A Week in #Intelligence - W8 - 2023 - #ExMergere - #OSINT #Analysis #AI #Strategic #Cyber #Criminal #Services
Pierre Memheld
AI/Data for Human Analysts, Anti-Corruption @Falcon-Horizon-EU, Global Companies Support, Competitive Intelligence & Due Diligence
???????????Headline
–???????????American and European allies are mobilizing to thwart the rapid expansion of the Russian paramilitary group known as Wagner, run by a Putin-affiliated oligarch, as it captures key cities for Moscow in Ukraine and spreads its influence to Africa and other corners of the world.
???????????Studies
?????????????The U.S. Intelligence Playbook to Expose Russia’s Ukraine War Plans - The New York Times
–???????????Bolder disclosures are part of a larger effort to stymie the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine and align support for Kyiv’s war effort in allied countries.
?????????????Former Head of National Intelligence Council and Deputy ODNI Neil Wiley on Intelligence Analysis - YouTube
–???????????Neil Wiley has lead some of the US Intelligence Community's most important analytical functions. His career in intelligence began as a Naval Intelligence Officer in an operational intelligence center focused on support to critical operational naval missions. He would later serve joint intelligence missions in Europe, would rise to lead all analytical activities at the Defense Intelligence Agency and in DoD Combatant Commands, and would later serve as the Chairman of the famed National Intelligence Council (NIC). Also served as a senior leader at ODNI, including leading the entire intelligence community as the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence from May 13, 2020 until February 2021.
–???????????As the purpose of the study of intelligence is, in part, to aid the practice of intelligence, scholarship must reflect that practice. This article sets out a theoretical framework for Critical Intelligence Studies that will increase the real-world applicability of the study of intelligence as currently represented by Intelligence Studies. Critical Security Studies’ recognition of the broadening and widening of the concept of security, and the ensuing recognition that intelligence work is not only done by state intelligence agencies or for the security of states, provides an opportunity to push forward the study of intelligence into a position where a well-developed, and theoretically sound, Critical Intelligence Studies can be meaningfully said to exist.
–???????????This thesis provides an in-depth analysis of criminal intelligence analysts’ analytical reasoning process and offers an argumentation theory-based framework as a means to support that reasoning process in software applications. Researchers have extensively researched specific areas of criminal intelligence analysts’ sensemaking and reasoning processes over the decades. However, the research is fractured across different research studies and those research studies often have high-level descriptions of how criminal intelligence analysts formulate their rationale (argument). This thesis addresses this gap by offering low level descriptions on how the reasoning-formulation process takes place. It is presented as a single framework, with supporting templates, to inform the software implementation process.
-?????????Situation awareness is the cognitive capability of human and artificial agents to perceive, understand and predict the status of the situation in an environment. Situation awareness systems aim at supporting the situation awareness of human and artificial agents using computational techniques, models, and approaches for supporting the assessment, tracking, and prediction of critical situations. Fuzzy logic formalisms have been extensively used in situation awareness systems thanks to their capability of dealing with uncertainties while providing agents with easily understandable models of situations and decisions. This paper proposes a systematic, unbiased, and updated review of the literature on fuzzy logic for situation awareness from 2010 to 2021, conducted using the PRISMA methodology, analyzing 139 articles. An in-depth discussion of the main open challenges and future research directions is provided.
???????????Artificial
·????????CIA to investigate how generative AI (like ChatGPT) can assist intelligence agencies | DefenseScoop
-?????????The Central Intelligence Agency is getting set to explore using chatbots and generative artificial intelligence capabilities to assist its officers in completing day-to-day job functions and their overarching spy missions.
-?????????Last week, a Chinese surveillance balloon floating over the United States set off a political firestorm in Washington. It also offered a glimpse into the secret world of intelligence gathering, where countries are racing to harness new technologies that will help them gain a competitive edge. But these same new technologies are making spycraft, especially the collection of human intelligence, far more challenging.
