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General Security and Resilience

Strengthening Post-Hurricane Supply Chain Resilience

The National Academy of Sciences has published a new report using observations from areas impacted by the 2017 Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria to identify key lessons and provide recommendations regarding the improvement of supply distribution networks in post-hurricane environments. Investment in resources to harden operations against natural disasters was found to be critical, and those state and local governments and larger businesses that were able to do so ended up being less impacted.

GWU Program on Extremism Releases Updated Tracker on Terrorism in the U.S.

This month, the George Washington University’s (GWU) Program on Extremism released a revamped version of its monthly tracker of activities involving individuals who have been charged in the U.S. with offenses related to terrorism. The tracker highlights that 208 individuals have been charged in the U.S. on offenses related to the Islamic State since March 2014. It also provides statistics related to those who have been charged, providing information on where they were arrested and the nature of the charges.

Swarm of Southern California Earthquakes Sparks Concerns about the San Andreas Fault

An outbreak yesterday of small earthquakes in Southern California is being closely monitored as to whether it might raise the chance of a much larger event on the San Andreas fault. The largest earthquake was a magnitude 4.6, reported at 8:56 a.m. under the southeastern part of the Salton Sea, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). It was among a series that began at 6:33 a.m. with a magnitude 3.2 earthquake. Magnitude 4 quakes struck at 9:03 a.m. and 12:29 p.m. It’s only the fourth time in the 88 years of modern records that such a swarm has occurred in this part of California.

UN Security Council Highlights Challenges from Alliances between Terrorist and Organized Crime Groups, Exploitation of COVID-19

The nexus between terrorism and organized crime took center stage during a meeting of the United Nations’ (UN’s) Security Council last week, with experts raising fresh concerns over opportunistic alliances emerging among belligerents who share a hostility towards national authorities and seek to exploit vulnerabilities created by the COVID-19 crisis.

The Top Ten Ways COVID-19 Could Impact Terrorism

Terrorists engaging in activities to gain positive publicity, increased susceptibility of individuals to radicalization, and bioterrorism as a viable tactic – these are three of the top ten ways COVID-19 could impact terrorism, according to an article published in Homeland Security Today. Speaking to the potential advent of bioterrorism, the articles observes the pandemic has exposed many weaknesses in global public health systems that terrorists have undoubtedly noticed and that they might seek to exploit.

Water’s Relationship to National Security during the COVID-19 Pandemic

COVID-19 has revealed how the unavailability of resources individuals and communities rely upon for everyday living – even if they never actually manifested during the pandemic – can lead to consequences that threaten national security, write two security scholars and analysts. They categorize these issues under the topic of resource security, which consists of three areas: institutional resources, human resources, and natural resources.

Department of State Report Hopes to Increase Resilience to Disinformation and Propaganda with Deconstruction of Russian Tactics

The U.S. Department of State has released a special report providing an overview of Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem. The report outlines the five pillars for this ecosystem, which include: 1) Official Government Communications; 2) State-Funded Global Messaging; 3) Cultivation of Proxy Sources; 4) Weaponization of Social Media; and 5) Cyber-Enabled Disinformation. It describes how these pillars. For one pillar in particular, Cultivation of Proxy Sources, it details how the tactics interact with one another to elevate malicious content and create an illusion of credibility.

Understanding Factors of Mass Attacks Increasingly Important with added COVID-19 Stressors, according to Secret Service/DHS Report

The U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Department of Homeland Security have published Mass Attacks in Public Spaces – 2019, a report that examines targeted attacks during which three of more individuals were harmed that occurred in public or semi-public spaces last year. The report seeks to inform prevention efforts by presenting analyses of the tactics, backgrounds, and pre-attack behaviors of the perpetrators to identify and affirm best practices in making threat assessments.

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