Day: April 10, 2024
Speaking at the National Assembly today, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signaled Armenia’s readiness to start the delimitation of the border with Azerbaijan from Tavush region.
“We don’t mind staring the delimitation process with Azerbaijan from Tavush province of the Republic of Armenia and Gazakh region of Azerbaijan,” PM Pashinyan said, presenting the report on the implementation of the government’s 2023 Action Plan.
He noted, however, that the delimitation is still not a security guarantee for Armenia in the future, noting that it does not guarantee that Azerbaijan will not launch a new aggression against sovereign Armenian territory or that Azerbaijan will withdraw from the agricultural lands of vital importance to more than three dozen Armenian villages it currently occupies.
“Will the delimitation in this section of Tavush guarantee that Azerbaijan will stick to the logic of delimitation and withdraw from areas of vital importance to more than 30 of our villages? No, it doesn’t. But the refusal from delimitation in the mentioned section guarantees that Azerbaijan will withdraw from those areas and this negative guarantee should be eliminated,” PM Pashinyan stated.
Yerevan has agreed to start delimitation to prevent a new attack by Azerbaijan, although this does not guarantee peace. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said this while addressing the country’s Parliament on 10 April.
“We are not against starting the delimitation process from the Tavush region and four villages of…
Remorseless killing at the initiation of artificial intelligence has been the subject of nail-biting concern for various members of computer-digital cosmos. Be wary of such machines in war and their displacing potential regarding human will and agency. For all that, the advent of AI-driven, automated systems in war has already become a cold-blooded reality, deployed conventionally, and with utmost lethality by human operators.
The teasing illusion here is the idea that autonomous systems will become so algorithmically attuned and trained as to render human agency redundant in a functional sense. Provided the targeting is trained, informed, and surgical, a utopia of precision will dawn in modern warfare. Civilian death tolls will be reduced; the mortality of combatants and undesirables will, conversely, increase with dramatic effect.
The staining case study that has put paid to this idea is the pulverising campaign being waged by Israel in Gaza. A report in the magazine +972 notes that the Israeli Defense Forces has indulgently availed itself of AI to identify targets and dispatch them accordingly. The process, however, has been far from accurate or forensically educated. As Brianna Rosen of Just Security accurately posits, “Rather than limiting harm to civilians, Israel’s use of AI bolsters its ability to identify, locate, and expand target sets which likely are not fully vetted to inflict maximum damage.”
The investigation opens by recalling the bombastically titled The Human-Machine Team: How to Create Human and Artificial Intelligence That Will Revolutionize Our World, a 2021 publication available in English authored by one “Brigadier General Y.S.”, the current commander of the Israeli intelligence unit 8200.
The author advances the case for a system capable of rapidly generating thousands of potential “targets” in the exigencies of conflict. The sinister and morally arid goal of such a machine would resolve a “human bottleneck for both locating new targets and decision-making to approve the targets.” Doing so not only dispenses with the human need to vet, check and verify the viability of the target but dispenses with the need to seek human approval for their termination.
The joint investigation by +972 and Local Call identifies the advanced stage of development of such a system, known to the Israeli forces as Lavender. In terms of its murderous purpose, this AI creation goes further than such lethal predecessors as “Habsora” (“The Gospel”), which identifies purportedly relevant military buildings and structures used by militants. Even that form of identification did little to keep the death rate moderate, generating what a former intelligence officer described as a “mass assassination factory.”
Six Israeli intelligence officers, all having served during the current war in Gaza, reveal how Lavender “played a central role in the unprecedented bombing of Palestinians, especially during the early stages of the war.” The effect of using the AI machine effectively subsumed the human element while giving the targeting results of the system a fictional human credibility.
Within the first weeks of the war, the IDF placed extensive, even exclusive reliance on Lavender, with as many as 37,000 Palestinians being identified as potential Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants for possible airstrikes. This reliance signalled a shift from the previous “human target” doctrine used by the IDF regarding senior military operatives. In such cases, killing the individual in their private residence would only happen exceptionally, and only to the most senior identified individuals, all to keep in awkward step with principles of proportionality in international law. The commencement of “Operation Swords of Iron” in response to the Hamas attacks of October 7 led to the adoption of a policy by which all Hamas operatives in its military wing irrespective of rank would be designated as human targets.
Officers were given expansive latitude to accept the kill lists without demur or scrutiny, with as little as 20 seconds being given to each target before bombing authorisation was given. Permission was also given despite awareness that errors in targeting arising in “approximately 10 percent of cases, and is known to occasionally mark individuals who have merely a loose connection to militant groups, or no connection at all.”
