Electrical engineer Gilbert Herrera was appointed research director of the US National Security Agency in late 2021, just as an AI revolution was brewing inside the US tech industry.
The NSA, sometimes jokingly said to stand for No Such Agency, has long hired top math and computer science talent. Its technical leaders have been early and avid users of advanced computing and AI. And yet when Herrera spoke with me by phone about the implications of the latest AI boom from NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland, it seemed that, like many others, the agency has been stunned by the recent success of the large language models behind ChatGPT and other hit AI products. The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Gilbert HerreraCourtesy of National Security Agency
How big of a surprise was the ChatGPT moment to the NSA?
Oh, I thought your first question was going to be “what did the NSA learn from the Ark of the Covenant?” That’s been a recurring one since about 1939. I’d love to tell you, but I can’t.
What I think everybody learned from the ChatGPT moment is that if you throw enough data and enough computing resources at AI, these emergent properties appear.
The NSA really views artificial intelligence as at the frontier of a long history of using automation to perform our missions with computing. AI has long been viewed as ways that we could operate smarter and faster and at scale. And so we’ve been involved in research leading to this moment for well over 20 years.
Large language models have been around long before generative pretrained (GPT) models. But this “ChatGPT moment”—once you could ask it to write a joke, or once you can engage in a conversation—that really differentiates it from other work that we and others have done.
The NSA and its counterparts among US allies have occasionally developed important technologies before anyone else but kept it a secret, like public key cryptography in the 1970s. Did the same thing perhaps happen with large language models?
At the NSA we couldn’t have created these big transformer models, because we could not use the data. We cannot use US citizen’s data. Another thing is the budget. I listened to a podcast where someone shared a Microsoft earnings call, and they said they were spending $10 billion a quarter on platform costs. [The total US intelligence budget in 2023 was $100 billion.]
It really has to be people that have enough money for capital investment that is tens of billions and [who] have access to the kind of data that can produce these emergent properties. And so it really is the hyperscalers [largest cloud companies] and potentially governments that don’t care about personal privacy, don’t have to follow personal privacy laws, and don’t have an issue with stealing data. And I’ll leave it to your imagination as to who that may be.
Doesn’t that put the NSA—and the United States—at a disadvantage in intelligence gathering and processing?
II’ll push back a little bit: It doesn’t put us at a big disadvantage. We kind of need to work around it, and I’ll come to that.
It’s not a huge disadvantage for our responsibility, which is dealing with nation-state targets. If you look at other applications, it may make it more difficult for some of our colleagues that deal with domestic intelligence. But the intelligence community is going to need to find a path to using commercial language models and respecting privacy and personal liberties. [The NSA is prohibited from collecting domestic intelligence, although multiple whistleblowers have warned that it does scoop up US data.]
Intelligence Season 2is a Canadian crime drama series set in Vancouver. It explores the connections between organized crime and intelligence activities, tracking the intertwined stories of crime leader Jimmy Reardon and intelligence agent Mary Spalding.
Here’s how you can watch and stream Intelligence Season 2 via streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video.
Is Intelligence Season 2 available to watch via streaming?
Yes, Intelligence Season 2 is available to watch via streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
In Season 2 of the show, Jimmy is framed for murder and finds himself in trouble. Meanwhile, Mary struggles to uncover the truth and protect her intelligence assets. As tensions rise, Jimmy faces extradition, and Mary must deal with the complexities of Canadian sovereignty. The season concludes with Jimmy gaining an advantage against his adversaries, but Mary faces tough decisions about her investigation and career.
The series features Ian Tracey as Jimmy Reardon, alongside Matt Frewer as Ted Altman, Klea Scott as Mary Spalding, and John Cassini as Ronnie Delmonico in all 12 episodes of the season.
Watch Intelligence Season 2 streaming via Amazon Prime Video
Intelligence Season 2 is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video. It is a vast library of movies and TV shows available through subscription. It offers exclusive Amazon-produced content, and if desired titles are not included, users have the option to rent or purchase them.
You can watch via Amazon Prime Video by following these steps:
$14.99 per month or $139 per year with an Amazon Prime membership
$8.99 per month for a standalone Prime Video membership
Amazon Prime is the online retailer’s paid service that provides fast shipping and exclusive sales on products, so the membership that includes both this service and Prime Video is the company’s most popular offering. However, you can also opt to subscribe to Prime Video separately.
Intelligence Season 2 synopsis is as follows:
“Mary Spalding, the director of the Vancouver Organized Crime Unit, offers Jimmy Reardon, one of Vancouver’s top organized crime bosses, immunity from prosecution in exchange for his role as a police informant.”
NOTE: The streaming services listed above are subject to change. The information provided was correct at the time of writing.
Sony Pictures has released the first official look at the upcoming family comedy film Harold and the Purple Crayon, starring…
Christopher Nolan had himself one hell of a night on Sunday. His box office megahit Oppenheimer rightly took home seven…
The Bear hasn’t even premiered its third season yet. But a fourth one is on the horizon, as Deadline reports…
The first Poolman trailer is out now, previewing the upcoming comedy-mystery starring Chris Pine in his directorial debut. The film…
The European Parliament is on high alert for cyberattacks and foreign interference in the run-up to the EU election in June.
POLITICO reported in December that an internal review showed that the institution’s cybersecurity “has not yet met industry standards” and is “not fully in-line with the threat level” posed by state-sponsored hackers and other threat groups.
One member of the security and defense subcommittee went in for a routine check on Tuesday, which resulted in a discovery of traces of spyware on their phone. The member told POLITICO it wasn’t immediately clear why they were targeted with hacking software.
Parliament’s Deputy Spokesperson Delphine Colard said in a statement that “traces found in two devices” prompted the email calling on members to have their phones checked.
“In the given geopolitical context and given the nature of the files followed by the subcommittee on security and defence, a special attention is dedicated to the devices of the members of this subcommittee and the staff supporting its work,” the statement said.
The new revelations follow previous incidents with other European Parliament members targeted with spyware. Researchers revealed in 2022 that the phones of members of the Catalan independence movement, including EU politicians, were infected with Pegasus and Candiru, two types of hacking tools. That same year, Greek member of the EU Parliament and opposition leader Nikos Androulakis was among a list of Greek political and public figures found to have been targeted with Predator, another spyware tool. Parliament’s President Roberta Metsola previously also faced an attempted hacking using spyware.
Parliament’s IT service launched a system to check members’ phones for spyware in April last year. It had run “hundreds of operations” since the program started, the statement said.
He claimed the Russian army detected two missile launches from Ukraine-controlled areas that hit the plane.
“Most likely, it was American Patriot systems or European, probably French,” Putin said. POLITICO could not independently verify his claims.
Putin refuted theories of “friendly fire” for the downing of the aircraft. “There are friend-or-foe systems, and no matter how many times the operator presses the button, our air defense systems would not have engaged,” Putin said.
“We only regret about our pilots,” he added.
Russia’s Investigative Committee reported collecting the remains and documents of deceased Ukrainian servicemen. Russia has sole access to the crash site.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday called for an international investigation into the crash. Kyiv said it couldn’t confirm the plane carried Ukrainian POWs. Ukrainian media initially reported that the Ukrainian Armed Forces downed the plane.
No matter how vacuous and empty a man’s brain is, his life partner should always be dumber. The Onion asked men why they prefer low-IQ wives, and this is what they said.
Daniel Barnes, Historian
“Whatever the reason, my preference is in no way a reflection of my own insecurities as a man.”
Isaiah Valdez, Gravedigger
Isaiah Valdez, Gravedigger
“I’m a simple guy. I just want a nice, traditional woman I can easily manipulate.”
Jack Thompson, Welder
“It makes it easier to explain to them why I have so many other wives.”
Frank Alonzo, Optician
“I’m the dumbest person at work, and I’m sure as hell not coming home to being the dumbest person there too.”
Todd Polk, Construction Worker
Todd Polk, Construction Worker
“A woman who can think for herself is always less than a month from breaking up with me.”
Randall Judd, Microbiologist
Randall Judd, Microbiologist
“It would feel good to win at Connect Four for once.”
