The “bad guy” singled out as the most dangerous breed of hacker has changed over the years from william_marmonthe happy hacker, to the malicious hacker, to the serious cyber-criminals.  Now a different villain in the hacking world has emerged at the top of the threat list in Washington and European capitals -- nation-states that are equipping themselves for aggressive cyber-war and industrial espionage and theft of intellectual property.

 

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Unmanned Aerial Warfare: Flight of the Drones in The Economist. This major survey of pilotless aircraft concludes that their growing capabilities may revolutionize warfare.  But the American near-monopoly on unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) will spark their proliferation among nations and also non-state actors (including terrorists), according to Coming Soon: The Drone Arms Race by Scott Shane in The New York Times. Recommended by European Affairs. (10/11)

Will the elimination of Osama Bin Laden help open the way to an end of the war in Afghanistan and an earlier withdrawal of more U.S. and European troops fighting there in the NATO-led offensive against the Taliban? This question is already being debated in policy circles in Washington (and in European capitals) on the day after the killing of Al Qaeda’s leader.

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Crime stories are quite popular on both sides of the Atlantic, but the heroes chasing the villains are rather different. Dirty Harry, Axel Foley, Rambo, Jack Bauer and McCloud are very unlike Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Inspector Morse, Commissaire Maigret or Kommissar Derrick. The one thing they have in common is that at the end of the story they all catch the bad guy.

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The Dirty and Dangerous Details of Nuclear Technology Smuggling

Peddling Peril

By David Albright alt

Free Press, 2010, 254 Pages

Reviewed by Kurt Moss

This account of the global clandestine traffic of nuclear-weapons technology is written by David Albright (no relation to Madeline), one of the most knowledgeable American experts on proliferation. Albright minces no words about his conviction that the most dangerous threat today to international security is the threat of nuclear weapons falling into “the wrong hands:” terrorists, criminals or irresponsible governments. He is equally clear about what needs to be done in self-defense against this threat. Western democracies and their allies should not rely on pre-emptive military action as their first line of defense against nuclear-armed rogues. Instead, Albright argues that Western democracies and other responsible governments should make it a security imperative to combat the global nuclear smuggling that is spreading this weapons technology amid comparative indifference to this particular dangerous threat.

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