Spy Museum, Washington DC with Chris Costa and Gina Bennet

Spy Museum Program

When Thu May 18, 2023 5pm – 8pm (EDT)
Where International Spy Museum (700 Lenfant Plz SW, Washington, DC 20024, United States)
Who Chris Costa, Gina Bennett, Spy Programs, Ursula Oaks, Amanda Ohlke*

Without Borders: The Haqqani Network and the Road to Kabul, New America ONLINE

[ONLINE] – Without Borders: The Haqqani Network and the Road to Kabul
EVENT

With the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the collapse of the Afghan government, the Haqqani Network’s influence and importance have risen to new heights. However, the story of the network’s rise and development goes back decades. In his new book Without Borders: The Haqqani Network and the Road to Kabul, Jere Van Dyk tells the story of the origins, political awakening, and rise of what the United States and its allies call the Haqqani Network, and what the Haqqani family calls the Haqqani Mujahideen. Van Dyk lived with the Haqqanis as a young reporter for the New York Times in the 1980s, in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, when they were America’s allies in the Afghan-Soviet war. After 9/11, the network became America’s enemy. Van Dyk traces that development and the global far-reaching aspects of the story of what came next.

Join New America’s International Security Program as it welcomes Jere Van Dyk to discuss his book Without Borders: The Haqqani Network and the Road to Kabul. Jere Van Dyk is a journalist and author who has focused much of his writing on far-away, mostly dangerous places, particularly Afghanistan and Pakistan. In the early 1980s, he lived as a correspondent for the New York Times in Afghanistan. After 9/11, he returned to Afghanistan for CBS News to report on the U.S.-led war. In late 2007, on a contract with Times Books, he hiked into the Tribal Areas of Pakistan, off-limits to foreigners. In 2008, he was captured by the Taliban, and taken up into the mountains and held for 45 days. He is also the author of Captive: My Time as a Prisoner of the Taliban, which details that experience and The Trade: My Journey into the Labyrinth of Political Kidnapping.

Join the conversation online using #WithoutBorders and following @NewAmericaISP.

PARTICIPANTS

Jere Van Dyk
Author, Without Borders: The Haqqani Network and the Road to Kabul

MODERATOR

Peter Bergen, @peterbergencnn
Vice President, New America

Leadership and Succession in Terrorist Organizations, New America ONLINE

[ONLINE] – Terror in Transition
Leadership and Succession in Terrorist Organizations
EVENT

What is the role of founding leaders in shaping terrorist organizations? What follows the loss of a formative leader? Following the killing of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan, who himself took over after the killing of al Qaeda’s founding leader, Osama Bin Laden, these questions are taking on renewed importance. In their book Terror in Transition: Leadership and Succession in Terrorist Organizations, Tricia L. Bacon and Elizabeth Grimm examine how religious terrorist groups manage and adapt to major shifts in leadership. Bacon and Grimm highlight similarities between Islamic terrorist groups abroad and Christian white nationalist groups such as the 1920s Ku Klux Klan.

Join New America’s International Security Program as it welcomes the co-authors of Terror in Transition for a discussion of the issues surrounding transitions in terrorist group leadership. Tricia L. Bacon is associate professor in the School of Public Affairs at American University and director of the Policy Anti-Terrorism Hub. In addition to Terror in Transition, she is the author of Why Terrorist Groups Form International Alliances (2018) and previously spent ten years working on counterterrorism at the U.S. Department of State. Elizabeth Grimm is an associate professor of teaching in the Security Studies Program at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. She is also the author of How the Gloves Came Off: Lawyers, Policy Makers, and Norms in the Debate on Torture (2017).

Join the conversation online using #TerrorinTransition and following @NewAmericaISP.

PARTICIPANTS

Tricia L. Bacon, @tricbacon
Co-Author, Terror in Transition
Associate Professor, American University

Elizabeth Grimm, @ProfLizGrimm
Co-Author, Terror in Transition
Associate Professor, Security Studies Program, Georgetown University

MODERATOR

Peter Bergen, @peterbergencnn
Vice President, New America
Co-Director, Center on the Future of War, ASU

The Pentagon’s long hunt for UFOs, CNN.com

Opinion:
Peter Bergen
Opinion by Erik German and Peter Bergen
Updated 8:08 AM EST, Wed January 18, 2023

Editor’s Note: Erik German is a producer and writer whose work has been published by The New York Times, Time, Frontline, and other publications. Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. The views expressed in this commentary are their own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN
—
On Thursday, the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a congressionally mandated report about “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” the preferred Pentagon nomenclature for what most folks call “UFOs.”