Mack Bowers, Economist
“I feel more secure in a relationship when I prevail at sorting objects by shape and even color.”
Brian Pearlman, Chef
“It’s a lot easier to cheat on someone when you can just distract them by ringing a small bell.”
Doug Vreeland, Mechanic
“A marriage between equals has the best chance to succeed.”
Eric Deming, Delivery Driver
Eric Deming, Delivery Driver
“They’re easier to steal money from.”
Howard Sahlman, Building Inspector
Howard Sahlman, Building Inspector
“Even though IQ is an arbitrary rubric, it’s good to have a number to throw in their faces when they disagree with you.”
Kyle Hotchkiss, Musician
“I prefer a cool, low-maintenance woman who’s happy just being locked in a barn with some lettuce after sex.”
Jon Robinson, Psychologist
Jon Robinson, Psychologist
“There’s nothing more endearing to me in a partner than someone who repeatedly steps on rakes that pop up and hit them in face.”
Brandon Kirk, Contractor
“What can I say? I want dumb kids.”
Randy Mireaux, Veterinarian
Randy Mireaux, Veterinarian
“My last sex doll got really arrogant and bitchy after it received its master’s, so I’m not dealing with that again.”
Tristan Morrow, Doctor
“I refuse to budge from my belief that Chester A. Arthur is the current U.S. president, and I won’t let anyone tell me otherwise.”
It’s that time of year again: Leaders, business titans, philanthropists and celebs descend on the Swiss ski town of Davos to discuss the fate of the world and do deals/shots with the global elite at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
This year’s theme: “Rebuilding trust.” Prescient, given the dumpster fire the world seems to be turning into lately, both literally (climate change) and figuratively (where to even begin?).
As always, the Davos great and good will be rubbing shoulders with some of the world’s absolute top-drawer dirtbags. While there’s been a distinct dearth of Russian oligarchs in attendance at the WEF since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Donald Trump will be tied up with the Iowa caucus, there are still plenty of would-be autocrats, dictators, thugs, extortionists, misery merchants, spoilers and political pariahs on the Davos guest list.
1. Argentine President Javier Milei
Known as the Donald Trump of Argentina — and also as “The Madman” and “The Wig” — the chainsaw-wielding Javier Milei has it all: a fanatical supporter base, background as a TV shock jock, libertarian anarcho-capitalist policies (except when it comes to abortion), and a … memorable … hairdo.
A long-time Davos devotee (he’s been attending the WEF for years), Milei’s libertarian policies have turned from kooky thought bubbles to concerning reality after he was elected president of South America’s second-largest economy, riding a wave of discontent with the political establishment (sound familiar?). The question now is how far Milei will go in delivering on his campaign promises to hack back public service and state spending, close the Argentine central bank and drop the peso.
If you do get stuck talking to Milei in the congress center or on the slopes, here are some conversation starters …
Rumor has it that Mohammed bin Salman will make his first in-person WEF appearance at this year’s event, accompanied by a giant posse of top Saudi officials.
It’s the ultimate redemption arc for the repressive authoritarian ruler of a country with an appalling human rights record — who, according to United States intelligence, personally ordered the brutal assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
Rumor has it that Mohammed bin Salman will make his first in-person WEF appearance at this year’s event | Leon Neal/Getty Images
Perhaps MBS would still be a WEF pariah — consigned to rubbing shoulders with mere B-listers at his own Davos in the desert — if it were not for that other one-time Davos-darling-turned-persona-non-grata: Russian President Vladimir Putin. By launching his invasion of Ukraine, which killed thousands of civilians and hundreds of thousands of troops, Putin managed to push the West back into MBS’ embrace. Guess it’s all just oil under the bridge now.
Here’s a piece of free advice: Try to avoid being caught getting a signature MBS fist-bump. Unless, of course, you’re the next person on our list …
3. Jared Kushner, founder of Affinity Partners
Jared Kushner is the closest anyone on the mountain is likely to come to Trump, the former — and possibly future — billionaire baron-cum-anti-elitist president of the United States of America.
On the one hand, a chat with The Donald’s son-in-law in the days just after the Iowa caucus would probably be quite a get for the Davos devotee. On other hand … it’s Jared Kushner.
The 43-year-old, who is married to Ivanka Trump and served as a senior adviser to the former president during his time in office, leveraged his stint in the White House to build up a lucrative consulting career, focused mainly on the Middle East.
Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, is largely funded through Gulf countries. That includes a $2 billion investment from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, led by bin Salman — which was, coincidentally, pushed through despite objections by the crown prince’s own advisers.
Kushner struck up a friendship and alliance with MBS during his father-in-law’s term in office, raising major conflict-of-interest suspicions for the Trump administration — especially when the then-U.S. president refused to condemn the Saudi leader in Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, despite the CIA concluding he was directly involved.
Running Azerbaijan is something of a family business for the Aliyevs — Ilham assumed power after the death of his father, Heydar Aliyev, an ex-Soviet KGB officer who ruled the country for decades. And the junior Aliyev changed Azerbaijan’s constitution to pave the path to power for the next generation of his family — and appointed his own wife as vice president to boot.
5. Chinese Premier Li Qiang
Li Qiang is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ultra-loyal right-hand man, and will represent his boss and his country at the World Economic Forum this year.
Li’s claim to infamy: imposing a brutal lockdown on the entirety of Shanghai for weeks during the coronavirus pandemic, which trapped its 25 million-plus inhabitants at home while many struggled to get food, tend to their animals or seek medical help — and tanking the city’s economy in the process.
Li’s also the guy selling (and whitewashing) China’s Uyghur policy in the Islamic world. In case you need a refresher, China has detained Uyghurs, who are mostly Muslim, in internment camps in the northwest region of Xinjiang, where there have been allegations of torture, slavery, forced sterilization, sexual abuse and brainwashing. China’s actions have been branded genocide by the U.S. State Department, and as potential crimes against humanity by the United Nations.
Li Qiang will represent his boss and his country at the World Economic Forum this year | Johannes Simon/Getty Images
Nicknamed “the Napoleon of Africa” in a nod to his campaign to seize power in 1994, Paul Kagame has ruled over the land of a thousand hills since. He’s often praised for overseeing what is probably the greatest development success story of modern Africa; he’s also a dictator.
Forced from office in 2018 by mass protests following the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová, Fico rose from the political ashes to become Slovakian prime minister for the fourth time late last year. His Smer party ran a Putin-friendly campaign, pledging to end all military support for Ukraine.
Slovakian courts are still working through multiple organized crime cases stemming from the last time Smer was in power, involving oligarchs alleged to have profited from state contracts; former top police brass and senior military intelligence officers; and parliamentarians from all three parties in Fico’s new coalition government.
8. President of Hungary Katalin Novák
Katalin Novák, elected Hungarian president in 2022, must’ve pulled the short straw: she’s been sent to Davos to fly the flag for the EU’s pariah state. Luckily, the 46-year-old is used to being the odd one out at a shindig: She’s both the first woman and the youngest-ever Hungarian president.
It’s her thoughts on the gender pay gap, though, that ought to get attention at the famously male-dominated World Economic Forum: In an infamous video posted back in late 2020, Novák told the sisterhood: “Do not believe that women have to constantly compete with men. Do not believe that every waking moment of our lives must be spent with comparing ourselves to men, and that we should work in at least the same position, for at least the same pay they do.” That’s us told.
9. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet
You may be surprised to see Hun Manet on this list: The new, Western-educated Cambodian prime minister has been touted in some circles as a potential modernizer and reformer.
But Hun Manet is less a breath of fresh air and a lot more continuation of the same stale story. Having inherited his position from his father, the longtime autocrat Hun Sen, Hun Manet has shown no signs of wanting to reform or modernize Cambodia. While some say it’s too early to tell where he’ll land (given his dad’s still on the scene, along with his Communist loyalists), the fact is: Many hallmarks of autocracy are still present in Cambodia. Repression of the opposition? Check. Dodgy “elections”? Check. Widespread graft and clientelism? Check and check.
