Scholarly Works, Political Science

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Browsing Scholarly Works, Political Science by Content Type "Report"

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    Analyzing the Russian Way of War: Evidence from the 2008 Conflict with Georgia
    Beehner, Lionel; Collins, Liam; Ferenzi, Steve; Person, Robert; Brantly, Aaron F. (Modern War Institute, 2018-03-20)
    In the dog days of August 2008, a column of Russian tanks and troops rolled across the Republic of Georgia’s northern border and into South Ossetia, sparking a war that was over almost before it began. The war, while not insignificant, lasted all of five days. The number of casualties did not exceed one thousand, the threshold most political scientists use to classify a war, although thousands of Georgians were displaced. By historical comparison, when Soviet tanks entered Hungary in 1956 and Afghanistan in 1979–89, the fatalities totaled 2,500 and roughly 14,000 respectively.1 The Russia-Georgia conflict was a limited war with limited objectives, yet it was arguably a watershed in the annals of modern war. It marked the first invasion by Russian ground forces into a sovereign nation since the Cold War. It also marked a breakthrough in the integration of cyberwarfare and other nonkinetic tools into a conventional strategy— what some observers in the West have termed “hybrid warfare.” Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it provided a stark preview of what was to come in Ukraine in 2014. Russian “peacekeepers,” including unmarked Russian special forces—or Spetsnaz—stationed in the region carried out an armed incursion. That is, Russia used separatist violence as a convenient pretext to launch a full-scale multidomain invasion to annex territory, a type of aggression that many analysts in the West thought was a relic of the twentieth century. The 2008 Russia-Georgia War highlights not a new form of conflict but rather the incorporation of a new dimension to that conflict: cyberspace. Where states once tried to control the radio waves, broadcast television channels, newspapers, or other forms of communications, they now add to these sources of information control cyberspace and its component aspects, websites, and social media.2 This allows Russia to influence audiences around the world. Propaganda, disinformation, and the manipulation of the informational aspects of both conflict and nonconflict settings has been a persistent attribute of state behavior.3 The new dimension added to the conduct of hostilities created by cyberspace is both a challenge to conventional hybrid information manipulation tactics and a benefit. Even though the tactical gains achieved through cyberspace in Georgia by Russian non-state actors had limited impact, the strategic and psychological effects were robust. The plausibly deniable nature of the cyber side of conflict should not be understated and adds a new dimension to hybrid warfare that once required state resources to accomplish. Now, managed through forums and social media, decentralized noncombatants can join the fight. Arguably, the inclusion of cyber means into a kinetic battle, not as a standalone effect but rather as a force multiplier, constitutes a logical progression to the natural evolution of conflict and demonstrates the value of information operations (IO) during conflict.
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    Defending the Borderland: Ukrainian Military Experiences with IO, Cyber, and EW
    Brantly, Aaron F.; Cal, Nerea M.; Winkelstein, Devlin P. (Army Cyber Institute at West Point, 2017-12-01)
    Ukraine is currently experiencing a conflict in two separate regions within its boundaries that challenges traditional conceptions of war, intervention, international law, and peacekeeping. The involvement of foreign military forces, unaffiliated foreign fighters, domestic rebels, irregular military units, and civilians in the conflict it a case study in hybrid warfare. This report seeks to understand the current state of hybrid warfare in Ukraine with a particular emphasis on the use of Information Operations (IO), Electronic Warfare (EW), and Cyber Operations (CO). We examine Ukraine’s technical, training, political-legal, financial, and cultural vulnerabilities and illustrate how Russian and Russian-backed actors have tailored their IO, CO, and EW operations in Ukraine to exploit these vulnerabilities to achieve their strategic objectives. This model of hybrid warfare has affected Ukraine militarily and domestically and has had geopolitical implications within the region and the broader international community. We argue that the conflict in Ukraine serves as a testing ground for a new, more complex and dynamic form of hybrid warfare for which the United States Army and Department of Defense (DoD) must be prepared. Developing a robust and detailed understanding of the conditions that enabled this style of warfare and how Russia has exploited those conditions in Ukraine will serve to inform strategists and decision-makers of the measures that must be taken to prevent or counter future uses. The context in which hybrid warfare has transpired in Ukraine is important as it forms the starting point for all subsequent findings on the impact of cyber, IO and EW on Ukraine’s military and society. This report focuses on the military impact of hybrid warfare, a future report building on these findings will focus on the societal impact. Our analysis is based on two weeks of in country meetings conducted with members of the Ukrainian government, military leadership and rank and file, volunteer battalions, members of the academic community, military industrial and commercial sectors as well as civilians. The result is an analytical work that provides an array of insights into many of the technical and societal aspects of a complex conflict.
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    Policing the Dark Web: Legal Challenges in the 2015 Playpen Case
    Chertoff, Michael; Jardine, Eric (2021-11-11)
    The dark web allows for anonymous browsing and publishing of content and is inherently cross-border by design. Law enforcement’s best tool to police anonymous dark web sites is a suite of technologies known as “network investigative techniques” (NITs), which essentially hack The Onion Router (Tor) hidden services (i.e., darknet sites) to deanonymize users. Using Operation Pacifier, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) 2015 investigation of the Playpen child abuse content darknet site, as a case study, this paper explores the implications of the use of NITs and both the Fourth and Sixth Amendments. We find that initial conflicts between the rules governing search and seizure and the search of machines using the dark web have been reconciled with changes to law and evolving legal precedent. The issues surrounding the due process remain more open.
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    Report on Citizenship Law: Jordan
    Frost, Lillian (European University Institute, 2022-02-24)
    This report focuses on nationality law in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, with reference to its historical background, evolution, and current context, as well as a description of the modes of acquiring and losing Jordanian nationality. Although the report focuses on the legal evolution and content of citizenship in Jordan, it also highlights important silences and inconsistencies in the law and, where pertinent, unpacks these in relation to the law.
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    The Spyware Industrial Complex
    Spens, Brooke (Tech4Humanity Lab, 2024-11-01)
    Over the last decade, commercial surveillance vendors (CSVs) have capitalized off the demand for full service cyber espionage tools from government customers. The demand has created an incentive model for firms to develop intrusion technologies, further proliferating the spyware industry at the risk of human rights and the security of users. Missteps of spyware companies resulting in the erroneous surveillance of civil society has been well documented by watchdog groups like University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab and Amnesty International. Rather than the misapplication of surveillance tools as is often covered in the media, this report will examine the ecosystem that supports the development, selling, and sustainment of commercial spying. Reports by Steven Feldstein and Brian Kot, Google’s Threat Analysis Group, and other works will be drawn on throughout this analysis. This paper aims to define the features and patterns of cyber espionage firms that produce the spyware utilized in the “pay-to-play” model.
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    Ukraine War OSINT Analysis: A Collaborative Student Report
    Brantly, Aaron F. (Virginia Tech. Tech4Humanity Lab, 2023-05-01)