?????????????[2302.09419] A Comprehensive Survey on Pretrained Foundation Models: A History from BERT to ChatGPT
–???????????Abstract: The Pretrained Foundation Models (PFMs) are regarded as the foundation for various downstream tasks with different data modalities. A pretrained foundation model, such as BERT, GPT-3, MAE, DALLE-E, and ChatGPT, is trained on large-scale data which provides a reasonable parameter initialization for a wide range of downstream applications. The idea of pretraining behind PFMs plays an important role in the application of large models. Different from previous methods that apply convolution and recurrent modules for feature extractions, the generative pre-training (GPT) method applies Transformer as the feature extractor and is trained on large datasets with an autoregressive paradigm. Similarly, the BERT apples transformers to train on large datasets as a contextual language model. Recently, the ChatGPT shows promising success on large language models, which applies an autoregressive language model with zero shot or few show prompting. With the extraordinary success of PFMs, AI has made waves in a variety of fields over the past few years. Considerable methods, datasets, and evaluation metrics have been proposed in the literature, the need is raising for an updated survey. This study provides a comprehensive review of recent research advancements, current and future challenges, and opportunities for PFMs in text, image, graph, as well as other data modalities. We first review the basic components and existing pretraining in natural language processing, computer vision, and graph learning. We then discuss other advanced PFMs for other data modalities and unified PFMs considering the data quality and quantity. Besides, we discuss relevant research about the fundamentals of the PFM, including model efficiency and compression, security, and privacy. Finally, we lay out key implications, future research directions, challenges, and open problems.
???????????Strategic
?????????????Russland: Kreml verhandelt offenbar mit China über die Lieferung von Kamikaze-Drohnen - DER SPIEGEL
–???????????"Chinese Xi'an Bingo Intelligent Aviation Technology has reportedly agreed to manufacture and test 100 ZT-180 prototype drones, capable of carrying a 35- to 50 kilogram warhead, before delivering them to the Russian Defense Ministry by April 2023"
?????????????Die USA und Deutschland haben China vor Waffenlieferungen an Russland gewarnt. Nach SPIEGEL-Informationen sollen Peking und Moskau aber bereits über den Kauf von 100 Drohnen verhandeln, die bis April geliefert werden k?nnten.
–???????????The U.S. has shared intelligence with authorities in Chad that the head of Russian paramilitary company Wagner Group is working with Chadian rebels to destabilize the government and potentially kill the president of the African nation, a key counterterrorism ally of the West, according to U.S., African and European officials.
–???????????Millions of barrels of Russian crude and fuels have been switched between tankers just a few miles off the coast of Greece, one of a series of workarounds that traders have used to overcome European Union sanctions against Moscow.
?????????????Bulgarian Factories and Secret Task Forces: How the West Hunts for Soviet?Arms - The New York Times
–???????????Ukraine has long relied on Russian weapons for its armed forces. Now it is scrambling to get Soviet-era ammunition for those weapons, with the help of manufacturers?even in rural corners of Eastern Europe.
?????????????U.S. Considers Release of Intelligence on China’s Potential Arms Transfer to Russia - WSJ
–???????????The Biden administration is considering releasing intelligence it believes shows that China is weighing whether to supply weapons to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, U.S. officials said.
?????????????AFGHANISTAN/CHINE : Wang Duanyong, défricheur du Parti communiste chinois en Afghanistan
–???????????Depuis le Centre de recherche sur les intérêts de la Chine à l'étranger de la Shanghai International Studies University, l'ancien consultant devenu chercheur Wang Duanyong accompagne les entreprises chinoises dans leurs plans d'investissement à Kaboul.
?????????????ALLEMAGNE/RUSSIE : Le spécialiste des métaux Walter poursuit ses activités en Russie, sous l'?il attentif de Kiev
–???????????Longtemps fournisseur de l'industrie militaire russe, la société allemande Walter a annoncé en septembre son retrait progressif du marché sous sanctions. Sa filiale saint-pétersbourgeoise demeure néanmoins active à ce jour, et ses équipements continuent d'être vendus via des appels d'offres étatiques.
???????????Collection
?????????????China is using spy buoys in the Arctic, says Canada
–???????????The Canadian military has discovered Chinese spy buoys in the Arctic which are monitoring US submarines and melting ice sheets....
领英推荐
–???????????New evidence points to China's XLUUV (extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicles) being armed with torpedoes. This is a significant leap in this space and, together with a large-scale development program, may be out-pacing the West.
