these looms ever larger, with dramatic warnings of forthcoming, or ongoing, mass extinctions of animals, marine life, insects, tree species and plants.

According to the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity, the diversity of genes, species and ecosystems, are essential to making agricultural production and livelihood more resilient to shocks and stresses. This is especially important in the context of climate change.  And yet, as we speak, humanity is dependent on fewer and fewer species to feed itself.  In all of human history, around 7000 plant species that have been cultivated for food. Today, 3 crops account for 60% of global calorie intake. Twelve —along with 5 animal species— account for 75% of the world’s food.

On the food production side as well, extreme concentration and standardization has reduced the diversity of entities, production methods, and practices that produce the world’s food.  We know that biodiversity is essential in the medium to long run, but we are increasingly dependent on agro-industrial practices and the monoculture of crops to feed the world in the short run. 

Are we running full speed down a blind alley? Is there another green revolution around the bend that will save the day?

AD: When we talk about the conservation of biodiversity, people often think about charismatic megafauna such as tigers, pandas and whales, and through their donations to NGOs and others they show a significant willingness to pay for their conservation. The loss of diversity in agriculture is much less appreciated and receives much less support, which is ironic as humans don’t depend on tigers and pandas as a food source. 

Did you know that there are thousands of varieties of potato and quinoa in Peru alone, yet we only find half a dozen in our supermarket? Of the thousands of apple varieties that existed in 19th Century America, perhaps only 100 commercial varieties now exist. The consequences of a food system that depends on a narrow range of varieties and species is not only risky in the medium and long terms but can also have severe short-term consequences. Think of the Irish potato famine in the mid-1800s, which was the result of a single potato variety being susceptible to blight, the consequences of which were over a million deaths due to starvation and a further 1.5 million people having to emigrate. 

Potential consequences arising from a lack of diversity in agriculture are not confined to the distant past. Even today emerging pests and diseases, such as wheat rust or banana wilt could take a severe toll on globally important food crops. About a fifth of the world’s livestock breeds are also considered to be at risk of extinction. And while we might be better placed now than in the 1800s to address such challenges, thanks to advances in scientific understanding, breeding technologies and the availability of ex situ materials in genebank collections, the latter are limited to certain crops, and the unprecedented loss of diversity from farmers’ fields means that we have less weapons at our disposal to meeting an increasing range of challenges, including from climate change. 

I like to think of agrobiodiversity like a deck of cards. There are different suits, colors and numbers, which allow us to play thousands of different games (canasta was always a favorite in my family). And while not all games require all the cards in the deck, so that losing a few cards might not seem that serious at first, as we lose more and more the number of games we can play diminishes drastically, especially when we may also not know which cards we have lost. Similarly, each loss of a variety or breed may result in our being less able to respond to new climate and emerging pest and disease challenges and so the need to ensure that we manage to keep as many of our diverse resources as possible. 

While the green revolution, based on plant breeding for specific characteristics – such as high outputs— and the transition to large-scale monocultures permitted significant increases in yield to be achieved and economies of scale to be captured, thereby improving food security for hundreds of millions of people, it has also brought with it significant environmental impacts. For example, through its dependence on chemical fertilizers, high water use, mechanization leading to soil compaction, loss of hedgerows for wildlife and, of course, a displacement of many traditional varieties and livestock breeds that were considered “inferior” to these new “improved” (i.e. highly selected/intensively bred) varieties.

Yet many traditional varieties also have important characteristics, such as the ability to survive drought or grow on the marginal lands of the type that are associated with many poor smallholder farmers; or with regard to their taste and nutritional qualities (for example high iron content, important in the fight against anemia). The value of that diversity is increasingly being recognized and could indeed form the basis for a new green revolution.

IR: What are some of the consequences of concentration and the industrialization of food production?

AD: In addition to the risks involved in overly depending on a limited range of crops and within those crops a limited range of varieties, the concentration and industrialization of food production has contributed to unhealthy consumption patterns – witness the global obesity epidemic. Globally the number of obese people has tripled since 1975, according to the World Health Organization. Some people are even both obese and malnourished at the same time, given not only the quantity of the food they are eating, but also its quality – lacking in essential vitamins and micronutrients. 

There is also a cultural impact. Traditional foods and food-related culture are lost. A community leader in Ecuador once told me “Eating is a political decision”, lamenting the food choices that younger generations were making, preferring “super-size me” fast foods over traditional more healthy dishes and the loss of the varieties that were now no longer in demand because of such changed preferences.

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IR: Given the global food demands, is it irresponsible to use limited fertile lands for tree planting and re-wilding, and promoting lower-yield farming?

