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THE RISE OF THE CYBER-MERCENARIES
What happens when private firms have cyberweapons as powerful as those owned by governments?
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/31/the-rise-of-the-cyber-mercenaries-israel-nso
▻https://foreignpolicymag.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/1_cyber_weapon_final1.jpg?w=1024&h=1536&crop=0,0,0

he first text message showed up on Ahmed Mansoor’s phone at 9:38 on a sweltering August morning in 2016. “New secrets about torture of Emiratis in state prisons,” it read, somewhat cryptically, in Arabic. A hyperlink followed the words. Something about the number and the message, and a similar one he received the next day, seemed off to Mansoor, a well-known human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates. He resisted the impulse to click on the links.

Instead, Mansoor sent the notes to Citizen Lab, a research institute based at the University of Toronto specializing in human rights and internet security. Working backward, researchers there identified the hyperlinks as part of a sophisticated spyware program built specifically to target Mansoor. Had he clicked on the links, the program would have turned his phone into a “digital spy in his pocket,” Citizen Lab later wrote in a report—tracking his movements, monitoring his messages, and taking control of his camera and microphone.

But the big revelation in the report wasn’t so much the technology itself; intelligence agencies in advanced countries have developed and deployed spyware around the world. What stood out was that Citizen Lab had traced the program to a private firm: the mysterious Israeli NSO Group. (The name is formed from the first initials of the company’s three founders.) Somehow, this relatively small company had managed to find a vulnerability in iPhones, considered to be among the world’s most secure cellular devices, and had developed a program to exploit it—a hugely expensive and time-consuming process. “We are not aware of any previous instance of an iPhone remote jailbreak used in the wild as part of a targeted attack campaign,” the Citizen Lab researchers wrote in their report.

Afghanistan Is Trying to Save Its Child Bombers.
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/29/afghanistan-is-trying-to-save-its-child-bombers
▻https://foreignpolicymag.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/liaf3115.jpg?w=1536&h=1024&crop=0,0,0,0

In a room full of loud teenagers, 17-year-old Mohammad Ehsan is the quietest. (The names of the boys in this piece have been changed to protect their identities.) The other boys in this juvenile rehabilitation center in the Afghan capital of Kabul are rough and boisterous; he takes the corner-most seat and avoids making eye contact. He speaks only when spoken to, sometimes answering with just a single word. As we talk, he stares at the floor or fidgets with the corner of his white shalwar kameez, as though he would rather be anywhere else than here.

His silence and his fear were hard-learned. Ehsan is one of 27 teenagers in this facility recruited and trained by the Taliban or the Islamic State to plant improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in the country’s endless war. Some, including Ehsan, were held in the Bagram prison located outside of Kabul, formerly operated by the United States. The other children are afraid of associating with them. “They’re too political and dangerous,” a young man incarcerated for murder said.

The Rise and Fall of #Soft_Power – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/20/the-rise-and-fall-of-soft-power

https://foreignpolicymag.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/gettyimages-9247998161.jpg

In his recent book, Has the West Lost It?, Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean academic and former diplomat, calls all this Western hubris. Indeed, hubris may be the only appropriate word for what transpired. Confidence in the potency and legitimacy of soft power was so great that tremendous hard power was deployed in its name. The Iraq War was the most prominent example. And the intervention in Libya, with European support, was the most recent. In both cases, the United States and Europe were left worse off.

Third, the hubris of soft power led to the illusion that soft power could somehow exist on its own . [...] The idea that soft power could perhaps be effective on its own perhaps underpinned the fatally mistaken belief that Iraq would automatically become a liberal democracy after Saddam Hussein was toppled.

The European project, perhaps even more so, was built on a false understanding of soft power. For many decades, Europe was essentially a free rider in the soft power game; the United States guaranteed its security, and its economic well-being was reliant on the U.S.-led global economic order. With the United States now less interested in providing either—and focusing more on hard power—Europe is facing real challenges.

[...]

When the West was confident of its soft power, it cherished the belief that the more open a society, the better. But now, calls for censorship of parts of internet are heard routinely in the media and in legislative chambers. Internet giants are under tremendous political and social pressure to self-censor their content. And many, including Facebook, YouTube, and Apple, are doing so. And so, one of the bedrocks of liberalism’s soft power—free speech—has fallen from favor.

