RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/17/five-people-charged-for-being-spies-of-the-chinese-government-involved-in-harassment-campaigns-against-u-s-citizens/

On Wednesday, federal prosecutors in New York charged five individuals with acting on behalf of the Chinese government as they attempted to spy on U.S. citizens, and to subsequently harass them for criticism of China.

As reported by the Washington Post, three separate charges were brought against each of the five defendants in Brooklyn, with the charges coming from the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York. The defendants have been accused of stalking and harassing Chinese nationals living in the country who are now critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In one example, one of the spies tried to interfere with the congressional candidacy of a military veteran who said he had been a leader of the student protesters at the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. In another instance, the defendants allegedly plotted to destroy the artwork of a former Chinese national currently living in Los Angeles. In another of the accusations, a defendant is accused of using his position within the Chinese community of New York City to seek information about prominent Chinese dissidents and anti-CCP activists, in order to send such information to the Chinese Ministry of State Security (MSS).

“Transnational repression harms people in the United States and around the world and threatens the rule of law itself,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew G. Olsen. The Department of Justice “will not allow any foreign government” to target American citizens, he added.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/biden-so-weak-another-big-threat-organizing-us-robert-spencer/

The Islamic State (ISIS) is back. Five years after Donald Trump entered the Oval Office and quickly brought about the destruction of its caliphate in Iraq and Syria, ISIS is resurgent and wealthy. Could this have anything to do with Old Joe Biden’s misrule? Of course.

To be sure, there are other factors at play as well. An Iraqi security official said Friday that “recent assessments … put the group’s reserves at between $25 million and $50 million.” That could be a conservative estimate: the Wall Street Journal reported in September 2020 that ISIS had “assets ranging into the hundreds of millions of dollars across the Middle East and Central Asia,” according to “officials and government records.”

The Iraqi official said that ISIS got its cash from “opportunistic extortion, looting and kidnap for ransom,” but those are not the only sources of the jihad terror group’s income. WSJ added that ISIS “still extorts local populations in areas it controls or has supporters; receives income from businesses it seized during its rule; and collects payments from human trafficking.” It also controls “a growing share of illicit tobacco markets in Pakistan and Afghanistan.” Nor is even that all: “donors in several Middle Eastern countries work on raising funds,” says the WSJ, in an understated reference to wealthy Muslims around the world who believe that ISIS is a worthy Islamic organization and keep it afloat financially with substantial donations.

On Friday, the group announced that it had chosen a new caliph, the brother of the former ISIS caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a U.S. raid in 2019. The new top dog is Juma Awad al-Badri, a.k.a. Abu al-Hassan al-Hashemi al-Quraishi, succeeding Abu Ibrahim al-Quraishi, who blew himself up to avoid being captured in a U.S. raid in Syria in February.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/01/the-increased-cyber-warfare-threat-from-a-new-sino-russo-alliance/

With the start of conventional warfare in the battle for control of Ukraine, many Americans wrongly assume that unless U.S. troops are deployed within the forces promised by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, this will be just another in the seemingly never-ending list of conflicts, wars, and skirmishes that may have little, if any, direct damaging effects on the United States.

We can certainly talk of the numerous economic implications of this war in eastern Europe. We can perhaps even argue that conflict may benefit the United States, as it might serve to provide a much-needed wakeup call to the Biden Administration that reversing the Trump-era energy policy and throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at an aggressive Russia only enabled this costly and destructive military endeavor.

Also enabling this brazen action from Russia is the weakness projected by yet another Democratic Party politician who has been forced to endure the indignity of having his red line ignored by a ruthless dictator. 

As a result, this new war will certainly signify the permanent arrival of what will be the most common theater of war in the future—the cybersphere. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pompeo-chinese-hypersonic-threat-a-very-difficult-problem/

Mike Pompeo warned this week that defending the United States from a hypersonic-missile attack is “a very difficult problem.” The former secretary of state’s remarks provide the latest example of a senior U.S. official vexed by this emerging threat.

The Trump-era top diplomat was speaking Tuesday evening during a session of the Nixon Seminar — a monthly foreign-policy-discussion program — after host Mary Kissel, vice president at Stephens Inc. and Pompeo’s senior adviser at the State Department, asked whether the U.S. can protect against hypersonic missiles from China.