AD: There are certainly increasingly tough trade-offs to be made, as we have also seen in recent years with the production of ethanol for fuel instead of using such land for foods crops, and the consequent rise in some food prices. I think the answer lies in letting markets allocate scare resources efficiently, whether that is for food production, carbon sequestration or biodiversity conservation. But we cannot expect markets to necessarily reach an optimal and sustainable outcome on their own (this is one of the big differences between conventional economists and ecological economists). For example, if the reproduction rate of a certain fish stock is below the interest rate at the bank, it would be more profitable to fish to extinction and put the proceeds in the bank —financially rational but ecologically stupid. Extinction is forever while conventional economics assumes we can instead move smoothly up and down supply and demand curves and furthermore not encounter any thresholds beyond which a point of no return is ever reached.  

Sustainability constraints instead need to be established (to address scale issues) and then the market can be used to address how given stocks or capacity can be allocated in the most efficient way. So fertile lands, less fertile lands and those more suited for forestry or re-wilding should have values associated with them that fully reflect their different economic (including social and environmental) values. Unfortunately, not only are there a lack of sustainability constraints, but also there are all kinds of perverse subsidies that undermine the price mechanism’s ability to fully reflect actual values. For example, OECD countries spend something like USD260 billion a year on agricultural subsidies, mostly to the conventional farming sector, thus providing a huge bias against potentially more sustainable activities. 

IR: Is organic farming environmentally sustainable? 

AD: Organic farming may be more sustainable in certain ways, for example with regard to its use of fertilizers or in terms of its impact on soil or water quality. But there are always trade-offs to be considered. For example, lower yields may require more land to be farmed and where this results in conversion of forested or wildlands, its environmental benefits would be reduced. The length of organic produce market chains may also be a concern. Relative to locally-produced non-organic food products, where more labor-intensive organic foods are being flown in from other countries where labor is cheaper, this may well result in a higher carbon footprint; as can shorter shelf life (given less post-harvest treatments) and thus higher levels of food waste.

IR: Food production is a response to changing eating habits and preferences. Is there a way to reintroduce and revalue diversity of tastes and diets?

AD: One thing we have been working on is a “Feed Me Sustainably” decision-support tool that could be used by public food procurement programs (such as those involved in providing school meals) with which to assess and seek to mitigate the environmental impacts of their purchasing decisions, such as with regard to carbon emissions, chemical fertilizer use, soil/water quality, agrobiodiversity and packaging waste. Such programs feed millions of children every day across the world and provide an excellent opportunity to instead buy more locally, support smallholder farmers and generate a sustainable demand for threatened traditional varieties with important nutritional characteristics. Along with educational and dietary benefits, they would also re-introduce children to more traditional and culturally appropriate meals, something that might have a life-long impact. 

Besides schools there are also many other public institutions whose food purchases could make a big difference, such as universities, hospitals and the armed forces.    

IR: One of the unintended consequences of fish hatcheries, according to critics, is that it functions to reverse natural selection --in effect giving the edge to less fit species. Is this not also the case with food crops?

AD: I think it’s useful to think of different crop varieties and livestock breeds as different technologies that are appropriate in different contexts; the same way that a Ferrari might be just the right car for driving on the autobahn, but a Land Rover will be the technological choice better-suited for off-road driving. The challenge then is to make the right technology choice for any given production environment. 

There is also a production-risk trade-off to be made. So while a uniform improved crop variety might produce a lot in good years, it may fail completely in poor climatic years; while a more traditional and usually less uniform variety might never produce as much, it may always produce at least something whatever the weather. For poor smallholder farmers who would otherwise starve to death in the face of a complete crop failure, such down-side risk minimization may well be more important than maximizing output. So “fitness” is to some extent in the eye of the sower. 

But while farmers may make their own individual decisions, collectively that could result in a lack of resilience at the landscape level – back to the Irish potato famine example – and governments need to guard against this by rewarding at least a minimum number of farmers for maintaining diversity for the public good and thus compensating them for any opportunity costs incurred by not only planting so-called improved varieties. Hence, we have been working hard both to help governments define conservation goals (not only to decide what to board onto Noah’s Ark but also how much – i.e. what proportion of overall farmland dedicated to diverse production might be considered a “safe minimum standard”) and to provide an incentive mechanism for them to do so – called Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation Services. You can see a short video about its application to quinoa diversity in Peru here. 

IR: Will we be able to feed ourselves in 5 years? in 30? 

