STILLWATER Okay, the Big Ten hasnt announced anything officially with their new television deal. However, details on the blockbuster financial deal are starting to leak out like Edward Snowdens briefcase.

USA TODAY Sports

FOX gets the Big Noon game and the bulk of the inventory in the Big Ten.

The Big Ten is expected to earn in excess of $1 billion for a package that will bring Saturday triple-headers starting with FOX and their Big Noon kickoff, followed by an afternoon game on CBS, and a night game on NBC to go along with their Notre Dame package that will mostly stick to the afternoons. There will be some mobility in the windows, but that appears to be the standard Saturday game plan.

Out of the Big Ten entirely is ESPN, who has been televising Big Ten football and basketball for some 40-years. The deals with all three networks are not finalized. The Sports Business Journal media writer John Ourand was the first one to report these details. CBS is rumored to be paying $350-million alone for the Saturday afternoon slot.

Okay, so what does that mean for the Big 12 Conference and for Oklahoma State?

Big 12 Conference

Gundy has high confidence in Yormark.

Lets start with this. FOX is looking for Friday night games as they want to establish a Friday night college package on Big FOX. They will also be looking for games for FS1, FS2, and FOX on Saturday afternoons and at night on certain Saturdays. We expect FOX will invest heavily in both he Big 12 and/or Pac-12 for inventory. Know this, new Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark has excellent contacts and relationships with many of the folks at FOX Sports that have come up the ranks during his tenure in both NASCAR and the New Jersey Nets.

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

President Kayse Shrum loves to win as does Brett Yormark.

Just a word to the Big 12 and Cowboy brethren, Yormark is aggressive. He is not going to sit around and wait for deals to fall in his lap. He is the go out and grab the bull by the horns kind of an executive. You have the right guy working for you. Oklahoma State has a President in Dr. Kayse Shrum that matches up well with Yormark. They have developed an appreciation for each other already.

Honestly, I believe CBS is out as they will look for the Saturday afternoon games only. CBS has some Group of Five conferences such as the Mountain West and American Athletic as well as the military academies for programming on CBS Sports Network. NBC could be shopping for some more inventory as they only get Notre Dame home games and may want either an extra Big Ten game or a game from the Big 12 or Pac-12 to augment that schedule and make their slate a consistent doubleheader each week.

As for ESPN, they have all of the SEC and ACC to themselves, but the word is they want inventory for the late night window. That screams Pac-12, but the Big 12 with BYU and potentially some additions if they were to poach some Pac-12 schools could jump into that.

Our sources have confirmed that Yormark has established a better relationship with ESPN after all the exchanges in the summer of 2021 with former commissioner Bob Bowlsby making accusations regarding ESPN working to help the SEC gain Texas and Oklahoma. Bowlsby basically accused ESPN of working to weaken the Big 12. ESPN has lots of channels and inventory and with no piece of the Big Ten package some money to spend. You would think.

Finally, how much is ESPN, and other companies with streaming capabilities willing to spend to push live sports, in this case college football, to grow their operation?

That is a multi-million dollar question that still needs to be answered. Maybe, there will be some streaming aspect to the Big Ten package where we can gauge how much money is in that well.

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What Does All This TV Talk on Big Ten Do for Big 12 and Oklahoma State? - Pokes Report

Nine years ago, a Council on Foreign Relations-sponsored independent task force published a report on U.S. cyber policy entitled Defending an Open, Global, Secure, and Resilient Internet. Last month, CFR issued the report of a new task force, Confronting Reality in Cyberspace: Foreign Policy for a Fragmented Internet. (I was project director for both reports.) The 2013 report was CFRs first attempt to introduce those in the foreign policy community who were unfamiliar with the politics of cyberspace to the most pressing issues. It explained how the increasing fragmentation of the internet and the rising threat of cyberattacks negatively affected U.S. interests, and it covered many of the concepts that have shaped U.S. cyber policy for the past two decades: deterrence, norm building, cyber alliances, digital trade agreements, information sharing, and public-private partnerships. Conversely, the 2022 report moved past the prior discussions around the importance of digital technologies, instead aiming to shift the debate on what the United States should try to accomplish in cyberspace. The 2022 reports focus is narrower, highlighting foreign policy tools and spending less time on areas like domestic authorities or workforce training. Reading the two in tandem is a reminder of how high public expectations were for what Washington could accomplish in cyberspace. It also illustrates how significantly the United States position in cyberspace has worsened over the past decade.

The new reports headline finding immediately tells the story: The era of the global internet is over. The internet is more fragmented, less free, and more dangerous. U.S. policymakers have long assumed that the global, open internet served American strategic, economic, political, and foreign policy interests. They believed that authoritarian, closed systems would struggle to hold back the challenges, both domestic and international, that a global network would present. This has not proved to be the case. Freedom House, which tracks internet freedom across the world, has seen sustained declines in empirical measures of internet freedom, especially in Asia and the Middle East, for over a decade. More states are launching political influence campaigns, hacking the accounts of activists and dissidents, and sometimes targeting vulnerable minority populations. A growing number of states choose to disconnect entirely from the global internet. According to Access Now, at least 182 internet shutdowns across 34 countries occurred in 2021, compared with 196 cases across 25 countries in 2018

In addition, the early advantages in technology, cyber operations, and diplomatic engagement the United States and its allies held in cyberspace over their adversaries have largely disappeared. The United States is asymmetrically vulnerable because of high levels of digitization and strong protections for free speech. U.S. adversaries, especially China, have adapted more rapidly than anticipated. These rivals have a clear vision of their goals in cyberspace, developing and implementing strategies in pursuit of their interests, and have made it more difficult for the United States to operate unchallenged in this domain.

The optimism of the earlier task forcein both the benefits of the open internet and the United States ability to shape cyberspaceis notable. While the 2013 CFR report flags the increasing fragmentation of the internet, it stated that the United States has benefited immensely from a digital infrastructure that is relatively open, global, secure, and resilient. The report highlighted the global strengths of the U.S. information and communications technology sector, and listed the many political, economic, social, and personal benefits it sees as flowing from an open internet. The report relays many examples of digital technologies supporting entrepreneurship in developing economies, expanding new forms of social and political activism, and empowering marginalized communities. It is, however, blind to the threats to democracies and social cohesion posed by hostile, state-backed information operations and the spread of disinformation.

The 2013 task force was also more confident of the positive impact of public-private partnerships on U.S. cyber policy. The reportwritten before Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency was collecting data from American technology firmscalls for collaboration with the private sector and nongovernmental organizations on a wide range of initiatives, including developing principles for a global security framework, promoting online freedom, increasing cyber resilience, and creating guidelines for the export of dual use technologies. In the wake of the Snowden disclosures, American firmsmotivated by a sense of betrayal, a commitment to an open internet, and economic interestresponded by increasingly portraying themselves as global actors. They also tried to make it more difficult for U.S. agencies to collect data through legal challenges and the introduction of end-to-end encryption on smartphone operating systems and messaging apps.The bad feelings of that era have largely dissipated, with the private sector in many instances working very closely with the government on threat intel sharing and cyber defense. Still, that history, and the possibility that Congress could pass new legislation to constrain the power of the tech companies, is reflected in the 2022 reports hesitation to tie too many U.S. foreign policy goals directly to the private sector.

China is an important challenger in both reports, but the threat is framed more narrowly in the earlier report. The first task force was concerned primarily with Chinese cyber industrial espionage and Beijings use of the Great Firewall to censor information and regulatory barriers to limit the competitiveness of American technology companies in the domestic economy. At the time of the 2013 report, China had not yet become a global supplier of 5G telecommunications hardware or developed TikTok, one of the worlds most popular social media platforms; nor was it a competitor in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum information sciences. Beijing was proclaiming the right to cyber sovereignty, but it had not yet developed an overlapping matrix of domestic data regulations, started to export its model of internet control to the global south, or increased its participation in international standard organizations in order to shape the next generation of technical standards.

In the decade since the first report, a destructive attack on critical infrastructure has become a more realistic threat. But the 2022 report, like its predecessor, is clear that the predominant risk of cyberattacks is not a potential cyber Pearl Harbor. Rather, most cyber operations have been attacks that violate sovereignty but remain below the threshold for the use of force or armed attack. These breaches are used for political advantage, espionage, and international statecraft, with the most damaging attacks undermining trust and confidence in social, political, and economic institutions.

Moreover, in the wake of the Colonial Pipeline attack, the 2022 report argues that cybercrime has become a standalone threat to national security. Ransomware attacks on hospitals, schools, and local governments have disrupted thousands of lives. The Conti ransomware group shut down the administrative body in Ireland charged with managing the national health-care system, disrupting critical health treatments. In 2019, a ransomware attack shut down the operations of a U.S. Coast Guard facility for 30 hours, and in May 2022, the new president of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves Robles, declared a national emergency after a ransomware attack crippled the Finance and Labor Ministry as well as the customs agency.

