In Geopolitics This Week
Ransomware Attack on Pipeline, Israel-Palestine Violence Flares, and Other Stories
Monday, May 10th
Ransomware Attack Shuts Down U.S. Gasoline Pipeline
Colonial Pipeline Co., which operates a 5,500-mile pipeline delivering 45% of the gasoline and jet fuel supplied to the entire US East Coast, said on Friday that it had been the victim of a ransomware attack.
In response to the attack, the company quickly "took certain systems offline to contain the threat," it said in a statement. Colonial said those actions "temporarily halted all pipeline operations and affected some of our IT systems, which we are actively in the process of restoring."
A former top cyber official in the Department of Homeland Security, Christopher Krebs, spoke last week before the House Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Infrastructure Protection & Innovation. His testimony vividly framed the ransomware emergency in the US as a "digital dumpster fire."
"Even if software and services were more secure, the allure of a quick buck and no real repercussions means the forward-looking prospects for ransomware actors are quite good," he said.
If you’d like to learn more about the growing threat that ransomware poses and the ungovernable nature of cyber-attacks, the Royal United Services Institute — a British defence and security think tank — has published a research paper exploring the issue in detail, and put forward its recommendations to counter these growing threats.
Read more about this story here.
Violence Escalates in Gaza as Both Israel and Hezbollah Mobilize
A weekend of clashes saw hundreds of Palestinians hurt fighting the Israeli police at a flashpoint religious site in the contested holy city. In an apparent attempt to avoid further confrontation, Israeli authorities changed the planned route of am ultranationalist Jewish march through the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. The marchers were ordered to avoid the area and sent on a different route circumventing the Muslim Quarter on their way to the Western Wall.
But a drastic escalation of violence following the march has led to both the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah undertaking large-scale mobilization of their forces.
For Israel, this is the largest and most comprehensive IDF maneuver in its history, and will include regular and reserve forces from all commands, with the participation of combat forces in the air, at sea and on land, as well as the political echelon — the Ministry of Defense, the National Emergency Authority the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other security bodies.
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah warned Israel against “committing any folly” during the drill. “In light of this situation we are on high alert and we will closely monitor the enemy movements,” he said Saturday during an address for International Al-Quds Day. “Any folly or any attempt to change the rule of engagement is an adventure that we won’t tolerate at all,” he declared.
Read more about this story here.
Tuesday, May 11th
Lockheed Martin Evacuates Staff Due to Militia Threats
Iraq’s fleet of F-16 fighter jets have been left grounded as Lockheed Martin announces a pullout of all maintenance crew due to concerns for their safety. The decision came after repeated rocket attacks were directed at the Balad Air Base, and is a glaring sign that militia groups remain a credible threat in the country even eighteen years after the initial U.S. occupation of Iraq.
“In coordination with the U.S. government and with employee safety as our top priority, Lockheed Martin is relocating our Iraq-based F-16 team,” Joseph LaMarca Jr., a company vice president for communications, said in a statement. He went on to say that “We value our partnership with the Iraqi Air Force and will continue to work with the Iraq and U.S. governments to ensure mission success going forward.”
The lack of maintenance crews for the F-16 is sure to dimish the ability of the Iraqi Air Force to fly sorties, and casts doubt on Iraq’s capacity to fight Islamic State militants without substantial U.S. help. Worse still, this comes at a time when Prime Minister Kadhimi is under immense pressure to negotiate a withdrawal of all American forces.
Read more about this story here.
China Fields First J-10C Fighter Jet with Indigenous Engine
Images have surfaced of a Chinese J-10C jet powered by a domestically made WS-10 engine. The appearence of a J-10C fighter with an indigenous engine at an airshow is an indicator that the engine has satisfied the various test parameters of the PLAAF.
China has had difficulties with the design and manufacture of domestic fighter engines over the past decade. While the WS-10B engine has been used to power the twin-engine Shenyang J-11 and J-16 jets since around 2010, the country has continued to rely on imported Russian AL-31 engines to power the Shenyang J-15 fighter and earlier batches of J-10.
The confirmation of J-10s powered by an indigenous engine represents a key milestone for China’s aviation industry, and it suggests China is now largely satisfied by the performance and reliability of the WS-10B engine. China has been conducting intensive tests on the J-10 since at least 2011, with the engine having been previously spotted on the J-10B and J-10C variants belonging to the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group.
Read more about this story here.
Wednesday, May 12th
Goods Shortages Related to the Covid-19 Crisis
While the COVID-19 crisis is winding down in many parts of the world, another problem is emerging as a consequence. In the simplest terms, differing lockdown mesasures across borders have led to drastic shortages for certain goods, and these shortages could easily turn into another crisis entirely.
In his latest article, George Friedman of Geopolitical Futures touches on a few of the shortages that the resonating effects of the Covid-19 pandemic have had on the supply of goods worldwide. Anything from the prevalent microchip shortage all the way to, apparently, ketchup, has not been able to escape the reverberating effects of trade disruption caused by the pandemic.
While the introduction of video-conferencing software such as Zoom has allowed management and intellectual production to continue, the movement of material goods is not as cost-free. And this, according to Friedman, is due to three key reasons. First, demand for goods has been constrained by unemployment and caution, so there was a delay in when the shortages started and when we started to really notice. Second, as people get vaccinated or simply go about their daily lives again, demand will outstrip supply capacity. Third, the pandemic has created a displaced workforce.
In all, the rules promulgated to fight COVID-19 affected the physical production and delivery of goods — and their workers — more than it affected intellectual and white-collar work.
Read more about this story here.
