Edward Snowden refuses to take advantage of his “right to be forgotten”. In the midst of the ongoing international effort to detect and prevent terror attacks, Snowden has championed the causes of digital rights and individual privacy. His tool of choice is social media. He joined Twitter at the end of September 2015 and followed the NSA, perhaps for the sheer irony. At the end of October, he tweeted about his latest victory—gaining a vote of confidence from the EU. The European Parliament had called upon EU member states to “drop any criminal charges against Edward Snowden, grant him protection and consequently prevent extradition or rendition by third parties, in recognition of his status as whistle-blower and international human rights defender.”

This resolution was narrowly adopted by 285 votes to 281 and is part of a greater trend within the EU concerning private citizens’ digital rights. However, it does not mean that Snowden can expect to find asylum in Europe quite yet. The resolution is non-binding, a motion that can only encourage member states to drop criminal charges and agree not to extradite Snowden if he happens to be in town. Despite public sentiment in Europe that favors Snowden and individual privacy rights, state-centric security concerns will likely prevent any wholesale acceptance of Snowden or his anti-surveillance narrative.

Still, privacy activists have seen a few significant victories in Europe. In May 2014, the European Court of Justice ruled against search engine giant, Google, in a case that established European citizens’ right to be forgotten. Google must now remove data that is “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant, or excessive in relation to the purposes for which they were processed and in light of the time that has elapsed.” In early October 2015, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) struck down a “safe-harbour” agreement from the year 2000. This agreement previously allowed the transfer of private user data between Europe and the US, so long as basic standards of data security were self-certifiably met by firms. By invalidating the agreement, European countries can now individually set security standards for data transfer or choose to suspend data transfers to the US entirely. This case was initiated by a privacy activist in response to Edward Snowden’s revelations about American mass surveillance. Indeed, the advocate general of the ECJ, Yves Bots, said that America’s indiscriminate surveillance practice made it impossible to believe that any country could sufficiently guarantee the protection of private data.

Though the EU pushed for tougher privacy rules prior to Snowden, these discoveries catalyzed the development of the latest regional privacy posture. When the documents concerning PRISM, espionage and other breaches of individual and state privacy were leaked, politicos and media throughout Europe exclaimed their outrage that their longtime partner and ally would so undermine their relations. It appears that Snowden sparked a significant loss of trust between the EU and the US, widening the policy gap across the Atlantic. Individual consumers are wary to use US technology at risk of having their data inspected; whole countries have become equally hesitant. Officially accepting Snowden as a human rights defender and legitimate whistle-blower seems to therefore be a logical move: public officials that voted in favor of the resolution were likely balancing the interests of their electorates and their states.

Expectedly, the whistle-blower and his supporters are touting the resolution’s adoption as a symbolic win. Symbolism in international politics has limited value, however, especially when states face the risk of tangible losses.

If European countries allowed Snowden to obtain asylum, they could jeopardize longstanding intelligence sharing relationships with the American intelligence community, as well as damaging economic and diplomatic ties to the US. As the threat from ISIS and other terrorist groups increases, the utility of surveillance will likely outweigh individual privacy in Europe as it has in the US. Already, Snowden is being attacked for precipitating the recent Paris terror attacks. During a talk, former CIA director John Brennan suggested that Snowden’s revelations created legal and policy hurdles to the collection of intelligence—thereby allowing the terrorists to catch the world’s leading intelligence agencies entirely off guard.

That the resolution saw only narrow success in the European Parliament affirms the dominance of a national security narrative that demands high volumes of intelligence obtained via mass surveillance. While Snowden uses social media as a tool to remain in the public eye and continue championing individual privacy rights, EU politicians may be using Snowden as a tool to placate their constituencies, using his symbolism to dodge policies that might endanger their states.

Snowden can celebrate his symbolic victory for now, but he must keep in mind that the “open hand” can only be extended so far; he should not expect to vacation in Paris or Berlin anytime soon.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

The post Snowden, Symbolism and Security appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

The title of this article is neither a joke nor is it unrealistic. Rather, it indicates an ugly truth that illuminates some of the more adverse results of globalization. It reveals a system that has been called ‘neo-cannibalistic’, that allegedly propagates socio-economic inequalities and is arguably an affront to human quality of life. The illegal organ trade thrives on an extremely low supply, powerfully high demand and little international market regulation; determining an adequate course of action at either the national or international level requires careful consideration of the medical and ethical issues at stake. Understanding the foundations upon which this system is built allows an opportunity to explore solutions to the problem.

The root of the illegal organ trade lies in a global organ shortage. In 2013, 2.8 million people required kidney transplants—but only 73,000 procedures occurred that year (by legitimate means). The demand for organs has been consistently and rapidly outgrowing the supply for years. This limitation is due to a lack of incentive in donating organs, as well as certain national attributes such as cost of health care and availability of transplant services, both of which also significantly curb the organ supply. Countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh become breeding grounds for illegal organ black markets as a result of such domestic systems. Donors actually face financial disincentives when they use legal, voluntary routes; the expense of receiving post-transplant care is cost-prohibitive for all except the economic elite (even in “rich countries” like the US). If altruism does drive an individual to donate an organ, the likelihood of finding a transplant surgeon is slim—and given the prevalence of the black market, most transplant physicians would offer illicit compensation regardless. The ease with which organ donors become organ sellers is startling.

Most sellers discover that there are neither returns nor refunds for their services. Sellers in Pakistan often receive less than 80% of their promised compensation, consequently failing to achieve their intended objectives—rather than buying Apple products (as the title of this article suggests), they hoped to use the money for marriage, dowry, housing or business. They also experience rapidly deteriorating health after the sale, as well as social stigmas: male sellers in Bangladesh are derisively called “kidney men”. Adding insult to injury (but unbeknownst to the victims), kidneys are likely sold for a hugely disproportional sum of money to an economic elite from a foreign country. The organ brokers that facilitate the sales have the most to gain. Sellers are promised an average of $1,737 USD, but actually earn an average of $1,377 USD. The organs are then sold in India for $15,000 USD, in China for $62,000 USD and in the US for $262,000 USD. By selling to clientele in the US, the middleman earns back his/her initial ‘investment’ 190 times over.