The reports offer a similar set of policy recommendations but drastically different expectations on outcomes. The 2013 report argues that [n]ow is the time for the United States, with its friends and allies, to ensure the Internet remains an open, global, secure, and resilient environment for users. The 2022 report also envisions a cyber foreign policy of the like-minded but contends that the utopian vision of an open, reliable, and secure global network has not been achieved and is unlikely ever to be realized. Instead of pursuing that goal, the United States should consolidate a coalition of allies and friends around a vision of the internet that preservesto the greatest degree possiblea trusted, protected international communication platform. Members of the coalition would develop a common understanding of the legitimate use of government surveillance, law enforcement access to data, and industrial policies; share best practices on technology regulation; work to forge a trusted supply chain for digital goods and services; and coordinate on international standards.

Digital trade agreements would be central to the coalition. There are several models that can be built upon, including the Economic Partnership Agreement between Japan and the European Union and the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement between Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore. Broadly these agreements remove tariffs on digital goods and eliminate nontariff barriers to digital trade. They also prohibit the localization requirements for computing facilities, cloud services, or data analysis motivated by anti-competitive or protectionist purposes; and they ban requirements to turn over to the government source code, algorithms, or related intellectual property rights. Moving forward, new provisions should address the concerns of workers and consumers, including those that promote digital inclusiveness, strengthen consumer confidence and trust, and protect personal information.

Both reports focus on the development of norms of responsible state behavior in cyberspace. The 2013 report calls for the leading nations to agree on a set of norms for activity and engagement in cyberspace. The 2022 reportlooking back at the development of norms at the United Nations, the 2015 agreement on cyber industrial espionage between China and the United States, and the growing use of attribution, criminal indictments, and sanctions against Russian, Chinese, North Korean, and Iranian hackerscontends that norms are more useful in binding friends together than in constraining adversaries. Major actors have flouted the norms endorsed by the U.N., and China returned to cyber industrial espionage after a year-long hiatus.

The 2022 report does not eschew norm development completely. Rather, it suggests three norms that states may adopt out of self-interest because they could help prevent unintended and catastrophic outcomes. After consultation with allies and friends, Washington would announce an initial set of standards for self-restraint in cyberspace. Along with repeating commitments to abide by international lawincluding international humanitarian law and the laws of armed conflictofficials should state that the United States will refrain from destructive attacks on election infrastructure and the international financial system. And while promoting these norms, the United States and its partners should prepare for a violation of these standards by increasing the resilience and redundancy of these critical systems.

In addition, the United States has a strong shared interest in working with potential adversaries to prevent cyberattacks from worsening or creating a nuclear crisis. During a conventional conflict, states could be tempted to use cyberattacks to try to neutralize nuclear threats. These actions, however, would be highly destabilizing. Cyberattacks on nuclear command, control, and communication (NC3) systems could lead to incentives for states to launch nuclear weapons preemptively if they feared that they could lose their second-strike capability. Intelligence gathering could be interpreted by the defender as an effort to degrade nuclear capabilities. These risks are rising as modern NC3 systems come to depend more heavily on digital infrastructure.

The United States should enter into discussions with China and Russia about limiting all types of cyber operations against NC3 systems on land and in space. In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the growing geopolitical competition between the United States and China, the spaces for cooperation between Washington and Moscow and Washington and Beijing are extremely narrow. Declarations of self-restraint can function as confidence-building measures, perhaps bridging the trust gap. U.S. policymakers should make clear that they are entering discussions with their Chinese and Russian counterparts because understandings on cyber operations and nuclear command and control are a shared interest among the three powers in preventing catastrophic outcomes.

Both reports agree that the United States cannot lead in cyberspace without addressing outstanding issues at home. While there are diverse prioritiesthe earlier report was written as the Obama administration was considering legislation on threat information sharing, and the latter argues for the necessity of national privacy lawsboth reports stress the role congressional action has in shaping and amplifying U.S. influence on global cyberspace. Both call for digital and cyber policies to be better integrated into national strategies; to clean up domestic cyberspace through new authorities and regulations; and to establish a cyber bureau in the State Department, overseen by a Senate-confirmed cyber ambassador. (A week before the 2022 report was published, Nate Fick, the task force co-chair, was nominated by President Biden to serve as ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy.)

Not surprisingly, the conclusions of the two reports hit divergent notes. The 2013 report, assuming that the United States still retains significant will and capabilities to shape global cyberspace, focuses on the trade-offs among privacy, security, openness, innovation, and the protection of intellectual property inherent in any digital policy. As long as policymakers are proactive, the United States can exert a positive influence on cyberspace by working to convince the next wave of users that an open and global internet is in all of our interests. The 2022 report is more circumspect. The goals are, in the language of the report, more limited and more realistic. Moreover, there is real doubt that the United States can and will move resolutely and quickly enough, especially on domestic legislation.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from reading the two reports is a sense of lost possibility and influence. Just a decade ago, the United States seemed uniquely positioned to exploit the openness of the internet for political, economic, and strategic gain. Today, the United States position is much more precarious. Adversaries benefit from a more fragmented, more dangerous cyberspace, and the United States must work actively to preserve the benefits of the open internet among a smaller number of like-minded countries.

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From Defending the Open Internet to Confronting the Reality of a Fragmented Cyberspace: Reflecting Upon Two CFR Reports on U.S. Goals in Cyberspace -...

Cryptocurrency mixing service Tornado Cash has been blacklisted by the US Treasury Department since last Monday for alleged use for money laundering. In this regard, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, the country will continue to aggressively pursue cryptocurrency mixers suspected of money laundering.

sanctions imposed by the United States Treasury Department The Ethereum mixer is related to the alleged use of the device by North Korea. The organization claims that it was used to launder money from attacks by the Lazarus Group, a hacker entity sponsored by the Asian country.

The cryptocurrency community is expressing its disapproval On the Secretary of States announcement, many expressed concern over whether considered a violation of the right to privacy Access to users and government. They warn that a neutral device that operates autonomously is being approved.

Spanish lawyers around Cryptocurrency Ecosystem Expert Chris Carrascosa Didnt Take Long feedback to message With a certain irony from Blinken: The Internet is to blame. Go against it too. This meant that a device could not be held responsible for misuse by certain users.

other users respondents The head of American diplomacy, known for exposing the United States domestic surveillance and espionage programs, accompanied expressions from Edward Snowden, who often said: Privacy is an act of freedom.

any other remember To blink a fact recorded on Wikipedia: The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the source code Tornado Cache software was protected by the First Amendment And the government regulations preventing its publication were unconstitutional.

In any case, US institutions are very concerned about the cryptocurrency ecosystem because They continue to debate the framework for regulating crypto assets, But without consensus.

Actually, this is not the first time that US Treasury bans cryptocurrency mixers. In May, the country announced sanctions against North Korean company Blender, which was also accused of helping the Lazarus Group steal cryptocurrency.

Antony Blinken said at the time: We will continue to address North Koreas illegal cyber activities as well as violations of UN Security Council resolutions.

In addition, Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian Nelson said that Cryptocurrency mixers aiding illegal transactions create a threat for the national security interests of the United States.

We are taking action against illegal financial activities in North Korea, and we will not allow state-sponsored theft and its money-laundering facilitators to go unanswered, Nelson said.

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US Vows To "aggressively Pursue" Cryptocurrency Mixers - Nation World News

In early 2021, the French-Lebanese cryptographer Nadim Kobeissi tweeted out a loose idea hed just had. Im designing a decentralized social media solution where each user hosts their own microservice. Kobeissi wrote. These then connect to one another in a mesh, allowing following and sharing posts. It will be lightweight, user friendly and secure. Are you interested in funding its development?

Within a day, Kobeissi had raised $100,000 with that brief, detail-light tweet. A week later, he was the CEO of a new, Delaware-incorporated company called Capsule Social that had a paper valuation of $10 million. Another $2.5 million came in via a pre-seed round that closed in April 2021. The startup is currently raising another round at a $30 million valuation.

[T]he level of interest was so exceptional I felt I essentially had to pause and reevaluate the perfect approachI was being solicited by venture capitalists to such a degree that I had no way to receive their money, Kobeissi says. I had no plan at all. I just had my project idea.

What excited VCs so much? Kobeissis pitch contained the magic word that animates the Web3 movements less speculative, more idealistic side: Decentralized.

Decentralized systems, which dont rely on any core entity to function, are an age-old concept that has been severely undermined in the Web 2.0 era. Many technologists have been chasing a decentralization revival for years.