10. Qatar Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani
How has a small kingdom of 2.6 million inhabitants in the Persian Gulf managed to play a starring role in so many explosive scandals?
Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani is the prime minister of Qatar, a country that’s played a starring role in many explosive scandals | Chris J. Ratcliffe/AFP via Getty Images
You’d think that sort of record would see Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani shunned by the world’s top brass. Nah! Just this month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with the Qatari leader and told him the U.S. was “deeply grateful for your ongoing leadership in this effort, for the tireless work which you undertook and that continues, to try to free the remaining hostages.”
See you on the slopes, Mohammed!
11. Polish President Andrzej Duda
When you compare Polish President Andrzej Duda to some of the others on this list, he doesn’t seem to measure up. He’s not a dictator running a violent petro-state, hasn’t invaded any neighbors or even wielded a chainsaw on stage.
But Duda is yesterday’s man. As the last one standing from Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice party that was swept out of office last year, Duda’s holding on for dear life to his own relevance, doing his best to act as a spoiler against the Donald Tusk-led government by wielding his veto powers and harboring convicted lawmakers. All of which is to say: When you catch up with President Duda at Davos, don’t assume he’s speaking for Poland.
12. Amin Nasser, CEO of Aramco
The Saudi Arabian state oil and gas company is Aramco — the world’s biggest energy firm — and Amin Nasser is its boss. If you read Aramco’s press releases, you’d be forgiven for assuming it is also the world’s biggest champion of the green energy transition. Spoiler alert: It’s far from it.
Exhibit A: Aramco is reportedly a top corporate polluter, with environment nongovernmental organization ClientEarth reporting that it accounts for more than 4 percent of the globe’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1965. Exhibit B: Bloomberg reported in 2021 that it understated its carbon footprint by as much as 50 percent.
Nasser, meanwhile, has criticized the idea that climate action should mean countries “either shut down or slow down big time” their fossil fuel production. Say that to Al Gore’s face!
This article has been updated to reflect the fact Shou Zi Chew is no longer going to attend the World Economic Forum.
Dionisios Sturis, Peter Snowdon, Suzanne Lynch and Paul de Villepin contributed reporting.
BERLIN — As the far-right Alternative for Germany continues to rise — and its radicalism becomes increasingly pronounced — a growing chorus of mainstream politicians is asking whether the best way to stop the party is to try to ban it.
The debate kicked off in earnest after Saskia Esken, the co-chief of the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD), came out earlier this month in favor of discussing a ban — if only, as she put it, to “shake voters” out of their complacency.
Since then, politicians from across the political spectrum have weighed in on whether a legal effort to ban Alternative for Germany (AfD), while possible under German law, would be tactically smart — or only further fuel the party’s rise.
Like so much of German politics, the conversation is colored by the country’s Nazi past. In a society mindful that Adolf Hitler initially gained strength at the ballot box, with the Nazis winning a plurality of votes in federal elections before seizing power, a growing number of political leaders, particularly on the left, view a prohibition of the AfD — a party they view as a dire threat to Germany’s democracy — as an imperative rooted in historical experience.
Others fear the attempt would backfire by allowing the AfD to depict their mainstream opponents as undermining the democratic will of the German people, desperate to ban a party they can’t beat.
Indeed, the AfD appears to be trying to turn the debate to its tactical advantage.
“Calls for the AfD to be banned are completely absurd and expose the anti-democratic attitude of those making these demands,” said Alice Weidel, co-leader of the party, in a written statement to POLITICO. “The repeated calls for a ban show that the other parties have long since run out of substantive arguments against our political proposals.”
The debate is assuming greater urgency in a key year in which the AfD appears set to do better than ever in June’s European Parliament election as well as in three state elections in eastern Germany in September. The party is currently in second place with 23 percent support in national polls; across all the states of the former East Germany, not including Berlin, the AfD is currently leading in polls.
Calls for a party ban grew louder this week following revelations that AfD members attended a secretive meeting of right-wing extremists where a “master plan” for deporting millions of people, including migrants and “unassimilated citizens,” was discussed. The news sent shockwaves across the country, with many drawing parallels to similar plans made by the Nazis. One of the people reportedly in attendance was Roland Hartwig, a former parliamentarian and now a close personal aide to Weidel, the party’s co-leader.
In a post on X, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz suggested it was a matter for the German judiciary.
“Learning from history is not just lip service,” he said. “Democrats must stand together.”
Many of the AfD’s most extreme leaders operate in eastern Germany, where the party is also the most popular. In two of the three states where the AfD will be competing in state elections next year — Thuringia and Saxony — state-level intelligence authorities have labeled local party branches as “secured extremist” — a designation that strengthens legal arguments for a ban.
Saskia Esken of the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) called for a ban on the AfD party to ‘shake’ up complacent voters | Michele Tantussi/Getty Images
Germany’s constitution allows for bans of parties that “seek to undermine or abolish the free democratic basic order” — essentially allowing the state to use anti-democratic means to prevent an authoritarian party from corroding democracy from within.
In reality, the legal hurdle for imposing a ban is very high. Germany’s constitutional court has only done it twice: The Socialist Reich Party, an heir to the Nazi party, was banned in 1952, while the Communist Party of Germany was prohibited in 1956.
More recently, in 2017, the court ruled that a neo-Nazi party known as the National Democratic Party (NPD), while meeting the ideological criteria for a prohibition, was too fringe to ban, as it lacked popular support and therefore the power to endanger German democracy.
Given the AfD’s poll numbers, however, an effort to ban it would pose an entirely different dilemma: How would politicians handle the backlash from the party’s many supporters?
Germany’s postwar democracy has arguably never faced a greater test, and politicians — as well as the public — remain divided over how to respond.
Center-right conservatives, who are leading in national polls, tend to view a ban attempt unfavorably.
“Such sham debates are grist to the AfD’s mill,” Friedrich Merz, the leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, told the Münchner Merkur newspaper. In response to Esken, the SPD leader who favors exploring a ban, Merz added: “Does the SPD chairwoman seriously believe that you can simply ban a party that reaches 30 percent in the polls? That’s a frightening suppression of reality.”
For the SPD, the stakes in terms of their political survival are much higher. The party has experienced a sharp decline in its popularity, and in two states in Germany’s east it is dangerously close to falling below the 5 percent hurdle needed to win seats in state parliaments.
Even within the SPD — a party whose history of resistance to the Nazis is a source of great internal pride — there is sharp disagreement over whether a ban is a good idea.
“If we ban a party that we don’t like, but which is still leading in the polls, it will lead to even greater solidarity with it,” Carsten Schneider, a social democrat who serves as federal commissioner for eastern Germany, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. “And even from people who are not AfD sympathizers or voters, the collateral damage would be very high.”
China’s top spy agency claims to have cracked an espionage case involving an agent working for the United Kingdom‘s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6.
The State Security Ministry in Beijing said in a social media post on Monday that the spying case involved a British foreign national surnamed Huang, who had been recruited and trained by MI6, although it was not disclosed when the relationship was uncovered.
China’s spy agency has been strategically disclosing past and present examples of foreign espionage in an effort to caution the Chinese public. The new awareness campaign is in line with President Xi Jinping‘s vision of a highly securitized state.
The latest incident further highlights ongoing tensions between Beijing and Western intelligence services, with cases continuing to emerge in both camps. The CIA recently said that it had made progress in reestablishing a network of agents in China.
The State Security Ministry said M16 had trained and equipped Huang—the head of an overseas consultancy—for intelligence-gathering operations inside China, according to its post on the widely used do-everything app WeChat. Huang’s activities were eventually uncovered, and legal action was taken against him.
Neither the ministry nor Chinese state media that covered the case disclosed when Huang was detained, but an investigation was said to be ongoing.
In its statement, the ministry said MI6 developed ties with Huang in 2015. British spies provided him with professional intelligence training in the U.K. and other locations, it said.
Chinese counterintelligence authorities, after conducting a thorough investigation, “promptly discovered evidence of Huang’s involvement in espionage activities,” leading to “criminal coercive measures” against him, the post said.
Huang’s nationality was not disclosed.