This report is part of a relatively new push by the US intelligence community and the Pentagon to try and make sense of more than 500 UFO sightings over the past couple of decades that have mostly been made by US service personnel.

As part of that push, in July the Pentagon established a new office with the wonderfully opaque name of the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

In plain English, this office attempts to figure out what’s behind UFO sightings made by Department of Defense personnel or members of the US intelligence community.

There is a sound national security reason for this office that has nothing to do with aliens or little green men. If there are unidentified objects flying around in US airspace, could these be evidence of American adversaries like Russia or China deploying new kinds of exotic weapons? And whatever these UFOs might be, they could represent a risk to US Air Force planes and commercial aircraft.

The creation of this office is also part of a pattern since the late 1940s when the US Department of Defense has bolstered the case for UFOs – in some cases to disguise top secret new aircraft that the Air Force was developing –while at the same assuring the general public that what some might believe are alien aircraft are explained by more prosaic phenomena such as weather events, or balloons, or airborne debris or good old human error.

Thursday’s new UFO report had some striking findings: The number of UFO sightings dramatically increased between March 2021 and August 2022, during which 247 new sightings were reported. Most of those reports came from pilots or others working for the US Navy and US Air Force.

The report suggests that these increased sightings may be the result of less stigma associated in reporting such sightings and also more guidance from the Pentagon to report “anomalies” in the sky. In other words, if you are instructed to look for something odd, you likely will find it.

For UFO believers, new report may provide some solace

According to a Gallup poll from 2021, around 40% of Americans believe that unidentified flying objects that are sometimes seen in the sky are, in fact, alien spacecraft.

For UFO true believers, the new report doesn’t provide information that would buttress their beliefs, but it leaves open a number of unexplained sightings that UFO believers will surely seize upon.

In some of the cases that the Pentagon investigated, an unspecified number of UFO sightings were “attributable to sensor irregularities or variances, such as operator or equipment error.”

The Pentagon also found that a very large number of the sightings, 163, were actually balloons or “balloon-like entities,” while 26 were unmanned aircraft systems, otherwise known as drones, and six were attributable to airborne “clutter,” such as plastic bags or birds.

Still, there are 171 unidentified object sightings that the Pentagon hasn’t attributed to anything yet, and some of those objects “demonstrated unusual flight characteristics.”

The Pentagon’s long, complex history with UFOs
This is not the first time the Pentagon has investigated UFOs and provided information that, in some cases, has helped to fuel the UFO believer movement.

In July 1952, following months of sightings across the US, pilots and ground personnel at Andrews Air Force Base said they spotted unaccountably fast, maneuverable objects flying over Washington, DC. Multiple military witnesses said they’d caught the objects on radar and at least one pilot reported seeing them with the naked eye.

As a result, the officer in charge of US Air Force intelligence, Major General John Samford, held a televised press conference. One US Air Force captain investigating the incident called Samford’s press conference “the largest and longest the Air Force had held since World War II.”

Seated soberly behind several microphones, Samford told reporters “the great bulk” of UFO sightings could be dismissed as hoaxes, friendly aircraft or aberrations of weather and light. Nevertheless, he said, there remained a certain percentage of reports that have been made by “credible observers of relatively incredible things.”

These relatively incredible possibilities of course inflamed UFO enthusiasts.

Newspapers across the country carried headlines like “Saucers Swarm Over Capitol,” and “Jets Chase DC Sky Ghosts.” One Air Force investigator in 1952 counted more than 16,000 newspaper stories on UFOs that year.

But less than a year after Samford’s press conference, a government panel of scientists, military and intelligence officials convened to study evidence and testimony from more than 20 purported UFO sightings. It concluded that UFOs did indeed pose a strategic threat to the US – but not because of aliens, but rather because America’s civil air defense could be overwhelmed by reports of UFOs.

This worry, writes aerospace historian Curtis Peebles, “was not really about flying saucers, it was about Pearl Harbor.” At the height of the Cold War, “the US was haunted by the specter of a surprise Soviet nuclear attack.”

The panel suggested a policy of “debunking” reports and recommended officials take “immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired.”