But when Capsule Social finally launched its Blogchain writing platform in June, Web3s sexier aspectscryptocurrency and NFTshad crashed, leaving idealists like Kobeissi scrambling to rescue their projects and decentralizations brand from the larger Web3 bust.

The internet itself is a decentralized network of telecoms networks, with no central authority that censors bits and bytes or stops one part of the network from communicating with others. The technologies that first took off on that infrastructureemail, the early webinherently adopted the same decentralized nature.

Thats how the nuts and bolts of online life were designed, but then monolithic platforms like Google and Facebook took over, placing themselves at the center of peoples interactions and activities. These Web 2.0 behemoths were user-friendly and secure, but it soon became apparent that they were using their all-seeing positions to profile and target ads at their userswhile censoring some search results and uploaded content.

Distrust of Silicon Valley inspired the first big decentralization wave of the 2010s, in which idealistic geeks and activists tried and failed to take on Big Tech with services like Diaspora and Mastodonalternatives to Facebook and Twitter, respectively. These projects offered greater privacy and censorship resistance than their rivals, but also far more complicated user experiences and, crucially, few of the users who were already happily interacting on Silicon Valleys platforms.

Then Bitcoin exploded, introducing the world to the concept of the blockchain, a decentralized ledger stored across multiple computers, the contents of which are effectively tamper-proof because of that distributed architecture. Decentralization was back with a vengeance, with the term being thrown around by seemingly every advocate of Web3a fuzzy term that encapsulates the interlinked crypto, blockchain, and NFT fields.

The Web3 crowd hopes to take on Wall Street with decentralized finance (DeFi), in which transactions are made via self-executing programs called smart contracts that run on blockchains like Ethereum. New Web3 projects and communities spring up in the form of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) that also use blockchains as a kind of operating system.

Decentralized networks can win the third era of the internet, declared Andreessen Horowitz partner Chris Dixon in 2018. When Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong last year announced a new section of the crypto exchanges blog for hitting back at crypto critics, he did so in a post about decentralizing truth.

Thats the context in which Kobeissi raised $100,000 in 24 hours. Last year, money was being thrown around very readily on projects like that, and when I first proposed this project it was largely meant as a passion or side project, said Kobeissi, who was until recently best known for creating the CryptoCat secure messaging program that journalist Glenn Greenwald used for clandestine discussions with NSA leaker Edward Snowden in early 2013. Kobeissi is somehow still only 31 years old.

But after the hype, came the crash.

Since November 2021, the crypto market cap has plummeted from $3 trillion to a shade above $1 trillion, with heavy-hitters Bitcoin and Ethereum each down 66%. Sales of NFTstradable tokens that denote ownership of digital files, generally arthave also collapsed, with an estimated 88% drop in the average NFT sale price between April and July.

The crypto winter has partly resulted from the wider economic downturnonce viewed as a hedge against traditional equities, it turns out cryptocurrencies track the Nasdaqs trajectory in particularbut the slump accelerated in May, when Terraform Labs dollar-pegged stablecoin UST collapsed. Perhaps more damagingly, countless instances of NFT and crypto theft and fraud have tainted the whole sectors reputation.

In Kobeissis view, decentralization has gotten caught up in the crash. I think NFTs have helped tarnish the decentralization brand, said Kobeissi.

According to the deal-tracker Pitchbook, global Web3 and blockchain deal activity dropped from nearly $10 billion in the first quarter of this year to $7.7 billion in the secondthough Pitchbook fintech analyst Robert Le says thats still a healthy amount, and the drop mirrors whats happening in the broader VC market.

Its definitely been a period of retrenchment over the last six months across many fronts, said Andrei Brasoveanu, who led venture capital firm Accels investments in companies like Web3 development platform Tenderly and Axie Infinity maker Sky Mavis. Theres a lot of clean-up happening right now.

On the one hand, the crash makes for a tougher market in which to launch a service like Blogchain. Kobeissi says the platform is yet to institute detailed metrics, which makes it impossible to gauge readership figures, but hardly any of the posts on Blogchainsome of which are well-researched articles of the sort one might see on Substackhave more than a handful of comments and shares.

Had we launched earlier, we would have had a bigger impact, simply because of the hype surrounding Web3 and so on, Kobeissi said. Now we basically have to do a grassroots-style campaign. We have to justify the value of the product on its meritslike any traditional, sensible business would have to do.

But Kobeissi also sees the crash as vindication of his controversial decision to shun Web3s buzzier elements.

Blogchain is Web3 to the core: its decentralized nature makes it hard to completely censor posts, and it uses blockchain-based smart contracts to make content-moderation decisions completely transparentan answer to Big Techs opaque moderation practices.

But Blogchain is not based on crypto or NFTs, a trait that disappointed many of the VCs who tried to throw cash at Kobeissi in early 2021, Kobeissi says. VCs also disliked his decision to use the carbon-neutral NEAR blockchain rather than the high-emissions Ethereum blockchain, which they argued has better brand recognition.

When we developed the platform we had dozens of calls with potential investors, partners and advisers, and most were pushing us to focus more on NFTs, he recalled. A lot said that instead of having a focus on content, we should just promise people tokens and NFTs. It was advice that was given in a very superior tone, and when I rejected the advice I was treated as someone who didnt know what they were talking about.

Monkey NFTs dont make sense, but when you use the same smart-contract technology to provide accountability in content moderation, that actually makes sense, Kobeissi said.

Jrgen Geuter, a German computer scientist turned prominent tech critic who writes under the name tante, agrees that decentralizations brand has been very much damaged by recent events, but in his view, trying to create decentralized systems was already a lost cause because users have shown again and again that they prize convenience over the ability to shun Big Tech.

Geuter cites email as an example. Email is inherently decentralized, but wide adoption of Googles feature-rich, well-secured Gmail service made it effectively centralized for many peoplemuch as Bitcoin is now controlled by a handful of mining groups, and the vast majority of NFT trading takes place on one platform, OpenSea.

Whats more, Geuter says, the limited success of projects like Diaspora and Mastodon already demonstrated that decentralized services have big problems overcoming Big Techs network effects and ease of use. Nobody likes annoying technology, except maybe technologists, he said.

All projects end up with a degree of centralization, says Pitchbooks Leand thats not a problem for most users. As a consumer, I just want to use a product that makes my life easier, Le said.

While Geuter mocks the way the Web3 scene fetishizes decentralization, he still believes the concept remains extremely importantas long as people recognize decentralization not as some vague agent of democratization, but rather as a tool for building things that really benefit from that kind of architecture, like transparent content-moderation systems.

In a way, moving decentralization out of this pie-in-the-sky crypto space, clearing its name and making it a topic of research again, is good for decentralization, Geuter said.

Accel VC Brasoveanu also believes the concept remains a compelling idea and goal to pursue, and noted the recent emergence of projects like NFT marketplace LooksRare, which offers a decentralized alternative to OpenSea. In June, OpenSea was still the leading market with two-thirds of NFT trading volumes, but LooksRare came in second with 20%.

Similarly, Le cited a decentralized wireless network for Internet-of-Things connected devices, called Helium, as an example of an innovative token model. Heliums participants earn a cryptocurrency by running the hotspots that make up the network, and companies can then buy that cryptocurrency to use their infrastructure. Helium was until very recently touting Salesforce and Lime as examples of such customers, but after pushback from both, Helium admitted it had only run pilot programs with them.

Helium was valued at $1.2 billion in March, when the likes of Andreessen Horowitz and Tiger Global Management participated in a $200 million Series D round.

I think now, because of how project developers think about tokenomics, the users are going to hold the tokens because they believe in the project, Le said. Thats less speculation, and more I understand this project.

Were one of the most likely Web3 platforms to survive this downturn because were using these technologies in a way that makes sense, said Kobeissi, who is preparing to add cryptocurrency functionality to Blogchain as a way of rewarding writers who prefer to remain anonymousBlogchains revenues come from taking a 10% cut of the subscription fees charged by its premium writers.

Its the hype that gave us a push at the beginningdeserved or notbut now, because weve built on such solid and well-justified foundationsI think that we have a chance at the long term.

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After cryptos crash and NFTs collapse, Web3 idealists race to prove that the dream of decentralization isnt dead - Fortune

Michael P. Fischerkeller,Emily O. Goldman, andRichard J. Harknett, Cyber Persistence Theory: Redefining National Security in Cyberspace (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Predictions about cyber war have ranged from the apocalyptic to the reassuring over the past decade, and the current war in Ukraine beyond its horrific violence, dislocations, and criminality provides a test case for those theories.Do cyber operations provide decisive advantages in war? Are they more escalatory or de-escalatory than other weapons? Or is it more appropriate to consider cyber capabilities primarily as instruments of interstate competition short of war?