AD: There is currently no food shortage in the world. Rather its distribution is uneven, so that some have access to too much food and others to not enough. There is also a huge amount of food waste (from post-harvest losses to unconsumed food discarded by affluent households), perhaps amounting to a third of what is produced. That also represents a huge waste of resources in terms of land, water and carbon emissions capacity. So despite the challenge of climate change, I believe that we can continue to feed the world, particularly if we don’t throw away all of the “cards” that we will need in order to be able to properly face that challenge.

However, the sustainability challenge more broadly is essentially about how many people consuming how much for how long. The elephant in the room (more charismatic megafauna) is the number of people on this planet - almost 8 billion now and expected to be close to 10 billion by 2050. When I was born there were just over 3 billion. And it certainly seems unlikely that everyone will be able to consume at current Western levels. We would need several more planet Earths for that to be possible. So while there is almost no discussion of the population issue, we can’t grow indefinitely on “Spaceship Planet Earth”, so ultimately a human population sustainability constraint will one day need to be established. 

How to do that in a fair and equitable way will raise many ethical issues that humanity will need to grasp in the not too distant future.   

According to the same NCRB data, in various jails across India a total of 488,511 prisoners were confined as on December 31, 2020. The number of convicts, under-trial inmates and detainees were 112,589; 371,848 and 3,590, respectively, “accounting for 23%, 76.1% and 0.7%… at the end of 2020.” It is worth calling special attention to the fact that the under-trials and detainees are categorized separately; these people will include those held behind bars, possibly without the prospect of bail.

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Even not considering the overall detainee figure, the bigger problem is with pre-trial, or under-trial prisoners. The 76.1% mark has come to pass with the Himalayan pendency of cases at Indian courts. According to an answer given by the country’s law minister in the upper house of Parliament this year, there are over 71,000 cases pending the Supreme Court, the top court of the country, 5.9 million cases pending in different high courts and another 41 million cases pending in the subordinate courts across the country.

There is a massive shortage of courts and judges, and several restrictive laws – such as The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 1967 – enacted over the years have allowed law enforcement agencies to lock up people without even the prospect of bail or even having to put them up before a magistrate for long periods.

In the federal structure of India, each state has the power to enact further restrictive laws and they, too, can officially circumvent the 90-day automatic bail system. The Indian Penal Code, a Chartered Act of 1860, passed during the British rule of India, has several sections that can deal with almost all regular criminal activity, but governments over time have found it easier to enact legislation that suit their own ends, mostly bypassing the possibility of amending the IPC to better use.

The Covid-19 pandemic added even more pressure as, by 2020, infections were already raging in crowded cells and across prison compounds when the second wave struck India. Convicts and under-trials were at huge risk of being infected – the Delta variant of the time being largely fatal – so were prison staff.

Interestingly, it was in 2019 that Indian prisons recorded the highest overcrowding in 10 years. While the restrictive nature of many of the acts that the accused were being charged with made bail nearly impossible – the onus of proving innocence was shifted to the accused, instead of the age-old practice of an accused being deemed innocent till proven guilty – the Supreme Court of India took the bold step of intervening to assure the prisoners’ right to health under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.

A bench of the court, headed by Justice N V Ramana, the Chief Justice of India, ordered the constitution of high-powered committees in different states and Union territories to look into the record of detainees in different jails and recommend how bail or parole could be granted without delay and without impairment of justice, to effectively decongest jails.

A set of formulae was devised in quick time by the committees and recommendations were put in place. The initial focus was on certain jails where actual occupancy rates were way above stated capacity. Those who had already been on bail or parole had their bail periods extended; as per the May 30, 2021 order of the court under-trial prisoners and convicts booked for offenses punishable with not more than a 7-year sentence were to be released on interim bail for a period of 90 days. They were to remain in home isolation under the surveillance of either a doctor or the police. Relaxation was also allowed to some who were above 60.

The decongestion was effective and quick. More importantly, the mass bails extended did not mean that the convicts or accused went absconding. Almost all reported back to their respective jails when the bail periods ran out and they had also been reporting attendance to the local police stations during bail.

The entire exercise became one of the best judicial decree implementations of the country in a long time, and one that has established a brilliant juridical precedent in India.

If the sudden Covid disruption had led to this forced solution, then its success needs to be studied in detail and replicated.

A recent Supreme Court order had allowed even the Enforcement Directorate (ED) of India, which deals with offenses of money laundering and violations of foreign exchange laws, to search, seize and arrest with impunity. It can also, technically, not present the accused before a magistrate within the statutory time period. This order is being challenged in the top court of the country, but the order possibly negates much of the good work initiated by the country’s top court during the Covid-19 pandemic disruption.

In a country as vast as India, with legal systems as complex as they can get, the pandemic at least pointed to the inherent goodness in people, even if they were convicted criminals. This was a god-given opportunity towards a solution to a major social problem in India. The way forward will be to order a full study of the effects of the temporary and immediate bail system and to find a way to initiate legal reforms that guarantees the basic rights of people, wherever and however they may be.

