Your Rights Online

Soldiers Angrily Speak Out about Being Blocked from Repairing Equipment by Contractors (substack.com) 146

Matt Stoller: Louis Rossmann is an important YouTube personality who talks about, among other things, the fact that big firms block their customers from repairing equipment so they can extract after-market profits with replacement parts. And he's very much noticed the Biden executive order, which calls for agencies to curtail this practice (as well as the FTC report on it). Rossmann did a series of videos on this order, one of which focused on the order calling for the Pentagon to stop contracting with firms that block soldiers from being able to repair equipment. He cited Elle Ekman's New York Times piece from 2019 on the problem. What's even more interesting than the video are the comments on it, from soldiers angry that they keep encountering this problem in the field. I pulled some of them and published them here.
Social Networks

Jordan's Government Used Secretly Recorded Clubhouse Audio To Spread Disinformation (restofworld.org) 13

In a new report released last week by The Stanford Internet Observatory, researchers analyzed a Jordanian disinformation network that pushed pro-monarchy and pro-military narratives on Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. The campaign, which Facebook said in a separate report had links to the Jordanian military, also republished audio that had been secretly recorded on Clubhouse. Rest of World reports: Researchers said this is the first time they have identified a disinformation operation that relied on Clubhouse and TikTok, indicating that some states are taking advantage of newer platforms to spread propaganda. The Jordanian campaign cobbled together audio and screen recordings from Clubhouse into at least one video that was then shared on Facebook. According to the report, the audio was taken from a conversation in which Jordanians outside the country and other Arab voices discussed Prince Hamzah, the half-brother of Jordan's leader, King Abdullah II, who was taken into custody in early April, along with over a dozen other prominent figures. Jordanian authorities accused Hamzah of plotting to destabilize the government, and while the prince later publicly pledged his loyalty to the king, he currently remains on house arrest.

People who saw the video "didn't know that it was linked to individuals in the Jordanian military," said Shelby Grossman, a research scholar at the Internet Observatory and a co-author of the report. "But at the same time, you could imagine that if someone watched this video, they might think to themselves, "Oh, people are listening when you have these Clubhouse conversations.'" While Clubhouse has not been officially banned by the Jordanian government, the nonprofit Jordan Open Source Association found that the app can currently only be accessed using a VPN. Recording is against Clubhouse's Terms of Service, which prohibits users from capturing "any portion of a conversation without the expressed consent of all of the speakers involved."

The most extensive portion of the Jordanian disinformation network was on Facebook. The social network said in its report that it had removed over 100 Facebook and Instagram accounts, three groups, and 35 pages connected to the campaign, four of which had more than 80,000 followers. The effort also included around $26,000 worth of Facebook ads, but it's unclear exactly whom they may have targeted. A spokesperson for Facebook said that the company's Ad Library transparency tool doesn't currently include data on ads that were run previously in Jordan.
The reports says that the researchers "also identified a handful of sock puppet accounts on TikTok that appeared to have ties to the same network." They didn't put a lot of effort into it though. "[T]he fake personalities didn't post original content, instead sharing videos from established accounts associated with the Jordanian military."
Businesses

Mobile Carrier Telenor Quits Myanmar, Says Coup Makes Doing Business Its Way Impossible (theregister.com) 17

Norwegian telco Telenor has quit Myanmar, selling its network there because the recent military coup has made it impossible to operate on its terms in the nation. The Register reports: A statement about the sale notes that Telenor had already written down the value of its Myanmar operation to $0. At the time of the write-down in May, Telenor valued the Myanmar assets at $780 million and said it would ponder its future presence in Myanmar depending on "developments in the country and the ability to contribute positively to the people of Myanmar" by offering "affordable mobile services [that] support the country's development and growth."