The Russo-Ukrainian War is the first case in which opponents with advanced cyber capabilities have used them to achieve material and cognitive effects in armed conflict. Firm conclusions must await the end of the war, but for now, cyber operations do not appear to have been decisive in destroying or disrupting military forces and economic wherewithal, or in affecting societal willpower and political cohesion.

Even the most revisionist states most of the time want to gain intelligence, enhance revenue through favorable trade, theft or sanctions evasion, and sabotage adversaries politically and economically, while avoiding shooting wars, especially with more powerful adversaries. Such states and their opponents are better off pursuing these aims through cyber operations if they can. Violent actions intended to take or hold territory or steal or disable assets are much more likely to provoke violent, costly, and irreversible responses. Once war is underway, it is thus far unclear whether roughly equivalent cyber capabilities would advantage an attacker or a defender.

The authors of a new book argue persuasively that the habitual U.S. approach of deterrence (primarily nuclear) and coercion (primarily threats of conventional attack) will not effectively dissuade adversaries cyber operations because they involve threats to inflict violence and damage disproportionate to the harm done unto us by those operations. Though written before the invasion, Cyber Persistence Theory does not flunk the Ukraine test thus far. Thanks to their pioneering diagnosis of the structure of the digital environment and the incentives it creates for competition, Michael Fischerkeller, Emily Goldman, and Richard Harknett posit that cyber warfare per se will be rare, and that most exertions will be below the violence and destruction of armed conflict. The authors are, respectively, a researcher at the Institute for Defense Analyses, a strategist at U.S. Cyber Command, and a professor at the University of Cincinnati.

If the great strength of the book is its structural analysis, its weakness is policy prescription. The authors propose an alternative approach of using persistent offensive and defensive competition with adversary cyber operators to establish customary legal boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable cyber espionage, economic and political competition, and warfighting. Unfortunately, the authors and the short span of cyber-age history do not provide detailed bases for thinking the United States and its friends will be able and willing to offer Russia, Iran, North Korea, and perhaps others sufficient threats and rewards to change their cyber behaviors.

The United States would prefer to extend its advantages in cyber-enabled precision warfare while minimizing adversary utilization of cyber to spy, steal, sabotage, and subvert below the level of armed conflict. But, if they can avoid war, adversaries have much to gain and little to lose from cyber competition with the United States, whereas the United States in toto government, businesses, and the public has more to lose from theft, sanctions evasion, and information warfare than its adversaries do. China could be an exception here, as discussed further below. Unlike the other adversaries, it is still a rising power in all relevant domains and could see benefit from negotiating rules on an equal footing. But the current political environment, with fault spread all around, precludes the authors and others from detailing sustainable experiments to this end. Absent a breakthrough on this front, the costs and anxieties of persistent exploitation of governmental, corporate, and personal computing and communications networks will continue.

The Long Shadow of Deterrence

Cyber Persistence Theory argues that the nature of information and communication technologies structures actors competition for relative gain: The global networked computing environment is a warehouse for and gateway to troves of sensitive, strategic assets that translate into wealth and power, and the capacity to organize for the pursuit of both. This environment is resilient at the macro-level its hard to crash the internet, and theres little gain from doing so. But billions of individual addresses in it are vulnerable, and it costs relatively little to acquire capabilities to exploit these vulnerabilities. So, every minute of every day some actor somewhere has both the capacity and will to [gain] access to ones national sources of power directly or indirectly.

It is impossible to completely defend against or deter capable adversaries from attempting intrusions. So, states must persistently compete for relative gains that, over time, could make them strategically better off than their adversaries. Each seeks to add to its power and wealth more than its competitors add to theirs, or especially in the case of Russia to detract more from its adversaries power and wealth than is detracted from its own.

Persistent competition, the authors write, generally takes the form of cyber faits accomplis a limited unilateral gain at a targets expense. Examples of these include Chinas theft of aircraft designs or other intellectual property, North Koreas crypto heists, Russias theft and political manipulation of data from the Democratic National Committee, and the U.S./Israeli destruction of Iranian centrifuges. Once states discover they have been exploited, they try to reduce their vulnerabilities and perhaps increase their own capacities to penetrate their adversaries. Hence, persistent cycles of engagement. This mode of competition is less expensive and risky in every way than armed conflict. It reflects a tacitly produced mutual understanding of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors similar to what the United States and the Soviet Union developed during the Cold War, which Herman Kahn dubbed agreed battle.

The books basic argument is easy to follow, not least because the authors adeptly, if not eloquently, summarize its elements at each stage in their 157-page text. The reader feels in the presence of excellent teachers. After describing the nature of the networked computing environment and the proclivities it produces, the book pivots to a discussion of how the United States could compete more effectively with its adversaries and, over time, temper the costs and risks to international society.

The United States and its allies governments, businesses, and customers should be relieved that the damage from adversary cyber operations is below what would be done by armed conflict. But things would be even better if adversaries stole less information, intellectual property and money, stopped conducting influence operations to exacerbate political polarity and dysfunction, limited penetration of key civilian infrastructure, and so on. While the case of China is more complicated, the authors argue with evidence that sanctions and other coercive threats generally have not deterred or compelled Russian, North Korean, or Iranian behavior as American policymakers, imbued with nuclear deterrence strategy, long assumed or hoped it would.

But saying deterrence and compellence wont work is not a viable policy. Something still must be done to change adversaries hostile behavior. Here, the authors urge an approach that is laudable and worthwhile, but still problematic. They urge the United States and allies to evolve existing international law and establish customary law that defines responsible state behavior and wrongful acts in this domain. The aim would be, over time, to motivate states to limit the targets, effects, and collateral damage of operations. Such restraint, it is argued, would benefit everyone by containing risks of major instability and escalation.

A Law-Building Project

Building such a legal regime would require the United States to overcome its frequent aversion to invoking international law when it indicts Chinese and other hackers. As part of the recommended legal-power strategy, the United States would declare what information and communication systems it deems exclusively its sovereign affair and off-limits from foreign interference under its interpretations of existing principles and rules of international law.

The power of this legal strategy would come from a third element: conducting cyber campaigns against adversaries in ways that reinforce the legal framework the United States is proposing. That is, the flip side of defining international legal obligations is the legitimacy it gives to countermeasures when someone violates an asserted obligation. Cyber operations to counter violations would, iteratively, amount to tacit bargaining with competitors over the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors around and about functions or infrastructure that have been declared off-limits.

Unfortunately, the authors cannot say why Russia, North Korea, and Iran would change their behavior to comport with customary international law as interpreted by the United States. These regimes use cyber operations to acquire intelligence, steal intellectual property, evade sanctions, and exacerbate political divisions in adversary societies in ways that they cannot by other means. These states remain isolated, economically hamstrung, and technologically underdeveloped, but they are better off than they would be without cyber operations against the United States and others.

China arguably should be understood and treated differently by the United States and other states. It seeks the capacity to sabotage the United States high-tech weaponry, reconnaissance, command and control, and logistics operations in warfare. Short of armed conflict, it has used cyber espionage to gain technological capability for military and civilian purposes, to enhance counter-intelligence to protect against U.S. spying, and to project favorable opinions about Chinas government and leaders into foreign countries. Unlike Russia, Iran, and North Korea, China is a rising technological and economic power with big equity stakes in the global trading system. It will want rules that others, including the United States, live by, to protect its wealth and intellectual property as well as its one-party political system, something especially problematic for the United States and its allies. And China wants to be central in writing those rules, not passively receiving them from U.S. policymakers. Yet, China does not have the experience and international following to take a leading role. The current all-encompassing antagonism between the two countries, epitomized by Speaker Pelosis visit to Taiwan, vitiates initiatives to create a modus vivendi in the cyber domain.

In conversations, officials and experts from Russia, Iran, and China typically assume the United States has better offensive cyber capabilities than they do to spy on them, to know how to sanction them and detect their evasions, to sabotage their infrastructure, to obtain and publicize damaging information on their leaders, and to precisely and speedily fight a conventional war. (Presumably, North Koreans would say the same, but I have not spoken with them). In their view, whatever measures the United States proposes will be meant to preserve U.S. advantages over them. And as far as international law goes, adversaries like Putin, Xi, Kim, and Khamenei assume the United States will interpret it unilaterally and use it to mobilize or justify punishing its adversaries, while ignoring or violating others interpretations of international law whenever it wants, without repercussions.

The authors of Cyber Persistence know this. They want to build up customary international law so the United States can internally and internationally justify more vigorous cyber operations against adversary networks and machines. Were adversary behaviors described in unsealed public indictments framed as internationally wrongful acts, they write, the extraordinary detail in the indictments should make policymakers comfortable with pursuing countermeasures, if the behavior identified in the indictment is ongoing. This is a very important sentence nine pages from the end of the book: The United States has been too self-deterred, too inhibited, in the authors view. Senior officials and presumably influential corporate leaders and shareholders need to be pushed to see that the best defense is a good offense, and that this can be legitimized.

