Are China and Russia on the Cyber Offensive in Latin America and the Caribbean?

Cyberspace—the newest domain of conflict—is among the most prominent forums of conflict in the twenty-first century. Increasingly nation-states utilize cyber and information capability in pursuit of foreign policy and national security objectives. This report focuses on two nation-states that are leading the charge in this respect: China and Russia. While Russia seeks to destabilize the global system for its own advantage, China’s goal is to maintain the current system and replace the United States as the global hegemon. To that end, China and Russia are pursuing robust cyber capabilities to advance their respective geopolitical, economic, and security interests. Moreover, Chinese and Russian state-run enterprises use tools ranging from cyber espionage to weaponizing information in an effort to undermine the efficacy of democracy and, in general, western interests around the world.https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/jgi_research/1005/thumbnail.jp

Are China and Russia on the Cyber Offensive in Latin America and the Caribbean? A Review of Their Cyber Capabilities and the Implications for the U.S. and its Partners in the Region

“This report explores the current military cyber structures and operations of China and Russia in order to postulate how both countries could conduct cyber operations in Latin America and the Carribean, and their motivations for doing so. We look at key actors in each state to provide an overview of current capabilities, and use the DIME (diplomacy, information, military, economics) framework to assess how they might use cyber and information capabilities in pursuit of national objectives in the region

The Digital Deciders

Today, the global and open model for the internet is under pressure, and we risk drifting towards an internet that we do not want. Amidst a massive global dialogue about cyber norms we are losing sight of the forest in favor of individual trees. The ultimate prize is not individual norms about what should be attacked and by whom, but instead the norm that the internet should be a place that is global and open to the free flow of content, not narrowly sovereign and closed. The ultimate trajectory of this process will depend just as much, if not more, on domestic developments in a group of undecided states that we coin the Digital Deciders. This report offers a data tool to help analyze these Digital Deciders and provides a background and context for this broad debate.https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/jgi_research/1007/thumbnail.jp

THEORETICAL STUDIES OF THE NaK 33Π3^{3}\Pi DOUBLE MINIMUM STATE

Author Institution: DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS, LEHIGH UNIVERSITYThe hyperfine structure of various ro-vibrational levels of several excited electronic states of the NaK molecule has been analyzed using a model based on diabatic electronic states. The patterns of the experimentally observed hyperfine levels exhibit considerable variation, which can be interpreted by associating different hyperfine coupling constants with each diabatic state contributing to a given adiabatic potential curve. The theoretical work is based on performing ab initio electronic structure calculations for several adiabatic states (using the GAMESS code) and then determining diabatic curves using the block diagonalization method. The ab initio calculations for the $3^{3}\Pi$ state clearly show that the double minimum arises from the crossing of diabatic states. Using the ab initio results as a guide to the correct form, we parametrized the diabatic potential curves and fitted the experimental data using parameterized, diabatic potential curves and coupling terms. Further calculations yield the hyperfine and spin-orbit coupling constants ($b_{F}$ and $A_{v}$, respectively) for each region of the potential

Landmark-based feature tracking for endoscopic motion analysis

Automated image analysis and interpretation within computer assisted minimally invasive surgery (MIS) most often depend and rely on manually defined landmarks, visible in endoscopic views. More specific, within many types of applications, such landmarks must be tracked automatically during the intervention. Typical feature tracking approaches are able to track slightly changing landmarks over time, as they occur in endoscopic image sequences, but are originally most often designed to track automatically detected salient points. In this contribution an approach is presented, where the advantages of feature descriptors and corresponding matchers can be used to track manually defined landmarks. Based on such initiated landmark points, local feature detection and tracking utilizing SURF or KLT features as descriptors, is executed. Within the region of interest as a constraint, movements of the detected features can be used to approximate the original landmark movements

A primer on the proliferation of offensive cyber capabilities

Offensive cyber capabilities run the gamut from sophisticated, long-term disruptions of physical infrastructure to malware used to target human rights journalists. As these capabilities continue to proliferate with increasing complexity and to new types of actors, the imperative to slow and counter their spread only strengthens. But to confront this growing menace, practitioners and policy makers must understand the processes and incentives behind it. The issue of cyber capability proliferation has often been presented as attempted export controls on intrusion software, creating a singular emphasis on malware components. This primer reframes the narrative of cyber capability proliferation to be more in line with the life cycle of cyber operations as a whole, presenting five pillars of offensive cyber capability: vulnerability research and exploit development, malware payload generation, technical command and control, operational management, and training and support. The primer describes how governments, criminal groups, industry, and Access-as-a-Service (AaaS) providers work within either self-regulated or semi-regulated markets to proliferate offensive cyber capabilities and suggests that the five pillars give policy makers a more granular framework within which to craft technically feasible counterproliferation policies without harming valuable elements of the cybersecurity industry. These recommended policies are developed in more detail, alongside three case studies of AaaS firms, in our companion report, Countering Cyber Proliferation: Zeroing in on Access as a Service