The Lavender system was also supplemented by using the emetically named “Where’s Daddy?”, another automated platform which tracked the targeted individuals to their family residences which would then be flattened. The result was mass slaughter, with “thousands of Palestinians – most of them women and children or people not involved in the fighting” killed by Israeli airstrikes in the initial stages of the conflict. As one of the interviewed intelligence officers stated with grim candour, killing Hamas operatives when in a military facility or while engaged in military activity was a matter of little interest. “On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.”
The use of the system entailed resorting to gruesome, and ultimately murderous calculi. Two of the sources interviewed claimed that the IDF “also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians.” Were the targets Hamas officials of certain seniority, the deaths of up to 100 civilians were also authorised.
In what is becoming its default position in the face of such revelations, the IDF continues to state, as reported in the Times of Israel, that appropriate conventions are being observed in the business of killing Palestinians. It “does not use an artificial intelligence system that identifies terrorist operatives or tries to predict whether a person is a terrorist”. The process, the claim goes, is far more discerning, involving the use of a “database whose purpose is to cross-reference intelligence sources… on the military operatives of terrorist organizations”.
The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, stated how “deeply troubled” he was by reports that Israel’s bombing campaign had used “artificial intelligence as a tool in the identification of targets, particularly in densely populated residential areas, resulting in a high level of civilian casualties”. It might be far better to see these matters as cases of willing, and reckless misidentification, with a conscious acceptance on the part of IDF military personnel that enormous civilian casualties are simply a matter of course. To that end, we are no longer talking about a form of advanced, scientific war waged proportionately and with precision, but a technologically advanced form of mass murder.
By Mitzi Perdue
One of Russia’s specialties is to create fake bomb threats, Lieutenant Colonel Vitaly Pankov of the Kyiv Cyber Police told me in a Zoom interview. They develop fake accounts, simulating schools, shopping centers or government institutions and spread fake bomb threat alerts.
“The clear objective is to undermine a sense of stability and safety,” Pankov told me. “They want to make people feel scared and that their government can’t protect them. They never stop or slow down. It’s a constant flow of attacks.”
Most of us know about Russia using rockets to destroy targets like schools, hospitals and power plants. But the destruction Pankov is up against is just as harmful, yet also invisible. Pankov from the Kyiv Region Cyber Police is a digital warrior.
“They are using the digital battlefield to go after all aspects of online life, like mobile phones, banks, commerce, email, and internet service providers,” he told me. “They create denial of service so that no one can conduct commerce, and they attack anything related to data processing.”
The targets
Here’s how a particularly nasty Russian technique works, according to Pankov.
“We were able to destroy a bot farm in the Kyiv Region, funded and operated by the Russians,” he told me. “One of their specialties was creating fake bomb threats. They developed fake accounts involving schools and shopping centers or government institutions. A Russian expert sitting in Russia would instruct a local agent in Kyiv Region to create fake internet accounts, and then their fun begins. They spread fake bomb threat alerts.”
“Say it’s to a school, although it could be any institution they attack,” he told me. “The principal at the school gets a credible bomb threat, apparently coming from someone in Kyiv. The principal has to evacuate the building, and the students and staff can’t come back in until my sniffing dogs come to make sure the building is clean. It’s a total disruption of whatever the kids were studying.”
Pankov said the Russians do this systematically. “The economic and psychological impact is huge and it’s happening every day,” he adds.
The mechanics of a bot farm
A bot farm is a collection of automated programs (bots) that create fake media interactions, usually for malicious purposes. They enable many cyber attacks.
“During 2023 we disabled more than ten large-scale bot farms,” Pankov told me. “A bot farm can generate 500 new fake accounts in a day. The longer the bot farm exists, the more fake accounts it can use for malicious purposes. A bot farm can have a profound impact on the social space. In a month, a single bot farm can create 15,000 fake accounts.”
In his experience, the bot farms have three aspects.
1. Promoting Russian ideology
2. Spreading disinformation about political leaders or their decisions. The bot farmers’ goal is to undermine the public’s support for the government.
3. Undermining confidence in the military, suggesting that, for instance, many more Ukrainians are dying than Russians, or that the West doesn’t care about Ukraine.
For example, to spread malevolent disinformation, a bot farmer may post information from one account to a group that follows military affairs. Then fake people from other fake accounts from the same bot farm will comment on the story, endorse it and repost it to other groups. The scale of this can be so massive that people feel it must be real.