The international transplant tourism that drives the black market is a result of globalization. Rich citizens of rich countries can afford to search the world for a tissue match. These organ-seekers can even take advantage of the Internet, another globalizing force, and deals are commonly made between recipients and organ brokers online. In developing countries, organ brokers are often associated with organ gangs that coerce poor individuals for their organs or take them by force. In one case, a victim was locked in a hotel room in a foreign country for a month and threatened with the death of him and his family if he resisted the loss of his kidney. Violence, coercion and deception are common tactics used by these gangs—and encouraged by the global organ trade. Globalization has thus allowed wealthy elites to take advantage of the poor internationally. The existing status quo clearly favors one group over the other; conditions in the poorer nations not only produce an illicit supply of organs for those who can afford them, but promotes violence and hardships in the process.

Those who argue against a regulated global organ market contend that it would legitimate both the commodification of the human body and the exploitation of the world’s poor. It seems, however, that permitting “commodification” would in fact limit exploitation. Bilateral and multilateral exchange agreements between countries could equitably facilitate an organ trade. It would ensure that sellers are paid proportionally to everyone else in the transplantation process, as enforced by law. Adequate post-transplant care could be guaranteed. And ultimately, the poor would be given a new degree of autonomy. With legal and fair compensation, they would be able to get married, obtain housing or even start a business. The solution is not a perfect one, but the black market will not subside left unregulated. Working within the bounds of globalization is the only real option as the world attempts to tackle its drawbacks.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

The post “Donate a Kidney, Buy the New iPhone”: The Booming Illegal Global Organ Trade appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

A new wild west has been born. It’s wilder than before: wanted posters lack daunting portraits of purported criminals, the guns are bigger and absolutely silent, and the bullets are no longer bullets—they’re bits and bytes. The 21st century has seen the boom of a new kind of cyber battlefield and a new cyber arms market to accompany it. Cyber weapons, ranging from simple zero-day vulnerabilities in software to fully weaponized malware, are sold on white markets, grey markets and underground black markets across the world to supply governments, businesses, individuals and even terrorist groups with the latest exploits for the most unknown of vulnerabilities. These cyber arms dealers have sparked the creation of national stockpiles of cyber weapons across the world not only by the so-called Great Powers, but also by middle powers vying to level the cyber playing field. As similar as this sounds to Cold War and post-Cold War era nuclear weapon stockpiling, cyber arms are not necessarily weapons of mass destruction—and stockpiles are not necessarily a bad thing.

Of the cyber threat vectors a nation-state faces, the zero-day exploit encased in sophisticated malware is the most frightening. These weapons leverage existing vulnerabilities (suggesting errors or inconsistencies in the underlying code) in consumer software of which manufacturers are totally unaware. The manufacturer will have had ‘zero days’ to prepare for an attack that employs such a vulnerability, and will be unable to produce a patch (to correct it) until the exploit has executed its payload and done the damage intended. As such, zero-days can be cyber-WMDs for Microsoft, Apple or Adobe products—software that almost every digital citizen owns and uses regularly.

The greater accessibility to a population that a zero-day provides an attacker, the more devastating its potential. The damage can range from exposing hidden or secret data on a device or network to altering such data to deleting the data entirely. What does this mean in terms of users, organizations or countries? A zero-day could make the device on which you’re reading this unusable, along with everyone else’s. A zero-day could expose essential company secrets and destroy its reputation. A zero-day for critical infrastructure could shut down a power grid, bringing a whole country to a standstill.

Fortunately, exorbitantly high prices limit the list of potential buyers of these attacks. Several boutique cyberweapon firms like VUPEN, The Hacking Team and Endgame operate in a grey cyber arms market to supply their digital munitions to national governments with sufficiently large budgets. The grey market exists where the morality of cyber weapons’ sales can be questionable. Essentially, they are not blatantly criminal in nature as in the black market, nor are they for the sake of public good as in the white market. In the grey market, the weapons’ morality depends on how they’re used by the buyer. Several cyber arms dealers claim they will not sell their products to oppressive regimes or those blacklisted by the US or NATO; yet, a massive (and ironic) 2015 hack of The Hacking Team revealed Russia, Bahrain, Ethiopia and Sudan as buyers of software that could quietly enable webcams and intercept all web passwords and user data. But none of these nations earned the ‘biggest client’ award. That honor went to—unsurprisingly—the United States.

The US government has purchased millions of dollars worth of cyber weapons from a variety of dealers (both companies and individuals) to build stockpiles of zero-days reminiscent of nuclear stockpiles in the 1960’s. The government also finds and develops vulnerabilities on its own. Once a zero-day is acquired, there are two options: (1) either disclose the vulnerability to the company responsible to create a patch or (2) retain it in a stockpile of weapons to use when national security requires. US policy is to generally disclose vulnerabilities, but it makes exceptions when the vulnerability can hypothetically be used for national security purposes. While option one supports defensive security by patching holes in citizens’ software, option two allows the construction of a potentially offensive stockpile based on the ambiguous national security exception.

But this is not the same as the nuclear issue, where each weapon possesses sheer destructive power with no discernibility for its targets. Even a zero-day for a ubiquitous product like Apple iOS, properly coded, can be used for a limited target. Each weapon can be tailor-made for an (arguably) beneficent national security purpose—such as dismantling centrifuges in an Iranian nuclear facility or gathering evidence to prosecute a child pornographer. Stockpiling also allows the US to prevent oppressive middle power regimes from acquiring weapons due to American bidding power in the weapons market.

Both options – to disclose or not disclose – are viable and necessary for national security. The US government, as the largest alleged buyer of zero-days, ought to consider all pertinent intelligence regarding the vulnerability before choosing an option. If a vulnerability may already be known by an adversary or in the wild, it may be wiser to disclose it and eliminate it; if it is relatively unknown, it makes more sense to stockpile it until it can either be used or it becomes known to an adversary and loses its value.