Now, hard power is everywhere. The United States is no doubt the biggest player in this game: Fire and fury to North Korea, trade wars on everyone, gutting the WTO, and using domestic laws to punish foreign companies for doing business with a third country. The list goes on. For its part, Europe looks like a deer in headlights. As some, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, call for standing firm against Trump, others, including French President Emmanuel Macron, are looking for peace.

And, of course, there is Russia. By adroitly using its limited but still considerable hard power, Russia achieved the most significant territorial gain by force since the end of World War II, taking Crimea from Ukraine. Meanwhile, Moscow’s forceful actions in Syria changed the course of the civil war there to its favor.

[...]

There is little doubt, in other words, that the era of soft power has given way to an era of hard power—and that is dangerous. For centuries, hard power politics resulted in immeasurable human suffering. Just in the 20th century alone, hard power drove two world wars and a long Cold War that threatened to annihilate mankind.

It is possible to aspire to something better this time. And this is where China may come in.

[...]

The European Union Needs Its Own Charles #de_Gaulle – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/16/europe-needs-its-own-charles-de-gaulle

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There’s nothing wrong with today’s EU that France’s legendary 20th-century leader didn’t see coming—and didn’t try to fix when he had the chance.

#ue

Botched #CIA Communications System Helped Blow Cover of Chinese Agents – Foreign Policy
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/15/botched-cia-communications-system-helped-blow-cover-chinese-agents-in

It was considered one of the CIA’s worst failures in decades: Over a two-year period starting in late 2010, Chinese authorities systematically dismantled the agency’s network of agents across the country, executing dozens of suspected U.S. spies. But since then, a question has loomed over the entire debacle.

How were the Chinese able to roll up the network?

Now, nearly eight years later, it appears that the agency botched the communication system it used to interact with its sources, according to five current and former intelligence officials. The CIA had imported the system from its Middle East operations, where the online environment was considerably less hazardous, and apparently underestimated China’s ability to penetrate it.

#Chine

Trump and Allies Seek End to Refugee Status for Millions of Palestinians
Foreign Policy - By Colum Lynch, Robbie Gramer | August 3, 2018, 2:12 PM
▻https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/03/trump-palestinians-israel-refugees-unrwaand-allies-seek-end-to-refuge

Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, has quietly been trying to do away with the U.N. relief agency that has provided food and essential services to millions of Palestinian refugees for decades, according to internal emails obtained by Foreign Policy.

His initiative is part of a broader push by the Trump administration and its allies in Congress to strip these Palestinians of their refugee status in the region and take their issue off the table in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, according to both American and Palestinian officials. At least two bills now making their way through Congress address the issue.

Kushner, whom Trump has charged with solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has been reluctant to speak publicly about any aspect of his Middle East diplomacy. A peace plan he’s been working on with other U.S. officials for some 18 months has been one of Washington’s most closely held documents.

But his position on the refugee issue and his animus toward the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is evident in internal emails written by Kushner and others earlier this year.

“It is important to have an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA,” Kushner wrote about the agency in one of those emails, dated Jan. 11 and addressed to several other senior officials, including Trump’s Middle East peace envoy, Jason Greenblatt.

“This [agency] perpetuates a status quo, is corrupt, inefficient and doesn’t help peace,” he wrote.

The United States has helped fund UNRWA since it was formed in 1949 to provide relief for Palestinians displaced from their homes following the establishment of the State of Israel and ensuing international war. Previous administrations have viewed the agency as a critical contributor to stability in the region.

But many Israel supporters in the United States today see UNRWA as part of an international infrastructure that has artificially kept the refugee issue alive and kindled hopes among the exiled Palestinians that they might someday return home—a possibility Israel flatly rules out.

Critics of the agency point in particular to its policy of granting refugee status not just to those who fled Mandatory Palestine 70 years ago but to their descendants as well—accounting that puts the refugee population at around 5 million, nearly one-third of whom live in camps across Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and Gaza.

By trying to unwind UNRWA, the Trump administration appears ready to reset the terms of the Palestinian refugee issue in Israel’s favor—as it did on another key issue in December, when Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

In the same January email, Kushner wrote: “Our goal can’t be to keep things stable and as they are. … Sometimes you have to strategically risk breaking things in order to get there.”

#UNRWA