Chinese police officers guard the Great Hall of the People during the Third Belt and Road Forum on October 18, 2023, in Beijing, China. China’s State Security Ministry, its top spy agency, said it cracked an espionage case involving an agent recruited by Britain’s MI6 intelligence service. Contributor/GC Images/Getty Images Entertainment
Last September, British authorities confirmed the arrests in March of two individuals for alleged breaches of the Official Secrets Act. One was a senior parliamentary researcher who had worked closely with British lawmakers on China policymaking.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry dismissed the allegations that the men were spying for Beijing as “entirely groundless.”
The Global Times, the nationalist Chinese state-run tabloid, said the intelligence activities by MI6 and the CIA were part of a broader strategy to counter China’s influence.
A national security expert quoted in the newspaper on Monday described China’s confrontation with the West as encompassing various fields, including economics, military, science and technology, and trade.
China has developed a cohesive approach to combating outside threats to national security, especially espionage, the Global Times reported, pointing to the country’s Counter-Espionage Law, revised—and toughened— last July.
Birtain’s Foreign Office did not immediately respond to Newsweek‘s written request for comment by the time of publication.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
LONDON — The U.K. already has some of the most far-reaching surveillance laws in the democratic world. Now it’s rushing to beef them up even further — and tech firms are spooked.
Britain’s government wants to build on its landmark Investigatory Powers Act, a controversial piece of legislation dubbed the “snooper’s charter” by critics when introduced back in 2016.
That law — introduced in the wake of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass state surveillance — attempted to introduce more accountability into the U.K. intelligence agencies’ sprawling snooping regime by formalizing wide-ranging powers to intercept emails, texts, web history and more.
Now new legislation is triggering a fresh outcry among both industry execs and privacy campaigners — who say it could hobble efforts to protect user privacy.
Industry body TechUK has written to Home Secretary James Cleverly airing its complaints. The group’s letter warns that the Investigatory Powers (Amendment) Bill threatens technological innovation; undermines the sovereignty of other nations; and could unleash dire consequences if it sets off a domino effect overseas.
Tech companies are most concerned by a change that would allow the Home Office to issue notices preventing them from making technical updates that might impede information-sharing with U.K. intelligence agencies.
TechUK argues that, combined with pre-existing powers, the changes would “grant a de facto power to indefinitely veto companies from making changes to their products and services offered in the U.K.”
“Using this power, the government could prevent the implementation of new end-to-end encryption, or stop developers from patching vulnerabilities in code that the government or their partners would like to exploit,” Meredith Whittaker, president of secure messaging app Signal, told POLITICO when the bill was first unveiled.
The Home Office, Britain’s interior ministry, remains adamant it’s a technical and procedural set of tweaks. Home Office Minister Andrew Sharpe said at the bill’s committee stage in the House of Lords that the law was “not going to … ban end-to-end encryption or introduce a veto power for the secretary of state … contrary to what some are incorrectly speculating.”
“We have always been clear that we support technological innovation and private and secure communications technologies, including end-to-end encryption,” a government spokesperson said. “But this cannot come at a cost to public safety, and it is critical that decisions are taken by those with democratic accountability.”
Encryption threat
Despite the protestations of industry and campaigners, the British government is whisking the bill through parliament at breakneck speed — risking the ire of lawmakers.
Ministers have so far blocked efforts’ to refine the bill in the House of Lords, the U.K.’s upper chamber. But there are more opportunities to contest the legislation coming and industry is already making appeals to MPs in the hopes of paring it back in the House of Commons.
Some companies including Apple have threatened to pull their services from the UK if asked to undermine encryption under Britain’s laws | Feline Lim/Getty Images
“We stress the critical need for adequate time to thoroughly discuss these changes, highlighting that rigorous scrutiny is essential given the international precedent they will set and their very serious impacts,” the TechUK letter states.
The backdrop to the row is the fraught debate on encryption that unfolded during the passage of the earlier Online Safety Act, which companies and campaigners argued could compel companies to break encryption in the name of online safety.
The bill ultimately said that the government can call for the implementation of this technology when it’s “technically feasible” and simultaneously preserves privacy.
Apple, WhatsApp and Signal have threatened to pull their services from the U.K. if asked to undermine encryption under U.K. laws.
Since the Online Safety Act passed in November, Meta announced that it had begun its rollout of end-to-end encryption on its Messenger service.
In response, Cleverly issued a statement saying he was “disappointed” that the company had gone ahead with the move despite repeated government warnings that it would make identifying child abusers on the platform more difficult.
Critics see a pincer movement. “Taken together, it appears that the Online Safety Bill’s Clause 122 is intended to undermine existing encryption, while the updates to the IPA are intended to block further rollouts of encryption,” said Whittaker.
Beyond encryption
In addition to the notice regime, rights campaigners are worried that the bill allows for the more permissive use of bulk data where there are “low or no” expectations of privacy, for wide-ranging purposes including training AI models.
Lib Dem peer Christopher Fox argued in the House of Lords that this “creates an essentially new and essentially undefined category of information” which marks “a departure from existing privacy law,” notably the Data Protection Act.
Director of campaign group Big Brother Watch, Silkie Carlo, also has issues with the newly invented category. With CCTV footage or social media posts for example, people may not have an expectation of privacy, “[but] that’s not the point, the point is that that data taken together and processed in a certain way, can be incredibly intrusive.”
Big Brother Watch is also concerned about how the bill deals with internet connection records — i.e. web logs for individuals for the last 12 months. These can currently be obtained by agencies when specific criteria is known, like the person of interest’s identity. Changes to the bill would broaden this for the purpose of “target discovery,” which Big Brother Watch characterizes as “generalized surveillance.”
Members of the House of Lords are also worried about the bill’s proposal to expand the number of people who can sanction spying on parliamentarians themselves. Right now, this requires the PM’s sign-off, but under the bill, the PM would be able to designate deputies for when he is not “available.” The change was inspired by the period in which former PM Boris Johnson was incapacitated with COVID-19.
The bill will return to the House of Lords on January 23, before heading to the House of Commons to be debated by MPs | Tolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images
“The purpose of this bill is to give the intelligence agencies a bit of extra agility at the margins, where the existing Rolls Royce regime is proving a bit clunky and bureaucratic,” argues David Anderson, crossbench peer and author of a review that served as a blueprint for the bill. “If you start throwing in too many safeguards, you will negate that purpose, and you will not solve the problem that bill is addressing.”
Anderson proposed the changes relating to spying on MPs and peers are necessary “if the prime minister has got COVID, or if they’re in a foreign country where they have no access to secure communications.”
This could even apply in cases where there’s a conflict of interest because spies want to snoop on the PM’s relatives or the PM himself, he added.
Amendments proposed by peers at the committee stage were uniformly rejected by the government.
The bill will return to the House of Lords for the next stage of the legislative process on January 23, before heading to the House of Commons to be debated by MPs.
“Our overarching concern is that the significance of the proposed changes to the notices regime are presented by the Home Office as minor adjustments and as such are being downplayed,” reads the TechUK letter.
“What we’re seeing across these different bills is a continual edging further towards … turning private tech companies into arms of a surveillance state,” says Carlo.
An American destroyer intercepted four drones fired by Houthi militants into the busy shipping lanes of the Red Sea, as the escalating crisis saw two commercial tankers hit in one chaotic day.
In a statement issued Sunday, U.S. Central Command said its navy had “shot down four unmanned aerial drones originating from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen that were inbound to the USS Laboon” the day before. The American destroyer had been patrolling the area as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian, the Washington-led mission to prevent violence spilling over into the strategic waterway.
On Saturday, the Pentagon announced that a Japanese-owned, Liberian-flagged chemical tanker, the Chem Pluto, had been struck by a drone in the Indian Ocean, stating that the attack was launched from Iran.
According to data from analytics platform Kpler, seen by POLITICO, the Chem Pluto had been carrying almost 43,000 barrels of highly-flammable benzene en route to the port of Mangaluru at the time, but no casualties have been reported. The attack was well outside the usual area of operation for Houthi drones, around 300 nautical miles from the coast of India and it is believed to be the first time the U.S. has accused Iran directly of targeting commercial shipping since the crisis began.