Cyber arms make cyber policy incredibly complex. There is no obvious choice as to whether a weapon should be kept or released, despite the commonplace arguments that any weapon stockpile is ‘bad’. Eliminating stockpiles and weapon creation is nearly an impossible task, given the ease of learning how to find zero-days and create malware (relative to, say, acquiring nuclear material and building a bomb). Instead of eliminating stockpiles, agreements between countries (like the one currently undergoing negotiations between the US and China) would enable an implicit acknowledgement of the existing stockpiles and promises not to use them to turn the Code War hot. Establishing inter-state norms is a first step to governing cyberspace and ending the new anarchy of this cyber Wild West. Until this anarchy subsides, it may be best for the US to keep its guns loaded for when a need to fire arises.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

The post The Code War: Why A Cyber Weapons Stockpile Isn’t So Bad appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

Kenneth Lee

Just a week before the tragic earthquake in Nepal, a group of earthquake specialists gathered in the capital, Kathmandu, to discuss how to prepare the region for the impending “big one”. For decades, experts have warned that the whole Himalayan region was at risk. Unfortunately, due to Nepal’s underdevelopment, there were no earthquake warning systems or earthquake resistant building codes in effect on April 25.

There is a reactionary mentality to earthquakes; most governments simply implement response mechanisms rather than measures to mitigate potential damage. While humanitarian operations have improved significantly in recent years thanks to technological innovations, the current policy approach toward earthquakes is unsustainable. Massive earthquakes are not freak disasters; they occur relatively frequently across the globe, leaving developing countries most at risk (e.g., Indonesia, Chile and Haiti).

Contrary to popular opinion, the approximate location and intensity of earthquakes can be predicted. Scientists are even developing estimated timeline technology. Armed with this promising research, the global community needs to aid developing countries in becoming equipped with the necessary technology, warning systems and architectural knowledge to mitigate earthquake damage. Japan is a clear example of an immensely successful proactive approach to earthquakes, regularly withstanding massive earthquakes above 7.0-magnitude. There is no excuse for the international community not cooperating on earthquake preparedness as it has on issues such as disease and poverty.

Dan Morgan-Russell

The New York Times’ Wednesday headline blared that the earthquake revealed the “hubris and imbalance” on Mount Everest, Nepal’s main attraction for foreigners. However, the climbing world has known about the appalling and embarrassing racial politics on Everest for decades.

Western adventure seekers often pay tens of thousands of dollars to join guided expeditions up Everest. These expeditions cheaply hire local Nepali Sherpas to haul gear while treating the Sherpas as second-class citizens. Sherpas break trails on the most dangerous parts of the mountain–places like the Khumbu Icefall, a glacial river of ice, where crevasses miles into the earth shift day by day. Sherpas on Everest have incredibly high death rates, higher even than US soldiers operating in Iraq from 2003 to 2007.

Himalayan expeditions have been unequal since Westerners started summiting Everest. At the start of the 1953 expedition, when Sir Edmund Hillary (a New Zealander) and Tenzing Norgay (a Nepali Indian) first stood atop the world, the Western climbers were given bunks in the homes of British embassy staff in Kathmandu, while the 20 Sherpas were offered a place on the garage floor of the embassy. After the expedition, the Queen knighted Sir Edmund Hillary for his successful summit, but did not bestow the same honor upon Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.

Nepal is an underdeveloped country, but with the Himalayan climbing industry becoming increasingly popular in recent decades, there is no reason for Nepal to remain destitute. Paying living wages to Sherpa guides and treating them with the respect they deserve is an important first step.

Erin Wong

With over 6,000 dead and 14,000 wounded, Nepal has suffered its greatest natural disaster of the century. Earthquakes in this region are not surprising, since the country lies directly on a fault line. Location, however, may not have been the only cause of Saturday’s tragedy.

Each year, the monsoon season brings heavy rainfall over the Himalayas, gathering in rivers basins in India and Bangladesh. The seasonal influx and outflow of rainwater weighs down the Indian subcontinent’s tectonic plate and builds potential energy along its edges. Over the weekend, this tension may have contributed to the Indian plate slipping under the Eurasian plate, causing the fatal earthquake. When climate change interferes with the natural magnitude of monsoon season in South Asia, this externality creates greater sensitivity between the two plates.

Geologists are predicting an increased frequency in earthquakes and volcanic action in the years to come. According to a team at University College London, humanity will face a series of “extreme geological events” in the near future. Simply put, changing weather patterns and the melting of major ice caps will lead to a massive displacement of water and weight, triggering abrupt seismic activity. There is no way to pinpoint exactly where these disasters will occur, but the Himalayas are among those regions most at risk.

This week, and for many thereafter, the international community must extend its prayers and support to those in Nepal. What this disaster has taught us is that the effects of climate change are no longer limited to the weather and will come at a great cost.

Jack Anderson

The earthquake in Nepal has brought the small country into the spotlight, and the picture is atrocious. Stratfor, a global intelligence company, made its assessment of Nepal’s geographical challenges available for free in the wake of the quake. On a seismically calm day, Nepal would probably still look incredibly disorganized and largely undeveloped. Nepal is landlocked high in the Himalayas, and its weak economy is heavily dependent on foreign tourists who want to see places like Mount Everest or to experience the local culture. A natural disaster is the last thing this tenuously positioned, poor and ill-governed country needed.

Vice News has been releasing video dispatches from Nepal, which show that the problems facing Nepalis in cities like Kathmandu and in small villages across the countryside are multitudinous. The government cannot help them all, even with the millions of dollars, tons of supplies and thousands of volunteers pouring into the country. Even the best organized recovery efforts would take years to get Nepal back to where it was before the quake–and that isn’t a very desirable state to be in anyway. Nepal’s recent history is rife with tragedies. Perhaps this one can be turned into an opportunity to build a country the right way. Their future survival might depend on it.