The original legal principle of “innocent until proven guilty” has to be perpetuated (in many cases this theory is being ignored) and, alongside, bail has to be an assumed right. The balance between politics and jurisprudence must be reinstated.

It took a massive disruption for this change to come out of India’s legal boondocks; now, continuity is needed.

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BLUF: A recent study suggests that over 40% of global container ship traffic could be electrified cost-effectively with current technology.

Representing a positive shift towards the potential for a less environmentally harmful maritime trade, an electrified container ship could have as little as a 1/12th of the impact of current models.

Question: What geopolitical impact would the mass adoption of electrified maritime trade be? If powered by lithium-ion batteries, could this be the spark that brings more great power competition over natural mineral resources?

Read more here

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Cyber Insurance Price Hikes

BLUF: As the cost for cyber insurance rapidly increases, local governments are struggling to maintain adequate coverage.

As cyber attacks continue to increase in frequency, companies offering cyber insurance are requiring more comprehensive measures in place to ensure coverage. While this may appear common sense at surface level, many of the requisite measures are cost prohibitive to vulnerable and heavily targeted parts of society.

Question: What measures can be installed to ensure a balance is struck between cyber insurance companies protecting their bottom line and attainable, cost-effective measures that don’t leave the most vulnerable high and dry?

For more see this article.

Improving Arctic Maritime Safety

BLUF: The Norwegian Coastal Administration has created ArcticInfo, an open-source, free to use program designed to monitor ice concentrations and meteorological factors off the coasts of Norway, Iceland, Russia, Canada, and Greenland, plus the Barents and North Seas.

Arctic maritime activity has the potential to rival traditional trade lanes. Since 2013, Arctic shipping has steadily risen. But despite its promise, adverse weather patterns, governance conflicts and geopolitical power projection represent major obstacles to its emergence as a rival to existing major trade routes.

Question: Will the profits resist the steadily intensifying geopolitical environment in the high north?

For more on shipping in the Arctic, see https://www.barentswatch.no/arcticinfo/

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by Daniel Bagge

In "Unmasking Maskirovka," Daniel Bagge contrasts national strategic approaches in cyberspace to enable a better understanding of the long-term goals behind Russia's cyber warfare campaigns. This book provides an in-depth and up-to-date examination of the importance of cyberspace operations, why such activities are so often successful, and how influence operations span the spectrum of conventional and digital statecraft.

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If cybercrime is not better addressed, at risk is nothing less than trust in government’s ability to deliver on the promise of security. Consider that 61 % of Europeans worry that elections can be manipulated through cyberattacks and one in three Americans will find themselves a victim of some form of cybercrime this year alone, not to mention the risks of state interference.

Disinformation has consumed many news and policy cycles, no less now in the time of COVID-19. Russian disinformation campaigns have regularly pushed out propaganda about the virus through think-tanks and suspect news services. Cyberspace has emerged as a national security complex affecting, as it does, governments, corporations, and individuals alike.

Given this state of affairs, a universal cybercrime treaty would seem beneficial. Yet, under the guise of combating cybercrime, two radically different visions of cyberspace compete for attention on the international stage. The first may be broadly characterized as a free-flowing model of cyberspace and has been championed by democracies. It is challenged by the second, the so-called “sovereign model,” where the primary focus is state control over information and, ultimately, people.

On 18 November 2019, a United Nations committee passed a Russia-backed cybercrime resolution by a vote of 88 to 58, with 34 countries abstaining. Russia’s successful vote set up an “Open-Ended Working Group” to examine cybercrime and methods to prevent it. While this development might sound salutary, it has direct consequences for the Budapest Convention on Cybercrime and existing mechanisms for improving the fight against cybercrime, international and national legal efforts, as well as long-term foreign policy impacts in many areas beyond cyberspace.

Foreign policy observers are quick to note that the Budapest Convention is the world’s only convention on cybercrime. Despite its status and clear value, the Convention has come under sustained pressure from Russia and its foreign policy partners that argue its very existence is an effort to violate sovereignty. Note that the Budapest Convention is open to the accession of countries that are not parties to the Council of Europe and is the means for international cooperation to tackle cybercrime.

Russia has also been actively trying to physically move current discussions on cybercrime from their home in Vienna, Austria (where decisions are made through consensus) to New York, where a majority vote would seem to give Russia and China a significant advantage in future proceedings.

