News Roundup Archive

Thursday, April 18, 2013

USIP's Science, Technology & Peacebuilding Roundup

United States Institute of Peace

 

Center of Innovation: Science, Technology and Peacebuilding

Weekly News Roundup, April 11 - 17, 2013

Table of Contents

**Click here to subscribe to USIP's Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding News Roundup,
which includes a special section on Internet and social media.**


Combating Tech's Conflict Minerals With Disclosure
Some of our most advanced technology products have helped finance the deadliest conflicts of our time. Perhaps, if tech companies change some of their habits, that can change. An essential part of most cellphones is the mineral tantalite, which is frequently obtained from the Democratic Republic of Congo under murky circumstances.
See the full article (New York Times, Quentin Hardy, 4/15/13) *NYT sign-up may be required to view the full article
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Cyber War is Just a Dangerous Guessing Game
Getting to the bottom of Stuxnet is a sticky business. What is not so clear is who was behind the attack, nor whether a Stuxnet-like virus could potentially knock out a city's power grid or other critical infrastructure - and panic around the latter has led to much rhetoric around the growing threat of cyber war.
See the full article (Al Jazeera, Shona Ghosh, 4/15/13)
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Pain Rays and Robot Swarms: The Radical New War Games the DOD Plays
In the year 2025, a rogue state--long suspected of developing biological weapons--now seems intent on using them against U.S. allies and interests. Anticipating such an event, we have developed a secret "counter-virus" that could infect and destroy their stockpile of bioweapons. Should we use it? These are part of actual discussions last month at an unusual wargame sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense's Rapid Reaction Technology Office and the U.S. Naval Academy.
See the full article (Atlantic, Patrick Lin, 4/15/13)
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Stuxnet and the Dawn of Algorithmic Warfare
Though autonomous, destructive robots are a long-time, hackneyed science fiction plot, for some time, this new kind of warfare has been shifting from yesterday's movie to today's reality. But unforeseen by the imaginations of both headline and science fiction writers, it was not a missile-laden drone or humanoid Terminator that introduced this new kind of combat, but a piece of software.
See the full article (Huffington Post, Jason Healey, 4/16/13)
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China Is a Cyber Victim, Too
China not only has a cyber problem, it has a valid U.S. cyber problem -- and it's one that Secretary of State John Kerry appears to have agreed to address. The Chinese press has reported that the websites of 85 public institutions and companies were "hacked" between September 2012 and March 2013, with 39 of those attacks traced back to the United States.
See the full article (Foreign Policy, Jason Healey, 4/16/13) *Foreign Policy sign-up may be required to view the full article
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GDELT: A Big Data History of Life, the Universe and Everything
Everybody is searching for bigger and bigger data: how about this? A comprehensive list of every event in human history. GDELT: Global Data on Events, Location and Tone is literally a giant list: over 250m events in over 300 categories from riots and protests to diplomatic exchanges and peace appeals. Crucially, it contains latitude and longitude for every event.
See the full article (Guardian, Simon Rogers, 4/12/13)
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Click here to subscribe to USIP's Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding News Roundup,
which includes a special section on Internet and social media.

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USIP's Media, Conflict & Peacebuilding Roundup

United States Institute of Peace

 