Kshitij Kumar

In the midst of a humanitarian crisis, politics has not disappeared. Consider the fact that on Monday, Nepal rejected an offer from Taiwan to send a rescue team, citing a desire to “prioritize help from neighboring countries.” Yet, the facts speak otherwise: search and rescue teams have also arrived from countries as far away as the US, Finland and Israel. The Nepali government appears to be prioritizing its belief in “One China” possibly at the expense of those affected by the quake.

China and India seem to be vying to win the hearts of the Nepali people, many of whom are frustrated by their own government’s slow relief response. China has dispatched 300 aid personnel; the Indian Air Force alone has sent 950 personnel and provided 400 tons of aid. Why? Both countries have significant geopolitical interests in the small country. China needs Nepal as an ally against the Tibetan independence movement. India needs Nepal to serve as a buffer against China. However, India has continuously failed to maintain healthy relations with the Nepali government. Perhaps this is why its aid has been so substantial and so quick; this is possibly one of New Delhi’s fastest and most expensive responses to a natural disaster in the region.

As Nepal recovers and begins reconstruction efforts moving forward, both India and China will make politico-economic moves to maintain influence. This soft power battle for the two regional hegemons to woo Nepal should be in the small country’s benefit. Let’s hope that the aid war going does not further hurt the many victims of the quake.

Correction: The previous version of Erin’s response mistakenly referred to the newly researched connection between increased monsoon rainfall and more frequent earthquakes as fact. The article has been corrected to reflect the doubt in the scientific community as to the validity of that conclusion.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

The post The Correspondents Weigh-In: Disaster in Nepal appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

There are hundreds of ways to kill a man. It can be done quietly: radioactive or organic poisons; a knife between the ribs; asphyxiation by strangulation. It can also be done loudly, with four bullets in the back, in front of the victim’s girlfriend and in sight of the Kremlin. Clearly, Boris Nemtsov’s February 27 murder was not meant to be quiet.

Who was Nemtsov and who shot him?

As a liberal minority opposition leader to Putin’s United Russia Party, Boris did not have a massive following in the country. Strongly against the war in Ukraine, Nemtsov even called an anti-war rally in both a blog post and a radio interview just hours before his death. Like any political figure, he was aware that his opinions, even without a substantial readership, created enemies. His anti-Putin sentiment was so pronounced that he eerily anticipated his own grisly demise at the ex-KGB chief’s hands.

Still, Putin did not pull the trigger on the night of February 27. Of the six individuals thought to be involved in the shooting, two are prime suspects. One of the prime suspects, Zaur Dadayev, is an ex-police officer and a “pious Muslim” who was supposedly angered by Nemtsov’s defense of Charlie Hebdo, according to the Chechen leader, Ramzan Kadyrov (a Putin ally). The other four were suspected accomplices. Of the four, only three are still alive; Bislan Shavanov tossed a grenade at the police who arrived to arrest him at his apartment hideout and used a second one to commit suicide. What might he have had to hide?

Could the murder have been gang related?

There are as many registered guns in Russia as there are in the famously anti-gun United Kingdom: ordinary citizens typically cannot carry out murders of high-profile politicians. Most guns that do not belong to police or military figures are illicitly held in gang arsenals. Furthermore, all six suspects were ethnic Chechens, reason enough for suspicion; of Moscow’s six most active and powerful gangs, half are Chechen. Given the suspects’ ethnic background and the nature of the killing, the probability of their membership in a gang is fairly high. And, when all of these gangs seem to be run like modern businesses in search of profit, a contract killing is as likely as any other business agreement.

Who ordered the hit?

If we assume that a gang carried out the killing, then the real question concerns the identity of the individual behind the metaphorical trigger. According to experts, Russian gangs only carry out high profile hits with approval from the Kremlin, suggesting a minimum of four parties involved in such dealings: the target, the hitman, the financier and the government figure. The notion that the government ordered the contract is not without precedent. Other killings have been carried out in a similar fashion, including those of Anna Politkovskaya, Anastasia Baburova and Stanislav Markelov, and Natalya Estemirova, to name a few. At least one of these murders (Politkovskaya’s) has explicit ties to Russian government.

Perhaps this is why it sounds so odd when Putin himself suggests that Nemtsov was a hired kill. The Western media has not hesitated to accuse the Russian president. His culpability certainly cannot be ruled out; however, let’s first consider alternative motivations. (1) It might have been rogue foreign agents, as Putin suggested. The message: Nemtsov was killed to destabilize the country, frame Putin/the Kremlin and show that everyone is vulnerable. (2) It may have actually been motivated by anger against Nemtsov’s support for Charlie Hebdo, as suggested by the Kadyrov. The message: anti-Islamic information, even satire, will not be taken lightly, no matter who you are. (3) It may have been pro-Ukrainian War agents, literally firing back at the staunchly anti-war Nemtsov who was soon to lead a rally protesting the ongoing military campaign. The message: the war will go on until the goals are met and Nemtsov – or anyone else – will not stand in the way. (4) It could have been Putin indirectly. The president went as far as to label political dissent as treasonous in his speeches, which could have led any hyper-nationalistic citizen to choose to do his “duty” and eliminate critics of the state like Nemtsov. The message: dissent will not be tolerated. If either Kadyrov or a rogue citizen was responsible for the murder, we may begin to see a picture of Russia in which Putin’s use of dangerous rhetoric and political alliances has cost him control of the very machinery he once created to gather his power. Even if he was not opposed to the killing, a lack of control suggests that he did not give the green light himself. His words, which could have easily been just political rhetoric, may have influenced vigilantism; his alliances, intended for personal gain, may have bolstered some egos more than desired.

Revenge and silencing political dissent fit the cost-benefit equation for each of the actors suggested above. By hiring contract killers, the financiers/green lights have lost nothing but money (as far we know). They’ve certainly gained one dead politician, whose passing must have sufficient political value to cover the monetary cost of the contract. The one potential culprit for whom Nemtsov’s death doesn’t quite fit the equation is Vladimir Putin himself—at least at face value.

Could Putin be directly responsible?