Moreover, Russia and China may parlay wins at the United Nations to further the overarching goals of challenging the existence of universal human rights and the ideals of an open, free, and indivisible Internet. Consider that Russia and China also actively challenge the post-World War II world order, which their governments regard as a construction benefiting Western states.

The Russian proposal for a global cybercrime convention as well as Russia’s eagerness to further the “Open-ended Working Group on Developments in the Field of information and telecommunications in the context of international security” are primarily political moves to strengthen the Russian goal of establishing “the system of international information security.” The system the Kremlin seeks to achieve would be based on a “Convention on International Information Security,” with the United Nations and the International Telecommunications Union assigned to play major roles. Moreover, this Russian conception leans on strong, even absolute, state sovereignty, which undermines and overrides international obligations the state may have or be interpreted to have.

Russian arguments for the purposes of a so-called sovereign internet (known as RuNet) stress several aspects of security by autonomy. The objective of a separate Russian internet was outlined in the 2017 information security doctrine as “developing a national system of the Russian Internet segment management.” The context of this ambition being “of ensuring information security in the field of strategic stability and equal strategic partnership” implicitly but effectively refers to the perceived information security threat from the United States. The purpose of the “national segment of the Internet,” as it is also called, was to protect information as such and secure Russian critical infrastructure in the event of threats to state stability, security, and functional integrity.

Some in Russian foreign policy justify the ostensible need to maintain Russian-to-Russian traffic within territorial borders through a questionable cost argument: in the future the cost of international routing may, they argue, become too expensive. Yet according to Kaspersky experts, currently only some 2 % of Russian-to-Russian traffic crosses its national borders.

The additional demand to pre-install Russian software to “track, filter, and reroute internet traffic” can be read in the contexts of information security, critical infrastructure protection, and boosting national research and development markets. Obviously, widening the coverage of federal (Roskomnadzor’s) enforcement mechanisms from routing traffic to all ITC devices also increases political and informational control over individuals.

It appears that these foreign policy moves are intended to create a cloud of uncertainty, serving to undermine past agreements and growing consensus on international norms in cyberspace while also subverting the core values of an open, free and accessible Internet. More acutely, Russia and China are working to enshrine what many experts maintain is a techno-dystopian, state-control view of cyberspace driven by technology that is exportable to other nations. Such digital authoritarian policies stand in stark contradiction with the stated goals of democratic states, ideals for cyberspace and people, and also threaten to undercut the modern global system of economy.

While the voting in the UN 3rd committee showed that there is little appetite to start negotiation or to establish a new legal instrument on cybercrime, it should be clear that such pressures will not recede. There is no also consensus on the legal scope that such a new treaty would have on this issue. In addition, many experts recognize that a new diplomatic process could serve to divert efforts from national legislative reforms on cybercrime. Worse still, a new international legal instrument on cybercrime would duplicate existing work and preempt the conclusions of the open-ended intergovernmental UN expert group (IEG) to conduct a comprehensive study of the problem of cybercrime and responses to it by member states. (Presently, the IEG is the main process at the level of the United Nations on the issue of cybercrime.)

Russia has not just maintained but has also developed and strengthened its call for an “international information security system.” Meanwhile, some experts argue that the U.S., Europe, and its allies have not been particularly successful in their efforts to convince and engage states. For the U.S. public attribution is becoming the norm, with name-and-shame for cyberattacks and espionage, such as with the SolarWinds breach. Meanwhile, the authority of like-minded Western countries has been affected by leaks of foreign espionage, news reports of mass surveillance, and weakening encryption.

Europe, the United States and its allies should prepare for future international negotiations that might not go according to plan, to include further gains by China and Russia to seek control over information and alter the course of cyberspace. It may also help to redouble efforts to identify shared national interests and objectives across camps and continents, such as through the Framework for Responsible State Behavior in Cyberspace and the Paris Call for Trust and Security in Cyberspace. For the time being, with Ukraine front and center, extended treaty negotiations on cybercrime seem unlikely.

In the meantime, to effectively push back on counter-democratic initiatives, the U.S., Europe, and its allies, need to undermine one of the three pillars in the Kremlin’s strategy: the general distrust toward information and communications technologies, the purported insufficiency of existing international law, or the narrative of existential external threat.

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BLUF: Tourism start-up ‘Space Perspective’ has released images of its planned ‘space cabin’ enterprise. We may be seeing the beginning of societal stratification amongst the Earth’s stratosphere.

From Asimov’s Emperors on Trantor to Morgan’s Altered Carbon, science fiction often depicts the oppressive inequality of modern socio-economic environments by placing the rich, powerful, and beautiful in the clouds. These are not flights of fancy: Musk’s upward vision, Bezos’s trip to space and Branson’s space zealotry indicate powerful eyes are on the skies.