–???????????MP Alicia Kearns claims the app is vulnerable to snoopers, while Energy Secretary Grant Shapps refuses to be ‘chased off’ the platform
?????????????Dutch intelligence: Many cyberattacks by Russia are not yet public knowledge - The Record from Recorded Future News
–???????????Many of Russia’s cyber operations against Ukraine and NATO members during the past year have not yet become public knowledge, according to a joint report published this week by two Dutch intelligence services.
???????????Criminal
-?????????The charges brought against Senior Analyst Raouf Farrah and his father, Sebti Farrah, by Algerian authorities are without basis, the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) said.
-?????????South Africa has been greylisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), an intergovernmental body that sets global standards to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.
–???????????How Albania became the leading producer of European cannabis, establishing Albanian organised crime as dominant players in the European drug trafficking trade.
-?????????Before February 2022, Russian and Ukrainian organized crime formed the strongest criminal ecosystem in Europe.?Having developed along similar lines in the 1990s, Russian and Ukrainian criminal groups and networks controlled a lucrative transnational smuggling highway between Russia and Western Europe that carried gold, timber, tobacco, coal, counterfeit/untaxed goods, humans and drugs. At the more politically connected end of the spectrum, corrupt officials and criminal bosses from both countries exploited Ukraine’s role as a transit country for Russian gas to siphon off millions of dollars, while Ukraine’s oligarch class exerted a strong grip over the country’s economic, political and information spheres.
?????????????FAQ: What's a Proxy? Using Relatives, Shell Companies, and Other Stand-Ins to Hide Illicit Wealth - OCCRP
–???????????The Russian cellist, the Chinese exchange student, and the 11-year-old son of an Azeri dictator. What binds this diverse set of characters together is that they’ve all allegedly been used by rich and powerful figures to hide assets from prying eyes. Known as proxies, these people form a crucial part of a sophisticated secrecy industry that undermines the global financial system by letting dirty money flow undetected, unchecked, and uninterrupted around the world.
???????????Services
-?????????After one year of war in Ukraine, the West’s exposure and the?arrest?of Russia’s spies are having an effect on the Kremlin’s ability to conduct espionage and covert operations. This counter_intelligence_ campaign should not let up as Russia’s military, economic and political weakness will likely lead to an increase in its security and intelligence activities, not a decrease.
–???????????A Russian military bomber engineer drove up to the U.S. Southwest border in late December, asking for asylum and offering to reveal some of Russia’s most closely guarded military secrets, according to an unclassified Customs and Border Protection report obtained by Yahoo News.
-?????????A Danish former defense minister who had publicly claimed that Denmark’s secret service helped U.S. intelligence spy on several European leaders said Tuesday he has been charged with divulging state secrets.
-?????????La mise en examen de l’ancien patron de la DGSE Bernard Bajolet pour ??tentative d’extorsion?? contre l’homme d’affaires Alain Duménil fait ressurgir les interrogations sur le ??trésor de guerre?? de la DGSE. Didier Migaud, actuel président de la Haute Autorité pour la transparence de la vie publique (HATVP), a indiqué à Mediapart avoir démissionné en 2003 de la commission de vérification des fonds spéciaux (CVFS) devant l’impossibilité de contr?ler ce patrimoine caché.
–???????????Mike Burgess did not identify any countries behind the network, but said the undercover operatives appeared to be "highly trained".
?????????????Israel, Saudi Arabia Reportedly in Talks Over Increasing Military and Intelligence Ties - Israel News - Haaretz.com
–???????????The stepped-up talks, which are backed by the U.S., come amid the countries’ shared concern about Iran, Bloomberg reports
-?????????El servicio secreto recuerda a ministros y altos cargos que solo pueden utilizar terminales “aprobados y configurados” por sus expertos en criptología
–???????????Arrimés de longue date dans le Donbass, les services russes ont peu à peu officialisé une partie de leur mainmise sur le dense maillage sécuritaire local.
?????????????OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE (OSINT) NEWS: The Secret World of CIA Diplomats: Operating Undercover Abroad
–???????????The CIA goes undercover with their intel officers stationed overseas, disguised as diplomats working in U.S. embassies. But shhh...the exact details on their covert operation are top secret!
-?????????Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo plans next week to put Russia and its intelligence services on notice: the US is monitoring their efforts to circumvent US sanctions and is cracking down.
-?????????The Dutch government on Saturday said it would close its consulate in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and that it would limit the number of Russian diplomats allowed at the Russian embassy in The Hague.