Unfortunately, the wisdom of their bold prescription is difficult to assess because the authors do not describe the countermeasures they have in mind. Classification and the traditional covertness of cyber operations prevent more transparency. Assuming for many good reasons the authors do not recommend armed attacks in response to adversary cyber operations of the kind seen so far, countermeasures would likely be in the cyber domain. The often-understandable lack of clarity regarding how the United States would react to hostile cyber operations leaves room for adversaries and commentators in swing countries, perhaps fueled by cinema and memories of Edward Snowden, to assume that the United States is doing more in their computers and networks than Russia, North Korea, Iran, and China are. And this is a problem for the authors other recommendation: The United States is competing with Russia and China for the rest of the worlds support in developing international norms and potentially customary law. If it cannot say more about the legitimating rationale and effects of operations it conducts in other countries systems, and plausibly distinguish between the normal and arguably legitimate espionage and countermeasures that the United States and its partners conduct compared to the less defensible targets and tradecraft of adversaries, the law-building strategy will founder.

Of course, even if Russia and China confine themselves to acceptable data-collecting espionage and preparation to attack legitimate U.S. military and war-supporting industry targets in war, the United States is likely to counteract. The hope for stabilizing cyber competition rests on the possibility of reciprocally bounding the targeting and probable effects of operations, and on very careful tradecraft. This will require the sustained, high-level attention of senior leaders, especially from the United States and China, and a steady diplomatic effort to explicate to each side which targets and effects are intolerable and will cause one to take countermeasures, and to create processes for communicating about ambiguous cases. Tacit bargaining will be essential given the secrecy of action in the cyber domain and the deranged politics of relations between the United States and the countries of greatest concern. But, at some point progress will depend on the U.S. political system tolerating leaders having a sustained, public dialogue or negotiation with leaders of adversary countries. Tacit bargaining is too ambiguous to rely upon alone.

Cyber Persistence Theory is a must-read even if it is far from the last word. The authors invoke Thomas Kuhn and his famous concept of paradigm shift. They penetratingly describe the structural shift that the information revolution imposes on some aspects of interstate competition. But cyberspace, unlike the phenomena that Kuhns natural scientists sought to understand, is human-made. Contending groups compete against each other by altering and exploiting their creations in this environment. The challenge is not merely to understand these dynamics like scientists do, but to shape them in ways that avert massive harm and, ideally, facilitate the pursuit of well-being. Meeting this latter challenge will require additional volumes that build on this one.

George Perkovich is Kenneth Olivier and Angela Nomellini Chair, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is co-editor of Understanding Cyber Conflict: 14 Analogies (Georgetown University Press, 2017) which can be downloaded free at 19029-Perkovich_Understanding.indd (carnegieendowment.org).

Image: U.S. Cyber Command, photo by Josef Cole

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Whistleblowers play a crucial role in ensuring the rule of law is properly preserved, and the public knows about unlawfully or unethically withheld critical information. .

From the sailors who reported misconduct of a superior officer in the Continental Navy to Bradley Birkenfeld, who helped the government recover billions in taxes, whistleblowers have done a great deal of good. Acknowledging National Whistleblower Appreciation Day on July 30th is a small token of appreciation for these individuals sacrifices.

If you need to blow the whistle on a concerning situation, heres the perfect guide for you. Well cover the risks of whistleblowing and whistleblowing best practices.

A whistleblower is a person who reports certain wrongdoings within their organization. Not all instances of reporting are considered whistleblowing. It all depends on the issue reported.Whistleblowing usually involves highlighting any criminal wrongdoings which affect the health and safety of others, or pose environmental risks. If you report a+ fraud coverup or if you know about a miscarriage of justice and let the relevant authorities know, youre considered a whistleblower.

National Whistleblower Appreciation Day, July 30th, 2022, marks the 244th anniversary of the US passing the first American whistleblower law, which came into effect on July 30th, 1778. In 2013, the US Senate unanimously agreed to honor National Whistleblower Appreciation Day, on July 30th. This day serves as a reminder of whistleblowers important contributions to preserving the laws and democracy of the US.

During the American Revolution, 10 whistleblowers came forward with reports of misconduct committed by a superior officer in the Continental Navy. When the forefathers learned some of them were being prosecuted for their decision to come forward, they took action. They voted to spend money from the governments treasury to pay lawyers to defend the whistleblowers.

These are some of the most iconic whistleblowers in US history who make us proud to support National Whistleblower Appreciation Day, July 30th.

Sherron WatkinsSherron Watkins is a former Enron vice president who exposed the companys improper accounting methods. In 2002, she testified before US Senate and House of Representatives members about the situation. The public criticized her for not coming forward sooner.

Toni SavageDr. Savage was a contracting officer with the Army Corps of Engineers in Alabama. In 2006, Savage reported contract fraud in the Armys Ranges Program. In retaliation, Savage was removed from her position, denied awards, faced hostility, and endured insensitive and racist statements. She was terminated in 2009.

Bradley BirkenfeldBradley Birkenfeld is a former wealth manager and banker at UBS. He was the first international banker to expose US citizens illegal offshore accounts in Switzerland. Birkenfeld was given $104 million as a reward for his whistleblowing which resulted in the recovery of over $25 billion in taxes.

Jane TurnerJane Turner was a special agent for the FBI. In 1999, she reported misconduct regarding the FBIs failure to prosecute crimes against children. She also reported misconduct regarding the potential theft of items from the 9/11 crime scene by FBI personnel. Turner was removed from her position and sexually discriminated against.

Aaron WestrickDr. Westrick was the research director for Second Chance Body Armor. He blew the whistle on defective vests produced and sold to police officers. His actions cost him his job but saved the lives of many police officers.

Edward SnowdenEdward Snowden is a former computer intelligence consultant for the NSA. He developed concerns about the programs he was involved in but was ignored when he raised them internally. He leaked classified NSA information and, as a result, was charged with theft of government property and faced two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917.

Cynthia CooperCynthia was the vice president of Internal Audit at Worldcom. Cooper and her team investigated and revealed $3.8 billion worth of fraud at Worldcom in 2002. To recognize her for her discovery and whistleblowing, she was named one of the Times Persons of the Year in 2002.

Mark FeltMark Felt was the FBI associate director involved in the Watergate scandal. He was the anonymous source, codenamed Deep Throat, who leaked critical information about the Watergate scandal leading to President Nixon resigning.

A. Ernest FitzgeraldMr. Fitzgerald was a government employee who blew the whistle on a $2.3 billion cost overrun involving the Lockheed C-5 aircraft. He testified before congress about the issue and saved the government $273 million. Fitzgerald was accused of leaking classified information and fired by President Nixon.

Frederic WhitehurstFrederic Whitehurst was a special agent in the FBI. He investigated and blew the whistle on scientific misconduct and procedural errors he noticed in the lab. In retaliation, the FBI attacked his credibility, criticized his claims, and fired him. After 10 years, the FBI investigated his claims, and 40 major reforms were made.

Even though its for a good cause, blowing the whistle can leave you vulnerable within your organization. Before you raise issues, think about any repercussions and make an action plan on how youll deal with the reaction of your peers and the organizations leadership.

You could be removed from your position or even fired if your identity is revealed after you blow the whistle. Industry players could blacklist you for your role in blowing the whistle on issues within your organization.

Your colleagues may label you as a traitor and treat you as such. You could be bullied and subjected to different types of harassment based on your sex, age, race, religion, and sexuality. Prepare yourself mentally for these scenarios, be strong, remain steadfast, and stick to your values.

Your colleagues may label you as a traitor and treat you as such. You could be bullied and subjected to different types of harassment based on your sex, age, race, religion, and sexuality. Prepare yourself mentally for these scenarios, be strong, remain steadfast, and stick to your values.

You could face lawsuits if your whistleblowing reveals youre involved in any illegal activities.

You could face lawsuits if your whistleblowing reveals youre involved in any illegal activities.

Is your goal to preserve the integrity of your organization, or do you wish to see it dismantled? The way you report information and who you report it to can determine if the issue is quietly dealt with internally or is dealt with in the courts.

Whistleblowing isnt just about exposing information you may consider to be juicy gossip. You will be reporting offenses that are potentially criminal, so you should consider the process and repercussions. You should find out if it will affect your career, how your actions could affect your family and friends, and how your family and friends will treat you.

You need to carefully identify people who wont betray you during the process. When you solicit the help of coworkers or external individuals who dont have the same moral compass or have more to gain from exposing your plans, they can derail you. If you can uncover and report the unlawful or unethical situation on your own, you should do so. Its even better if you can complete the process while staying anonymous.