The question is, will the trend continue and to what heights are social elites willing to climb to avoid reality?

For more see High Altitude Balloon Startup Reveals Design of Luxurious "Space Loung”

Where is AUKUS going?

BLUF: Australia, the UK, and the US are collaboratively developing hypersonic weapons, in the first expansion of the 2021 AUKUS deal.

The AUKUS alliance is possibly the most significant security arrangement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States since World War Two. The deal first regarded submarines but has always been described, by the signatories as an extendable arrangement. Initial cooperation would be followed by collaborative development in AI, Quantum Computing and Cybersecurity. But the expansion into hypersonic missiles could represent a change in direction, at least from what was publicly announced. Perhaps this recalculation has been influenced by China’s flaunted acquisition and Russian successful use in Ukraine.

The question is, what’s next, will Western security arrangements ever find themselves in a position to dictate, rather than react to security developments?

For more see: Australia, UK, US Alliance to Develop Hypersonic Missiles

3D Printing a way to save coral reefs

BLUF: Brazilian scientists 3d print “cribs” to give coral a safe space to recover from the heat waves, bleaching events, sedimentation, and other disturbances.

Hobbyists Brazil’s coral ecosystems are the only reefs located in the south Atlantic Ocean. Like other reefs, they have been subject to periodic bleaching events. Enter 3D printing. 3D printing is a way of making products and components from a digital model or computer file. Historically, manufacturing relied on subtractive techniques: a process in which unnecessary excess is removed from a block of material (such as steel, plastic, marble, etc.) until the desired final product takes shape. 3D printing entails manufacturing a desired product by adding layers of material until the desired shape is achieved, often reducing material waste. Scientists and community volunteers in Brazil are pointing the way to build more resilience into coral ecosystems and, in the process, helping to save towns, economies, and coastlines.

For more read: How a town tethered to coral learned to save its reef — and itself

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by Martin Erwig

2018 PROSE Award Honorable Mention, Computing and Information Science

How Hansel and Gretel, Sherlock Holmes, the movie Groundhog Day, Harry Potter, and other familiar stories illustrate the concepts of computing.

Picture a computer scientist, staring at a screen and clicking away frantically on a keyboard, hacking into a system, or perhaps developing an app. Now delete that picture. In Once Upon an Algorithm, Martin Erwig explains computation as something that takes place beyond electronic computers, and computer science as the study of systematic problem solving. Erwig points out that many daily activities involve problem solving. Getting up in the morning, for example: You get up, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast. This simple daily routine solves a recurring problem through a series of well-defined steps. In computer science, such a routine is called an algorithm.

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Something happened when the bombs of a revanchist invader began to fall on the very European cities of Ukraine. Some visceral muscle memory was activated in Europeans, who shared their grandparents memories of cities being bombarded in WWII, of civilians having nowhere to go to escape the slaughter, of the displacement and upheaval and human and historic carnage.

It’s a different Europe now than it was six months ago. The lines between old and new have become less distinct. Europe has remembered its own history and is thinking about how its actions now will help to preserve its identity into the future.

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by Sarah Jones

This is a kids book about war. It helps explain what war is, why wars start, and what happens after a war.

“War might seem like a big idea that’s really hard to understand. But something I want you to know is that war always involves…people. Real people, with real lives, and real names.” - Sarah Jones

eBook Format: EPUB, Kindle, PDF
eBook ISBN: 978-1-953955-64-7
72 pages

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Consider the case of one notable company: Nike. Most of Nike’s shoes are produced in Vietnam but when the country had to shut down due to the pandemic, Nike’s shipments reportedly went from arriving in the US every 40 days to 80 days. And on the consumer side, as with most other items, shoes now cost more. Nike’s experience is not an anomaly. Most companies are suffering the effects of supply chain shortages and delays.

As to costs, a key question is how much, if any, of this inflation is artificially induced?

According to a survey by digital.com “56% of retail businesses say inflation has given them the ability to raise prices beyond what’s required to offset higher costs.” That means some of these companies could absorb the cost caused by supply chain disruptions but choose to not only pass it on to the consumer but also increase their profit margin. These charts depict the data:

• Percent of businesses that have used inflation to more than offset costs and increase profits, by size

• Percent of businesses that have used inflation to more than offset costs and increase profits, by industry

Long before the pandemic, U.S. shipping ports had been looking to automation as a way to keep up with the shifting buying habits of consumers. The progressive shift to automation is a move that is sure to upset unions, with the potential for walkouts, strikes and further setbacks in the future. The International Longshoremen's Association says “replacing manually operated yard stacking cranes, yard tractors, and other cargo-handling equipment with driverless machines, is the most contentious issue facing longshore unions on the West and East coasts of North America. It will almost certainly be an issue again next spring when the ILWU and PMA launch negotiations to replace the current contract that expires on July 1, 2022.” A disinformation campaign could turn this “contentious issue” into a flash point.