Washington has previously said intelligence revealed Iran was “deeply involved” in planning attacks on vessels, working closely with Yemen’s Houthi rebels to cause a crisis that experts fear is already threatening the world economy. Houthi forces say they are targeting vessels with links to Israel in retaliation for its war in Gaza.
On Saturday evening, two civilian ships in the Red Sea area sounded the alarm that they were under attack. The Blaamanen, a Norwegian-flagged vessel carrying a quarter of a million tons of sunflower oil, reported it had narrowly avoided an attack drone, while Indian-flagged crude oil tanker Saibaba confirmed it had taken a direct hit.
Close to the Suez Canal which links Europe to Asia, more than 10 percent of global trade passes through the Red Sea, with around 17,000 ships a year crossing between the Mediterranean and the Arabian Sea.
In his first interview since being appointed as U.K. foreign secretary, former British prime minister David Cameron, told The Telegraph on Friday that the West must send “an incredibly clear message that this escalation will not be tolerated” to Tehran. Along with France, Italy and Spain, the U.K. is one of a handful of countries joining forces with the U.S. as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian.
TAIPEI — 2024 will be a bumper year of elections around the world, but one of the first votes on the calendar will also be one of the most hotly contested and consequential: Taiwan, where there are vital strategic interests at play for both the U.S. and China on January 13.
If the campaign started with expectations in the U.S. that the ruling, pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), whose top brass are frequent and welcome guests in Washington, would stroll to victory, the final stages of the presidential and legislative race have turned into a nail-biter.
Chinese President’s Xi Jinping’s Communist Party leadership, increasingly assertive in its claim that democratic Taiwan is part of China and keen to see the ruling party in Taipei ousted, is trying to swing the election through a disinformation campaign of hoaxes and outlandish claims on social media.
And the tactics may be working. The latest polls for the first-past-the-post presidential race on the My Formosa portal have DPP leader William Lai on 35.2 percent, only just keeping his nose out in front of his main challenger from the Beijing-friendly Kuomintang (KMT), Hou Yu-ih,on 30.6 percent. On Tuesday, the Beijing-leaning United Daily News put both candidates on 31 percent.
“This is not a walk in the park,” admitted Vincent Chao, a city councillor and prominent DPP personality, speaking to POLITICO’s Power Play podcast at a campaign event in New Taipei, a municipality surrounding the capital.
It could hardly be a more febrile period in terms of security fears over the Taiwan Strait, where insistent Chinese maneuvering has been matched by a high-stakes U.S.-backed boost to the island’s defenses. Only on December 15, the U.S. approved another $300 million of spending on defense kit, sparking a retort from China that the expenditure would harm “security interests and threaten peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
Lai’s opponents are playing hard on these security implications of the vote, and are accusing him of bringing the island closer to conflict because of his past comments in favor of the island’s independence. China has, after all, continually warned that independence “means war” and Xi has said Beijing is willing to use “all necessary measures” to secure unification. Lai has hit back that his rivals “are parroting the [Chinese Communist Party line] as propaganda to score electoral benefits.”
For the global economy, open war over Taiwan would be a disaster, perhaps even outstripping the shock of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, due in particular to the island’s critical role in microchip supplies.
Head-to-head race
The specter of a DPP defeat has raised the temperature of the fevered last few weeks of the campaign.
Chao, the DPP councillor and a former political secretary in Taiwan’s Washington representation, admitted that the DPP ends the year in “a head-to-head race” in the final stretch. “I mean, it’s democracy and the party has been in power for eight years. Anything could change,” he said.
Wearing a jaunty white and green “Team Taiwan” tracksuit, the party’s signature colors, he talks above the backstage din of an evening event, held among the tower block estates of New Taipei. Volunteers hand out pork dumplings, the outgoing president Tsai Ing-wen gives a rousing speech about freedom and security, and there are ballads of national loyalty and singalong love songs. It feels heartfelt, but also very Taiwanese in its orderliness, the crowd sitting on stools in the evening heat, waving small flags in unison.
Chao is candid about the scale of China’s social media offensive.
The specter of a DPP defeat has raised the temperature of the fevered last few weeks of the campaign | Annabelle Chih/Getty Images
“What we’re seeing is a much more sophisticated China,” Chao reflected. “They’ve grown much more confident in their abilities to influence our elections, not through military coercion or other overt means, but through disinformation, through influencing public opinion, through controlling the information that people see … through social media organizations like TikTok.”
One of the many unfounded stories that gained currency on social posts was a claim the U.S. had asked Taiwan to develop biological weapons research, a rumor aimed at raising anxiety about an arms race. Another accused the DPP of covert surveillance of its rivals.
Trade and business links are another lever. According to Japan’s Nikkei newspaper, some 300 executives from big Taiwanese businesses operating China were called to a meeting by by China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Director Song Tao, a close ally of China’s President Xi, in early December and roundly encouraged to fly home to Taiwan support a pro-Beijing outcome in January.
A third concern is an international system buckling under new conflicts and crises, with less time to devote to Taiwan’s freedoms, all compounded by an uncertain outcome in the upcoming U.S. election. In the wake of Beijing’s ’s clampdown on freedoms in Hong Kong and with the backwash of the Ukraine crisis, anxieties run high among DPP supporters about Taiwan’s outlook and the need for high levels of deterrence.
“We really do not want to be the next Ukraine,” Chao added, with feeling.
Bending with Beijing
Opinion is strongly divided about the smartest tactical response toward China’s muscle flexing.
Opinion is strongly divided about the smartest tactical response toward China’s muscle flexing. | Annabelle Chih/Getty Images
Across town, at one of the opposition’s bases, where campaigners wear tracksuits in the white and blue of the Kuomintang party, International Relations Director Alexander Huang said his political troops were “within touching distance” of a possible victory.
Keen to shake off a reputation of being reflexively pro-China, as opposed to merely cautious about riling its powerful neighbour, the KMT hosted cocktails for foreign journalists in a trendy, Christmas-decorated bar, bringing together Chinese news-agency writers with Western reporters covering the election.
Huang, who hails from a military intelligence background and studied Chinese military and security doctrine in Washington, argued renewed Western support and commitments of defence expenditure by the U.S. administration increased the risk of something backfiring over Taiwan’s security. “We are under a great military threat [from China],” he told Power Play. “Our position is deterrence without provocation: assurance without appeasement.”
He also reckoned the current chilly relations between the governing DPP party and Beijing were widening distrust. “Our current government has no direct communication with the other side. If you are not able to communicate your view to your adversary, how can you change that?”
It’s less clear what reassurances the KMT expects from Beijing in return for a more accommodating relationship. Huang cites a possible decrease in trade tensions, which can hit Taiwanese agriculture and fishing when Beijing turns the screws, and further action on climate change and pollution (Taiwan is downwind of China’s emissions).
Colorful cast
The race certainly does not lack for colorful personalities.
The DPP’s presidential candidate, Lai, is a doctor and parliamentarian, while his KMT rival Hou is a former policeman and mayor in New Taipei. Mindful that the mood has become cynical about political elites, both sides have chosen frontmen who can claim humble roots: Hou hails from a family that scratched a living as food market traders, while Lai, the epitome of a slick Taiwanese professional, grew up with a widowed mother after his father died in a mining accident.
Hou is a former policeman and mayor in New Taipei | Annabelle Chih/Getty Images
The “Veep” contenders are flashier than the main candidates and more media-friendly. Hsiao Bi-khim, educated in the U.S. and until recently ambassador to Washington, is a pet-lover who styles herself as an agile “cat warrior” in stark contrast to China’s pugnacious “wolf-warrior” diplomats. Her KMT opponent is Jaw Shaw-kong, a formidable, populist-tinged debater and TV personality, who channels overt pro-Beijing sentiment, recently calling for more alignment in military planning with China’s leadership.
The billionaire Foxconn founder Terry Gou, who had run as a maverick, wafting pets as incentives to couples to have more babies to combat a worryingly low birthrate, quit the race after China’s tax authorities launched punitive investigations into his company, the builder of iPhones.