If your identity is discovered illegally, you may not face prosecution, but that doesnt mean youre completely safe. Your organization can still retaliate against you, by firing or harassing you. Some entities will try to invade your privacy so they can collect data to attack your credibility. Use PIA VPN to scramble your data in transit and install our antivirus to protect your devices from breaches.

In some situations, its best to report unethical or egregious procedures through internal channels. When you have a certain level of confidence that your leadership team can adequately address the situation, you should start there. Remember, if you expose issues internally, your identity is known, so if you go public with your report afterwards you cant do it anonymously.

Sometimes, the best solution is to raise issues publicly first, eg. when the perpetrators are high-ranking individuals. When you do this, resolutions are usually faster, which means reduced opportunities for coverups.

To keep yourself protected when you blow the whistle, follow these best practices:

Find a knowledgeable lawyer who can guide you through the process.

Develop a plan and dont do things on a whim.

Figure out how to stay anonymous while you collect and reveal evidence. You can use a VPN to conceal your internet activity, but remember, encrypted traffic can draw attention to you. Use a VPN like Private Internet Access with a multi-hop feature that obfuscates your traffic to hide your VPN use.

Dont interview co-workers and make it obvious to everyone youre asking questions. Try to be discrete and engage inconversations about the topic when it feels natural. Dont rush your evidence-gathering process; only gather as much information as needed.

Meet with informants away from your organization. This makes it harder to identify you as the whistleblower. Its even better if you can use proxies to do meetups for you, allowing you to stay anonymous.

The US has multiple whistleblowing laws such as the False Claims Act which allows whistleblowers to sue those who defraud the government on its behalf. Additionally, Federal government employees are protected under The Whistleblower Protection Act with some exceptions including those who work for the FBI.

Members of the intelligence community are protected under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 and the FBI Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act of 2016.

Whistleblowing is risky but necessary. Its important for someone to take on the responsibility to maintain the integrity of organizations and government agencies if the need arises.

If you find yourself in a situation where you need to report criminal or fraudulent activities, you should plan how you will execute the process. Follow our best practices for whistleblowing to remain anonymous and safe from retaliation. Try to anticipate possible reactions if your identity is revealed and prepare for them.

July 30th marks the anniversary of the US passing the first American whistleblower law on July 30th, 1778. This day is a reminder of the important contributions multiple whistleblowers have made to preserving and improving US laws.

In 2013, the US Senate unanimously agreed to honor July 30th as National Whistleblower Appreciation Day. It encourages others to blow the whistle on egregious situations and also reminds them about the dangers of blowing the whistle without protecting their anonymity.

July 30th is National Whistleblower Appreciation Day. Its also the day In God we trust became the USs national motto on July 30th, 1956. Uruguay defeated Argentina on this day in 1930 to win the first ever football World Cup. The Republic of Vanuatu also celebrates its independence on this day.

Becoming a whistleblower has many risks. You may lose your job, experience harassment, become a victim of doxxing, have your credibility attacked, and other organizations could blacklist you. If you reveal you were involved in any illegal activities, you could also end up in prison. Secure your online traffic and mitigate some of these risks.

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Why Is July 30th National Whistleblower Day? - Privacy News Online

While cybersecurity teams would be unwise to take their eyes off Russia, the evolving threat posed by China's massive hacking operation deserves more attention than it's getting among some targeted businesses especially those involved in emerging technologies, experts told Protocol.

As the tech war between China and the U.S. heats up, cyber threat experts said the recent FBI warnings about the Chinese government's efforts to steal intellectual property line up with the realities they see.

"Our government is correct: Companies actually need to pay more attention," said Lou Steinberg, formerly the CTO at TD Ameritrade.

In recent years, threats from Russia have driven much of the cybersecurity attention and investment among businesses in the U.S. and Western Europe, especially after Russias invasion of Ukraine in February. Understandably, the threat of ransomware and disruption of critical infrastructure tends to provoke a response.

But when it comes to state-sponsored intrusions, China was behind a stunning 67% of the attacks between mid-2020 and mid-2021, compared to just 1% for the Russian government, according to data from CrowdStrike.

Without a doubt, China "stands out as the leading nation in terms of threat relevance, at least for America," said Tom Hegel, a senior threat researcher at SentinelOne.

In July, the FBI and MI5 issued an unprecedented joint warning about the threat of IP theft by China. During an address to business leaders in London, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that China's hacking program is "bigger than that of every other major country combined" and that the Chinese government is "set on stealing your technology whatever it is that makes your industry tick."

"The Chinese government poses an even more serious threat to Western businesses than even many sophisticated businesspeople realize," Wray said.

During his three years as a researcher at Secureworks, Marc Burnard has seen Chinese government hackers go after customers in chemicals manufacturing, aviation, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals to name just a few.

"It's quite difficult to point out what the key sectors are for China, because they target so many," Burnard said. "It's a scale that just completely dwarfs anything from the likes of Iran, North Korea and Russia."

One of the most brazen examples was China's release of bomber jets with strikingly similar designs to the F-35 starting in 2011, according to Nicolas Chaillan, former chief software officer for the U.S. Air Force. Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden appeared to confirm that Chinese government hackers stole data on the F-35 Lightning II, which is believed to have been used in the design of Chinese jets including the J-31 and J-20.

Chaillan who resigned in protest over the military's progress on IT modernization amid the China threat said the recent FBI warning on China is telling. "It takes a lot for the government to start saying stuff like that," he told Protocol. "That usually gives you a hint that it's really, really bad."

China "stands out as the leading nation in terms of threat relevance, at least for America."

Wray has made a number of public remarks on the China cyber threat this year. In a January speech, he said the FBI had 2,000 open investigations related to attempted theft of technology and information by the Chinese government. The FBI is opening a new case related to Chinese intelligence roughly every 12 hours, he said at the time.

In July 2021, the White House denounced the Chinese government over its "pattern of malicious cyber activity," in tandem with the European Union, the U.K. and NATO. The action made it clear that the Biden administration believes China has been ignoring its 2015 agreement to cease hacking activities meant to steal the IP of U.S. businesses.

Major incidents have included the Chinese government's widespread exploitation of vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange in 2021, which led to the compromise of 10,000 U.S. companies' networks, Wray said in January.

In analyzing the Chinese cyber threat, the key is to understand the larger context for why China is targeting Western IP, said Michael Daniel, formerly cybersecurity coordinator and special assistant to the president during the Obama administration.

"China is an expanding power that fundamentally sees itself as challenging the West, and challenging the world order that the Western European system has set up," Daniel said.

A central part of that aspiration is challenging the West economically, but China is prone to taking shortcuts, experts say.

The Chinese government laid out its "Made in China 2025" strategy, which identifies the industries that it considers to be most important going forward, in 2015. The document is extremely helpful when it comes to defending against IP theft by China's government, said Daniel, who is now president and CEO of the Cyber Threat Alliance, an industry group.

"If your company is in one of those industries identified in that strategy, you are a target for Chinese intelligence," he said. "It's that simple, actually."

Some of the industries that now face the biggest threat of IP theft from China such as energy, aerospace defense technology and quantum computing are already well aware of it, according to Steinberg, now the founder of cybersecurity research lab CTM Insights.

But other industries should be paying closer attention than they are, he said. Those include the AI/robotics, agricultural technology and electric vehicle sectors which are among the industries mentioned in the "Made in China 2025" plan.

"If you're on their list, they've got an army of skilled people who are trying to figure out how to get your intellectual property," Steinberg said.

"If your company is in one of those industries identified in that strategy, you are a target for Chinese intelligence."

Christian Sorensen, formerly a U.S. Cyber Command official and U.S. Air Force officer, said there's been a clear shift in China's IP theft priorities from its traditional focus on defense-related technologies such as the designs for the F-35 and into the high-tech and biotech sectors. For instance, in mid-2020, the U.S. accused Chinese government hackers of attempting to steal data from COVID-19 vaccine developer Moderna.

Threats of this sort can be more difficult for perennially overwhelmed security teams to prioritize, however, said Sorensen, who is now founder and CEO of cybersecurity vendor SightGain.

"Everybody pays attention to what's right in their face," he said. "Our intellectual property is just flying out of our borders, which is a serious strategic threat. But it's not always the front-burner threat."

That has been particularly the case in 2022 the year of "Shields Up."

Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden appeared to confirm that Chinese government hackers stole data on the U.S.'s F-35 Lightning II. Photo: Robert Atanasovski/AFP via Getty Images

Following the invasion of Ukraine, there was a widespread expectation that the U.S. and other allies of Ukraine would face disruptive cyberattacks by Russia. So far, major retaliatory attacks from Russia have not materialized though experts believe a Russian escalation of this sort could still come as soon as later this year, depending on how events play out with Ukraine and sanctions.