Company president and CEO Sigve Brekke now rates conditions in the nation as "increasingly challenging for Telenor for people security, regulatory and compliance reasons." "We have evaluated all options and believe a sale of the company is the best possible solution in this situation." The carrier has therefore sold its operations to M1 Group for $105 million. M1 Group describes itself as "a holding company that owns, manages and oversees investments engaged in diversified businesses." The group owns a stake in mobile carrier MTN, which operates mobile networks across Africa, the Middle East, and Afghanistan.
Further reading: Myanmar's Internet Suppression
China

Prenatal Test Developed With Chinese Military Harvests Gene Data From Millions of Women (reuters.com) 122

A prenatal test taken by millions of pregnant women globally was developed by Chinese gene company BGI Group in collaboration with the Chinese military and is being used by the firm to collect genetic data, a Reuters review of publicly available documents found. From the report: The report is the first to reveal that the company collaborated with the People's Liberation Army (PLA) to develop and improve the test, taken in early pregnancy, as well as the scope of BGI's storage and analysis of the data. The United States sees BGI's efforts to collect and analyze human gene data as a national security threat. China's biggest genomics firm, BGI began marketing the test abroad in 2013. Branded NIFTY, it is among the world's top selling non-invasive prenatal tests (NIPT). These screen a sample of blood from a pregnant woman to detect abnormalities such as Down's syndrome in a developing fetus. So far more than 8 million women globally have taken BGI's prenatal tests, BGI has said. NIFTY is sold in at least 52 countries, including Britain, Europe, Canada, Australia, Thailand and India, but not the United States.

BGI uses leftover blood samples sent to its laboratory in Hong Kong and genetic data from the tests for population research, the company confirmed to Reuters. Reuters found the genetic data of over 500 women who took the test, including women in Europe and Asia, is also stored in the government-funded China National GeneBank in Shenzhen, which BGI runs. Reuters found no evidence BGI violated privacy agreements or regulations; the company said it obtains signed consent and destroys overseas samples and data after five years. "At no stage throughout the testing or research process does BGI have access to any identifiable personal data," the company said. However, the test's privacy policy says data collected can be shared when it is "directly relevant to national security or national defense security" in China. BGI said it "has never been asked to provide -- nor provided -- data from its NIFTY tests to Chinese authorities for national security or national defense purposes."
"Non-invasive prenatal testing kits marketed by Chinese biotech firms serve an important medical function, but they can also provide another mechanism for the People's Republic of China and Chinese biotech companies to collect genetic and genomic data from around the globe," the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center said.

China's foreign ministry said Reuters' findings reflected "groundless accusations and smears" of U.S. agencies.
Security

SideCopy Cyber-Espionage Group Targets Indian Government, Military (therecord.media) 3

A cyber-espionage group has been observed targeting Indian targets with government and military-related lures in a broad campaign to infect victims with malware. From a report: Tracked under the name of SideCopy, this cyber-espionage group has been active since 2019, according to Seqrite, Quick Heal's threat intelligence team, which first documented its spear-phishing campaigns last September. But in a report published today, Cisco Talos, one of the networking giant's cybersecurity divisions, said the group did not retreat or stop its operations after having its attacks and tooling exposed last year.
Cloud

Pentagon Cancels $10 Billion JEDI Cloud Contract (cnbc.com) 80

The Department of Defense announced Tuesday it's calling off the $10 billion cloud contract that was the subject of a legal battle involving Amazon and Microsoft. From a report: The JEDI, or Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, deal has become one of the most tangled contracts for the Department of Defense. In a press release Tuesday, the Pentagon said that "due to evolving requirements, increased cloud conversancy, and industry advances, the JEDI Cloud contract no longer meets its needs." But the fight over a cloud computing project does not appear to be completely over yet. The Pentagon said in the press release that it still needs enterprise-scale cloud capability and announced a new multi-vendor contract known as the Joint Warfighter Cloud Capability. The agency said it plans to solicit proposals from both Amazon and Microsoft for the contract, adding that they are the only cloud service providers that can meet its needs. But, it added, it will continue to do market research to see if others could also meet its specifications. [...] The lucrative JEDI contract was intended to modernize the Pentagon's IT operations for services rendered over as many as 10 years. Microsoft was awarded the cloud computing contract in 2019, beating out market leader Amazon Web Services.
Space