While Nemtsov was certainly a vociferous critic, he lacked a large following and was definitely not hurting Putin’s current 86% approval rating in Russia. Though it seems irrational to loudly kill a (seemingly) harmless critic and invite the blame of the international community, Putin could have still wished to convey that opposition figures ought to quiet down. But this hasn’t exactly worked historically. Critics seem to only have multiplied, so there’s always been a new mole to whack down.

If it was indeed Putin directly behind the murder, I do not believe silencing dissent was his direct intention. Instead, the message I hear is: I had Nemtsov killed, because I could and because I can. Putin is the young schoolboy in the yard who loudly and sadistically stomps on an insect purely to demonstrate that it is within his power. He does it to show that he remains virtually unaffected. The fingers pointed at Putin are of no real consequence; he is not going anywhere.

Whichever message is the correct one, all paint a worrying picture of the political climate in Russia. That Putin, formerly chief of the Soviet intelligence service, himself suggested that it was a contract killing logically means that an honest and transparent investigation should turn up the legitimate financier/green light. However, if Putin was in control of the murder, any investigation is likely to be thwarted by his power and influence, a fact of which he is well aware. His suggestion is a challenge: prove that I did it. I dare you.

Whether such an honest investigation is currently, or will ever be underway is unknowable. Ukrainian leader Poroshenko stated one of the few things we do know: Boris Nemtsov’s death was no accident. That, perhaps, is the most concerning message of all.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

The post Kill Boris: The Murder of a Political Dissident appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

Listening to your family members bicker at the dinner table during the holiday season isn’t the only type of politics being served up. Every time food is bought, sold, or eaten, the global food marketplace is affected, in turn impacting global politics. Having food is perhaps the most fundamental of human rights, yet it remains a right difficult to ensure for the global population; 805 million people lack adequate sustenance—that’s one out of every nine people on the planet. When this right cannot be upheld, the human survival instinct kicks in, historically leading to geopolitical upheavals and revolutions across the globe. The availability of food, prices and the power of food in influencing populations are all intrinsically linked. And, as much as geopolitics influences food, the converse also holds true.

Several revolutions in history are demonstrably linked to a lack of available and/or reasonably priced food or basic nutrients. Mahatma Gandhi, for example, led the Salt March in 1930 to protest against the Salt Laws that made salt incredibly expensive, which garnered worldwide attention, and arguably sparked the Indian Revolution. The French Revolution was similarly founded upon the hunger of the people and even the American Revolution included food riots.

These examples are from times past, but the power of food insecurity has not changed. We’ve seen revolutions in Africa and the Middle East that have been linked to a lack of food, especially in 2008 with upheavals in more than 40 nations including Tunisia, Libya and Egypt. Each of these states is a food importer, usually because they lack the necessary geo-environmental (soil) conditions or the technical capacity to produce their own food. These are typically developing states that must purchase basic foodstuffs from other nations, putting themselves at the mercy of the food-producing nations.

There exists a higher power than the producer states, however: the climate and global climate change. An exceptionally weak monsoon in India puts whole harvests in danger, spiking prices dramatically in the states that depend on India. For each degree celsius increase in the global temperature, there is a net loss of 10% in the world’s food production; simultaneously, as humans produce less and less food, the global dining table adds 228,000 more mouths to feed every day. It’s basic economics: as demand for food rises while provisions plummet, the price skyrockets. In 2008, food prices tripled globally. The Arab Uprisings started shortly thereafter.

Rich and producer states are largely unaffected by explosive changes in food prices, and rarely experience revolutions within their own borders. That does not mean that they are careless. In fact, they are very wary of food insecurity. As a result, they invest in the purchase of foreign land, often in developing countries. This is the land that the poorer, developing countries themselves could not use, but that the richer nations have the technological capacity to produce food on, despite the difficult soils. For instance, a South Korean firm recently attempted to purchase a million hectares of land in Madagascar for a 99-year period; oil-rich Middle Eastern nations are following suit. China, Britain and the US are also particularly big “land grabbers”, buying up land mostly across Africa and Asia, the former being home to the highest prevalence of hunger and the latter home to two-thirds of the world’s hungry people. If this sounds like rich states taking advantage of poorer states to ensure their own food security, that’s because it is. The practice of “land grabbing” has even been called neocolonialist. The poorer states agree to these land grab deals to gain quick revenue, especially during the current recession. Ultimately, though, they lose much more than they gain.

Land grabbing and food insecurity is setting off a geopolitical domino effect. Although Realists will tout the necessity of each state ensuring its own security in the anarchic international system, I argue richer states are responsible for mitigating global hunger and strife. More attention must be paid to helping poorer states develop and use technology to grow their own crops. If land grabs are necessary, then they are far more profitable to the world if the newly developed farmland were used to feed local populations. Conquering food insecurity is not an impossible challenge to meet. Success would yield more international stability, but the most valuable reward will be fulfilling a right for millions of people—one requisite for the right to life.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

The post Order Up! A Recipe for Food Insecurity appeared first on Glimpse from the Globe.

If you are currently reading this article on your computer, tablet, or smartphone, then you are most likely one of three billion people on Earth who have come to take the Internet – and all the freedom it has to offer – for granted. We cannot imagine life without the Web, which serves as a platform for daily entertainment, learning and even political movements. The UN has gone as far as to declare Internet access a human right.

The Internet isn’t without its controversies, ranging from celebrity photo scandals to international censorship issues. The latest grand debate, however, revolves around the fundamental role of the Internet: preserving consumers’ unhindered access of (lawful) content from content-creators and providers. If you, the consumer, wish to read this article or LeMonde.fr, then you have equal access to both. This is net neutrality: the notion that “all internet traffic be treated equally“. But treated equally by whom? In the chain of Internet content distribution, the net neutrality debate hinges on the middleman between content-creators and the consumer—broadband Internet Service Providers (ISPs) such as Verizon, Comcast and Cox. Currently, the ISPs manage your Internet traffic by treating all content equally.