America's focus on its cyber adversaries tends to go in cycles, experts say. And even prior to the Ukraine war, Russian threat actors have been constantly in the spotlight, from the SolarWinds breach by Russia's intelligence forces in 2020 to the Colonial Pipeline and Kaseya ransomware attacks by cybercriminals operating out of the country in 2021.

It's not out of the question that China might pursue similar disruptive cyberattacks against the U.S. and Western Europe in the future, however, if China wants to prevent aid to Taiwan, Daniel said. It's believed that China has been seeking the ability to strike critical infrastructure for a situation such as that, he said.

To date, however, China's cyber activity has been "almost entirely covert cyber espionage campaigns," said Josephine Wolff, associate professor of cybersecurity policy at Tufts University.

Whereas Russian cyberattacks are often meant to create noise and chaos, Wolff said, China's attacks are "meant to happen undercover. They don't want anyone to know it's them."

U.S.-China tensions rose Tuesday as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan. Mandiant's John Hultquist said in a statement that China is expected to carry out significant cyber espionage against targets in Taiwan and the U.S. related to the situation.

Notably, the Chinese government is very effective at organizing the hacking activities, said SentinelOne's Hegel. "It's a well-oiled machine for mass espionage."

While China's hacking program often does not perform the most technically advanced attacks, its sheer size and persistence allows it to be successful over the longer-term, he said.

But because China's motives are different compared to Russia, "you've got to defend yourself [in] a completely different way," said CTM Insights' Steinberg.

The go-to technologies in these situations are data-loss prevention, data exfiltration detection and deception technologies such as tripwires, he said. Rather than expecting to prevent an intrusion every time, the key to stopping IP theft is "Can you catch it happening and shut it down?"

Businesses should also concentrate on applying special protections to systems that are hosting IP, said Burnard, who is senior consultant for information security research at Secureworks. That might include network segmentation and enhanced monitoring for those parts of the system, he said.

One way that Chinas hackers have been evolving can be seen in their methods for gaining initial access to corporate systems, experts say. Recent years have seen Chinese attackers increasingly exploiting vulnerabilities, instead of just relying on phishing, said Kevin Gonzalez, director of security at cybersecurity vendor Anvilogic.

China-based attackers exploited a dozen published vulnerabilities in 2021, up from just two the prior year, CrowdStrike reported making the Chinese government's hacking operation the "leader in vulnerability exploitation."

The threat actors have shown capabilities for exploiting both previously unknown, zero-day vulnerabilities as well as unpatched known vulnerabilities, Hegel said.

Additionally, Chinas government hackers are now scanning for vulnerabilities the second they pop up online," he said for instance, in the case of Log4Shell, a severe vulnerability in the widely used Apache Log4j software that was uncovered in December 2021. The Chinese government reportedly punished China-based tech giant Alibaba for informing the developers behind Log4j about the flaw prior to telling the government.

China has used more innovative techniques as well, such as software supply chain attacks. The compromises of CCleaner and Asus Live Update in 2017 are among the past instances.

Still, while China's focus on IP theft makes some defenses unique from those needed to stop ransomware, there are plenty of countermeasures that can help against both Russia- and China-style threats, experts said.

Placing an emphasis on strong security hygiene, vulnerability and patch management, identity authentication and zero-trust architecture will go a long way toward defending against attacks regardless of what country they're coming from, said Adam Meyers, senior vice president of intelligence at CrowdStrike.

Threat hunting is also a valuable investment, whether you're concerned about threats from Russia, China or anywhere else, Meyers said. "You have to be out there looking for these threats, because the adversary is constantly moving," he said.

But hacking is not the only cyber threat that China poses to the U.S. and the West, experts say. And it may not even be the most challenging, said Samuel Visner, a longtime cybersecurity executive and former NSA official, who currently serves as technical fellow at MITRE.

The harder question, according to Visner, is how to respond to China's initiative to build a "Digital Silk Road" across much of the globe using exported Chinese IT infrastructure. The technology is believed to be capable of facilitating surveillance on citizens. Ultimately, the fear is that the Digital Silk Road could be used to feed information about Americans or Europeans traveling abroad back to the Chinese government, he said.

While meeting a different definition of cybersecurity, Visner said, "that is also a security challenge."

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Russian hackers get the headlines. But China is the bigger threat to many US enterprises. - Protocol

The cryptocurrency world is full of surprises and mysteries. This article is all aboutwhat is MoneroXMR Crypto and whether Edward Snowden behind the project? Lets take a look at it in more detail.

Monero is a cryptocurrency that has a high degree of anonymity. It is a decentralized cryptocurrency that operates a public distributed ledger infused with privacy-concentrated technologies to achieve anonymity. It is also an open-source technique that demonstrates that observers cannot analyze transactions and activities about its cryptocurrency.

Moneros blockchain design is unique, and all transaction details from the sender to the receiver are kept secret. Despite preserving similarities with well-known cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Monero is completely distinct in its function. It currently has the most comprehensive community of developers, after Bitcoin and Ethereum. Like Bitcoin and Ethereum, users can mine Monero, and the process isneutral.

Monero relies onproof-of-work. It is an algorithm that provides security to the cryptocurrency. This consensus instrument prevents problems like double-spending, which canfudgethe supply. When this happens, it will show much more than actually available tokens. Monero employs ring signatures and stealth addresses to deliver user privacy. The concept of ring signatures focuses on covering the particulars of an individual in a bunch of people. It is like a digital signature from the individual that helps others in the dark about the transaction.

>> CLICK HERE TO TRADE MONERO <<

Monero executes Cryptonode, a protocol that covers all functions on the blockchain. Each recipient accepts a special address for each transaction, a so-called stealth address, which cannot be allocated to his public address. The recipient can utilize his private key to recognize the transaction on the blockchain.

The sender is covered by so-called ring signatures. Random transactions on the blockchain are blended with valid transactions. The miners can employ a cryptographic method to ensure that one of the transactions in the ring signature was signed with a valid key. But you dont know which ones. So, looking at the blockchain, you cant divulge which of the transactions was published. The number of transactions for the ring signature is inconsistent. The more participating transactions there are, of course, the more safe the whole thing is.

Like every year,Coindeskpitches its yearly Consensus conference. This assembly has been the key meeting place for people committed to a decentralized world since 2015. It is one of the few worldwide affairs that celebrate all sides of blockchain tech. For this year 2022 particularly, we atCryptoTickerpartook in thefull conference schedule. There were many speakers and one of them was a prominent personality, Edward Snowden.

Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower whose leaks flared a worldwide debate over internet vigilance, is declared to have had a major role in the evolution of one more privacy coin Zcash (ZEC). The ex-US defense employee was one of six people who participated in the ritual that launched Zcashs so-called authorized structure. The whistle-blower has admitted that he was the sixth person who partook in a detailed 2016 ceremony that ushered in the invention of zcash, a top privacy-protecting coin. Now, whether he is behind Monero or not is not clear yet.

XMR/USDT Weekly chart GoCharting

At the time of writing this, the XMR price is sitting at $159.37. It is important to mention that after the XMR price dropped by almost 50% in May, which was little compared to other cryptocurrencies, the price is slightly increasing. The price movement of XMR is creating a customers hedge zone. Buyers could form a 40-day high at the $155 mark, where buyers labored under this area.

Buyers must break this bullish railing as soon as possible, more proliferation could prefer an additional withdrawal. Although buyers are hardly driving higher XMR coin prices, they appear to be shutting out near the $150 to $155 resistance area. Meanwhile, the market cap has increased by 7% to $1.7 billion in the past 36 hours. Likewise, trading volume rose by 37% approximated to the last night, implying more than average buying in the last 24 hours.

Monero (XMR) token could split its most contemporary bullish railing at $155. And buyers must split this bullish railing as soon as possible, more proliferation could prefer an additional pullback.The Support levels are $100 and $78 and the resistance level are $162 and $200.

In the past 2 days though, we noticed a slight crypto correction lower. Is now the time to buy cryptos

Ethereum based Layer 2 solutions are all the rage, how can you invest in this lucrative market? What are the

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I MAY HAVE to wait until I'm on my deathbed.

These were the words of the anonymous whistleblower who leaked a trove of documents, known as the Panama Papers, which implicated Namibians and international names in dubious activities six years ago.

The Panama Papers, which The Namibian and more than 400 journalists combed through, included 11,5 million leaked documents that showed how the rich create offshore shell companies in tax havens to avoid paying taxes, to conceal their riches, and to engage in crimes such as money laundering.

The Namibian's investigative unit has produced several investigative articles since 2016 as part of the global reporting on the Panama Papers.

Leaked documents showed that Namibia's financial system was contaminated with mafioso money through Vito Palazzolo, who was once viewed as one of the most powerful figures in the Italian mafia, the Cosa Nostra.