Passenger Added To Jeff Bezos' Planned Spaceflight Would Be the Oldest Person In Space (fortune.com) 44

Pioneering pilot Wally Funk, who was denied being an astronaut because of her gender, is joining Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on an upcoming space voyage by his rocket startup, Blue Origin. Fortune reports: The nation's first female Federal Aviation Administration inspector, whose formal name is Mary Wallace Funk, will be an "honored guest" for the July 20 launch of the New Shepard rocket, Blue Origin said Thursday. At 82, Funk would be the oldest person to ever reach space, the company said, shattering the current record held by John Glenn, the astronaut-turned-senator who went into orbit at 77. Other New Shepard crew members include Bezos's brother Mark Bezos and a yet-to-be revealed auction winner who is paying $28 million to be an astronaut. Funk, an airline pilot and instructor, was a member of the "Mercury 13," a team of 13 American women who went through formal astronaut training in the early 1960s. Despite the intense preparation, the women were barred from becoming astronauts because of a then-NASA requirement to only accept military fighter pilots, a position held exclusively by men.
The Internet

Russian Hackers Are Abusing VPNs To Hijack Accounts, US and UK Officials Say (reuters.com) 39

Russian spies accused of interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election have spent much of the past two years abusing virtual private networks (VPNs) to target hundreds of organizations worldwide, U.S. and British authorities said on Thursday. Reuters reports: The governments said in a joint advisory that Unit 26165, the arm of Russia's military spy agency whose officers were indicted for allegedly breaking into Democratic Party emails, had been using VPNs and Tor - a privacy-focused network - to conduct "widespread, distributed, and anonymized brute force access attempts against hundreds of government and private sector targets." The advisory did not identify any of the targets by name, saying only that they were mainly in the United States and Europe and included government offices, political parties, energy companies, law firms and media organizations. The National Security Agency (NSA) today also disclosed details of "brute force" methods they say have been used by Russian intelligence to try to break into the cloud services of hundreds of government agencies, energy companies and other organizations.

Earlier this week, law enforcement seized the servers and customer logs for DoubleVPN, a Russian-based VPN service that was reportedly used by cyber criminals to hide their activities while conducting ransomware attacks, phishing campaigns and other malicious hacking operations.
Security

Germany Thwarts Cyberattack, Denies Impact on Banking System (bloomberg.com) 5

German authorities thwarted a cyberattack on a data service provider used by federal agencies and pushed back on a report that a broad assault targeted critical infrastructure and banks. From a report: The attempt was quickly dealt with and impact on service was "very marginal," Interior Ministry spokesman Steve Alter told reporters on Wednesday, adding that it was likely criminally motivated. He was queried about a report by Bild newspaper, which cited unidentified intelligence sources saying that a hacker group linked to the Kremlin had carried out an attack on German infrastructure and the country's banking system. Bild identified the group as "Fancy Lazarus" after earlier referencing "Fancy Bear," a group controlled by Russia's GRU military intelligence agency that was behind the hacking of Hillary Clinton's staff before the 2016 election, according to a 2018 U.S. Department of Justice indictment. Authorities haven't detected an increase in cyber activities in recent days, Alter said.
China

China's Cyber Power At Least a Decade Behind the US, Study Finds (nikkei.com) 117

Hmmmmmm shares a report from the Financial Times: China's strengths as a cyber power are being undermined by poor security and weak intelligence analysis, according to new research that predicts Beijing will be unable to match US cyber capabilities for at least a decade. The study, published on Monday by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, comes as a series of hacking campaigns have highlighted the growing threat of online espionage by hostile states.