The supply chain strains have also exposed other weaknesses that could be exploited both economically and logistically. Consider semiconductors which are woven into the fiber of almost every technological advancement today and likely will remain instrumental to growth for the foreseeable future. With the shift to remote work and education, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) says they achieved great success as the world relied more than ever on technology. But the “unanticipated demand” along with “fluctuations in chip demand for other products such as cars, triggered a rippling supply-demand imbalance felt across the world.” Meantime, global supply and geopolitical issues are becoming more apparent and for good reason: “75% of the world’s chip manufacturing capacity is concentrated in East Asia, with China projected to command the largest share of global production by 2030, due to its government’s massive investments in this sector.” 

In the United States, the CHIP and Science Act of 2022 seeks to address some of these issues by providing $52.7 Billion for research, development and fabrication of semiconductors in the U.S. As a result of this legislation the White House says the company Micron announced “a $40 billion investment in memory chip manufacturing, critical for computers and electronic devices, which will create up to 40,000 new jobs in construction and manufacturing. This investment alone will bring the U.S. market share of memory chip production from less than 2 percent to up to 10 percent over the next decade.”

Additionally Qualcomm and GlobalFoundries announced a new partnership that includes “$4.2 billion to manufacture chips in an expansion of GlobalFoundries’ upstate New York facility.” This aims to steer the U.S. in the right direction in terms of driving STEM innovation. At present, the country is many years away from self-reliance in semiconductors, having held 37% of the global semiconductor manufacturing capacity in 1990. Now, according to SIA, U.S. manufacturers account for roughly 12% of the global semiconductor market. In short, as global sales and reliance have gone up over the years, the ability of US-based manufacturers to produce semiconductors receded.

Another potential weakness is the dramatic drop-off in ship tracking data from China. The number of Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals from ships in Chinese waters plummeted “85% in under a month” reports Bloomberg. The news outlet says the change in AIS’ ability to track Chinese vessels occurred after November 1, 2021 when China’s Personal Information Protection Law came into effect. “The new rules regulate how domestic and foreign organizations collect and export the country's data,” reports Bloomberg. “Although there are no specific guidelines on shipping data in the regulations, some domestic providers in China have stopped giving information to foreign companies as a direct consequence of the new rules,” reports Reuters.

On the jobs front, U.S. employment in manufacturing has been declining for decades. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) reports that manufacturing jobs had been “relatively stable at 17 million since 1965, (but then) declined by one third in that decade, falling by 5.8 million to below 12 million in 2010 (returning to just 12.3 million in 2016).” OECD argues automation wasn’t the culprit but rather problems “with capital investment, output, productivity, and trade deficits.” Notably, the OECD also reports that “the median income of men without a secondary school diploma fell by 20% between 1990 and 2013; for men with secondary school diplomas or some college, median income fell by 13%. The decline of US manufacturing–traditionally a route to the middle class–hit these groups particularly hard.”

All of the previously mentioned underlying causes and their impacts were exacerbated by the 2007 recession and then again by the pandemic, affecting consumers wallets and pinching the middle class. A shrinking middle class is apt to result in larger economic disparities. A greater gap between economic levels along with a polarized political landscape, racial tensions, COVID-19 pandemic — and a presidential election that’s but two years away — are all vulnerabilities that foreign adversaries are apt to exploit.

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Global platforms like Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, WeChat, V Kontakte, and Twitter are the battlegrounds for new age propaganda. The world may be on a path leading us all toward (or away) from global military conflagration, torrents of refugees, shifting global alliances, and spiking energy and food prices. Yet the undisclosed and private decisions of nations, platforms, and apps are increasingly setting the terms for divergent and, very possibly, belligerently opposed realities.

For billions of social media users in China and Russia, the war in Ukraine is a smart phone, real time, social media “war” fought between states with serious tech talent. Billions of people see  versions of reality moderated by algorithms and censors. This is the shape of influence operations and propaganda in the digital age: highly curated, siloed, tailored, and controlled. 

No matter which wars you see — or don’t see — the realities on the ground are harsh, encompassing and terribly fascinating, as death at scale always appears to be. Narratives of current events depend on the platform- at least for a time and for many people in far flung locations. V Kontakte and Odnoklassniki command the Russian landscape with over 100MM Russian speaking users. The messaging app Telegram has reportedly surpassed Meta’s Whatsapp, serving up stories and channels on the war in Urkaine to millions of Russians.