Asked to comment on whether this is happening in the West, Pankov answers, “I cannot comment on this officially, but from public sources, I see that the same pattern exists in the West. Bad actors inject fake information, and the goal is dividing people and making people not trust each other or their government.”
Mitigation
Pankov loves his job because he gets to fulfill the oath he took as a police officer: to protect and serve. “When we are investigating cybercrime and bringing the perpetrator to justice or even when we can prevent cybercrime from happening. I know, I am protecting and serving,” he said.
While traditional warfare garners headlines, the insidious nature of digital attacks poses an equally grave threat. As the Russia–Ukraine war rages on, it’s a reminder that the frontlines of modern warfare extend far beyond the physical realm. Ukraine is safer because of digital warriors like Lieutenant Colonel Pankov.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.
- About the author: Mitzi Perdue is a businesswoman, author and anti-human trafficking advocate. She holds a bachelor of arts degree, with honors, from Harvard University and a master’s degree from George Washington University. Mitzi is a past president of the 40,000-member American Agri-Women and was a US Delegate to the United Nations Conference on Women in Nairobi. She was also a Commissioner for the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. Mitzi’s Scripps Howard column, The Environment and You, was for years the most widely syndicated environmental column in the US. Currently, she hosts The Pen and the Planet on EarthxTV. Mitzi founded the anti-trafficking organization, Win This Fight, and today is a global speaker on the subject.
- Source: This article was published by Fair Observer
Israel’s Damascus strike on April 1 will go down in the corpus of literature on war and diplomacy as an act of high-intensity deception. Iran wouldn’t have expected a cowardly attack using stealth fighters on its diplomatic compound.
Israel’s a priori national deception practices provided no clues. But the asymmetry in the aura of secrecy makes the Iranian retaliation rather challenging. Speculations are rife.
Israel seems confident about its counter-deception system. The Israeli Defence Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi stressed on Sunday that Israel knows “how to handle Iran.” He said, “We are prepared for this; we have good defensive systems and know how to act forcefully against Iran in both near and distant places. We are operating in cooperation with the USA and strategic partners in the region.” [Emphasis added.]
The bit about the USA is disconcerting because the bazaar gossip is that Americans quietly assured the Iranians that they had no clue about Israel’s Damascus attack, leave alone a role in it. But the deployment of F-35 jets for such a mission wasn’t a coincidence, after all.
The Biden Administration routinely gives assurances to Russians whenever Ukrainians strike deep inside Russian territory with Americans or Brits providing satellite intelligence, logistics, weaponry — and increasingly with NATO countries’ military personnel controlling the operations.
Russia’s dilemma is similar to what Iran faces. The big question, prima facie, would have four parts: 1. To what extent were Americans in the loop? 2. Going forward, will the US go the whole hog in an election year to kickstart another Middle Eastern war? 3. Is this any longer an exclusive affair between Iran and the Axis of Resistance on one side and Israel on the other side? 4. What are the US motivations if it indeed conveyed any assurance to Tehran?
In the commentariat, there is a delusional opinion that in the action-reaction syndrome involving Israel and Iran, President Biden will keep the US out of any direct intervention because the American public opinion militates against another war after Iraq and Afghanistan. But in reality, that is rarely the case.
Since the storm clouds on the horizon presage a world war, an analogy from the 1940s would be appropriate. President Franklin Roosevelt took on his own the audacious decision to participate in World War II by developing an initiative that was consistent with the legal prohibition against the granting of credit, satisfactory to military leadership, and acceptable to an American public that generally resisted involving the US in the European conflict.
Now, the “Globalists” who dominate the US establishment, including Biden himself, also know that World War II eventually restored (“fixed”) the American economy. During World War II, 17 million new civilian jobs were created, industrial productivity increased by 96 percent, and corporate profits after taxes doubled.
The government expenditures helped bring about the business recovery in the US economy that had eluded FDR’s New Deal. That analogy also holds good today. Indeed, American politicians of all stripes harken back to those halcyon days to make a case for their agendas even today. And they include Biden himself, who is fond of comparing himself in broad historical strokes with FDR.
Equally, there is a common belief today, which is not without basis, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has contrived to draw the US into the conflict situation in the Middle East. But didn’t Winston Churchill do exactly the same, calculating that the US’ entry in the continental war with Germany would decisively tilt the balance of forces?
Churchill apparently said — rather, he claimed so in his not-so-honest history of the war — that for the first time in a long time he slept easy, secure in the knowledge that with the US in the war, victory was inevitable.