IISS researchers ranked countries on a spectrum of cyber capabilities, from the strength of their digital economies and the maturity of their intelligence and security functions to how well cyber facilities were integrated with military operations. China, like Russia, has proved expertise in offensive cyber operations -- conducting online spying, intellectual property theft and disinformation campaigns against the US and its allies. But both countries were held back by comparatively loose cybersecurity compared with their competitors, according to the IISS. As a result, only the US is ranked as a "top tier" cyber power by the think tank, with China, Russia, the UK, Australia, Canada, France and Israel in the second tier. The third tier comprises India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, North Korea, Iran and Vietnam.

Greg Austin, an expert in cyber, space and future conflict at the IISS, said media reports focusing only on the positive sides of China's digital advances -- such as its aspirations to become a global leader in artificial intelligence -- had contributed to an "exaggerated" perception of its cyber prowess. "On every measure, the development of skills for cybersecurity in China is in a worse position than it is in many other countries," he said. What set the US apart in the first tier, according to the IISS, was its unparalleled digital-industrial base, its cryptographic expertise and the ability to execute "sophisticated, surgical" cyber strikes against adversaries. Unlike opponents such as China and Russia, the US also benefited from close alliances with other cyber powers, including its Five Eyes partners.

Businesses

Fired by Bot at Amazon: 'It's You Against the Machine' (bloomberg.com) 160

Contract drivers say algorithms terminate them by email -- even when they have done nothing wrong. From a report: Stephen Normandin spent almost four years racing around Phoenix delivering packages as a contract driver for Amazon.com. Then one day, he received an automated email. The algorithms tracking him had decided he wasn't doing his job properly. The 63-year-old Army veteran was stunned. He'd been fired by a machine. Normandin says Amazon punished him for things beyond his control that prevented him from completing his deliveries, such as locked apartment complexes. He said he took the termination hard and, priding himself on a strong work ethic, recalled that during his military career he helped cook for 250,000 Vietnamese refugees at Fort Chaffee in Arkansas. "I'm an old-school kind of guy, and I give every job 110%," he said. "This really upset me because we're talking about my reputation. They say I didn't do the job when I know damn well I did." Normandin's experience is a twist on the decades-old prediction that robots will replace workers. At Amazon, machines are often the boss -- hiring, rating and firing millions of people with little or no human oversight.

Amazon became the world's largest online retailer in part by outsourcing its sprawling operations to algorithms -- sets of computer instructions designed to solve specific problems. For years, the company has used algorithms to manage the millions of third-party merchants on its online marketplace, drawing complaints that sellers have been booted off after being falsely accused of selling counterfeit goods and jacking up prices. Increasingly, the company is ceding its human-resources operation to machines as well, using software not only to manage workers in its warehouses but to oversee contract drivers, independent delivery companies and even the performance of its office workers. People familiar with the strategy say Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos believes machines make decisions more quickly and accurately than people, reducing costs and giving Amazon a competitive advantage.

Sci-Fi

As US Govt Releases UFO Report, 'X-Files' Creator Remains Skeptical (nytimes.com) 158

Space.com reports: The U.S. government needs some more time to get to the bottom of the UFO mystery. That's the main take-home message from the highly anticipated UFO report released Friday.

"The limited amount of high-quality reporting on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) hampers our ability to draw firm conclusions about the nature or intent of UAP," the report's executive summary states, using the military's now-preferred term for "UFO" (presumably because that older acronym has a lot of baggage attached to it).

Or, as CNET puts it, "all those sightings of bizarre things in the sky over the years fall into several categories, require more study and remain largely unexplained and unidentified." (Though they point out the Department of Defense's "UAP" Task Force reported eleven "documented instances in which pilots reported near misses...")

The report drew a response from Chris Carter, who created The X-Files, a TV drama about a government conspiracy hiding evidence of UFO's. Filming the show brought Carter in contact with real-world people who claimed they'd seen aliens, and he still thinks that when it comes to UFO, most of us are not quite there yet — but want to believe: The universe is just too vast for us to be alone in it. Carl Jung wanted to believe, as did Carl Sagan. Both wrote books on the subject... Can the new report, or any government report, give us clear answers?