How the US-China Conflict Is Playing Out in Unexpected Places
With much of the heated debate about the great power conflict between the United States and China focusing on the flashpoints of the South China Sea or Taiwan, less attention has been given to a far more likely battleground. Since strategic thought in both the United States and China has largely focused on a Sino-U.S. interstate war, an unintended consequence has been the downplaying of the odds of a clash between the two giants occuring through a foreign internal conflict.
In fact, military competition is far more likely to take the form of proxy war in which Washington and Beijing aid rival actors in a third country intrastate conflict. In this regard, the battlefield of Sino-U.S. military competition is more likely to be Venezuela or Myanmar than the often-touted locations such as the South China Sea. Proxy war such as this could even escalate in unexpected and costly ways as Washington and Beijing try to manipulate civil wars in far-flung lands they do not understand, ratchet up their commitment to avoid the defeat of a favored actor, and respond to local surrogates that pursue their own agendas.
Read more about this story here.
Thursday, May 13th
Azerbaijani Soldiers Advance Into Armenia
Azerbaijani armed forces have reportedly crossed the state border of the Republic of Armenia and advanced more than three kilometres into Armenian territory, acting prime minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, said late on Wednesday following an emergency meeting of the country’s security council.
Strangely, the Azeri troops are said to not have brought any weapons as they attempted their surrounding maneouvre on Sev Lich lake armed with nothing but maps. According to Pashinyan, “the actions of the Azerbaijani armed forces were not accompanied by use of firearms or any other weapon, and they are trying to justify their actions by some maps, which we deem imaginary and false, because at our disposal we have a map approved between Soviet Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan, and confirmed by the central government, which clearly shows where the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan passes.”
Azeri moves at Sev Lich (Black Lake), around a third of which lies within Azerbaijan, may turn out to be nothing more than sabre-rattling as Baku tries to pressure Armenia and its security guarantor (Russia) to speed up the delivery of concessions made in the Moscow-brokered ceasefire agreement last November. A critical element of the agreement has been the establishment of a land corridor that would run through Armenia connecting Azerbaijan proper to its exclave of Nakhchivan near the Turkish border.
Read more about this story here.
Washington Stops Issuing Visas to Russians, The Kremlin Responds
Following an announcement that the US Embassy in Russia will stop issuing all non-immigrant visas to Russian nationals from May 12 as part of renewed US sanctions on Russia, the Kremlin has responded by expelling a senior US diplomat and other embassy staff. The US embassy confirmed that Rebecca Ross, who is the official spokeswoman for the embassy in Moscow, has been made persona non grata and must leave the country.
That Ross and nine other American diplomats have until May 21 to leave is largely a response to the US decision to also expel 10 Russian diplomats from Washington as part of imposed sanctions, claiming they were working as spies. The US sanctions also named 32 Russians accused of interfering in the 2020 presidential election as well as imposed restrictions on US investment into Russian Ministry of Finance ruble-denominated OFZ treasury bills.
But this all seems rather counter-productive, since, if relations between Russia and the United States are at a level not seen since the Cold War, shouldn’t a more intensive diplomatic drive be the solution to rapidly deteriorating relations? Indeed, it is difficult to see how a vacuum in dialogue will do much other than to worsen an already hostile relationship going forward.
Read more about this story here.
Friday, May 14th
Colonial Pipeline Co. Pays $5M Ransom As Shortages Remain
As the Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline reportedly said it was making “substantial progress” in restoring full service, Bloomberg reported that the company had paid the cyber-criminals a ransom of roughly $5 million in cryptocurrency in order to obtain the software decryption key required to unlock their data.
But severe shortages remain as a consequence of the ransomware attack. A tracking service showed 88% of gas stations were out of fuel in Washington D.C., 45% of stations in Virginia and 39% of Maryland. About 65% of stations were without gas in North Carolina, and nearly half were out in Georgia and South Carolina. Such is the power of cyber-attacks today.
So how should institutions deal with ransomware attacks? The discussions on how best to approach this challenge can vary. For example, the FBI discourages payment when a system is held hostage by ransomware, it views the threat of normalising such attacks as reckless. But an outright ban would also be complicated, and some organisations think a ban would be a mistake as long as many potential targets remain “woefully unprepared.”
A public-private task force set up by Microsoft, Amazon, the FBI, and the Secret Service has suggested ransomware actors need to be named and shamed, and those that harbor them need to be punished. It calls for mandatory disclosure of ransom payments and the creation of a federal “response fund” to provide financial assistance to victims in hopes that it will prevent them from paying ransoms.
Read more about this story here.
US Coast Guard Proposal to Renovate Seattle Port
In December 2020, the US Congress adopted a bill coauthored by Dan Sullivan of Alaska (R), Maria Cantwell of Washington (D), and Roger Wicker of Mississippi (R) that authorised the Coast Guard Polar Security Cutters for use as icebreakers.
These would be armed with an MK38 25mm autocannon, with the US Coast Guard (USCG) Headquarters declining to comment on any additional armament such as remote weapons mounts or the possibility of Anti-Ship Missile capabilities. The USCG did say that the concept for a nuclear-powered icebreaker, as requested by the Trump Administration, could not go forward after conducting an analysis of the viability of such a project.
And now, the USCG is proposing an expansion of its Seattle waterfront base. the USCG says that over the course of the next decade the port will have a higher profile role as the U.S. ramps up its presence in the Arctic. Dan Sullivan said that the U.S. needs a persistent presence in the Arctic to hold off adversaries. Lt. Russ Tippets, a USCG spokesperson, said that the Coast Guard is looking for cost-effective options for accommodating a modernized icebreaker fleet.
Read more about this story here.