The recent involvement of the Russian Federal Security Service’s (FSB) cryptography specialists in international efforts to instrumentalize emerging currencies such as Bitcoin and Ether (Iso.org, accessed September 11) shows how profoundly the official Russian position on cyber technology has shifted in the past year. It... MORE

This piece builds upon prior research and analysis on Chinese advances in quantum information science and quantum technologies, previously featured in China Brief in the series “China’s Quantum Leap,” parts one and two. Today, technologies that harness the “spooky” properties of quantum phenomena, once purely... MORE

The Russian parliament (Duma) adopted a piece of legislation, on July 21, which virtually outlaws anonymous communication over Internet-based instant messengers (IM) (Rosbalt.ru, July 21). The new law forces all IMs operating in the Russian Federation to: - identify users by their actual telephone number;... MORE

In late June 2017, for the second time in the previous two months, Europe experienced a massive wave of cyberattacks, which also spread to the United States. Initially, the attacks—from a virus known as “Petya”—targeted Ukrainian and Russian companies, but then propagated to hit vulnerable... MORE

Even by the standards of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the brutal treatment of China’s first Nobel Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, has breached the norms of civilized behavior. The third day after Liu‘s death from liver cancer—which deteriorated into the terminal stage last June largely... MORE

On June 14, during the first international Global Cybersecurity Summit, in Kyiv, the secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, Oleksandr Turchynov, stated that “Ukraine has become a playground for the testing of the most up-to-date cyber techniques” by the Russian Federation (Ukrinform.ru,... MORE

The recent decision by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to ban popular Russian social networks VKontakte (VK) and Odnoklassniki, on May 15 (see EDM, June 7), provoked serious debate both inside Ukraine and abroad. Now that the initial anxiety over that ban has somewhat subsided, it... MORE

Following the adoption of a new Information Security Doctrine, in December 2016 (see EDM, December 16, 2016), Russian President Vladimir Putin has recently approved a new Strategy for the Development of an Information Society for 2017–2030 (Pravo.gov.ru, May 10). This document replaces the previous version... MORE

Speaking to the Russian parliament (Duma) last February, Russian Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu announced the creation of “information operations troops” (“cyber troops”) within the Armed Forces. He emphasized that state “propaganda should be smart, accurate and effective” and that that these new formations “will... MORE

Created in April 2016, the Russian National Guard (Rosgvardia—see EDM, April 7, 11, 12, 18, 2016) is turning into a much more formidable weapon in the hands of the Kremlin than was initially expected. If the most recent information pertaining to this structure proves correct,... MORE