I'm as skeptical now as I've ever been... [F]or me, the report on U.F.O.s was dead on arrival. Ordered up by a bipartisan group of legislators during the Trump administration, the interim report revealed nothing conclusive about U.F.O.s or their extraterrestrial origins. And the portions that remain classified will only fuel more conspiracy theories.

This is "X-Files" territory if there ever was any...

Government

Peter Thiel Turned a $6,000-a-Year Retirement Account Into a $5 Billion Tax Shelter (propublica.org) 315

Remember when ProPublica said they'd obtained the tax returns of some of America's richest people?

Now they're reporting that Peter Thiel turned a small retirement account — the kind meant to help middle class investors — "into a $5 billion tax-free piggy bank." Billionaire Peter Thiel, a founder of PayPal, has publicly condemned "confiscatory taxes." He's been a major funder of one of the most prominent anti-tax political action committees in the country. And he's bankrolled a group that promotes building floating nations that would impose no compulsory income taxes. But Thiel doesn't need a man-made island to avoid paying taxes. He has something just as effective: a Roth individual retirement account.

Over the last 20 years, Thiel has quietly turned his Roth IRA — a humdrum retirement vehicle intended to spur Americans to save for their golden years — into a gargantuan tax-exempt piggy bank, confidential Internal Revenue Service data shows. Using stock deals unavailable to most people, Thiel has taken a retirement account worth less than $2,000 in 1999 and spun it into a $5 billion windfall. To put that into perspective, here's how much the average Roth was worth at the end of 2018: $39,108... What's more, as long as Thiel waits to withdraw his money until April 2027, when he is six months shy of his 60th birthday, he will never have to pay a penny of tax on those billions....

While most Americans are dutifully paying taxes — chipping in their part to fund the military, highways and safety-net programs — the country's richest citizens are finding ways to sidestep the tax system. One of the most surprising of these techniques involves the Roth IRA, which limits most people to contributing just $6,000 each year... Yet, from the start, a small number of entrepreneurs, like Thiel, made an end run around the rules: Open a Roth with $2,000 or less. Get a sweetheart deal to buy a stake in a startup that has a good chance of one day exploding in value. Pay just fractions of a penny per share, a price low enough to buy huge numbers of shares. Watch as all the gains on that stock — no matter how giant — are shielded from taxes forever, as long as the IRA remains untouched until age 59 and a half. Then use the proceeds, still inside the Roth, to make other investments.

ProPublica argues Thiel's move alone "deprived the U.S. government of untold millions in tax revenue. Perhaps billions." But he's not the only multi-millionaire they found stashing vast sums into untaxed accounts:
  • Ted Weschler, a deputy of Warren Buffett at Berkshire Hathaway had $264.4 million at the end of 2018.
  • Hedge fund manager Randall Smith, whose Alden Global Capital has gutted newspapers around the country, had $252.6 million in his.
  • Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world and a vocal supporter of higher taxes on the rich: $20.2 million
  • Former Renaissance Technologies hedge fund manager Robert Mercer: $31.5 million

Sci-Fi

US Has No Explanation for Unidentified Objects and Stops Short of Ruling Out Aliens (nytimes.com) 187

According to The New York Times, citing a highly anticipated UFO report released on Friday, "The government still has no explanation for nearly all of the scores of unidentified aerial phenomena reported over almost two decades and investigated by a Pentagon task force, [...] a result that is likely to fuel theories of otherworldly visitations." From the report: A total of 143 reports gathered since 2004 remain unexplained, the document released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said. Of those, 21 reports of unknown phenomena, involving 18 episodes, possibly demonstrate technological capabilities that are unknown to the United States: objects moving without observable propulsion or with rapid acceleration that is believed to be beyond the capabilities of Russia, China or other terrestrial nations. But, the report said, more rigorous analysis of those episodes is needed. There is no evidence that any of the episodes involve secret American weapons programs, unknown technology from Russia or China or extraterrestrial visitations. But the government report did not rule out those explanations.