The US Air Force tasked a small office called Project Blue Book with doing just that. Until the 1970s, Blue Book officers followed up on UFO reports, interviewed witnesses, collected evidence and consistently put a narrative into the press stressing that most sightings could be attributable to normal aircraft, hoaxers or weather phenomena.

Then, as now, the vast majority of UFO reports easily submitted to conventional explanation.

But there remained a small group of American UFO-watchers who could not be talked down. And they kept watching the skies, reporting on craft that seemed able to fly higher and faster than any known planes.

In some cases, they were spotting real and very secret US assets. CIA historian Gerald Haines estimated that as many as half of the reports investigated by Project Blue Book were actually sightings of the CIA’s U-2 and the Air Force’s SR-71 Blackbird spy planes.

The need to protect these and later stealth projects spawned a new approach from some corners of the US counterintelligence community.

“The US Air Force and the CIA had their own working UFO to hide,” writes Mark Pilkington in his book “Mirage Men,” an extensive history of purported UFO sightings. “The finer, fleshier details had been filled in by the imaginations of the people on the ground, encouraged and embellished by…the CIA and others in the alphabet soup of intelligence organizations.”

Pilkington documented cases in the early 1980s of Air Force counterintelligence agents making contact with UFO investigators and egging them on – even leaking faked evidence of secret contact between the US government and alien visitors. Stories like these inevitably spread. And any useful intelligence about top secret, real life aircraft became lost in increasingly outlandish noise about UFOs.

Pilkington described the Pentagon’s communication strategy as “a two-channel system” – one for debunking and calming down the general public when it came to reports of UFOs, the other for hiding potential leaks about top secret US technology.

So where does that leave us today? Perhaps, with the Cold War behind us, the Pentagon’s new UFO office signals a new chapter of sensible transparency surrounding aerial unknowns that could pose a threat to our security. But with the Pentagon’s long history of whipsawing between stoking and stifling public fascination, it doesn’t seem likely that UFO true believers will give up on the mystery any time soon.

An Assessment of National Processes of Designating Terrorist Groups

https://www.newamerica.org/international-security/reports/an-assessment-of-variation-in-national-processes-of-defining-and-designating-terrorist-groups/

2023 SOF Imperatives Forum, The U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, Washington DC

Tuesday, 31 JAN 2023

Location:
The U.S. Capitol Visitor Center
First St NE, Washington, DC 20515

Attendee Eligibility:
All individuals who register for the Forum will be invited to attend the event sessions, meals, and evening reception.
FORUM AGENDA

All times listed below are in ET and subject to change:

Tuesday, 31 JAN 2023:

1300 – 1305 Opening Remarks
Master of Ceremonies: Mr. Christian Sessoms, VP Government Solutions, Conceal
1305 – 1315 Welcome Remarks
Mr. Peter Bergen, Chairperson of the Board, Global SOF Foundation
1315 – 1345 Senior Leader Presentation
Lieutenant General Francis L. Donovan, Vice Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command
1345 – 1430 Panel Discussion: Role of SOF in Indo-Pacom
Moderator: Mr. Michael Mackay (Norwich SSDA ‘15), National Security Advisor, U.S. House of Representatives
Rear Adm. Vic Mercado, USN (Ret), Former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities
COL Sean Berg, Deputy Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command Pacific
Dr. Michael G. Vickers, Former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
Ms. Emily Harding, Deputy Director and Senior Fellow, International Security Program, Center for Strategic & International Studies
1430 – 1500 Networking Break
1500 – 1545 Panel Discussion: Eastern European Threats
Moderator: Mr. Tony Frazier, Maxar Technologies
Lieutenant General Dr. Romulus Ruszin-Szendi, Commander, Hungarian Defense Forces
General Daniel Petrescu, Chief of Defence, Romania
1545 – 1630 Senior Leader Conversation: Irregular Warfare and the Role of SOF
Moderator: Ms. Catherine Herridge, CBS
Rep Scott Peters, Co-Chair House SOF Caucus (Invited)
Rep Kathy Castor, Co-Chair House SOF Caucus
Rep Mike Waltz, Co-Chair House SOF Caucus (Invited)
Re Richard Hudson, Co-Chair House SOF Caucus (Invited)
1630 – 1700 Keynote Presentation
The Honorable Mike Rogers, HASC Ranking Member (Invited)
1700 – 1715 Keynote Presentation
Ms. Elizabeth Phu, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict
1715 – 1730 Keynote Presentation
TBD
1730 Closing Remarks
Mr. Stu Bradin, President and CEO, Global SOF Foundation
1730 – 1900 Networking Reception

