A whole vocabulary of mediaspeak terms applied to real life has gradually emerged. Included here, among others, are: collateral damage, neutralized, canceled, surgical strike, playbook, rules of the game, high-value target, and gamechanger.
All you would need is a ship under a foreign flag positioned offshore to launch hundreds of drones, or even a truck carrying them. When I served as deputy administrator at the National Nuclear Security Administration, overseeing nuclear programs, the drone threat was something we were deeply concerned about.
On TikTok, the war against Iran began with a series of videos from influencer types in Dubai, Doha, and elsewhere in the Middle East. They sat on restaurant patios or on hotel-room balconies and pointed their phone cameras skyward to document missiles flying through the air of their respective cities, then disappearing into puffs of smoke as they were shot down.
We watch people lying, and we know they're lying. And also, you watch people dealing with lying not very well and not enjoying it. The lying, backstabbing and manipulation the game inspires does indeed make for delightful TV viewing.
Over the past year, waves of federal layoffs have left thousands of government employees and contractor clients suddenly out of work. For foreign intelligence services, that disruption has opened new opportunities. With more former U.S. officials seeking employment or freelance work - often in specialized national security fields - adversaries, namely China, have stepped in, posing as consulting firms, research groups and recruiters.
A dozen humanoid robots stand in front of a snow-covered mountain range. They hold machine guns and run across a shooting range, kneeling down to shoot at targets and change magazines, then maneuvering through an obstacle course. The setting for these scenes in a 48-second video currently circulating on social media is supposedly China, with the national flag flying in the background. But is it real? In many languages, such as Turkish shown here, the claim spread that the video shows a real military exercise.
The first hours of the operation included precision munitions launched from air, land, and sea. Additionally, CENTCOM's Task Force Scorpion Strike employed low-cost one-way attack drones for the first time in combat.
The scam typically involves state-backed fraudsters applying for remote IT work in the west, using fake identities and the help of facilitators in the country where the company targeted is based. Once hired, they send their wages back to Kim Jong-un's state and have even been known to threaten to release sensitive company data after being fired.
As a veteran of the war on terror, I have spent the past year watching Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers expand their operations across the country on a heretofore unprecedented scale and with a new faux-military bearing. From equipment to weapons to tactics, ICE and other immigration enforcement bodies want to be seen as combat forces carrying out their missions.
Entering the cyber world is stepping into a warzone. Cyber is considered a war zone, and what happens there is described as cyberwar. But it's not that simple. War is conducted by nations (political), not undertaken by criminals (financial). Both are increasing in this war zone we call cyber, but the political threat is growing fast. Cyberwar is a complex subject, and a formal definition is difficult.