The nine-page document essentially declines to draw conclusions, announcing that the available reporting is "largely inconclusive" and noting that limited and inconsistent data created a challenge in evaluating the phenomena. The report said the number of sightings was too limited for a detailed pattern analysis. While they clustered around military training or testing grounds, the report found that that could be the result of collection bias or the presence of cutting-edge sensors in those areas. Government officials outlined a plan to develop, if additional funding is available, a better program to observe and collect data on future unexplained phenomena. [...] The government intends to update Congress within 90 days on efforts to develop an improved collection strategy and what officials are calling a technical road map to develop technology to better observe the phenomena, senior government officials told reporters on Friday. Officials said they would provide lawmakers with periodical updates beyond that.

United States

Highly Anticipated UFO Report Expected To Be Presented To Congress Later Today (go.com) 71

ABC News reports: A highly anticipated UFO report prepared by the U.S. intelligence community is expected to be presented to congressional committees on Friday, according to a U.S. official, but officials have told ABC News the report will not provide definitive explanations for the dozens of encounters reported by the U.S. military with unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs. And in a development certain to disappoint UFO enthusiasts who have hoped that the report may have found links to alien spacecraft, the report has not found any evidence to suggest any links to such theories, according to three officials. The report prepared by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was required by the Intelligence Authorization Act passed by Congress late last year. The U.S. intelligence community was given 180 days to prepare an unclassified and classified report on what the U.S. government knew about UAP's.
Businesses

AWS Has Acquired Encrypted Messaging Service Wickr (techcrunch.com) 13

Amazon's cloud services giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) is getting into the encrypted messaging business. From a report: The company has just announced that it has acquired secure communications service Wickr -- a messaging app that has geared itself towards providing services to government and military groups and enterprises. It claims to be the only "collaboration service" that meets security criteria set out by the NSA. AWS will continue operating Wickr as is, and offer its services to AWS customers, "effective immediately," notes a blog post from Stephen Schmidt, the VP and CISO for AWS, announcing the news. Financial terms were not disclosed in the short announcement. Wickr had raised just under $60 million in funding according to PitchBook data (it also notes a valuation of under $30 million but that seems to be a very old estimate).
The Courts

French Spyware Bosses Indicted For Their Role In the Torture of Dissidents (technologyreview.com) 29

Senior executives at a French spyware firm have been indicted for the company's sale of surveillance software to authoritarian regimes in Libya and Egypt that resulted in the torture and disappearance of dissidents. MIT Technology Review reports: While high-tech surveillance is a multibillion-dollar industry worldwide, it is rare for companies or individuals to face legal consequences for selling such technologies -- even to notorious dictatorships or other dangerous regimes. But charges in the Paris Judicial Court against leaders at Amesys, a surveillance company that later changed its name to Nexa Technology, claim that the sales to Libya and Egypt over the last decade led to the crushing of opposition, torture of dissidents, and other human rights abuses. The former head of Amesys, Philippe Vannier, and three current and former executives at Nexa technologies were indicted for "complicity in acts of torture" for selling spy technology to the Libyan regime. French media report that Nexa president Olivier Bohbot, managing director Renaud Roques, and former president Stephane Salies face the same charges for surveillance sales to Egypt.

The charges were brought by brought by the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes unit of the court, but the case began 10 years ago when Amesys sold its system for listening in on internet traffic to the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Six victims of the spying testified in France about being arrested and tortured by the regime, an experience that they say is a direct result of these spying tools. In 2014, the company sold surveillance software to Egyptian president Abdel al-Sisi shortly after he took control of the country in a military coup. The complaints, filed by the International Federation for Human Rights, or FIDH, and the French League for Human Rights, allege that the company did not have government permission to sell its technologies to Libya or Egypt because oversight was weak and at times nonexistent. The claims led to an independent judicial investigation against Amesys/Nexa, which is still ongoing. Next, the judges will decide whether to send the case to criminal court or dismiss it if there is not sufficient evidence -- but the indictment is a major step forward and points toward the prospect that the judges will view the evidence as potentially strong enough to support a criminal trial.