Is no career safe from AI anymore? CNN.com

Opinion by Peter Bergen, CNN
Updated 5:37 PM EST, Mon December 26, 2022

Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen is the author of “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

It’s long been clear that artificial intelligence (AI) can one day replace many humans working in fields such as customer service, insurance underwriting and manufacturing. Yet, I have long been complacent about my career as a writer. After all, what AI tool could replace the workings of the human brain?

For the past several days, I have been hearing about the AI chatbot ChatGPT. Users of the tool claim to be able to write coherent essays and op-eds in seconds. So, I signed up to give it a try and asked it to perform a task that I had hitherto believed required at least some level of skill. I asked ChatGPT to “Write an op-ed in the style of Peter Bergen.”

Within two seconds, the tool spat out this op-ed:

The country is more secure, but the war on terror is far from over.

As President Joe Biden marks 100 days in office, he can point to some consequential achievements in national security. The United States has made dramatic progress in winding down its two longest wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the U.S. is more secure than it was four years ago, when Donald Trump took office.

But the war on terror is far from over. Al-Qaeda remains a threat to the United States and its allies, while the Islamic State continues to be a menace in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia.

The Biden Administration has taken some steps to address these threats, including authorizing the first military strikes against al-Qaeda and Islamic State targets in Syria and Yemen, and deploying special operations forces to Syria to help combat the Islamic State.

But much more needs to be done to protect the U.S. and its allies from terrorist threats. The Biden Administration should expand its efforts to counter violent extremism, not just in the Middle East, but in the United States as well.

The U.S. should also strengthen its partnerships with countries in the region, such as Jordan and Egypt, that are key to regional stability and counterterrorism efforts. Working with these countries to build up their capacity to counter terrorist threats will pay dividends in the long run.

Finally, the Biden Administration should make a concerted effort to re-engage with Iran, the region’s most powerful state. This could help to reduce the risk of future conflicts, while also opening the door to greater cooperation in the fight against terrorism and other transnational threats.

The war on terror is far from over, but the Biden Administration is taking the right steps to protect the United States and its allies from terrorist threats. With the right strategy and the right partners, the U.S. can continue to make progress in combating this global scourge.

The op-ed made a clear overall argument that the “war on terror” wasn’t over, buttressing that argument with multiple sub-arguments with concrete policy proposals for the Biden administration to act on, such as reengaging with Iran.

But the op-ed made some factual errors, including a dated reference about when the Biden administration had assumed office, which I attributed to the fact that, according to OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, its “default models’ training data cuts off in 2021, so they may not have knowledge of current events.”

The ChatGPT-generated op-ed also suggested that the Biden administration was the first to authorize US strikes against al-Qaeda in Yemen and ISIS in Syria, policies that had in fact started in previous administrations, and the single strike against al-Qaeda in Yemen during the Biden administration was reported to have been a “suspected” US strike, not a confirmed strike.

The op-ed also asserted that the Iraq War was one of the two longest American wars which is debatable since the Vietnam War lasted more than 10 years, while the Iraq War lasted from 2003 to the withdrawal of all US troops in 2012. (American troops did go back into Iraq in 2014 to fight ISIS and thousands remain there.)

I also work as a college professor at Arizona State University and AI tools like ChatGPT also raise some interesting questions about the role of student papers that make up such a core part of American college educations.

I asked the tool a simple historical question: “What was the role of women in the French Revolution?” And in a second it replied:

Women played a crucial role in the French Revolution, both in the context of the political upheaval and the social transformation that it brought about.

Women were active participants in the storming of the Bastille and the overthrow of the monarchy. Women also took part in the political debates of the time, forming political clubs and writing pamphlets to advocate for their rights. They also participated in the revolutionary festivals and marches, as well as the violence of the Reign of Terror.

The Revolution also saw the emergence of a new type of woman, the ‘citizeness’, who was educated and politically active. Ultimately, the Revolution brought about some changes in the status of women, such as the right to divorce and the right to own property, but these gains were short-lived.

