Terrorists and Revolutionaries: the Achilles Heel of Communist Surveillance

© The author(s), 2018. The scholarly understanding of communist state surveillance practices remains limited. Utilising thousands of recently declassified archival materials from communist Czechoslovakia, this article aims to revise our understanding of everyday security practices and surveillance under communist regimes, which have thus far been overwhelmingly understood in relation to the domestic population and social control. In the 1970s and 1980s, Czechoslovakia attracted the Cold War terrorist and revolutionary elite. Visits by the likes of Carlos the Jackal, Munich Olympic massacre mastermind Abu Daoud, and key PLO figures in Prague were closely surveilled by the Czechoslovak State Security (StB). This article investigates the motifs and performance of a wide range of mechanisms that the StB utilised to surveil violent non-state actors, including informer networks and SIGINT. It argues that in the last decade of the Cold War, Prague adopted a “surveillance-centred” approach to international terrorists on its territory—arguably enabled by informal “non-aggression pacts.” Furthermore, it challenges the notion that the communist state security structures were omnipotent surveillance mechanisms. Despite having spent decades perfecting their grip on domestic dissent, when confronted with foreign, unfamiliar, and uncontrollable non-state actors engaged in terrorism or political violence, these ominous institutions were often shown to be anxious, inept, and at times impotent. Finally, it explores the parallel state approaches to international terrorists and revolutionaries, and their shortcomings, across the Iron Curtain jurisdictions. Overall, this article seeks to expand our understanding of the broad and varied complexities of intelligence and surveillance in communist regimes

Ambient accountability: intelligence services in Europe and the decline of state secrecy

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in West European Politics on 15 January 2018, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2017.1415780

Banking on Military Assistance: Czechoslovakia’s Struggle for Influence and Profit in the Third World 1955–1968*

In the 1950s, Czechoslovakia launched an ambitious program of military assistance to countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Driven by the desire to obtain political influence and hard currency, the program involved the delivery of arms, military technology, and training to select clients. However, Czechoslovakia faced many challenges, as the country struggled to offer quality training to Third World partners and to control foreign soldiers who often challenged military discipline and social order. Moreover, Prague also struggled to make the program commercially viable, as arms sales and student numbers dropped in the early 1960s. This paper reconstructs the inception, structure, operational challenges, and debates surrounding the key objectives of the Czechoslovak military training program for the Third World in the 1950s and 1960s. In particular, it focuses on the ‘tug of war’ waged by key stakeholders running the assistance program, which set political and geopolitical interests against commercial gain. By interrogating the challenges of Czechoslovakia’s military assistance programs to the Third World, this paper provides a rare insight into Prague’s foreign policy at a crucial juncture, when it fashioned a new, activist role in the Third World. It challenges the assumption that this highly sensitive area of Czechoslovak foreign policy was defined either by politics or by commercial interests, rather arguing that it was shaped by a constant struggle between these two often competing priorities

Bytes not waves: information communication technologies, global jihadism and counterterrorism

© The Author(s) 2020. Rapoport's conceptualization of the last, religious wave of four global waves remains highly influential. But it, and other typologies, have placed too little emphasis on the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the evolution of global jihadist activities. This article makes two new contributions by developing both a new ICT-based typology for understanding jihadist evolutions, and by focusing on successful attacks. Our central argument is that ICTs' impact on global jihadism has facilitated dramatic transformations of its strategy, organization and tactics since the 1990s, and that these can be understood as four overlapping iterations. ‘Jihadism 1.0’ describes the hierarchical, top-down directed and overseas financed and trained terrorist organizations that conducted iconic attacks at the turn of the millennium. Jihadism has since evolved into ‘Jihadism 2.0’ and then ‘Jihadism 3.0’. Jihadism 2.0 recognizes that a number of smaller, coordinated attacks can have a global impact. Jihadism 3.0 is inspired terrorism that has no links to the central terror organization, utilizing individuals and crude tactics. Finally, jihadism is evolving toward ‘Jihadism 4.0’, or cyberterrorism. We argue this typology provides a useful basis for scholars and practitioners to conceptualize the ICT dynamics influencing global jihadism, and these may be applicable to other global terrorists. The conclusion analyses how counter-terrorism services can respond to these evolutions and charts areas for future research.UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship grant reference MR/S034412/1 and the GLOBSEC Intelligence Reform Initiativ

Human SCARB2-Mediated Entry and Endocytosis of EV71

Enterovirus (EV) 71 infection is known to cause hand-foot-and-mouth disease (HFMD) and in severe cases, induces neurological disorders culminating in fatality. An outbreak of EV71 in South East Asia in 1997 affected over 120,000 people and caused neurological disorders in a few individuals. The control of EV71 infection through public health interventions remains minimal and treatments are only symptomatic. Recently, human scavenger receptor class B, member 2 (SCARB2) has been reported to be a cellular receptor of EV71. We expressed human SCARB2 gene in NIH3T3 cells (3T3-SCARB2) to study the mechanisms of EV71 entry and infection. We demonstrated that human SCARB2 serves as a cellular receptor for EV71 entry. Disruption of expression of SCARB2 using siRNAs can interfere EV71 infection and subsequent inhibit the expression of viral capsid proteins in RD and 3T3-SCARB2 but not Vero cells. SiRNAs specific to clathrin or dynamin or chemical inhibitor of clathrin-mediated endocytosis were all capable of interfering with the entry of EV71 into 3T3-SCARB2 cells. On the other hand, caveolin specific siRNA or inhibitors of caveolae-mediated endocytosis had no effect, confirming that only clathrin-mediated pathway was involved in EV71 infection. Endocytosis of EV71 was also found to be pH-dependent requiring endosomal acidification and also required intact membrane cholesterol. In summary, the mechanism of EV71 entry through SCARB2 as the receptor for attachment, and its cellular entry is through a clathrin-mediated and pH-dependent endocytic pathway. This study on the receptor and endocytic mechanisms of EV71 infection is useful for the development of effective medications and prophylactic treatment against the enterovirus

An Introduction: The Secret Struggle for the Global South–Espionage, Military Assistance and State Security in the Cold War

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International History Review on 18 June 2020, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/07075332.2020.1777456

DPOAEs in infants developmentally exposed to PCBs show two differently time spaced exposure sensitive windows

The study aim was to identify the timing of sensitive windows for ototoxicity related to perinatal exposure to PCBs. A total of 351 and 214 children from a birth cohort in eastern Slovakia underwent otoacoustic testing at 45 and 72 months, respectively, and distortion product otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs) at 11 frequencies were recorded. Cord and child 6-, 16-, 45-, and 72- month blood samples were analyzed for PCB 153 concentration. The PCB 153 concentration-time profiles were approximated with a system model to calculate area under the PCB*time curves (AUCs) for specific time intervals (3 and 6 months for 45 and 72 months data, respectively). DPOAE amplitudes were correlated (Spearman) with cord serum PCB and AUCs, markers of prenatal and postnatal exposure, respectively. Two exposure critical windows were identified in infants, the first related to prenatal and early postnatal and the second to postnatal exposure to PCBs. Our data have shown tonotopicity, sexual dimorphism, and asymmetry in ototoxicity of PCBs