Known only as John Doe, the whistleblower has never disclosed their identity or their gender.

They said they were motivated to speak out by a growing sense of 'instability' in the world, and from disappointment that more hasn't been done to clamp down on a secretive financial system that props up autocrats and enables people like Russian president Vladimir Putin to launch a war in Ukraine.

It's a risk that I live with, given that the Russian government has expressed the fact that it wants me dead, they said in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel.Doe, who only spoke out publicly once before, recently reached out to the two German journalists who had received the leaked documents in 2015 concerning the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

The two reporters from Suddeutsche Zeitung, Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, now work for Der Spiegel.

They agreed to share the transcript of their Doe interview with media groups (including The Namibian) that participated in the award-winning investigation under the umbrella of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Below is the verbatim interview, which was published in Der Spiegel.

Der Spiegel (DS): How are you doing? Are you safe? John Doe (JD): I am safe, to the best of my knowledge. We live in a perilous world, and that weighs on me sometimes. But overall I am doing quite well, and I consider myself very fortunate.

DS: You stayed silent for six years.

Haven't you been tempted to reveal that it was you who made the secret offshore dealings of heads of state and heads of governments, drug cartels, and criminals public? JD: I have often wrestled, as I think many people do, with issues of being credited for my work. Fame was never part of the equation. At that stage, the only concern was staying alive long enough for someone to tell the story.

Making the decision to compile the data available to me at Mossack Fonseca took days and felt like looking down the barrel of a loaded gun, but ultimately, I had to do it.

DS: You reached out to the German daily Sddeutsche Zeitung, which initiated a collaboration of more than 400 journalists, coordinated by the ICIJ. When you reached out to us, what did you have in mind? JD: When I contacted you, I had absolutely no idea what would happen or if you would even respond. I corresponded with many journalists who were uninterested, including at The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

WikiLeaks, for its part, did not even bother answering when I reached out to them later on. (Editor's note: The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal did not want to comment, and WikiLeaks did not respond to a request for comment.) DS: How satisfied are you with the impact of the leak? JD: I am astounded with the outcome of the Panama Papers.

What the ICIJ accomplished was unprecedented, and I am extremely pleased, and even proud, that major reforms have taken place as a result of the Panama Papers.

The fact that there have been subsequent journalistic collaborations of similar scale is also a real triumph.

Sadly, it is still not enough.

I never thought that releasing one law firm's data would solve global corruption full stop, let alone change human nature.

Politicians must act.

We need publicly accessible corporate registries in every jurisdiction, from the British Virgin Islands to Anguilla to the Seychelles to Labuan to Delaware.

Now.

And if you hear resistance, that sound you hear is the sound of a politician who must be sacked.

DS: Since 2016, thousands of Panama Papers stories have been published. Are there any you think the world still needs to see? JD: There are so many untold stories. One that comes to mind is a trust with yellow paper checks that was likely set up for a drug cartel by a Colombian consulting firm, in which a large American bank appears to have allowed direct use of its correspondent bank account with a bank in Panama.

Payees' names were typed on these checks with a typewriter. To call this arrangement unusual would be an understatement they might as well have issued checks made out of actual red flags.

DS: Edward Snowden once mentioned your case as being the best-case scenario for a whistleblower: You created a big impact and are still unknown and free. Is that also how you see your role? JD: I count myself as incredibly lucky that everything has worked out as well as it has, even if nothing is perfect. Remaining unknown has had the obvious benefit of keeping me relatively safe, but there has been a cost as well, which is that I have not been able to keep the issue in the public eye the way that Edward Snowden did regarding the National Security Agency (NSA) wiretapping revelations.

Of course, he paid with his freedom to some degree. There are always trade-offs.

DS: What has your leak taught you about whistleblowing? JD: I would say the most important thing is that my example shows it is possible, although perhaps rare, to make a major difference and still maintain a good life. But it takes a lot of work and a lot of luck to stay one step ahead.

DS: Is there anything you would recommend to potential whistleblowers? JD: Telling the truth about sensitive matters is never easy. I would say that an underappreciated factor is just how difficult it is to keep a level head.

Whether you are talking to journalists or government authorities, be prepared for everything to move very slowly.

It's important to just breathe and find other things to think about from time to time.

DS: If you could turn back time, would you blow the whistle again? JD: In a heartbeat.

*Not his real name.

Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer run Paper Trail Media, a German-based investigative platform.

Visit https://www.papertrailmedia.de/ for more.

Originally posted here:
I may have to wait until I'm on my deathbed Panama Papers whistleblower - Namibian

By Charles Makakala

On July 12, 2007, two US Apache helicopters attacked multiple sites in Baghdad during the insurgency that followed the American invasion of Iraq. The world hardly noticed until a leaked video in 2010 revealed what actually happened on that day.

In the footage, American soldiers are seen firing at a group of about 20 people, and later a van and a building, killing seven men and wounding others. They were all civilians and those killed included two journalists. Two of the three children in the van were wounded. Upon observing that, one soldier commented, Well, its their fault for bringing their kids into the battle.

The video was leaked by Private Bradley Manning, an intelligence officer with the US Army. For weeks, Manning had been conversing anonymously with an individual at WikiLeaks using an encrypted channel. At the other end was Julian Assange, an Australian computer programmer who had founded WikiLeaks. The decisions they made in 2010 transformed their lives Manning ending up in jail, and Assange spending the past decade fighting extradition to US.

For many people, Manning and Assange are considered activists and human rights heroes for their actions. The revelations of events such as the one above, plus many other American misdeeds, are used to substantiate that position. As a result, the duo have received countless awards for their standing and courage.

However, on June 17, 2022, a UK government minister signed an order to deport Assange to the US, the decision that would have brought to an end a decade-long legal saga about Assange. Assange appealed against the decision, and the world once again rose up in his support. The President of Mexico called for his release. In Germany, more than 70 MPs did the same. Amnesty International and other organisations have made similar calls.

It was, therefore, predictable to see many Africans adding their voices to the Free Assange chorus. Petitions have been signed and mobilisation is done through social media to put pressure on the UK and US governments to let Assange go. Africans are very tribal, especially if the matter at issue is against the US.

With every post by an acquaintance or a friend here or there announcing that they have signed such petitions and rallying others to do the same thing, I am reminded of how radically different my views are to theirs. From the very beginning, I have always considered Manning, Assange, and later Edward Snowden traitors who deserve to face justice.

On June 9, 2013, a video by Snowden appeared on the internet detailing how the US intelligence agency NSA, was spying on its citizens. Not surprisingly, the video catapulted Snowden into global stardom as a champion of citizens rights in an increasingly connected digital world. From Russia, where Snowden took refuge, he justified his actions as (informing) the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.

Manning and Assange have used similar arguments to defend themselves, but it doesnt add up.

A person who is motivated by ethical consideration is judicious. They will understand the gravity of their actions, and will be extremely careful in their approach. Considering the mercenary ways in which the documents released by Snowden and Manning were obtained, that is espionage. Moreover, considering the reckless manner in which thousands of secret documents are shared in the internet, without any regard for the implications, that is traitorous. Manning, for example, concealed the documents in a Lady Gaga CD case so as to pass through security and later sent more than 700,000 confidential documents to WikiLeaks including over 250,000 diplomatic cables going back to 1966.

That is anarchy.

Unfortunately, this is not a new phenomenon.

In 1986, Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician, disclosed details of Israels nuclear programme to the British media, expecting to be paid $1 million in return. Vanunu illegally smuggled a camera into the Negev Nuclear Research Facility and took photographs of the facility and shared them with the British press. The Mossad, Israels intelligence agency, lured Vanunu out of the UK through a classic honey-trap method, capturing him and subsequently sending him to Israel where he spent 18 years in prison.

Like others of his ilk, Vanunu justified his actions on account of his ethical consideration, in his case, his opposition to nuclear weapons. There is nothing wrong in principle with that ethical position, but if one is opposed to nuclear weapons, why would they pick a job developing nuclear weapons?

The business of the state requires a certain degree of secrecy and confidentiality. Diplomats have to report openly, security officers use clandestine means to gather intelligence, and leaders make tough decisions to stop wickedness. Yes, these privileges are often abused, but the need for increased accountability is not enough justification for anarchy.

We live in the world where people have become increasingly vain. Traditional values of loyalty and integrity are considered secondary to fame and pseudo-heroism. How can anyone confuse whistleblowing with dumping of millions of confidential documents on the internet? Moreover, how can anyone expect to do that and face no consequences? Finally, is Putins Russia, arguably your nations biggest security threat, the place that you would take refuge in?

Truly, as it is said, fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

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Julian Assange? Heres why I am not a fan of his - The Citizen