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On an April day in 1937, the sky opens and fire rains down upon the small Spanish town of Guernica. Seventeen-year-old Sibi and her family are caught up in the horror. Griff, an American military attaché, pulls Sibi from the wreckage, and it’s only the first time he saves her life in a span of hours. When Germany claims no involvement in the attack, insisting the Spanish Republic was responsible, Griff guides Sibi to lie to Nazi officials. If she or her sisters reveal that they saw planes bearing swastikas, the gestapo will silence them—by any means necessary.

Masterfully rendered and vividly capturing one of the most notorious episodes in history, The Girl from Guernica is an unforgettable testament to the bonds of family and the courage of women in wartime.

Billie, Mary Alice, Helen, and Natalie have worked for the Museum, an elite network of assassins, for forty years. Now their talents are considered old-school and no one appreciates what they have to offer in an age that relies more on technology than people skills.

When the foursome is sent on an all-expenses paid vacation to mark their retirement, they are targeted by one of their own. Only the Board, the top-level members of the Museum, can order the termination of field agents, and the women realize they’ve been marked for death.

They’ve spent their lives as the deadliest assassins in a clandestine international organization, but now that they’re sixty years old, four women friends can’t just retire – it’s kill or be killed in this action-packed thriller by New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-nominated author Deanna Raybourn.

The first comparative study of estimative intelligence and strategic surprise in a European context, complementing and testing insights from previous studies centred on the United States

This book provides the first assessment of the performance of three leading European polities in providing estimative intelligence during an era of surprise. It develops a new framework for conducting postmortems guided by a normative model of anticipatory foreign policy. The comparative analysis focuses on how the UK, the EU and Germany handled three cases of major surprises: the Arab uprisings, the rise to power of the Islamic State (ISIS), and the Russian annexation of Crimea. It considers not just government intelligence assessments, but also diplomatic reporting and expert open sources and how these assessments were received by organisational leaders. The book tests and develops new theories about the causes of strategic surprises, going beyond a common focus on intelligence versus policy failures to identify challenges and factors that cut across both communities. With the help of former senior officials, the book identifies lessons yet to be learnt by European polities to better anticipate and prepare for future surprises.

Showcases Michael Herman’s critical reflections from his thirty-five years of intelligence experience.

This volume draws on Herman’s professional experience and personal recollections to examine the past and present of British intelligence. In twenty-one chapters he offers an insider’s perspective on the Cold War intelligence contest against the Soviet Union and its continuing legacy today. This includes proposals for intelligence ethics and reform in the twenty-first century, and the declassified copy of his evidence to the 2004 Butler Review. Herman also discusses the role of personalities in the British intelligence community, producing sketches of Cold War contemporaries on the JIC and several Directors of GCHQ. The combination of operational experience and academic reflection makes this volume a unique contribution to intelligence scholarship.

Tests whether the analysis of competing hypotheses reduces cognitive bias, and proposes a more effective approach.

Recent high-profile intelligence failures – from 9/11 to the 2003 Iraq war – prove that cognitive bias in intelligence analysis can have catastrophic consequences. This book critiques the reliance of Western intelligence agencies on the use of a method for intelligence analysis developed by the CIA in the 1990s, the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH). The author puts ACH to the test in an experimental setting against two key cognitive biases with unique empirical research facilitated by UK’s Professional Heads of Intelligence Analysis unit at the Cabinet Office, and finds that the theoretical basis of the ACH method is significantly flawed. Combining the insight of a practitioner with over 11 years of experience in intelligence with both philosophical theory and experimental research, the author proposes an alternative approach to mitigating cognitive bias that focuses on creating the optimum environment for analysis, challenging current leading theories.

Germany will expand its military presence in the Indo-Pacific by sending more warships and joining drills with allies as it keeps an eye on the “enormous” build-up of China’s armed forces, the German defence chief told Reuters.

India will formally commission its first home-built aircraft carrier on Friday, the culmination of 17 years of construction and tests as the country seeks to catch up with regional rival China and its far larger naval fleet.

The INS Vikrant however will not have its own fleet of fighter jets on deck and instead will rely on a few Russian-designed aircraft borrowed from India’s only other carrier, the INS Vikramaditya.

The Lorenz ransomware gang now uses a critical vulnerability in Mitel MiVoice VOIP appliances to breach enterprises, using their phone systems for initial access to their corporate networks.

Arctic Wolf Labs security researchers spotted this new tactic after observing a significant overlap with Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) tied to ransomware attacks exploiting the CVE-2022-29499 bug for initial access, as Crowdstrike reported in June.

Twitter’s former security chief has told the US Congress there was “at least one agent” from China’s intelligence service on Twitter’s payroll.