If net neutrality is diminished or eliminated, however, then ISPs are in the unique position to create an Internet “fast lane”. If you’re reading this article, LeMonde, or the Washington Post online, and the Washington Post has paid to use the fast lane, then their content will reach you before this article and LeMonde. If you subscribe to the Washington Post online, then they could charge you more to cover their expenses to use the fast lane.

Net neutrality could be established by reclassifying ISPs as “common carriers” under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934, whereby they would be obligated to provide the same services, sans discrimination, to all consumers the way gas and electricity giants are. This would be a change from their current classification as “information services”, which have no such obligation.

In a recent announcement, President Obama stood in support of net neutrality, summing up proponents’ views succinctly below:

More than any other invention of our time, the Internet has unlocked possibilities we could just barely imagine a generation ago. And here’s a big reason we’ve seen such incredible growth and innovation: Most Internet providers have treated Internet traffic equally. That’s a principle known as “net neutrality”—and it says that an entrepreneur’s fledgling company should have the same chance to succeed as established corporations, and that access to a high school student’s blog shouldn’t be unfairly slowed down to make way for advertisers with more money.

On the other hand, critics of net neutrality cite overregulation of the Internet as a cause for a decrease in the US’s innovative power and for the government to continue to supposedly spy on us and infringe on our privacy rights, among other reasons. A coherent set of arguments can be found here.

The US is not the only nation-state to debate net neutrality: the European Parliament just passed rules “enshrining new net neutrality provisions” and Brazil officially adopted its Marco Civil featuring strong provisions for net neutrality, to name a few. Despite these strides elsewhere, all eyes remain on the debate in the US. Why? Because the US remains a leading world power that sets precedents, especially in the area of human rights and freedoms. Loss of Internet neutrality is a loss for individual rights: the Internet would cease to be an equal forum for free speech and expression. As it does during elections and campaigning, money would influence how loudly one can speak and how effectively one can be heard. Yes, some bloggers are more popular than others, some content has more viewers than others, but at its core, the Internet remains a platform that offers equal opportunity: everyone starts at zero. By throwing money into the equation, this would no longer be the case. For the US, a loss of Internet neutrality would abate the reputation of a country that touts its foundation upon equal rights for all.

Hypocrisy at home erodes our ability to meet foreign policy objectives. In failing to establish net neutrality at home, the US inadvertently permits more authoritarian governments to promote pro-government content and block anti-government content in their own countries. In an economic sense, the costs of entry for a foreign – or even small domestic – tech entrepreneur would rise, making them less likely to attempt to play on the American field of innovation. Following suit, other nations would likely establish their own protectionist policies, redrawing lines across the realm of technology—one of the very sources of globalization. Ultimately, a failure of net neutrality means the end of the Internet as an egalitarian medium, an economic setback, a rise in protectionism and a loss for democracy worldwide.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

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China is rising. This is an unequivocal fact that has not gone unnoticed by the world, not just the United States, for whom China now is a peer world power. Most aware of China’s increasing might are those countries in China’s periphery, including Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and India. Tensions are often high between China and its neighboring Middle Powers, which know that the Dragon cannot be checked by one nation alone. As a result, a classic international balancing act is quietly forming—one that is eerily reminiscent of the European powers’ response to the German threat just prior to World War I. The Middle Powers have recently forged closer relationships in order to collectively serve as a counterweight to the rising regional hegemon.

The necessity of such a counterweight-coalition of Asian states is clear when looking at Beijing’s military assertiveness. The dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, in which Japan has the legal upper hand, has been suggested to be the site of World War III’s potential beginning. There is also significant friction between both China and Vietnam and China and India over border disputes. China has recently behaved in a manner that has earned it the label of a regional “bully.”

Further reason for these countries allying is that the role of the US is unclear. These nations would rather not rely on a diplomatically awkward US, who is trying still to find a middle ground between supporting traditional allies and preventing reckless maneuvers. America’s foreign policy focus is primarily on the Middle East crises while its domestic political scene has become drastically polarized, both of which factor into the Asian perception of American inattentiveness and thus inability to serve as a dependable ally.

Without the US as the leader, even in the background, which nation has risen to lead the coalition of Middle Powers? One initially thinks Japan, since it has historically enjoyed substantial US support, including a significant role in the counter-China alignment. It is not, however, the key player for a number of reasons, first being its strained relationship with South Korea, another Middle Power. For perspective, tensions are so high between these two states that Japanese leader Abe is as unpopular in South Korea as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un. Secondly, Sino-Japanese relations are at a point where diplomacy seems to be a futile endeavor. The two nations’ intense rivalry might seem like a catalyst for Japan to serve as the Asia-Pacific ringleader, but in reality, such a relationship will not lead to effective counterbalancing but rather an unhealthy polarization against China. The most effective leader must function as both a lodestone and a counterweight simultaneously.

Enter India. New Delhi has been building economic and military relations among the Middle Powers. India joined Vietnam in joint military exercises only a few months ago, and the relations between their navies and armies are being bolstered. India and South Korea agreed to double their annual trade to $40 billion by 2015, as well as increase military ties. Prime Ministers Abe and Modi enjoy a particularly friendly relationship that has spawned an agreement to “upgrade and strengthen” their defenses together alongside heavy reinforcement of their bilateral trade. India has demonstrated that it has no aggressive intentions towards the periphery by forging amicable relations between them and itself: this makes India the ideal state to spearhead the balance against the Chinese threat.

Moreover, India does what Japan cannot: sustain a working relationship with Beijing. Even as their respective troops glared at each other from across the border, Modi celebrated his birthday by hosting China’s president Xi Jinping. The two laid out a trade deal in which China will invest $20 billion in Indian infrastructure projects, a significant increase from the $400 million invested by China in the last decade.

India is in a position where it will be tugged upward as China rises itself; on the other hand, if China’s belligerence increases, India can rely upon its Middle Power coalition to balance against Beijing and function as a prominent ally to Japan, Korea, Vietnam and the others on the periphery. The Middle Powers are proving that they do not need the US to secure themselves, and India is proving itself to be an astute international security architect.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors. 

