The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released an Unclassified Summary of Assessment on COVID-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] Origins. Details in the summary indicate that the most plausible origins of COVID-19 involve exposure to SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) via an infected animal or a...
In Hatescape: An In-Depth Analysis of Extremism and Hate Speech on TikTok, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) offers a comprehensive examination of how TikTok content creators exploit the platform’s unique features in order to spread messages of hate. The report analyzed a sample of 1,030 TikTok videos identified as promoting...
As mainstream social media companies have increased their scrutiny and moderation of right-wing extremist (RWE) content and groups, there’s been a move to alternative online content platforms. There’s also growing concern about right-wing extremism in Australia, and about how this shift has diversified the mechanisms used to fundraise by RWE...
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) has launched a new project that will study the links between far-right extremism and online gaming. Called the Gaming and Extremism series, the goal of the project is to understand the “role online gaming plays in the strategy of far-right extremists” through a series...
Dr. Paul Stockton’s latest report for the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), “Defeating Coercive Information Operations in Future Crises,” provides an assessment of U.S. vulnerabilities to Chinese and Russian coercive Information Operations (IO) and proposes options for defeating and deterring attacks. For thousands of years, combatants have spread...
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) recently released a report titled, “What We Need to Learn: Lessons from Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction.” This report incorporates 13 years of oversight work, more than 760 interviews, and a review of thousands of government documents to produce a comprehensive retrospective...
Whether it’s the spread of “fake news,” the emergence of deepfake technology, or foreign actors on social media, the existence of mis- and disinformation is very prevalent in our lives today. To warn of the dangers of mis- and disinformation, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has created a new...
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released the document “Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis“, the Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6.) The report finds that climate change is widespread, rapid, and intensifying. Founded in 1988, the IPCC is the United Nations body...
What this report finds is stark. Inspectors general identified many of the same issues that have plagued Federal agencies for more than a decade. A recently published bipartisan report, Federal Cybersecurity: America’s Data ‘Still’ at Risk, shows that two years after an initial cybersecurity investigation, Federal agencies are still not...
New In Focus now available on Havana Syndrome. A collection of resources focused on the mysterious illness affecting U.S. and Canadian embassy officials and personnel, reportedly since as early as 2016. Symptoms disclosed have been headaches, nausea, memory loss, hearing loss, vertigo, vision problems, and pressure or vibration of noise lasting...
