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42. Journal of Advanced Military Studies: Economics of Defense
- Author:
- Patrick Callaway, James Lockhart, Nikolas Gardner, Rebecca Jensen, Ian Brown, J. Craig Stone, Lauren Mackenzie, and Kristin Post
- Publication Date:
- 03-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Journal of Advanced Military Studies
- Institution:
- Marine Corps University Press, National Defense University
- Abstract:
- During the past two decades, the U.S. government infrastructure has ground to a halt for a variety of reasons, particularly due to deficit reductions, military spending, health care, and overall party-line budget disagreements, but even more recently on border security and immigration. Regardless of party politics and the daily administrative drama in the White House, how does one of the wealthiest countries in the world prepare for the impact of making war and defending peace within these economic and political constraints? Authors for this issue of MCU Journal address the economics of defense and how those costs impact nations. Aside from the economic costs the United States bears for its defense, the articles in the Spring issue of MCU Journal will demonstrate there are other costs and unique limitations faced by America and other nation-states. For example, smaller nations such as Oman must rely on technologically advanced allies for their defense support. Long-term political costs also may apply to these nations, as James Lockhart’s article on the Central Intelligence Agency’s intervention in Chilean politics discusses. There are also other ways to wage “war” that are discussed in this issue; for example, looking to the past, President Thomas Jefferson attempted to wage a trade war against Great Britain and France to maintain U.S. trade neutrality and, looking to the present and future, governments must address the real costs of cyberwar. Finally, we must consider the political and diplomatic costs associated with U.S. servicemembers and their work in foreign states, but also the relationship repair they must rely on to keep the peace.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, Counterinsurgency, Culture, Armed Forces, Military Affairs, Authoritarianism, Cybersecurity, Weapons, Economy, Military Spending, History, Coup, Trade, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Augusto Pinochet
- Political Geography:
- Britain, Afghanistan, China, South Asia, Canada, Asia, South America, North America, Chile, Oman, and United States of America
43. A candle in the dark: US national security strategy for artificial intelligence
- Author:
- Tate Nurkin and Stephen Rodriguez
- Publication Date:
- 12-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Atlantic Council
- Abstract:
- AI is expected to have a transformational impact on the future of geopolitics, defense, and security. The emerging geopolitical and security context influencing the future of AI technology development has been driven by the erosion of traditional geopolitical frameworks, increased conflict between liberalism and authoritarianism, the pervasiveness of social media use and 4IR-driven digitization of industries, as well as the ability of more actors to affect strategic and operational environments. However, the future of AI will depend on the decisions of great power competitors—the US, China and Russia—global trends development, and the management of uncertainties associated with emerging technologies. In this fluctuating environment, where the US is engaged in a high-stakes competition with is near-peer adversaries, and AI is enabling paradigm-shifting changes in public and private sector operations, how should the US respond? In this new Atlantic Council Strategy Paper, A Candle in the Dark: US National Security Strategy for Artificial Intelligence, Tate Nurkin and Stephen Rodriguez provide an integrated strategy to respond to this key issue. According to Former US Secretary of Defense Dr. Ashton B. Carter, author of the foreword, this paper “effectively articulates the current technological landscape and offers a coherent strategic framework for the United States and its allies to harness AI’s upside potential, while mitigating downside risks and defending against emerging threats.” In a world full of uncertainties, this paper provides a holistic way forward for the US to leverage the full potential of AI while maintaining America’s technological competitiveness.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, NATO, Intelligence, National Security, Science and Technology, Cybersecurity, Entrepreneurship, Drones, Conflict, and Disinformation
- Political Geography:
- Russia, China, Eurasia, Asia, North America, and United States of America
44. US-China collaboration on the Internet of Things safety: What next?
- Author:
- Karl Frederick Rauscher
- Publication Date:
- 12-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Atlantic Council
- Abstract:
- The Internet of Things describes a future world with pervasive connectivity. While IoT offers a range of humanitarian, commercial, and national security benefits, its pervasive nature has many concerned over its impacts on safety and security in society. A great disservice is done when national security, commercial, and humanitarian interests are conflated. In a new report by the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, Karl Rauscher notes that the world’s two largest powers are at a crossroads with regard to their level and scope of cooperation in continued IoT advances. United States–China Collaboration on the Internet of Things Safety: What’s Next? analyzes possibilities for the United States and China to work together to establish consensus policies and standards to make their societies safer and provide a model for the world.