Suffice to say, the probability cannot be ruled out that we are overplaying the chill in Biden’s equations with Netanyahu. On the other hand, all this would imply at the very least that Iran has a massive challenge in crafting a proportionate response to the Israeli aggression. The retaliation has to be symbolic and substantive, cogent and convincing and above all, reasonable and rational. Most important, it should not trigger a world war — Iran most certainly does not want a war.
But every cloud has a silver lining, too. The mitigating factor in the grim situation is that on Sunday, Israel withdrew its ground forces from Khan Younis marking the end of so-called high-intensity conflict. At one stroke, the matrix has changed.
The Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant unilaterally announced victory claiming that Hamas has “stopped functioning as a military organisation throughout the Gaza Strip.” Which, of course, flies in the face of reality, as at least six Hamas battalions are reportedly hiding, still functional, including its leaders who are surrounded by about 130 hostages.
Call it what you will, but this is a significant climbdown by Israel with much unfinished business remaining still, as it were: release of all the hostages; return of residents back home in the south and north; a set-up to administer Gaza Strip where Hamas remains the de facto leadership enjoying massive popular backing.
Gen. Halevi put a brave face on it, asserting this does not signal the end of war but only, “we’re fighting this war differently … Senior Hamas officials are still in hiding. We will get to them sooner or later… We have plans and we will act when we decide.”
This unceremonious end to Israel’s Gaza war after six months is almost certainly linked to the reported progress in the negotiations in Cairo over the release of hostages. Well, Israel’s score card is not entirely empty! Besides, the Damascus strike can be deemed a parting kick at the Quds Force of Iran’s elite IRGC at the operational level in both Iraq and Syria.
But then, Tehran has a noble tradition of eyeing martyrdom as the ultimate victory for its generals. Indeed, Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedididn’t attain martyrdom in vain. This needs explaining.
No matter what Gen. Halevi says about living to fight another day, there is the bigger picture, in which a truce-hostage deal is finally taking shape, which creates an entirely new dynamic all around — most significantly, in Israeli domestic politics that would give impetus to new thinking.
Israel is traditionally quick to adapt to alien circumstances. For the second time, Israel is retrenching from Gaza and this time around, with its reputation as the Middle East’s cat whiskers severely damaged. What emerges is also that Israel can no longer take for granted seamless American support.
The prominent Israeli commentator David Horowitz wrote with biting sarcasm, “Is this how the war ends? Not with a bang, or even a whimper…” But if an inconclusive war can still produce peace as its outcome, it must be welcomed — and Iran will have no doubts on that score. Quintessentially, Hamas’ victory is Iran’s sweet revenge, too. It makes a direct Iranian retaliation against Israel seem lacking in elan, somewhat old-fashioned and redundant.
That said, at the end of the day, as hours are ticking away, nothing is certain until a truce and hostage release deal is through. The pendulum keeps swinging from one end to the other by the hour.
If peace doves get released tied to the purse strings of wealthy Arab states, the biggest winner might yet be Biden. Unlike Barack Obama, he worked hard to earn it. All the guile in his tool kit as politician has been in display. It is no small feat to try to manipulate Netanyahu. An election victory in November, possibly holding a Nobel as his trophy, isn’t a far-fetched thought.
This article was published at Indian Punchline
By Ivan Shchedrov and Rajoli Siddharth Jayaprakash
Act of terror
March 22 will stand as a sombre day in Russian history, marred by the terrorist onslaught in Crocus City Hall, which claimed the lives of 143 people. Four armed terrorists broke into the building and opened fire at a crowd of over 6,000 people who came to the concert of the local musical group. The terrorists were later apprehended in Bryansk oblast, which borders Ukraine, 370 kilometres from Moscow.
Federal Security Service or FSB claims that they tried to escape and were moving towards the Ukrainian border and that Ukraine allegedly prepared “the window” for a getaway. Kyiv marked the statement as “absurd”. The Crocus attacks evoke memories of the tragedies of the Nord-Ost siege in 2002, which claimed the lives of 130 people, and the Beslan school massacre in 2004, which resulted in the death of 334 people. This time, the terrorists did not take hostages and pressed no demands.
Battle of narratives
President Putin later stated that despite the involvement of an Islamic entity in the attack, further investigation has to be conducted to ascertain the level of involvement of other actors, such as Ukraine. He further added that considering the drone attacks conducted by Ukraine on Russia’s civilian populace and energy infrastructure, Ukrainian involvement in ordering such attacks could be plausible.