Russell Hsiao of the Global Taiwan Institute, a non-partisan research organization, reckoned that even if the DPP wins, its mandate will be less compelling than in the glory days of 2020, when it surged to a record level.
The guessing game of how likely an intervention — or even invasion — by China is helps explain the nervy tenor of this race.
The KMT’s Huang thought a “full-scale, kinetic invasion” is unlikely in the immediate future. How long does he think that guarantee would hold? “I would say not for the next five years, if we get our policy right.”
Hardly the most durable time-frame.
Taipei politics being a small world, Huang is a longstanding frenemy of the DPP’s Chao, who counters that Taiwan urgently needs to retain its defiant stance and deepen its strategic alliances with the West. They just disagree widely on the means to secure its future.
“The aim of [Beijing’s] engagements is unification … by force if necessary. Democracy, freedom, they are not just words. They represent what our people sincerely believe and hope to uphold.”
Stuart Lau contributed reporting.
Anne McElvoy is host of POLITICO’s weekly Power Play interview podcast, whose latest episode comes from the Taiwan election campaign.
KYIV — Ukraine’s spies aim to intensify intelligence operations and conduct sabotage strikes deep in Russian-controlled territory next year to bring the war as close to the Kremlin as possible, the head of Ukraine’s SBU security service told POLITICO.
“We cannot disclose our plans. They should remain a shocker for the enemy. We prepare surprises,” Major General Vasyl Malyuk said in written responses to questions. “The occupiers must understand that it will not be possible to hide. We will find the enemy everywhere.”
While he dodged specifics, Malyuk did give some hints. Logistics targets and military assets in occupied Ukrainian territory are likely to continue to be a focus. And then there are strikes that hit the enemy across the border.
“We are always looking for new solutions. So, cotton will continue to burn,” Malyuk joked.
Ukrainians use the word “cotton” to describe explosions in Russia and the occupied territories of Ukraine organized by Ukrainian special services. It came from Russian media and officials describing the growing number of such incidents with the word khlopok, which means both “blast” and “cotton” in Russian.
With combat along hundreds of kilometers of front lines essentially stalled for much of this year, the exploits of the SBU both boost Ukrainian morale and also hurt Russia’s war fighting abilities.
“The SBU carries out targeted point strikes. We stab the enemy with a needle right in the heart. Each of our special operations pursues a specific goal and gives its result. All this in a complex complicates the capabilities of the Russian Federation for waging war and brings our victory closer,” Malyuk said.
One area of focus will be Crimea and the Black Sea, building on this year’s operations.
Malyuk’s pet project is the Sea Baby drone, called malyuk in Ukrainian, which means “little guy.” The drone carries about 850 kilograms of explosives and is able to operate in stormy conditions, making it difficult to detect.
“With the help of those little guys we are gradually pushing the Black Sea Fleet of the Russian Federation out of Crimea,” Malyuk said.
It’s been used to attack the Kerch Bridge that links occupied Crimea to mainland Russia in July as well as to hammer Russian ships.
In October 2022 the SBU’s marine drones attacked Sevastopol Bay damaging four Russian warships. This year, the drones hit two missile carriers, a tanker, an amphibious assault ship and also damaged a large military tugboat and Russia’s newest reconnaissance and hydrographic ship.
Malyuk’s pet project is the Sea Baby drone, called malyuk in Ukrainian, which means “little guy.” The drone carries about 850 kilograms of explosives and is able to operate in stormy conditions, making it difficult to detect | Courtesy of the Security Service of Ukraine
That forced Moscow to shift much of the fleet away from its base in occupied Sevastopol in Crimea, leaving the west of the sea free of Russian vessels and allowing Ukraine to resume use of its ports for shipping.
The Kerch Bridge is still standing after a 2022 truck bomb attack and this year’s strike, but is only partially open, Malyuk said.
“It is a legitimate target for us, according to international law and the rules of war. Ukrainian law also allows us to attack this object. And we have to destroy the logistics of our enemy,” Malyuk added.
Malyuk said that Kyiv carefully considers its targets before striking — an effort to stay within the rules of war in contrast with Russia, which has fired missiles, artillery and drones at both military and civilian targets.
“When planning and preparing its special operations, the SBU carefully selects its targets. We work on military facilities or on those that the enemy uses to carry out their military tasks. We act fully by the norms of international law,” Malyuk said.
The SBU conducts most of its operations on Ukraine’s territory — in Donbas, Crimea and the Black Sea.
“This is our land and we will use all possible methods to free it from the occupiers,” Malyuk said.
When it comes to planning something in Russia, SBU says it focuses only on targets used for military purposes like logistical corridors for supplying weapons — like the rail tunnel in Siberia hit with two explosions (the SBU hasn’t claimed responsibility) as well as warships, military bases and similar targets.
“All SBU operations you hear about are exclusively our work and our unique technical development,” Malyuk said. “These operations became possible, in particular, because we develop and implement our technical solutions.”
EUROPOL HEADQUARTERS, THE HAGUE — “Please knock. Do not enter,” said the sign on the door of Europe’s heavily-secured law enforcement headquarters in the Netherlands.
Inside, detectives were staring at their computers, examining a video of a newborn girl being molested.
A group of international detectives was trying to identify details — a toy, a clothing label, a sound — that would allow them to rescue the girl and arrest those who sexually abused her, recorded it and then shared it on the internet.
Even a tiny hint could help track down the country where the baby girl was assaulted, allowing the case to be transferred to the right police authority for further investigation. Such details matter when police are trying to tackle crimes carried out behind closed doors but disseminated online across the world.
Finding and stopping child sex offenders is gruesome and frustrating most of the time — yet hugely rewarding sometimes — police officers part of the international task force at the EU agency Europol told POLITICO.
Offenders are getting better at covering their digital tracks and law enforcement officials say they don’t have the tools they need to keep up. The increasing use of encrypted communication online makes investigators’ work harder, especially as a pandemic that kept people at home and online ramped up a flood of abuse images and videos.
In 2022, social media giant Meta Platforms found and reported 26 million images on Facebook and Instagram. Teenagers’ favorite apps Snapchat and TikTok respectively filed over 550,000 and nearly 290,000 reports to the U.S. National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, an organization acting as a clearing house under U.S. law for child sexual abuse material (CSAM) content that technology firms detect and spot.
The European Commission in December also ordered Meta to explain what it was doing to fight the spread of illegal sexual images taken by minors themselves and shared through Instagram, under the EU’s new content-moderation rulebook, the Digital Services Act (DSA).
Politicians across the world are keen to act. In the European Union and the United Kingdom, legislators have drafted laws to dig up more illegal content and extend law enforcement’s powers to crack down on child sexual abuse material.
But those efforts have ignited a fierce public debate on what takes precedence: granting police new abilities to go after offenders or preserving privacy and protections against states’ and digital platforms’ mass online surveillance.
The scale of the problem
The Europol task force has met twice a year since 2014 to accelerate investigations to identify victims, most recently in November. It has almost tripled in size to 33 investigators representing 26 countries including Germany, Australia and the United States.
“You might recognize things that are in the images or you might recognize the sounds in the background or the voices. If you do that together with multiple nationalities in one room, it can be really effective,” said Marijn Schuurbiers, head of operations at Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3).
Still, too often detectives feel like they’re swimming against the tide, as the amount of child sexual abuse material circulating online surges.
Europol created a database in 2016 and this system now holds 85 million unique photos and videos of children, many found on pedophile forums on the “dark web” — the part of the internet that isn’t publicly searchable and requires special software to browse.
“We can work hours and hours on end and we’re still scratching the surface. It’s terrifying,” said Mary, a national police officer from a non-EU country with 17 years of experience. She requested not to use her last name to protect her identity while doing investigative work.
The task force in November went through 432 files, each containing tens of thousands of images, and found the most likely country for 285 of the children abused in the images. Police believe it likely identified 74 of the victims, three of whom were rescued by the time of publication. Two offenders were arrested.
“We have some successes. But all I can see is those we can’t help,” Mary said.