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They have been called barbarians, terrorists and murderers. Even Al Qaeda has disavowed them. The group has been known as ISIS as well as by ISIL, but its latest name illustrates its power: the Islamic State, or IS. Their ambition is both frightening and impressive—their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, proclaimed their goal to ultimately conquer Rome, leaving a state that stretches from the Middle East to Europe in their wake. Such threats and proclamations are often vacuous, so why are we concerned about this one? The creation of a state requires one of two things: international support (which IS certainly lacks) or the power to reinforce their desires with deadly force. We are concerned about IS because they have weapons that they are more than willing to use. We are concerned about IS because they have our weapons.

IS has two methods in its weapons-acquisition strategy. The first is stealing: it has pillaged Iraq and Iraq’s Kurdish military force, gaining weapons the US once provided to the country to secure itself from insurgents. In early June, IS took hold of two large weapons depots in Iraq and obtained 400,000 military-use items. The US airstrikes are being conducted not only to kill IS members, but also to destroy such American weapons stores in Iraq. The US is effectively attacking both sources of IS’s power: its number of men and its looted weapons. IS’s anger and retaliation to the airstrikes, in the form of the killings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff are thus unsurprising.

The second method is taking full advantage of the Middle Eastern black and gray markets for arms. According to the Congressional Research Service, the Middle East has the world’s most quickly developing arms market. Tracking weapons in such markets is an impossible task, which aids IS’s mission. Also to IS’s benefit is that instability breeds further instability. Destabilized countries flood markets with arms, specifically small and light weapons (SALW), which in turn are used by rebel groups and terrorists to foster even greater instability.

Why the preference for SALW? They are easily accessible, relatively inexpensive and easy to employ and maintain. IS knows what is best for them and they destroy what they know they can’t have, such as “weapons like M1 tanks, M113 armored personnel carriers, MRAP heavy armored trucks, and other multi-million dollar pieces of equipment.” Destroying such weapons keeps them out of Iraqi Security Forces’ hands.

Despite the difficulty in tracking SALW in the Middle East, the original sources can still be traced. IS is, at its core, one of the many Syrian opposition groups. Weapons smuggled into Syria find themselves in terrorists’ hands. These arms arrive in Syria from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, among other states. Middlemen private arms merchants facilitate this network. The chain does not begin with Middle Eastern states, however. They did not create the weapons themselves. They purchased them, and not through an illegal market. The problem of SALW begins in legal markets, with transactions on paper and not shrouded in secrecy: the sale of arms from the West.

In 2012 alone, the EU exported €39 billion worth of arms, including €9 billion worth to the Middle East alone. Even more significantly, 2012 was a record year for the sale of small arms to the Middle East—almost €265 million worth. The US is also culpable: earlier this year, the Obama administration finalized an arms deal worth $11 billion with Qatar. The US has inadvertently provided not only weapons, but also training, as it has been revealed that US instructors at a Jordanian base trained Syrian rebels that went on to join IS. Canada, too, just finalized a $10 billion arms deal involving light armored vehicles with Saudi Arabia.

We are duly afraid of the IS. It is a monstrosity—and the West is Dr. Frankenstein. The West is the original source of IS’ power. It has men, weapons and ideology on its side, but weapons enable and give clout to the other two. Whether they are stealing the weapons or obtaining them from black markets, they are manufactured at here, at home. And yet, as we continue an airstrike campaign, we continue selling arms to the Middle East. Even the most vociferate gun advocate would agree that it does not make sense to give a gun to an unstable human. So why are we giving guns to an unstable region?

The views expressed by these authors do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

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The deadliest Ebola outbreak in history still rages on in West Africa. The death toll has exceeded 1000, but the disease remains contained within the African continent, at least thus far. The United States is yet untouched by the threat, as it has always historically been—however, this is not due to the prowess of American biodefense. We have simply been lucky.

A biodefense policy founded on luck is deserving of the poor marks issued by the Bipartisan WMD Terrorism Research Center in a concluding report. The stakes are simply too high for when our luck runs out, whether that be by natural chance or, potentially more devastatingly, by a terrorist. Amidst the fear stirred up by the naturally occurring Ebola outbreak, it is important to remember that the anthropogenic biological terror threat remains a potent one. The National Security Council estimates that an intentional bioweapon attack might result in human loss in the hundreds of thousands, and economic loss upwards of $1 trillion.

Perhaps with these potential ramifications in consideration, the biological threat has climbed the list of national security priorities in recent years. Despite proposed budget cuts throughout the Pentagon, planned spending for FY2015 on bioweapon tracking and surveillance—to be carried out by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA)—will remain practically unchanged. This is positive, yes, but a slew of recent incidents are a firm reminder that work remains to be done.

Understanding the threat is a prerequisite to containing it, especially in the case of biological weapons. There are two categories of biological threats: pathological, which involves living organisms or viruses, and toxin-based, which involves non-living agents. Historically, two biological attacks have occurred on US soil: a religious cult added Salmonella to restaurant food in Oregon in 1984 resulting in several hospitalizations (but no casualties); a week after September 11^th, letters containing anthrax (a major potential bioweapon that could be used against the US in the future) claimed the lives of five Americans. This threat is unique in that it recognizes no borders and has a frightening degree of chaotic autonomy. It makes the mundane dangerous; it acts silently and slowly. It is invisible, and it can evolve to become more robust over time.

Scientific advancement has exacerbated the threat. It has allowed mankind to harness the living weapons beyond their natural form, to direct their development and evolution, and to direct them in maximum numbers with maximum efficiency at a target. A force of nature can now be controlled, made exponentially more powerful as with chimaera viruses (read: a potential virus with the endurance of anthrax, the symptoms of Ebola and the communicability of the flu), and weaponized. This is what makes the biological threat the most dangerous of all.

Significant problems in current biodefense policy occur in three areas: prevention, recognition and response.

