Kelvin Droegemeier, the new science advisor to President Donald Trump is moving to bolster U.S. policies on research security. Recent U.S.-China political has spilled into the research community which has been pushing back against federal agencies investigating foreign-born scientists. [node:read-more:link]
China and the U.S. are deadlocked over a United Nations resolution which would extend the UN mission in Afghanistan. Diplomats say Beijing is expected to veto the German-Indonesian initiative because it doesn’t refer to China’s overland and marine infrastructure projects. [node:read-more:link]
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian says “the time is right” for reconciliation between the European Union and Russia. His suggestion comes just as the U.S. Congress prepares to resume consideration of sanctions against Russia, which could heighten tensions between the EU and the U.S. [node:read-more:link]
Hamza Bin Laden, son of al-Qaeda founder Osama Bin Laden and an increasingly active player in global terrorism, has been killed in a U.S. operation. President Donald Trump confirmed his death but no details on where or when the operation occurred have been released. [node:read-more:link]
Jens Stoltenberg, the Dane who has been Secretary General of NATO since 2014, worries about Middle East tensions rising after the weekend drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s main oil-processing facility. While there’s an ongoing argument about who was responsible, Stoltenberg said Iran is “destabilizing” the region. [node:read-more:link]
The U.S. intelligence community is said to be developing biometric identification systems which could single out individuals at a distance. Facial recognition and other biometrics technologies have improved in recent years but evidently are still prone to errors. [node:read-more:link]
RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki says the force is still trying to understand the fallout of allegations levelled against a senior civilian staffer. Cameron Ortis, director general of the RCMP's national intelligence coordination centre, has been charged with, among other things, preparing to share operational information with a foreign entity or terrorist group in the past year. [node:read-more:link]
Gen. David Goldfein, the U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff, says the military has much to learn from Apple’s “unleashing” of open-source technologies, which became a core in which other companies were founded and have flourished. He writes that the engineering and business lessons are important for the defence sector which he says has too often procured systems which cannot communicate with each other and are difficult to update. [node:read-more:link]
A former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security says the U.S. should not use telecom giant Huawei as leverage in broader trade negotiations with China. Tom Ridge says Huawei has repeatedly shown that it is “an instrumentality” of Beijing. [node:read-more:link]
In an bid to end a western blockade against its 5G technology, Huawei is offering to sell its software to a western company which then could rewrite problematic code. The U.S. has been urging its allies not to permit 5G over concerns that alleged “backdoors” would enable the Chinese government to spy on telecom systems. [node:read-more:link]
Dr. James A. Boutilier has been chosen as the 2016 Vimy Award recipient. This prestigious award is presented annually to a prominent Canadian who has made outstanding contributions towards the security and defence of Canada and the preservation of democratic values. [node:read-more:link]
Looking ahead to the 2022 expiry of the long-standing Airbus Defence and Space contract to manage the ground station element of the Skynet 6 communications satellite program, the British government has launched a new competition it expects will yield a new contract in late 2020. [node:read-more:link]
Military buildups on both sides of the border between South and North Korea are a growing concern. Ongoing missile tests by Pyongyang are being called necessary to defend against new South Korean weaponry as the government in Seoul boosts its military budget significantly. [node:read-more:link]
The Department of Defense hopes to merge it sundry cybersecurity capabilities into a single cloud-based hub. It says this also would connect to U.S. Cyber Command’s Unified Platform to enable “full-spectrum” operations. [node:read-more:link]
The federal government's latest Arctic strategy includes promises profound change but one policy researcher says it’s short on detail. He says that there is nothing new in the current administration’s approach, that it basically retiterates commitments by previous administrations in Ottawa. [node:read-more:link]