Many Western agencies outside of the U.S. are restricted by privacy provisions in the software they use like facial recognition tools. They often have to make do with a mix of manual analysis and freely accessible tools they can get from the internet.
“If you have like thousands or hundreds of thousands or even millions of pictures, it’s basically impossible to go manually through them, one by one,” said Schuurbiers.
Since 2017, the agency has regularly been asking for public help to identify objects in images like plastic bags and a logo on a school uniform. Europol said it has gotten 27,000 tips from internet sleuths including investigative outlet Bellingcat, some of which led to 23 kids being identified and five offenders being prosecuted.
Groups on the “dark web” remain the principal place where offenders share illegal content, according to Europol.
But police and child protection hotlines are seeing a growing number of images cropping up on popular and accessible platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Instagram. The pandemic made this worse as more children and teenagers also joined social media and gaming websites where offenders got better at grooming victims and blackmailing them into making sexual content.
Law enforcement agencies around the world have also sounded the alarm that offenders are also connecting with minors and exchanging illegal content on encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal and iMessage, making it extremely challenging to find the content. WhatsApp, for instance, scans the photos and descriptions users but is unable to monitor their highly secure messages.
Finding more child sexual abuse material
The crisis of child sexual abuse material proliferating online has got governments pushing through sweeping new legislation to make it possible for law enforcement to investigate more online material and use artificial intelligence tools to help them.
The European Commission has proposed a law that could force tech companies like Meta, Apple and Google to scan messages and content stored in the cloud for images of abuse — and even for conversations of offenders seeking to manipulate minors upon a judge’s order. The companies would have to report the content, so it could end up with Europol or other national investigators, and then remove it.
The United Kingdom recently passed the Online Safety Act, which some legal experts say would allow the country’s platform regulator Ofcom to force companies to break encryption to find sexual abuse. Government and Ofcom officials have said companies would not currently be forced to monitor content because tools to bypass encryption and also preserve privacy do not exist at the moment.
Both plans have sparked widespread backlash among digital rights activists, tech experts and some lawyers. They fear the laws effectively force tech firms to ditch encryption, and that indiscriminate scanning will lead to mass surveillance.
Negotiations on the EU draft law remain on thin ice, with politicians and member countries clashing over how far to go in hunting down potential illegal child abuse. And Brussels also finalized in December a new law, the Artificial Intelligence Act, governing how law enforcement will be able to use AI tools like facial recognition software to go through footage and images.
Still, EU lawmakers have already significantly expanded Europol’s powers to build new artificial intelligence tools and handle more data. Under the Digital Services Act, Europol and national police will also be able to swiftly compel tech companies to remove publicly accessible illegal content and hand over information about users posting such images.
Anne, a Europol investigator, said she doesn’t keep count of the number of kids she’s identified in her 12 years working in the field — but she remembers them. She requested not to use her last name to protect her investigative work.
“The thing that I will always remember from my cases is the images,” she said. “They stay in my head.”
The Kremlin’s spy chief Sergei Naryshkin warned the U.S. that Ukraine will turn into its “second Vietnam,” amid disagreement in Congress over funding for Kyiv.
“Ukraine will turn into a ‘black hole’ absorbing more and more resources and people,” Russian foreign intelligence chief Naryshkin said Thursday in a written statement published by his agency’s house journal, the Intelligence Operative.
“Ultimately, the U.S. risks creating a ‘second Vietnam’ for itself, and every new American administration will have to deal with it,” he added.
The U.S. was engaged in the Vietnam War — fought between South Vietnam and the U.S. on one side and communist North Vietnam backed by the Soviet Union and China on the other — for nearly two decades. The conflict claimed more than a million lives, including tens of thousands from the U.S., and ended with a comprehensive victory for the North Vietnamese forces.
According to a recent poll, 59 percent of Americans still support sending military aid to Ukraine.
TEL AVIV — Israeli officials are becoming guardedly optimistic that a hostage deal with Hamas can be reached, but any agreement is likely to be interim and limited.
A deal is likely to involve just a few dozen captive Israeli children and elderly, among them some dual nationals, including Americans, according to two Israeli officials, who were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic of hostages.
The formalizing of humanitarian pauses in northern Gaza has helped progress the talks via the Qataris and Egyptians, the two officials acknowledged. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week agreed to put in place four-hour daily humanitarian pauses in its bombings in Gaza after almost two weeks of pressure from the Biden administration.
But the two officials cautioned that there are still several outstanding issues that could easily derail a deal, including the Hamas militants withholding a complete list of the hostages being held in the Gaza Strip. The Hamas military leadership is also demanding a cease-fire, or a longer humanitarian pause of as much as a week, the Israeli officials said.
David Meidan, a former Mossad intelligence officer, who served for a time as Benjamin Netanyahu’s coordinator on hostage issues, believes that “something is moving under the surface” regarding the hostages. The humanitarian pauses that Netanyahu has agreed to “might lead to some positive steps,” Meidan said in an exclusive interview with POLITICO.
More than a decade ago, Meidan negotiated the deal to secure the release of Gilad Shalit, a young Israeli soldier captured by Hamas in 2006, in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners. Meidan, who has been counseling the families of the Israeli hostages, has been consulted by U.S. diplomats and Netanyahu’s newly appointed hostage envoy, Gal Hirsch.
Meidan advised Hirsch and the Americans not to waste time juggling different channels of communication and to focus their efforts on identifying mediators able to reach the key decision-makers — namely the Hamas military leaders in Gaza. He said he told them that “the political leaders outside Gaza in Qatar are not so relevant.” They can serve just as go-betweens for messages to the Hamas military leaders, Meidan explained.
The key players
“When I led negotiations 12 years ago, I did not understand in the beginning exactly who the key players were. Finally, I understood that the key person at the time was Ahmed Jabari,” Meidan said.
Jabari in 2006 was commander of the military wing of Hamas, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. He was killed subsequently in 2012 in a targeted Israeli airstrike. Now Meidan says Yehya Sinwar, Hamas’ leader in the Gaza Strip and one of the founders of the organization’s military wing, is the key player — along with Mohammed Deif, who planned the October 7 terror attack on southern Israel, and Marwan Issa, who is the deputy chief of Hamas’ military wing. “It is those three,” he said.
“The Americans are deeply involved. I have the impression that on the American side there’s a very high level of engagement and it is coming straight from the top,” Meidan said. But the American role can only be limited, and Washington is not best placed to be a negotiator. “What it can do is pressure the Egyptians and Qataris and instill a sense of urgency,” he says. Last week, Mossad chief David Barnea and CIA Director William Burns were in Qatar to discuss ways to win the release of the hostages in Gaza with the Qatari prime minister, according to media reports.
Meidan said the negotiations this time round will be more difficult than what he encountered a dozen years ago. First, he was bartering for just one soldier, not for around 240 captives, mostly civilian; and he wasn’t negotiating against the backdrop of an all-out war.
And though he couldn’t sit opposite Jabari because of Israeli laws, he and the Hamas leader were in adjacent rooms in Cairo during the final stages with the Egyptians ferrying messages back and forth as they bargained. Meidan knew a deal was near when Jabari started to accept that it would be impossible for Israel to release some of the Palestinians that Hamas wanted freed. “That was when I knew he was turning pragmatic,” he said.
‘More complex’
Egyptian generals were crucial in pulling off the Shalit deal, according to Meidan. He thinks they will be key again — including one general who led the Egyptian team in 2006.
“Now it is even more complex,” Meidan said. No one is in adjacent rooms, and it is much more laborious and time-consuming.
“What you have now is the Israelis and the Americans talking with the Qataris, who are then passing messages to the Hamas political leaders in Doha, who then communicate with Gaza. And you have Egyptians talking with Hamas leaders in Gaza. The Israelis draft proposals and the Americans tweak them. The Qataris and the Egyptians make suggestions. The final version is sent to Gaza via the Hamas leaders in Doha,” he added.
Hamas has different ways of communicating between the political and military leaders, including using cell phones, which are easily monitored. “Each round of bargaining takes two to three days” slowing the process and drawing out the bargaining, says Meidan. “It takes a lot of time but, alas, time is of the essence,” he said.
