Information Technology for Peace and Security

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Christian Reuter: “Technological and scientific progress, especially the rapid development in information technology (IT) and artificial intelligence (AI), plays a crucial role regarding questions of peace and security. This textbook, extended and updated in its second edition, addresses the significance, potential of IT, as well as the challenges it poses, with regard to peace and security.

It introduces the reader to the concepts of peace, conflict, and security research, especially focusing on natural, technical and computer science perspectives. In the following sections, it sheds light on cyber conflicts, war and peace, cyber arms control, cyber attribution, infrastructures, artificial intelligence, as well ICT in peace and conflict…(More)”.

How Artificial Intelligence Can Support Peace

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by Adam Zable, Marine Ragnet, Roshni Singh, Hannah Chafetz, Andrew J. Zahuranec, and Stefaan G. Verhulst: “In what follows we provide a series of case studies of how AI can be used to promote peace, leveraging what we learned at the Kluz Prize for PeaceTech and NYU Prep and Becera events. These case studies and applications of AI are limited to what was included in these initiatives and are not fully comprehensive. With these examples of the role of technology before, during, and after a conflict, we hope to broaden the discussion around the potential positive uses of AI in the context of today’s global challenges.

Ai for Peace Blog GraphicThe table above summarizes the how AI may be harnessed throughout the conflict cycle and the supporting examples from the Kluz Prize for PeaceTech and NYU PREP and Becera events

(1) The Use of AI Before a Conflict

AI can support conflict prevention by predicting emerging tensions and supporting mediation efforts. In recent years, AI-driven early warning systems have been used to identify patterns that precede violence, allowing for timely interventions. 

For instance, The Violence & Impacts Early-Warning System (VIEWS), developed by a research consortium at Uppsala University in Sweden and the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in Norway, employs AI and machine learning algorithms to analyze large datasets, including conflict history, political events, and socio-economic indicators—supporting negative peace and peacebuilding efforts. These algorithms are trained to recognize patterns that precede violent conflict, using both supervised and unsupervised learning methods to make predictions about the likelihood and severity of conflicts up to three years in advance. The system also uses predictive analytics to identify potential hotspots, where specific factors—such as spikes in political unrest or economic instability—suggest a higher risk of conflict…(More)”.

Deliberative Technology: Designing AI and Computational Democracy for Peacebuilding in Highly-Polarized Contexts

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Lisa Schirch: “This is a report on an international workshop for 45 peacebuilders, co-hosted by Toda Peace Institute and the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies in June 2024.  Emphasizing citizen participation and collective intelligence, the workshop explored the intersection of digital democracy and algorithmic technologies designed to enhance democratic processes. Central to the discussions were deliberative technologies, a new class of tools that facilitate collective discussion and decision-making by incorporating both qualitative and quantitative inputs, supported by bridging algorithms and AI. The workshop provided a comprehensive overview of how these innovative approaches and technologies can contribute to more inclusive and effective democratic processes, particularly in contexts marked by polarization and conflict…(More)”

The satellite spectrum battle that could shape the new space economy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Peggy Hollinger and Yasemin Craggs: “In early August, when corporate activity was in a summer lull, Elon Musk’s SpaceX quietly opened up a new front in a global battle over a scarce and precious resource: radio spectrum.

Its target was an obscure international regulation governing the way spectrum, the invisible highway of electromagnetic waves that enables all wireless technology, is shared by satellite operators in different orbits. And the chosen weapon was the US regulator, the Federal Communications Commission. 

On August 9, SpaceX petitioned the FCC to loosen globally agreed power limits on transmissions from operators like itself in low Earth orbit, the region of space up to 2,000km above the planet’s surface set to be a pivotal arena in the future of communication, transportation and defence.

The so-called equivalent power flux density rules were set more than 20 years ago to ensure signals from low Earth orbit did not interfere with those from systems in higher geostationary, or fixed, orbit.

SpaceX, which owns the world’s fastest-growing satellite broadband network, Starlink, told the regulator that these “antiquated power restrictions” were unfit for “the modern space age”. It went on to charge that the international process governing the rules had been hijacked by an alliance between the operators of older, geostationary systems and “America’s staunchest adversaries”. 

At stake was “US global competitiveness in the new space economy” and the future of satellite communication, it said. 

SpaceX’s broadside was the second attempt in less than a year to win a revision of these highly technical rules. Nine months ago at the World Radiocommunication Conference, where regulations governing spectrum use are decided, SpaceX and Project Kuiper — Amazon’s attempt to build a rival to Musk’s system — lost an initial attempt to win global support for a change to the power restrictions. 

Graphic explaining how radio interference can affect satellites

Although many in the industry believe a revision is long overdue, the discussions were tense and divisive, according to participants.

On one side were the upstart tech companies whose low Earth orbit satellite networks are threatening the business models of longer-established competitors with high-speed, low-latency broadband services…(More)”.

Why is it so hard to establish the death toll?