There is a lot of conflicting information, including those related to public statements. On the one hand, evidence points towards ISIS-K involvement in the attack. The international media refer to Amaq agency’s social media statements in which the grouping took responsibility.
Subsequently, the terrorist propaganda outlet released first-person footage depicting the terrorists unleashing gunfire inside the concert hall while shouting Islamist slogans. The details of the arrest of the perpetrators have emerged in Al-Naba, a weekly newspaper linked to ISIS. Secondly, two suspects were in Türkiye before the attack, suggesting their involvement in terrorist activities.
On the other hand, many questioned the nature of information dissemination. The assertion that it was ISIS-K remains to be officially unsubstantiated. The IS has taken responsibility for crimes it did not commit more than once. In addition, the “customer” did not know the “contractor” personally, and the money was transferred from a crypto wallet. The most important is the direction of escape that the terrorists chose, which entangles the case.
Stronger regulation on migration
Immediately after the attacks, the citizenship of the terrorists was held in question. Initially, reports surfaced that the terrorists held Russian citizenship. However, the Ministry of Internal Affairs refuted these claims, asserting that all the suspects were foreigners. One of them had illegal migrant status as his temporary registration had expired.
Emomali Rahmon, the President of Tajikistan, called Putin to express his condolences and offered cooperation from the Tajik special services and armed forces. During the operational actions in Tajikistan, nine people were arrested in Wahdat, nearby Dushanbe. Tajiks are amongst the largest migrant groups in Russia; since the attack, xenophobia against Tajiks has increased. The embassy of Tajikistan in Russia recommended that Tajik workers remain indoors. Since the attacks, 30 cases of violence against migrants have been recorded, and 2,500 complaints have been reported to NGOs dealing with migrants.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the Chairman of the state Duma, stated that migration laws should be tightened in Russia. The Ministry of Labour proposes the creation of a state-owned entity, “Work in Russia,” which would conduct the organised recruitment of labour migrants. State deputies further suggest fingerprinting labour migrants upon entry and two-year labour contracts. Almaz Tahzibay, a political scientist, believes that further hurdles for migrant workers from Central Asia could disincentivise migrants from migrating to Russia for work.
The state Duma created a working group to develop laws after the terrorist attack in Crocus. Several other legislative changes were proposed; for instance, they called for banning the possession of firearms for the new citizens of the Russian Federation for five years.
Volodin, LDPR leader Leonid Slutsky, and Dimitri Medvedev, the Deputy Chairman of the security council of the Russian Federation, proposed the re-introduction of the death penalty in Russia, which has been banned in Russia for decades. Re-introducing the death penalty would require a constitutional amendment; Vladimir Vasiliev, the head of the United Russia faction in the state Duma, stated that the re-introduction of the death penalty would be worked out in accordance with the wishes of the society. At present, the introduction of the death penalty looks unlikely.
International consequences
The recent terrorist attack has brought to the forefront a challenge regarding regional stability and security. The issue of terrorism emanating from Afghanistan and permeating into the territories of Central Asian nations is still predominant, despite the fact that it had been overshadowed within Russia amid broader international political dynamics.
This terrorist incident serves as a stark reminder of the pivotal role the region plays in the security calculus of neighbouring nations. It was the first time the ISIS-K conducted an act of terror outside the region of Greater Khorasan, which stretches across Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. It is conceivable that active recruitment and training of terrorists may be occurring within the borders of these countries. In early March, the Russian forces eliminated two insurgents from Kazakhstan who were preparing a bombing of Moscow’s synagogue.
Russia needs to strengthen its interaction within the framework of multilateral structures, particularly the Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure of SCO (RATS) and Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). Parts of Afghanistan and Southern Tajikistan are also near Kashmir, which is a concern for India’s security. Collaboration between Russia and India can strengthen the efforts to combat regional terrorism. Despite the fact that terrorist activity is now directed towards Russia, the situation may change in future.
Conclusion
The Crocus attack is a new form of terror unleashed upon the Russian state. The perpetrators of the attacks have changed. In earlier incidents, the perpetrators originated from the Caucasus. However, this time, the perpetrators came from Central Asia and could not speak the Russian language. What is more worrisome is that Central Asia has become a hub for ISIS-K to recruit more terrorists. As investigators in Moscow scramble to ascertain the actors involved in the attack, Russia now has to eliminate an emanating ISIS-K in its backyard whilst managing its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
About the authors:
- Ivan Shchedrov is a Visiting Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation
- Rajoli Siddharth Jayaprakash is a Research Assistant with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation
Source: This article was published at the Observer Research Foundation