Peiter “Mudge” Zatko also said Twitter knowingly allowed India to add agents to the company roster, potentially giving both nations access to sensitive data about users.

Traffers are cybercriminals organized in teams whose purpose is to steal a maximum of bankable information from infected computers, which they sell to other cybercriminals.

Cybercrime comes in many different flavors, most of it being financially-oriented. Phishers, scammers and malware operators are the most visible ones, yet there are some other profiles in the cybercrime economy who play an important role and are yet very discreet: Traffers.

A cyberattack on a British company that supplies drinking water to 1.6 million customers has raised security concerns about the vulnerability of such utilities across drought-stricken Europe. South Staffordshire PLC said last week that its information-technology systems were hit by a cyberattack but it didn’t affect the company’s ability to provide safe drinking water to customers.

To mark the 70th anniversary of the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, ASIS Director-General Paul Symon addressed the Lowy Institute on the past, present and future of foreign espionage from an Australian perspective. He also spoke in conversation with Executive Director Michael Fullilove.

At a conference in New Orleans in 2007, Jon Greiner, then the chief of police in Ogden, Utah, heard a presentation by the New York City Police Department about a sophisticated new data hub called a “real time crime center.” Reams of information rendered in red and green splotches, dotted lines, and tiny yellow icons appeared as overlays on an interactive map of New York City: Murders. Shootings. Road closures. You could see the routes of planes landing at LaGuardia and the schedules of container ships arriving at the mouth of the Hudson River.

The cybercrime ecosystem is filled with a multitude of threat actors that share the same financial motivation through malicious activities. Although not well described by the global cybersecurity industry, the actors in charge of generating non-legitimate traffic play a key role in the distribution of threats, as well as the underground economy.

Recently, a small but growing number of intelligence scholars has called for more methodological variety in the study of intelligence. In this article, we connect with the emerging discussion about the utility of sociological approaches and discuss three influential sociological concepts, namely ‘epistemic communities’, ‘transnational fields’ and ‘knowledge circulation’ for understanding international intelligence relations. We apply each concept to an empirical example from our research on German-Arab intelligence relations during the Cold War. The paper concludes that the concepts highlight the everyday life and social embeddedness of shared and transnational intelligence practices and processes.

As an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency for 15 years, I spent a great deal of time writing for the President’s Daily Brief, also known as the PDB. The PDB is considered the premier, all source product authored by the intelligence community. The President and his key staff receive the PDB seven days a week, 365 days a year and it contains articles on the top national security issues facing the United States. The writing and editing process for the PDB is rigorous because you are producing a document for the most senior level officials in the U.S. government.

Today Artificial Intelligence (AI) is making decisions that affect many aspects of our everyday lives. If AI technologies are not applied within an ethical framework, a lack of trust will slow down or halt the adoption of AI and delay the productivity benefits that it can offer, writes Dr. Rahil Garnavi, Data & AI Lead @ Centre for Applied Research, IBM Consulting. This article is found on the Committee for Econonimic Development of Australia website

From COVID-19, climate change and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, disinformation, conspiracy theories and fake news can spread like wildfire in social media ecosystems. New marketing and communication tools have allowed nations states, extremists and other malicious actors to carry out surgical strikes on public opinion through ‘weaponized’ social media apps (Twitter, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.) spreading disinformation, distrust and discord with the help of bots, trolls, cyber troopers and ‘buzzers’.

Meanwhile, scammers and others take advantage of these same tools to carry out financial and other fraud. This can directly impact the mission, operations and security of international institutions, government organisations and industry.

Using examples from around the world, including the Indo-Pacific and Southeast Asia, the webinar will provide participants with an appreciation of the scope and scale of disinformation and malicious influence as historical, global and rapidly evolving phenomena.

What intelligence questions are generated when we discuss “prisoners of war”? The prisoner’s side asks: what happened? Are they alive? If so, where? What did they know? Can they compromise operations? Can we get them out? The other side asks: what do they know? Can they tell us anything we don’t know? Are they misleading us? The prisoner asks: where are we? Are there any friendlies? Can we share information to escape?

James Brundage joins Andrew to discuss prisoners-of-war and intelligence. He is the Curator at the Pritzker Military Museum & Library in Chicago.

Are you looking to secure your business against cyber-attacks, both foreign and domestic? Have your accounts or passwords already been compromised? We can help you determine the simplest ways to secure yourself in a rapidly changing cyber landscape. In this webinar, Maine SBDC at NMDC Center Director and Business Advisor Brandon McDonald will discuss what to look for and proactive practices to keep your business safe. Hosted by America’s Maine Small Business Development Centers.