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Smriti Mallapaty: “Given the uncertainty of counting fatalities during conflict, researchers use other ways to estimate mortality.

One common method uses household surveys, says Debarati Guha-Sapir, an epidemiologist who specializes in civil conflicts at the University of Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, and is based in Brussels. A sample of the population is asked how many people in their family have died over a specific period of time. This approach has been used to count deaths in conflicts elsewhere, including in Iraq3 and the Central African Republic4.

The situation in Gaza right now is not conducive to a survey, given the level of movement and displacement, say researchers. And it would be irresponsible to send data collectors into an active conflict and put their lives at risk, says Ball.

There are also ethical concerns around intruding on people who lack basic access to food and medication to ask about deaths in their families, says Jamaluddine. Surveys will have to wait for the conflict to end and movement to ease, say researchers.

Another approach is to compare multiple independent lists of fatalities and calculate mortality from the overlap between them. The Human Rights Data Analysis Group used this approach to estimate the number of people killed in Syria between 2011 and 2014. Jamaluddine hopes to use the ministry fatality data in conjunction with those posted on social media by several informal groups to estimate mortality in this way. But Guha-Sapir says this method relies on the population being stable and not moving around, which is often not the case in conflict-affected communities.

In addition to deaths immediately caused by the violence, some civilians die of the spread of infectious diseases, starvation or lack of access to health care. In February, Jamaluddine and her colleagues used modelling to make projections of excess deaths due to the war and found that, in a continued scenario of six months of escalated conflict, 68,650 people could die from traumatic injuries, 2,680 from non-communicable diseases such as cancer and 2,720 from infectious diseases — along with thousands more if an epidemic were to break out. On 30 July, the ministry declared a polio epidemic in Gaza after detecting the virus in sewage samples, and in mid-August it confirmed the first case of polio in 25 years, in a 10-month-old baby…

The longer the conflict continues, the harder it will be to get reliable estimates, because “reports by survivors get worse as time goes by”, says Jon Pedersen, a demographer at !Mikro in Oslo, who advises international agencies on mortality estimates…(More)”.

Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Ronald Deibert: “In this real-life spy thriller, cyber security expert Ronald Deibert details the unseemly marketplace for high-tech surveillance, professional disinformation, and computerized malfeasance. He reveals how his team of digital sleuths at the Citizen Lab have lifted the lid on dozens of covert operations targeting innocent citizens everywhere.

Chasing Shadows provides a front-row seat to a dark underworld of digital espionage, disinformation, and subversion. There, autocrats and dictators peer into their targets’ lives with the mere press of a button, spreading their tentacles of authoritarianism through a digital ecosystem that is insecure, poorly regulated, and prone to abuse. The activists, opposition figures, and journalists who dare to advocate for basic political rights and freedoms are hounded, arrested, tortured, and sometimes murdered.

From the gritty streets of Guatemala City to the corridors of power in the White House, this compelling narrative traces the journey of the Citizen Lab as it evolved into a globally renowned source of counterintelligence for civil society. As this small team of investigators disarmed cyber mercenaries and helped to improve the digital security of billions of people worldwide, their success brought them, too, into the same sinister crosshairs that plagued the victims they worked to protect.

Deibert recounts how the Lab exposed the world’s pre-eminent cyber-mercenary firm, Israel-based NSO Group—the creators of the phone-hacking marvel Pegasus—in a series of human rights abuses, from domestic spying scandals in Spain, Poland, Hungary, and Greece to its implication in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018…(More)”

A.I. May Save Us, or May Construct Viruses to Kill Us

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Article by Nicholas Kristof: “Here’s a bargain of the most horrifying kind: For less than $100,000, it may now be possible to use artificial intelligence to develop a virus that could kill millions of people.

That’s the conclusion of Jason Matheny, the president of the RAND Corporation, a think tank that studies security matters and other issues.

“It wouldn’t cost more to create a pathogen that’s capable of killing hundreds of millions of people versus a pathogen that’s only capable of killing hundreds of thousands of people,” Matheny told me.

In contrast, he noted, it could cost billions of dollars to produce a new vaccine or antiviral in response…

In the early 2000s, some of us worried about smallpox being reintroduced as a bioweapon if the virus were stolen from the labs in Atlanta and in Russia’s Novosibirsk region that retain the virus since the disease was eradicated. But with synthetic biology, now it wouldn’t have to be stolen.

Some years ago, a research team created a cousin of the smallpox virus, horse pox, in six months for $100,000, and with A.I. it could be easier and cheaper to refine the virus.

One reason biological weapons haven’t been much used is that they can boomerang. If Russia released a virus in Ukraine, it could spread to Russia. But a retired Chinese general has raised the possibility of biological warfare that targets particular races or ethnicities (probably imperfectly), which would make bioweapons much more useful. Alternatively, it might be possible to develop a virus that would kill or incapacitate a particular person, such as a troublesome president or ambassador, if one had obtained that person’s DNA at a dinner or reception.