In China, WeChat, Doutin, QQ from TenCent and Baidu dominate Chinese social engagement. These platforms reach over 1 billion users and over 80% of Chinese speakers. For these folks the war in Ukraine appears to be very much a security action and perhaps even necessary conflict.

To put a finer point on it, global attention has divided on the “wars” in Ukraine. Yes, wars — not singular but plural. Tech companies and the walled gardens that US national and private tech companies are permitting through the gates offer widely divergent “realities” about the war.  Ukraine is, after all, a set of very different stories told by censored, curated or raw tech platforms. For example, not admitting there is a war in Ukraine can get you bumped off platforms. In the end, billions of people see their version, moderated by algos and censors.

It’s become axiomatic to say that we live in an age of platforms and applications. There are corporate and national platforms. Some nations restrict or close national platforms, others do not. Some platform companies do light to heavy content censoring, promotion and demotion by policy, machine learning around user preferences, data on users etc. These factors determine which war you are seeing, or in the edge cases, perhaps no war at all. 

In all these cases, we are living through an intense divergence of realities as delivered by platforms and apps. Yet, these platforms are the dominant collectors and conveyors of reality/content. Platforms and apps are shaping, shading and highlighting life, death, nations, justice and the path ahead. While some good work has been done regarding the issues of online terrorism, that too is a very slippery problem set that remains fraught.

Not nearly enough attention has been paid to the issues of control which appear to be growing larger and more intractable. Curating, blocking, and promoting content shapes passions. It also shapes decisions, fighting, aid, intervention, the welcome of refugees and donor’s gifting decisions.  These decisions may elevate or crush hopes, provide balms and assistance and — if we dare to dream —stability or even peace.

Most content creators and consumers can’t or don’t see the processes that shape curation and control. There is little awareness of apps and the potency of algorithms and therefore, low transparency and accountability. 

From the US Presidential Election of 2016, to COVID-19 vaccination, and Ukraine, governments and platforms seek to maintain control and position – often as a priority well above the simple serving up of information. 

Ours is a time of gnawing uncertainty and volatility. But in techland people are presently debating the rules and rights of citizens on platforms and applications. The debate is on who gets to inflect, promote, demote, shade or highlight such issues as life, death, justice and war. We, if there is still a “we,” keep seeing the same issues arise with growing consequence. Clearly, we need to move quickly and decisively while we have any possibility of appealing to something like a commonality.

This seems like a time to pause and consider the stakes. It might also be time to add two questions: What does it mean to live in an age where platforms determine our “realities” and where platforms and apps lack transparency and accountability? And who could or should do anything about it?

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BLUF: Indoor air quality guidance is changing, with extensive possibilities for change in building design, maintenance, public health and environmental concerns.

And there is new EPA guidance: “[b]uilding owners and operators should engage experts, facilities managers, and others who are skilled, trained, and/or certified in HVAC work to develop and implement plans to improve IAQ and manage air flows.”

Q: Will this result in new architectural and management choices? 

For more see EPA Publishes Best Practices for Indoor Air Quality in Combating COVID-19 

Mammalian Hosts for Covid-19 Abound and mutations are to be expected. 

BLUF: Covid-19 has apparently infected a large percentage of deer in North America. Mammalian hosts have the possibility of serving as reservoirs for pathogens.

Biologists suggest that the prospect for successful containment measures – aka “Covid zero” -- looks unlikely.

The question is whether wild animals will serve up mutations and, if so, on what timetable?

See this article for more detail Researcher finds 'stunning' rate of COVID among deer. Here's what it means for humans

Whither Russian Cyber War? 

BLUF: Experts largely agree that Russia has not engaged in “cyberwar” in Ukraine -- and the term alone might cause some to blink.

For some, the apparent lack of cyberwar has given renewed rise to abandon concerns about cyberwar and focus on crime and espionage. Others see hybrid threats and warfare on the horizon — to include the further use and abuse of the cyber domain.

Q: Is Russia holding back? Or is “cyberwar” largely already on?

A thought piece: Where is Russia’s cyberwar? Researchers decipher its strategy

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That is the case of Mexico. While more than 100,000 deaths in the last three years show an increase in the official registry of intentional homicides —the murder rate has almost doubled since 2015. Government surveys on citizen perception of insecurity, on the other hand, show a strong downward trend: the crime incidence rate for 2020 was 9.09 % lower than 2019. 

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Channeling signals of disruption and opportunity. With confidence.

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Why a Flat Map Can’t Represent the True Sizes and Shapes of Countries and Continents

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Nobody Lives Here, A Fascinating Map of the Many Areas in the United States With Zero Population