- Topic:
- National Security, Power Politics, Cybersecurity, and Internet of Things
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, North America, and United States of America
45. Mapping more of China's tech giants: AI and surveillance
- Author:
- Danielle Cave, Fergus Ryan, and Vicky Xiuzhong Xu
- Publication Date:
- 11-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
- Abstract:
- ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre has updated the public database that maps the global expansion of key Chinese technology companies. This update adds a further 11 companies and organisations: iFlytek, Megvii, ByteDance (which owns TikTok), SenseTime, YITU, CloudWalk, DJI, Meiya Pico, Dahua, Uniview and BeiDou. Our public database now maps 23 companies and organisations and is visualised through our interactive website, Mapping China’s Technology Giants. The website seeks to give policymakers, academics, journalists, government officials and other interested readers a more holistic picture of the increasingly global reach of China’s tech giants. The response to phase 1 of this project—it quickly became one of ASPI’s most read products—suggests that the current lack of transparency about some of these companies’ operations and governance arrangements has created a gap this database is helping to fill. This update adds companies working mainly in the artificial intelligence (AI) and surveillance tech sectors. SenseTime, for example, is one of the world’s most valuable AI start-ups. iFlytek is a partially state-owned speech recognition company. Meiya Pico is a digital forensics and security company that created media headlines in 2019 because of its monitoring mobile app MFSocket.1 In addition, we’ve added DJI, which specialises in drone technologies, and BeiDou, which isn’t a company but the Chinese Government’s satellite navigation system. We also added ByteDance—an internet technology company perhaps best known internationally for its video app, TikTok, which is popular with teenagers around the world. TikTok is also attracting public and media scrutiny in the US over national security implications, the use of US citizens’ data and allegations of censorship, including shadow banning (the down-ranking of particular topics via the app’s algorithm so users don’t see certain topics in their feed). Company overviews now include a summary of their activities in Xinjiang.2 For some companies, including ByteDance and Huawei, we are including evidence of their work in Xinjiang that has not being reported publicly before. For most of these companies, the surveillance technologies and techniques being rolled out abroad—often funded by loans from the Export–Import Bank of China (China Eximbank)3—have long been used on Chinese citizens, and especially on the Uyghur and other minority populations in Xinjiang, where an estimated 1.5 million people are being arbitrarily held in detention centres.4 Some of these companies have actively and repeatedly obscured their work in Xinjiang, including in hearings with foreign parliamentary committees. This project now includes evidence and analysis of those activities in order to foster greater transparency about their engagement in human rights abuses or ethically questionable activities in the same way Western firms are held to account by Western media and civil society actors, as they should be. In this report, we include a number of case studies in which we delve deeper into parts of the dataset. This includes case studies on TikTok as a vector for censorship and surveillance, BeiDou’s satellite and space race and CloudWalk’s various AI, biometric data and facial recognition partnerships with the Zimbabwean Government. We also include a case study on Meiya Pico’s work with China’s Public Security Ministry on Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) aid projects in Southeast Asia and Central Asia. Those projects include the construction of digital forensics labs and cyber capacity training, including for police forces across Asia. We have also investigated the role that foreign investment plays in the global expansion of some of these companies, particularly in China’s surveillance and public security sector.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Cybersecurity, Surveillance, Artificial Intelligence, and Emerging Technology
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia-Pacific
46. Engineering global consent: The Chinese Communist Party's data-driven power expansion
- Author:
- Samantha Hoffman
- Publication Date:
- 10-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)
- Abstract:
- The Chinese party-state engages in data collection on a massive scale as a means of generating information to enhance state security—and, crucially, the political security of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)—across multiple domains. The party-state intends to shape, manage and control its global operating environment so that public sentiment is favourable to its own interests. The party’s interests are prioritised over simply the Chinese state’s interests or simply the Chinese people’s interests. The effort requires continuous expansion of the party’s power overseas because, according to its own articulation of its threat perceptions, external risks to its power are just as likely—if not more likely—to emerge from outside the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) borders as from within. This report explains how the party-state’s tech-enhanced authoritarianism is expanding globally. The effort doesn’t always involve distinctly coercive and overtly invasive technology, such as surveillance cameras. In fact, it often relies on technologies that provide useful services. Those services are designed to bring efficiency to everyday governance and convenience to everyday life. The problem is that it’s not only the customer deploying these technologies—notably those associated with ‘smart cities’, such as ‘internet of things’ (IoT) devices—that derives benefit from their use. Whoever has the opportunity to access the data a product generates and collects can derive value from the data. How the data is processed, and then used, depends on the intent of the actor processing it.