Assessments of ethnic-targeting research by China are classified, but they may be why the U.S. Defense Department has said that the most important long-term threat of biowarfare comes from China.

A.I. has a more hopeful side as well, of course. It holds the promise of improving education, reducing auto accidents, curing cancers and developing miraculous new pharmaceuticals.

One of the best-known benefits is in protein folding, which can lead to revolutionary advances in medical care. Scientists used to spend years or decades figuring out the shapes of individual proteins, and then a Google initiative called AlphaFold was introduced that could predict the shapes within minutes. “It’s Google Maps for biology,” Kent Walker, president of global affairs at Google, told me.

Scientists have since used updated versions of AlphaFold to work on pharmaceuticals including a vaccine against malaria, one of the greatest killers of humans throughout history.

So it’s unclear whether A.I. will save us or kill us first…(More)”.

Rethinking Dual-Use Technology

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Article by Artur Kluz and Stefaan Verhulst: “A new concept of “triple use” — where technology serves commercial, defense, and peacebuilding purposes — may offer a breakthrough solution for founders, investors and society to explore….

As a result of the resurgence of geopolitical tensions, the debate about the applications of dual-use technology is intensifying. The core issue founders, tech entrepreneurs, venture capitalists (VCs), and limited partner investors (LPs) are examining is whether commercial technologies should increasingly be re-used for military purposes. Traditionally, the majority of  investors (including limited partners) have prohibited dual-use tech in their agreements. However, the rapidly growing dual-use market, with its substantial addressable size and growth potential, is compelling all stakeholders to reconsider this stance. The pressure for innovations, capital returns and Return On Investment (ROI) is driving the need for a solution. 

These discussions are fraught with moral complexity, but they also present an opportunity to rethink the dual-use paradigm and foster investment in technologies aimed at supporting peace. A new concept of “triple use”— where technology serves commercial, defense, and peacebuilding purposes — may offer an innovative and more positive avenue for founders, investors and society to explore. This additional re-use, which remains in an incipient state, is increasingly being referred to as PeaceTech. By integrating terms dedicated to PeaceTech in new and existing investment and LP agreements, tech companies, founders and venture capital investors can be also required to apply their technology for peacebuilding purposes. This approach can expand the applications of emerging technologies to also include conflict prevention, reconstruction or any humanitarian aspects.

However, current efforts to use technologies for peacebuilding are impeded by various obstacles, including a lack of awareness within the tech sector and among investors, limited commercial interest, disparities in technical capacity, privacy concerns, international relations and political complexities. In the below we examine some of these challenges, while also exploring certain avenues for overcoming them — including approaching technologies for peace as a “triple use” application. We will especially try to identify examples of how tech companies, tech entrepreneurs, accelerators, and tech investors including VCs and LPs can commercially benefit and support “triple use” technologies. Ultimately, we argue, the vast potential — largely untapped — of “triple use” technologies calls for a new wave of tech ecosystem transformation and public and private investments as well as the development of a new field of research…(More)”.

Searching for Safer, Healthier Digital Spaces

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by Search for Common Ground (Search): “… has specialized in approaches that leverage media such as radio and television to reach target audiences. In recent years, the organization has been more intentional about digital and online spaces, delving deeper into the realm of digital peacebuilding. Search has since implemented a number of digital peacebuilding projects.

Search wanted to understand if and how its initiatives were able to catalyze constructive agency among social media users, away from a space of apathy, self-doubt, or fear to incite inclusion, belonging, empathy, mutual understanding, and trust. This report examines these hypotheses using primary data from former and current participants in Search’s digital peacebuilding initiatives…(More)”

The tools of global spycraft have changed

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

The Economist: “A few years ago intelligence analysts observed that internet-connected CCTV cameras in Taiwan and South Korea were inexplicably talking to vital parts of the Indian power grid. The strange connection turned out to be a deliberately circuitous route by which Chinese spies were communicating with malware they had previously buried deep inside crucial parts of the Indian grid (presumably to enable future sabotage). The analysts spotted it because they were scanning the internet to look for “command and control” (c2) nodes—such as cameras—that hackers use as stepping stones to their victims.

The attack was not revealed by an Indian or Western intelligence agency, but by Recorded Future, a firm in Somerville, Massachusetts. Christopher Ahlberg, its boss, claims the company has knowledge of more c2 nodes than anyone in the world. “We use that to bust Chinese and Russian intel operations constantly.” It also has billions of stolen log-in details found on the dark web (a hard-to-access part of the internet) and collects millions of images daily. “We know every UK company, every Chinese company, every Indian company,” says Mr Ahlberg.  Recorded Future has 1,700 clients in 75 countries, including 47 governments.

The Chinese intrusion and its discovery were a microcosm of modern intelligence. The internet, and devices connected to it, is everywhere, offering opportunities galore for surveillance, entrapment and covert operations. The entities monitoring it, and acting on it, are often private firms, not government agencies…(More)” See Special Issue on Watching the Watchers