Prevention

The pieces necessary to create a biological or toxin weapon are far more readily available than those needed for a nuclear weapon. Creating novel microorganisms is a practice commonplace even in high schools—imagine what a state with billions of dollars at its disposal could do, especially when DNA sequences and entire genomes of dangerous pathogens can be found online or be purchased. The capacity to build a bioweapon hence exists at both the state and non-state levels. The Biological Weapons Convention of 1972 banned biological and toxin-based weapons stockpiling and production by states, but its highly ambiguous language and lack of inspection/compulsion mechanisms leave it a gentleman’s agreement at best. Meanwhile, DTRA has undertaken efforts to reduce the biothreat in former Soviet republics, including Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Ukraine, as part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. These efforts, unfortunately, face a setback—the US’ own labs have holes in their security that have recently come to light. Some 86 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) lab workers were recently infected with anthrax, because “expert protocols were not followed”. Worse yet, earlier this month a small stockpile of smallpox was discovered at the National Institutes of Health—in an attempt to remove and safely store them elsewhere, some of the potent disease was spilled. The CDC suggested itself in 2012 that there were 727 incidents of theft, loss, or release of biological agents between 2004 and 2010. How can we have any authority in assisting other nations’ biodefense programs when our own purportedly sees accidents like this on an average of “over twice per week”? How can we encourage other countries to keep tabs on their research and development programs when our own researchers are allowed to create novel, potentially pandemic strains of bird flu (H5N1) with minimal oversight? The prevention aspect of our domestic and international biodefense posture looks miserable, and nations will not be the only ones to notice the glaring lapses. Terrorists will, too.

Recognition

In the unfortunate scenario that a malevolent actor does obtain a weaponized biological agent and releases it in the US, the first step to resolving the problem is recognizing it in the first place. There will be no loud explosion, no mushroom cloud—how will we even know that the attack has been carried out? The system put in place in 2003, proudly introduced by President Bush in his State of the Union speech, is a biodefender that is both blind and impossibly slow. BioWatch has produced only false alarms since its implementation; if it ever does face a legitimate threat, the likelihood of actually detecting the agent is slim. Moreover, producing any result—which would need to be confirmed anyway by human personnel—would take 24 to 36 hours. These functionality issues and a scathing report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) seem to have convinced the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to look into more viable options such as a ‘Lab-in-a-box’, which will purportedly be able to identify up to six different organisms, and can produce results within three-hour intervals.

Yet, the crucial problem of biothreat recognition remains unaddressed. The leaps made in synthetic biology (the de novo engineering of organisms) and gain-of-function research (genetically enhancing existing organisms), alongside the decreasing costs of such research (down from millions of dollars to mere thousands), have produced the very real possibility that our list of microorganisms and toxins to watch for is obsolete before it is even updated.

Response

Fortunately, even if we lack a perfect picture of our adversary, current response preparations are not quite as bleak as the prevention and recognition programs. The US currently has enough smallpox vaccines in its stockpile to inoculate every single citizen, enough anthrax vaccines to respond to a large-scale attack, and various therapeutic drugs to treat victims in the event of such an attack.

Sadly, those are all the positives that we can lay claim to. As of a 2012 New York Times article, there are “no new broad-spectrum antibacterial drugs in the stockpile and no new antivirals.” This means that we have vaccines for smallpox and anthrax, but no real responses to any of the other potential bioweapons on the list.

In the scenario that there were to be an attack using one of the biological weapons we are prepared for—say, weaponized smallpox—then a quick and organized response would be a prerequisite to surveillance and containment necessary to minimize losses, a National Institute of Health (NIH) report claims. Simply having enough vaccines does not suffice: the government must be able to quickly and effectively administer these vaccines, which requires a high level of organization and a reliable chain of command. These requirements are not reality, however. According to national security expert Randall Larsen, “Today, there are more than two dozen Senate-confirmed individuals with some responsibility for biodefense. Not one person has it for a full-time job, and no one is in charge.”

Having examined the problems with the US’ biodefense program and policy in three areas, I present the following policy recommendations:

• Consolidate bureaucracy and put someone in charge. Make biodefense a permanent priority. Putting someone in charge, as was done under both the previous Bush and Clinton administrations, would firmly establish biodefense into our whole national defense calculus. This will prevent sidetracking of the issue, and ensure that all necessary changes are made and precautions are taken to reinforce our citizens’ safety. Consolidation also entails cutting down the number of labs that do high-level, dangerous research in the US—the labs that have become breeding grounds for potentially devastating mistakes, time and time again. Such a decrease would save taxpayer dollars and enhance biosecurity, while sending a message to the world to follow suit. Simulations ought to be regularly conducted and involve officials at national, state and local levels to confirm preparedness in the event of a biological attack. Consolidating bureaucracy should also involve fast tracking funding, or creating a discretionary fund for investment in broad-spectrum therapeutic drugs and vaccines.

• Create strict oversight programs domestically and internationally. Begin by thoroughly reassessing CDC lab safety and security, highlighting the flaws, and remedying them. Again, this will send the message to our allies that may have lost faith in our assistive programs via DTRA that, yes, the US can have security troubles: all the more reason to double- and triple-check your own implemented systems and protocol. Moving forward, a domestic oversight program should focus on ascertaining the following:

• What biodefense projects are being undertaken, by whom, and with what risks;
• Who purchases and sells particularly dangerous genomes and research material.

Internationally, the US should look into bringing the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) back on the table and giving it teeth by way of an inspection regime not unlike the present nuclear one. This should go hand-in-hand with the establishment of international biosafety standards and protocol, which would serve the added purpose of building confidence between states and acknowledging the biological threat as a serious global concern.

The biological threat is constantly evolving, gaining new capabilities and becoming increasingly severe. Another 9/11-level attack, spread of a pandemic disease, or worse should not be necessary for the US to acknowledge and address the holes in its biodefense infrastructure. Real solutions to threat prevention off American soil and response preparedness on American soil are ready to be considered and implemented. Despite the difficulty of recognizing our microscopic adversaries, our biodefense hinges on successfully minimizing the number of variables: the fewer there are, the more robust our biodefense. Even as it evolves, we must remain cognizant of the threat, coherent in our response and as much in control as possible. The rest, we can leave only to luck.

The views expressed by these authors do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

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