National intelligence agencies pride themselves on their ability to cultivate sources within the most prominent institutions of the countries they target. Received this from a friend? SUBSCRIBE [[link removed]] CRITICAL STATE Your weekly foreign policy fix. If you read just one thing…

…read about new frontiers in snitch-tagging.

National intelligence agencies pride themselves on their ability to cultivate sources within the most prominent institutions of the countries they target. Last week brought the distressing news that, in America, one of those institutions is Twitter [[link removed]]. Saudi Arabia allegedly recruited two Twitter employees to spy on Twitter accounts, hoping to gather email addresses and locations associated with opposition activists and thousands of others. About a third of Saudis use Twitter, and regime figures have warned in the past that the government has access to anonymous users’ true identities. One might have assumed that access came from a sophisticated hacking capability, but actually it seems it came the old-fashioned way: five-figure bribes to people in positions to know.

Veterans Day reading

Writer Adin Dobkin’s grandfather, John Edward Thompson, was an American pilot in World War II and was shot down over Italy. German soldiers captured him, and he became a prisoner of war at a camp in Poland called Stalag Luft. There he kept a diary [[link removed]] chronicling his time in captivity that today serves as a compelling look into the lives of POWs.

Thompson’s diary reflects an aviator’s scientific personality. He tracked his morale on a carefully drawn line graph that measured mood on a 0-100 scale, from “Rock Bottom” to “Near Heaven,” and he mapped both his route to Poland and his cell.

Mostly, though, the diary is about food. As the war wound down, rations became bleaker, and the bread, which had always been about 30% sawdust and leaves, would sometimes have bits of glass or sand in it. When Red Cross aid appeared in the camp, though, Thompson began recording whole recipes that he and others put together from the aid package ingredients.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] We are going… to steal… the moon data!

India’s space agency was the target [[link removed]] of a cyber attack during its September attempt to land a rover on the moon, making it the fifth Indian government agency to be hit in a similar fashion in recent months. The attack, which consisted of simple phishing emails that Indian officials opened, releasing malware onto government systems, likely originated in North Korea.

The attack’s effect is unclear, but the government denied that it had anything to do with the failure of the moon mission. Similar intrusions by North Korean hackers into South Korean systems seem to have been largely information-gathering exercises.

Vipin Narang, who studies both the North Korean nuclear program and South Asian security issues, said [[link removed]] that the apparent “attacks” are more likely espionage attempts that exploit India’s weak cybersecurity. North Korea wants scientific data, Narang argued, and India is basically leaving theirs out like a pie on a windowsill; the moment North Korea reaches for the pie, we call it a cyber attack.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] DEEP DIVE Refugees, ethnicity, civil war

Last week on Deep Dive, we examined the latest research on what happens when people who have been displaced by conflict return home to find a different political environment than the one they knew when they left. Today, we’ll look at how refugees who don’t return home and instead settle abroad shape the security environments of their new homes.

In an earlier edition of Critical State, Sara Polo spoke about her research [[link removed]] with Julian Wucherpfennig, showing that refugees who settle abroad are much more likely to be targets of terrorism in their new homes than to commit terrorist attacks. This week’s Deep Dive looks at a paper that is similar but focuses on refugee resettlement through the lens of ethnic conflict rather than terrorism. In a recent issue of the Journal of Peace Research, ETH Zürich senior researcher Seraina Rüegger set out to measure [[link removed]] whether the mass movement of refugees into countries had any effect on those countries’ propensities for ethnic conflict.

Rüegger used a database she helped create that tracks both refugee movements around the world between 1975 and 2013 and refugees' ethnicities to get at this question. The key to understanding the role of refugees' ethnicity in driving host country civil conflict, she figured, was to look at how refugee ethnicity mapped onto the ethnic divides in the countries where they resettled. So, with her database, she coded whether refugees shared an ethnicity with any major ethnic groups in the countries they moved to, and whether those ethnic groups were included or excluded from governing power in the host country.

By breaking the data down that way, Rüegger was able to demonstrate two important findings. First, once you account for ethnicity, it turns out that the conventional wisdom that refugees from neighboring states are a driver of civil conflict in the countries where they settle basically falls apart. Second, the only case where it seems like refugees do make civil conflict more likely are cases where refugees share an ethnicity with a domestic ethnic group that has been excluded from governing. The arrival of co-ethnic refugees, Rüegger theorized, can shift the balance of power between the host government and disenfranchised ethnic groups in a way that makes conflict more likely if the government doesn’t reconsider its exclusionary policies.

As in Polo & Wucherpfennig, Rüegger’s paper demonstrates that it is the politics of the host country, rather than the presence of refugees, that determines the security impact of refugee movements. Host governments would do well, therefore, to work out their domestic issues rather than blaming strife on refugees who are only seeking safety.

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Lydia Emmanouilidou investigated [[link removed]] the state of cybersecurity in America’s election infrastructure. Things are improving as a result of more open communication between federal, state, and local authorities about data breaches and best practices, but many vulnerabilities remain as the 2020 election nears. Also, kudos to The World editor who led a story about the threat of electoral fraud with a photo of people voting in a Chicago laundromat. Top work.

Elias Yousif highlighted [[link removed]] recent deescalation in the Persian Gulf. Saudi Arabian forces and Houthi rebels have declared a mutual ceasefire in Yemen, the Saudi government has refrained from reprisals after the September strike on their oil facilities, and Europeans are pushing back against Iran’s new uranium enrichment. Taken together, Yousif argued, these developments have created an opening for durable moves toward a more peaceful region.

Shirin Jaafari spoke [[link removed]] with activists involved in ongoing protests in Iraq about the evolution and durability of the country’s anti-government movement. Drivers of motorcycle rickshaws, known as “tuk-tuks” in Iraq, have become symbols of the protests for their daring rescues of marchers injured by security forces. Despite the government’s use of bullets and tear gas to put down the protests, in which over 250 Iraqis have been killed, marches are still growing.

FORWARD TO A FRIEND [[link removed]] WELL PLAYED

The impeachment saga last week was all about deposition transcripts, and every deposition transcript is a gold mine of human moments. Here’s [[link removed]] some [[link removed]] of our favorites [[link removed]].

Last week in cute [[link removed]] things [[link removed]] that will eventually kill us all.

Tomorrow at 6 pm EST, the Project on Nuclear Gaming at the University of California, Berkeley is holding an online event to try to get as many people as possible to play SIGNAL, their nuclear confrontation simulator, simultaneously. The goal is to build a data set of decisions about nuclear deterrence made by regular people, to help researchers understand how deterrence — the concept that underpins most current nuclear weapons strategy — actually works. Check it out here [[link removed]].

“Wanted” indeed [[link removed]]!

If only the outgoing House Armed Services Committee chair had been as famously thrifty as his namesake [[link removed]].

The US Marine Corps turned 244 last weekend, and the Army has been nothing but supportive [[link removed]].

It’s not the mustache that makes this [[link removed]] so much as the way playing for Cleveland seems to have aged Mayfield into a man who has seen too much.

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Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between The World and Inkstick Media.

The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRX, BBC, and WGBH.

With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.”

Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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