Meidan had wanted Israel to prioritize hostage negotiations much sooner — and before Israel started to pummel Gaza and launch military ground operations.
“Now we are in a different situation,” he said. He faults Netanyahu for dragging his feet. “I listened carefully to the statements of the Hamas leaders, and I got the impression they were taken aback at the international outrage after the terrible October 7 attack and were trying to argue that the worst of what happened wasn’t carried out by their fighters,” Meidan said.
Meidan said the best way to engineer a deal now is to use the humanitarian pauses to push a humanitarian line on Hamas and argue they should reciprocate by freeing captive babies, children, the elderly and the infirm. “But it is very difficult,” he said.
‘Rollercoaster of emotions’
The families of the hostages are getting ever more impatient and desperate, he said. Most are holding off calling for a cease-fire, leaving it to the government to determine the best ways of getting their relatives back, Meidan said. Most are arguing that Netanyahu should release all and any Palestinians held in Israeli jails that Hamas wants freed.
But that could change soon. “They are going through a rollercoaster of emotions and can say different things from day to day — you have to remember there are many relatives involved and they don’t all agree,” Meidan said. But with each passing day, more are saying to me that there should be a cease-fire to save as many hostages as possible,” he said.
If the hostage families as a group begin to call for a cease-fire, it could shift domestic Israeli politics dramatically, presenting Netanyahu with a potentially explosive political moment, say opposition politicians. The war aims to wreck Hamas’ military capabilities, defang the organization to prevent any repetition of October 7 has enormous public backing, but if Israel is faced with a stark choice of choosing between the hostages and the military campaign, then Israelis will prioritize getting the captives released, say some opposition politicians.
“Basically, if you ask me, the hostages have to come first, we should get them home,” Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party and leader of the opposition, told POLITICO. Although he said he thought in practical terms Israel won’t be faced with such a black-and-white dilemma. But if it is, “we will have our chance to kill whoever we need to kill afterwards. If we are faced with a choice, then we must go with the hostages because that is the basic contract the country has with the families,” he added.
Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agrees that there doesn’t have to be a clear-cut choice. “I am not sure it will come to an either-or. I don’t think that if Israel stops now, then we’ll get the hostages. And I don’t think that if we don’t stop, we will lose the hostages,” he said.
“When we negotiated the release of Gilad Shalit, we were still confronting Hamas and killing terrorists and they never harmed him because they understood he was an asset and a bargaining chip which they didn’t want to lose. They protect the assets,” he said. But he and other politicians acknowledge say that if the families of the hostages call en masse for a cease-fire, it will roil Israel’s domestic politics.
How effectively can you explain yourself to others? Learn to embrace the healthy challenge of describing your beliefs to sharpen your thinking and worldview.
This content is for Monthly, Yearly, and Lifetime members only. Join Here
Russian President Vladimir Putin is not worried about Western sanctions — quite the opposite, in fact.
Faced with the prospect of a 12th round of EU sanctions — which could include trade in anything from diamonds to needles — the Russian leader brushed off the plan as ridiculous and took a jab at Europe and its crawling bedbug problem.
“Perhaps the less junk, the better. There is less of a chance of bedbugs coming here from large European cities,” Putin joked on Wednesday, reported Russian state-run news agency TASS.
Several European cities, including Paris, are battling an infestation of bedbugs in recent months. The tiny insects have swarmed public transport, raising alarm among residents and public officials, and sending cities into a frenzy.
Last month, French intelligence even blamed Russian propaganda for stoking fears about the bedbugs by posting fake articles that looked like they were written by reputable French newspapers.
Putin’s comment comes as the EU is preparing a new round of sanctions against Russia, which is likely to include export restrictions on welding machines, chemicals and diamonds, among other items. According to EUobserver, Lithuania has proposed a plan which also includes the ban of exports of “nails, tacks, drawing pins” and “sewing needles, knitting needles.”
Putin — whose full-scale invasion of Ukraine is heading toward the two-year mark — has ridiculed the proposal, saying that Western officials “are now simply reaching the point of absurdity in their fantasies.”
Israel’s Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu was suspended indefinitely after he said in an interview that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip was “one of the possibilities,” the government announced on Sunday.
“Eliyahu’s statements are not based in reality,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement on X.
Israel and its military “are operating in accordance with the highest standards of international law to avoid harming innocents,” the prime minister added.
A member of the ultra-nationalist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, Eliyahu earlier on Sunday claimed in a radio interview that since there were “no non-combatants in Gaza,” using an atomic weapon on the Palestinian enclave was “one of the possibilities.”
Eliyahu later sought to rectify his statement, saying it was “clear to all sensible people” that his reference to nuclear weapons had been “metaphorical.”
Israel, which has one of the most powerful armies in the Middle East, is widely believed to possess nuclear weapons, although it has never publicly conducted nuclear tests.
Netanyahu’s government has been under fire for the failures of Israeli intelligence in preventing the surprise attacks from the Palestinian militant group Hamas that killed more than 1,400 people on Israeli soil on October 7. The government has also been criticized for a lack of support provided to survivors of the attacks.
In retaliation, Israel’s government has ordered a “complete siege” of the Gaza Strip, limiting all access to food, water and fuel in the Palestinian enclave — which is controlled by the Hamas militant group and home to 2.3 million people — for the past month.
It has also launched a ground assault into Gaza and thousands of airstrikes on the enclave, killing more than 9,400 people, according to the Hamas-run heath authorities in Gaza. Israel’s offensive has also led to strikes on several non-military targets, including nearby refugee camps and an ambulance convoy which Israel says was being used by Hamas.
Mikhail Filiponenko, a pro-Russian lawmaker and ex-militiaman in occupied eastern Ukraine, walked over to a car outside his house on Wednesday morning … and was promptly blown to smithereens, Russian media reported.
Ukraine’s Military Intelligence immediately claimed responsibility for the assassination.
“Yeah, it was our operation,” Andriy Cherniak, representative of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate, also known as GUR, told POLITICO in a phone conversation about the car bomb attack.
Military intelligence worked together with local Ukrainian partisans to prepare to assassinate Filiponenko, GUR said in a statement.
Filiponenko was born in Luhansk and studied in Kyiv. However, in 2014 he joined Russian-backed mercenaries who seized power and helped President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin to establish its rule over the occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine.
“He was involved in the organization of torture camps in the occupied territories of the Luhansk region, where prisoners of war and civilian hostages were subjected to inhumane torture. Filiponenko himself personally brutally tortured people,” Ukraine’s military intelligence said.
GUR revealed the exact address where Filiponenko lived in Luhansk and added that Ukraine’s spies knew where other high-profile collaborators were living in the occupied territories.
A social media post by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashing out at military and security chiefs for allowing a deadly Hamas attack on October 7 was promptly deleted on Sunday after triggering negative comments, many from Israel’s own war cabinet.
As the post on X unleashed a wave of furious reactions by high-ranking Israeli security officials, exposing deep internal divisions, Netanyahu published a new post saying: “I was wrong.”
“The things I said following the press conference should not have been said and I apologize for that,” he wrote. “I give full backing to all the heads of the security arms. I am strengthening the Chief of Staff and the commanders and soldiers of the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] who are at the front,” he added in the post.
Netanyahu has drawn public criticism for refusing to take any responsibility in not preventing Hamas’ assault earlier this month, when the militant group killed more than 1,400 people and took around 200 hostages. So far, the Israeli leader has simply said that, once the war is over, tough questions would be asked of everybody, including himself.
The deleted post reflected his attempt to deflect any personal responsibility, taking a clear aim at security chiefs. “Under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of war intentions on the part of Hamas,” it read. “On the contrary, the assessment of the entire security echelon, including the head of military intelligence and the head of Shin Bet, was that Hamas was deterred and was seeking an arrangement.”
It added: “This was the assessment presented time and again to the prime minister and the cabinet by all the security echelon and the intelligence community, including right up until the outbreak of the war.”
Reuters reported that Israel’s military spokesperson declined to comment on Netanyahu’s blaming of the intelligence agencies, saying: “We are now at war, focused on the war.”
