... the questions addressed in the RAND think tank's recent
report
"
Fighting Shadows in the Dark. Understanding and Countering Coercion in Cyberspace
". The authors discuss cyber operations conducted by four states — Russia, China, Iran and North Korea — and try to determine whether those activities amounted to cyber coercion.
Starting with the study findings, we will highlight the following points. Cyber operations intended to coerce are a small subset of overall cyber operations globally....
... direct illegal deliveries. According to the calculations of the relevant US departments, the DPRK exported a total of 930 thousand tons of coal in at least 127 shipments in the first four months of 2019 alone [
2
]. Illegal exports of other goods and ... ... information technologies in the interests of both legal and, possibly, illegal receiving of funds. There is evidence that the North Korea's military-industrial complex uses affiliated trading corporations to deploy IT specialists (software developers) ...
... against Iran as a way to force it to halt its nuclear program. Washington probably assumes that having curtailed its nuclear program Iran would be unable to obtain a nuclear weapon quickly. Consequently, it would not be able to follow in the footsteps of North Korea. Having developed nuclear warheads and means of delivery, the DPRK can negotiate from the position of strength. The fear of isolation or aggression would keep Tehran from leaving the JCPOA. In other words, the US does not lose anything as ...
... power, means, normative and regulatory support, but also the political will to actively use destructive ICT capabilities. In this regard, we should note that all of the United States’ current strategic planning documents name Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea as its main opponents, and these countries are likely to be the targets of any cyberattacks. National Security Advisor of the United States John Bolton confirmed as much at a conference held by
The Wall Street Journal
this past June (just ...
On April 24-25, a Russian-North Korean summit will be held in Vladivostok. This meeting is long overdue, especially given the fact that Kim Jong-un has had four meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, three with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and two with Donald Trump....
... UN Security Council by holding another, sixth nuclear test and launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2017, and when U.S. President Donald Trump, speaking at the UN General Assembly, responded by talking about the complete destruction of North Korea.
Inter-Korean normalization could give a powerful impetus to resolving the nuclear problem since North Korea’s nuclear missile program is a result of the confrontation between the two Koreas, with the U.S. siding with South Korea for over ...
... architecture (the New START Treaty is now the last one standing), Donald Trump comes across far more hawkish on Russia than Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats.
In a practical sense, scrapping the INF Treaty gives Washington free rein to threaten North Korea while also pressuring China, the country Trump deliberately alluded to when announcing the U.S. withdrawal from the treaty.
If the negotiations on the denuclearization of North Korea fail—and it’s hard to imagine that Pyongyang will completely ...
... the denuclearization of the entire Korean Peninsula – both the North and the South. This formula is included into the Trump-Kim joint statement following the results of the Singapore summit. This implies, among other things, the United States’ refusal to deploy nuclear weapons in South Korea in the future, calls of American ships carrying nuclear weapons into South Korean ports, and the direction of strategic bombers into the Korean airspace. The North Korean leader also noted that Pyongyang would abandon its nuclear weapons, first, only in the context of complete and universal nuclear disarmament, and, second, only on the condition that the DPRK would be provided with solid security guarantees....
US and North Korea have called the Summit a historic success, but it was also a compulsion in light of lack of alternatives
The world is talking of this Summit as a historic moment with hopes that it will bring peace to Korean Peninsula. Reading between the ...
... before and in course of the negotiations
Chung Eui-yong, Head of the National Security Office under the president of South Korea, said, while speaking to reporters in Washington, that president Trump had expressed his agreement to hold a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un until May. According to Valdai Club expert Gleb Ivashentsov, there are many obstacles for the meeting, and we have to wait for what the DPRK will say and how the US will behave before and in course of the negotiations. ...