Center of Innovation: Media, Conflict and Peacebuilding

Weekly News Roundup, April 11 - 17, 2013

Media and Journalism

Internet and Social Media

What's New from PeaceMedia

**Click here to subscribe to USIP's Science, Technology and Peacebuilding News Roundup.**


Media and Journalism

Honoring a Photojournalist's Life and Work
You couldn't ask for a more elegantly powerful document of a life than Sebastian Junger's tribute to his friend and colleague Tim Hetherington. The HBO film, about the frontline photojournalist who died in a mortar attack in Libya two years ago, is both an emotionally honest portrait of a specific, gifted man and a testament to the value of his profession - visual journalism during wartime.
See the full article (Boston Globe, Matthew Gilbert, 4/17/13)
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Pakistani News Editor Dies in Suicide Bombing
Aslam Durrani, news editor of the Daily Pakistan, was killed by a suicide bombing at a political rally yesterday in Pakistan's north-western provincial capital, Peshawar. More than 20 people were reported to have died in the attack and many others, including two journalists, were injured in the incident. The militant group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan has claimed responsibility for the attack.
See the full article (Guardian, Roy Greenslade, 4/17/13)
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Why Does China Mess With the Foreign Press?
In China, the flagship newspapers are still the "throat and tongue" of the ruling party, and their work is directed by the Party's Propaganda Department. That's the first reason why Chinese cyber snoops dug into the Times' servers -- to find out who had ordered a political attack on China's premier and for what purpose.
See the full article (Atlantic, Andrew Nathan, 4/16/13)
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BBC Tactics in Covering North Korea Are Faulted
As tensions escalated between North Korea and the world late last month, a small group of students crossed the border into the reclusive country. But among the students were three BBC journalists filming an undercover documentary. The BBC, the university said, "deliberately misled" the group to underplay the scope of the reporting, placed the students in danger and jeopardized its work in politically fraught nations.
See the full article (New York Times, Ravi Somaiya, 4/14/13) *NYT sign-up may be required to view the full article
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Contradictions Among the People
Zeng Li was a "content examiner" at Southern Weekend, perhaps China's most progressive newspaper. As censorship became stricter in recent years, it fell to him to review the paper before it was printed. The censor's change of heart came in time for him to play an important role in the January revolt staged by some Southern Weekend journalists.
See the full article (Economist, 4/13/13)
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Internet and Social Media

Blogger Who Traced Flow of Arms to Syria Through YouTube Seeks Crowdfunding
The British blogger Eliot Higgins, who has played an important role in tracing the flow of arms to Syrian rebels through close analysis of video clips posted on YouTube from his living room in England, began an appeal for financial support from readers this week.
See the full article (New York Times, Robert Mackey, 4/17/13) *NYT sign-up may be required to view the full article
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The Plot to Block Internet Freedom
The expansion of the open Internet must be allowed to continue: The mobile and social media revolutions are critical not only for democratic institutions' ability to solve the collective problems of a shrinking world, but also to a dynamic and innovative global economy that depends on financial transparency and the free flow of information.
See the full article (Foreign Policy, Julius Genachowski and Lee C. Bollinger, 4/16/13) *Foreign Policy sign-up may be required to view the full article
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Putin Nemesis Stays Defiant Ahead of Trial
When middle-class Muscovites massed for the first time on Dec. 5, 2011, chanting "Putin is a thief," many were there because of the anticorruption blogger Aleksei A. Navalny. On Wednesday, Mr. Navalny, 36, will go on trial, facing charges of embezzling $500,000 from a timber company that could result in a prison sentence of up to 10 years.
See the full article (New York Times, Ellen Barry, 4/16/13) *NYT sign-up may be required to view the full article
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China's Communist Party Isn't Really Afraid of the Internet
Earlier this week, a Chinese propaganda official said China's internet-based "new media" were threatening the Communist party. Indeed, it would seem that microblog Sina Weibo, video sharing sites, and other online forums used by millions of Chinese citizens have government officials shaking in their shoes.
See the full article (Atlantic, Lily Kuo, 4/15/13)
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How to Cover the Syrian War Without Leaving Your Home
The war in Syria has been documented unlike any conflict before. Every day, there is an electronic flood of information: Youtube videos, Facebook posts, and web forums all provide a ground-level view of events in the country. The Syrian conflict has spawned a cottage industry of analysts devoted to parsing this information.
See the full article (Foreign Policy, David Kenner, 4/12/13)
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What's New from PeaceMedia

"Coping With Peacebuilding Complexity: Cedric de Coning" - TEDx
Cedric de Coning is a research fellow with NUPI and a peacekeeping and peacebuilding advisor for ACCORD. In his talk, he exposes the importance of a bottom-up and inclusive approach in peacebuilding and peacekeeping.
See the full video
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