The Military

The US Navy's Plans for a Railgun Are Finally Dead (popularmechanics.com) 109

Anyone who's played Quake remembers the railgun weapon. The U.S. Navy spent $500 million to try to build a real one, according to Popular Mechanics, "using electricity and magnetism instead of gunpowder and chemical energy to accelerate a projectile down a pair of rails." But now they've apparently given up: The service is ending funding for the railgun without having sent a single weapon to sea, while pushing technology derived from the program into existing weapons. The weapon is a victim of a change in the Navy's direction toward faster, longer-range weapons that are capable of striking ships and land targets in a major war. The Navy's budget request includes no funding for the railgun in 2022, The Drive reports...

Railguns are theoretically safer than conventional guns, since they reduce the amount of volatile powder a ship stores deep within its bowels in the ammunition magazine. The projectiles are also faster. But despite those advantages, there are reasons why the Navy is canning the railgun, which has been in development since 2005. For one, there are currently only three ships the Navy could conceivably fit the railgun to... The railgun concept itself is also out of step with the Navy's reorientation toward great power conflict, particularly a possible war with China or Russia. As an offensive weapon, the railgun's range of 50 to 100 miles is relatively short, placing a railgun-equipped ship within range of longer-range weapons, including China's DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile.

And while the railgun also has defensive potential since it can shoot down incoming aircraft, missiles, and drones, the Navy already has plenty of existing missiles and guns to deal with those threats.

China

Chinese Astronauts Reach New Space Station For Three-Month Mission (nbcnews.com) 54

For the next three months, three Chinese astronauts will live on a cylinder-shaped module measuring 16.6 metres by 4.2 metres (54 feet by 13.7 feet) while carrying out further construction work for China's orbiting space station.

It's the first time in five years China has sent humans into space, reports NBC News. : Shenzhou-12, or "Divine Vessel," is one of 11 planned missions to complete construction of China's 70-ton Tiangong or Harmony of the Heavens space station that is set to be up and running by next year... China has long been frozen out of the International Space Station, or ISS, a project launched 20 years ago that has served as the ultimate expression of post-Cold War reconciliation between Russia and the United States. American concerns over the Chinese space program's secrecy and connections to its military were largely responsible for that. But the aging ISS that hosted astronauts from the U.S., Russia and a number of other countries is set to be decommissioned after 2024. As broader U.S.-Russia relations deteriorate, Moscow has hinted that it may withdraw from ISS cooperation in 2025, meaning China could be the only country with a functioning space station.

Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, also signed an agreement in March with the Chinese National Space Administration to build a base on or around the Moon, which they will call the International Scientific Lunar Station.

"All the firsts that the U.S. and the USSR did in the Cold War, China is just ticking them off," said Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "Now they're at the point where they're starting to think, 'OK, we're not just copying the West anymore, we're going to start doing our own thing'. And that's going to be very interesting to watch."

Security

Poland Says Recent Attacks on Local Politicians Originated from Russia (therecord.media) 22

The Polish government said that a recent wave of cyberattacks that have targeted the email accounts of local political figures originated from Russia. From a report: The attacks have targeted some of the most important Polish officials, ministers, and deputies from various political parties, said Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland's deputy prime minister, citing sources from the Polish Internal Security Agency and the Military Counterintelligence Service. "The analysis of our services and the special services of our allies allows for a clear statement that the cyber attack was carried out from the territory of the Russian Federation," Kaczynski said in a press release today. "Its scale and range are wide," the Polish official said. The announcement today comes after Polish local news outlets reported last week hackers broke into the email inbox of Michal Dworczyk, head of the Chancellery of the Polish Prime Minister's. Throughout the course of the last week, the hackers leaked emails and documents from Dworczyk's inbox on a Telegram channel, according to Polish online news outlet Onet. Other documents were also leaked through the Facebook account of Dworczyk's wife.

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