Pompeo, who in January called for fast-tracking new defensive and offensive technologies to deal with the hypersonic threat, suggested that the U.S. doesn’t have the technological capabilities to detect such an attack in time

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckbrooks/2022/01/21/cybersecurity-in-2022–a-fresh-look-at-some-very-alarming-stats/?sh=6c30802c6b61

Earlier this year I wrote a FORBES article called “Alarming Cybersecurity Stats: What You Need To Know For 2021.”  Alarming Cybersecurity Stats: What You Need To Know For 2021 (forbes.com) It included an assortment of stats on the increase in threats to our digital wellness as companies, governments, and consumers. The article was based on the backdrop of a spate of high-profile cyber-attacks such as Solar Winds, and Colonial Pipeline and had painted a dire assessment of the 2021 first half status of the cyber-threat ecosystem. Now we have reached the second half of 2021. Just when we thought it could not get much worse from a cybersecurity stat perspective, it did.

Americans Seem To Be Wakening Up To The Need for Better Cybersecurity

Let us start with a positive stat, it appears that in the U.S. most are finally waking up to the cyberthreats. Awareness is an important step! A poll by The Pearson Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that “about 9 in 10 Americans are at least somewhat concerned about hacking that involves their personal information, financial institutions, government agencies or certain utilities.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/talibans-year-end-gift-biden-administration-and-un-joseph-klein/

The Biden administration has just handed the Taliban terrorists now running Afghanistan an end-of-year gift. Lots and lots of money will be coming their way.

President Biden’s Treasury Department said on December 22nd that it was issuing new “general licenses” allowing financial transactions by the U.S. government, international entities, and non-governmental organizations involving the Taliban and members of the terrorist Haqqani network, subject to certain conditions. The money can only be used for such permitted purposes as humanitarian aid, civil society development, and environmental and natural resource protection projects.

Morgan Ortagus, a State Department spokeswoman during the Trump administration, tweeted that the licenses legitimize “brutal organizations like the Taliban and the Haqqani Network, which is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. These licenses will effectively end their isolation.”

Ortagus also noted that “much of the aid going to Afghanistan…will end up straight back into the pockets of the Taliban and other terrorists and warlords, just as so much has for decades.”

“Where is the plan to prevent this?” Ortagus asked rhetorically. There is evidently no plan.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/12/20/potential-terrorist-from-saudi-arabia-caught-after-crossing-bidens-open-border-n1542983

Governor Greg Abbott of Texas has announced that his state will be building the border wall that Biden’s handlers won’t build, and on Monday we saw yet again why this wall will come not a moment too soon: U.S. Border Patrol officials announced that a “potential terrorist” linked to “Yemeni subjects of interest” was caught in Arizona after crossing into the country from Mexico. Biden’s handlers resolutely ignore the evidence that their open border mess is a national security issue, yet that evidence just keeps on piling up.

According to Fox News,

… the 21-year-old man was apprehended Thursday night entering the U.S. from Mexico through Yuma, Arizona, according to a tweet from Yuma Sector Chief Patrol Agent Chris T. Clem. He appears to have been wearing a jacket emblazoned with an American flag patch and another that stated: ‘Central Oneida County Volunteer.’ The man is allegedly from Saudi Arabia and ‘is linked to several Yemeni subjects of interest.’

Central Oneida County is in New York; Central Oneida County Volunteer Ambulance Corps Chief Thomas Meyers said the Saudi who was apprehended is not actually a member of the organization. It’s unclear how he got the jacket, but it suggests that he may have been in the United States before.

Border Patrol officials did not explain why the man was considered a “potential terrorist,” but there is nothing implausible about the claim. Rep. John Katko (R-NY), ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, distributed a fact sheet in October warning that “known or suspected terrorists are crossing the border ‘at a level we have never seen before.’”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-will-soon-lead-the-us-in-tech-global-leader-semiconductors-5g-wireless-green-energy-11638915759?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Central Intelligence Agency Director Bill Burns announced in October that the agency is establishing two new major “mission centers,” one focusing on China and the other on frontier technologies. This action reflects his judgment that China is the “most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century” and that the “main arena for competition and rivalry” between China and the U.S. will be advanced technologies. The question Americans should be asking is: Could China win the technology race?

A new report on the “Great Technological Rivalry” from Harvard’s Belfer Center answers: Yes. The report isn’t alarmist but nonetheless concludes that China has made such extraordinary leaps that it is now a full-spectrum peer competitor. In each of the foundational technologies of the 21st century—artificial intelligence, semiconductors, 5G wireless, quantum information science, biotechnology and green energy—China could soon be the global leader. In some areas, it is already No. 1.

Last year China produced 50% of the world’s computers and mobile phones; the U.S. produced only 6%. China produces 70 solar panels for each one produced in the U.S., sells four times the number of electric vehicles, and has nine times as many 5G base stations, with network speeds five times as fast as American equivalents.

In the advanced technology likely to have the greatest effect on economics and security in the coming decade—artificial intelligence—China is ahead of the U.S. in crucial areas. A spring 2021 report from the National Security Commission on AI warned that China is poised to overtake the U.S. as the global leader in AI by 2030.