- Topic:
- Authoritarianism, Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence, and Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, and Australia/Pacific
47. Denmark's China Challenge
- Author:
- Luke Patey
- Publication Date:
- 10-2019
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
- Abstract:
- A common refrain in Denmark is that China is too far away to be a threat to Danish economic, foreign and security policy interests. This is no longer the case. Danish policy-makers acknowledge that China’s rise as a global superpower presents Denmark with new challenges. However, transforming this strategic thinking into practice is no simple task. Recommendations Intensify cooperation between the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs to ensure Denmark’s initiatives in foreign policy, security and economic relations with China are more closely integrated. Beware of the bilateral. Beijing’s new assertive foreign policy and US-China strategic competition require that Denmark leverage its interests increasingly through the EU, NATO and other multilateral bodies. Assess the economic vulnerabilities of Danish industries in China and diversify trade and investment across Asia’s emerging markets and developed economies in the G7/EU.
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Power Politics, Bilateral Relations, Cybersecurity, and Global Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- China, Europe, Asia, and Denmark
48. The Army Role in Achieving Deterrence in Cyberspace
- Author:
- Jeffrey L. Caton
- Publication Date:
- 03-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- The Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College
- Abstract:
- publication cover In 2015, the Department of Defense (DoD) released the DoD Cyber Strategy which explicitly calls for a comprehensive strategy to provide credible deterrence in cyberspace against threats from key state and nonstate actors. To be effective, such activities must be coordinated with ongoing deterrence efforts in the physical realm, especially those of near-peers impacting critical global regions such as China in the Asia-Pacific region and Russia in Europe. It is important for the U.S. Army to identify and plan for any unique roles that they may provide to these endeavors. This study explores the evolving concept of deterrence in cyberspace in three major areas: • First, the monograph addresses the question: What is the current U.S. deterrence posture for cyberspace? The discussion includes an assessment of relevant current national and DoD policies and concepts as well as an examination of key issues for cyber deterrence found in professional literature. • Second, it examines the question: What are the Army’s roles in cyberspace deterrence? This section provides background information on how Army cyber forces operate and examines the potential contributions of these forces to the deterrence efforts in cyberspace as well as in the broader context of strategic deterrence. The section also addresses how the priority of these contributions may change with escalating levels of conflict. • Third, the monograph provides recommendations for changing or adapting the DoD and Army responsibilities to better define and implement the evolving concepts and actions supporting deterrence in the dynamic domain of cyberspace.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, Government, Non State Actors, Cybersecurity, and Army
- Political Geography:
- Russia, China, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and United States of America
49. Why China Has Not Caught Up Yet: Military-Technological Superiority and the Limits of Imitation, Reverse Engineering, and Cyber Espionage
- Author:
- Andrea Gilli and Mauro Gilli
- Publication Date:
- 02-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- International Security
- Institution:
- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Can countries easily imitate the United States' advanced weapon systems and thus erode its military-technological superiority? Scholarship in international relations theory generally assumes that rising states benefit from the “advantage of backwardness.” That is, by free riding on the research and technology of the most advanced countries, less developed states can allegedly close the military-technological gap with their rivals relatively easily and quickly. More recent works maintain that globalization, the emergence of dual-use components, and advances in communications have facilitated this process. This literature is built on shaky theoretical foundations, however, and its claims lack empirical support. In particular, it largely ignores one of the most important changes to have occurred in the realm of weapons development since the second industrial revolution: the exponential increase in the complexity of military technology. This increase in complexity has promoted a change in the system of production that has made the imitation and replication of the performance of state-of-the-art weapon systems harder—so much so as to offset the diffusing effects of globalization and advances in communications. An examination of the British-German naval rivalry (1890–1915) and China's efforts to imitate U.S. stealth fighters supports these findings.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, Military Affairs, Cybersecurity, and Information Age
- Political Geography:
- Britain, United States, China, and Germany
50. Arrests in Poland Contribute to the International Controversies Surrounding Huawei
- Author:
- John Dotson
- Publication Date:
- 02-2019
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- China Brief
- Institution:
- The Jamestown Foundation
- Abstract:
- The December 1, 2018, arrest of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou, and the arrest of another Huawei employee in Poland, come on the heels of a series of escalating measures—or measures under consideration—by governments in North America and the Pacific Region to restrict the use of Chinese-manufactured telecommunications equipment. Such measures are now increasingly under consideration in Europe, as well, with major implications not only for the international profile of companies such as Huawei, but also for the construction of advanced communications infrastructure throughout much of the world.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology, Cybersecurity, Economy, and Research
- Political Geography:
- China, Europe, Asia, Poland, North America, and United States of America