While this short essay wasn’t exactly like the work of leading historians of the French Revolution, such as Richard Cobb or Simon Schama, and it overplayed the role of women in the violence of the “Reign of Terror,” it does suggest a future in which college students will likely be able to submit long and complicated papers that are entirely generated by AI. And then what does it mean to be educated at a liberal arts college? And why go to all the bother and expense?

So, I head into 2023 with a sobering realization. My career as a CNN op-ed writer, which began in earnest over a decade ago, may not exactly be over yet since AI generated op-eds make factual errors – just as humans do, though those are typically caught during the fact checking process.

Yet my writing career could still go the way of the grocery checkout jobs eliminated by automation. Al tools will keep getting smarter, and distinguishing an AI-written op-ed from a “real” human op-ed will get harder over time, just as AI-generated college papers will become harder to distinguish from those written by actual students.

As a writer and professor, that makes for a dystopian future. (I promise this sentiment was not generated by AI.)

Sulaimani Security Forum 2023, Sulaimani, Iraq

On March 15 and 16, 2023, the Institute of Regional and International Studies (IRIS) at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS) will host its seventh annual Sulaimani Forum. The Sulaimani Forum has become the premier platform for dialogue on the complex policy challenges facing Iraq and the broader Middle East region. As in previous years, the Forum will bring together globally recognized policymakers, diplomats, scholars, and journalists from across the world. The event is widely covered by regional and international media. This year’s event will emphasize three central themes:

Iraq 20 Years After the Invasion of 2003
The Impact of the Ukraine War on Iraq and MENA
Climate Change and Water Scarcity
About the Forum: The Sulaimani Forum was founded in 2013 as the first policy-oriented event in Iraq to convene globally recognized thought leaders and decision makers. The Forum has featured Iraq’s heads of state and government as well as high-level officials from regional countries, Europe, and the United States. The programs from previous years can be found here.

About IRIS: The Institute of Regional and International Studies (IRIS) at the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani (AUIS) is committed to rigorous research and effective policy development in Iraq and the Middle East region. Building upon the University’s broader educational mission, IRIS builds the skills and capacity of researchers, policymakers, and leaders towards the aim of leveraging policy research into political and social change. More information on IRIS’ programs and events can be found here.

SCHEDULE
GUESTS
PARTNERS
ABOUT
11
DAYS
23
HOURS
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE
MARCH 15
MARCH 16
08:00
MORE INFO
Campus Gates Open
10:00
MORE INFO
Morning Plenary Session
14:00
MORE INFO
Lunch
15:00
MORE INFO
Afternoon Plenary Session
17:30
MORE INFO
Policy Roundtables
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FEATURED GUESTS

AL-ALI
International IDEA

BAHOUT
American University of Beirut

BERGEN
New America

FANTAPPIE
Center for Humanitarian Dialogue

JAFAR
Crescent Petroleum

MINWALLA
Management Systems International

PLASSCHAERT
UNAMI
MORE GUESTS

Doha Security Forum, Qatar

WELCOME TO THE
GLOBAL SECURITY FORUM
Established in 2018, the Global Security Forum (GSF) is an annual international gathering hosted by The Soufan Center. For several years it has brought together an international network of senior officials and experts, and consistently includes ministers, heads of security agencies, and prominent experts, academics, and journalists, and thousands of attendees. This invitation-only event provides a unique dynamic platform for international stakeholders to convene and address the international community’s leading security challenges.

In 2021, the Global Security Forum explored the imperative of balancing cooperation and competition in ensuring security and addressing critical challenges in governance and development. In 2020, the Forum looked at the evolution of global security challenges posed by complex geopolitical realities exacerbated by the global COVID-19 pandemic, including disinformation, extremism, and governance and legitimacy. In 2019, the Forum explored the proliferation of modern disinformation and the serious implications for an increasingly interconnected world. The inaugural 2018 Global Security Forum addressed the global challenge of returning foreign fighters.

Assessing Variation in the Labeling of Terrorist Organizations Around the World, New America ONLINE event

[ONLINE] – Assessing Variation in the Labeling of Terrorist Organizations Around the World
EVENT

What is a terrorist organization? It is a question whose importance has grown as demands for social media companies and others to restrict terrorist content have proliferated. Yet, the international community has not come to an agreement on the issue. Instead a patchwork of designation practices exists globally. Disagreements abound in the Middle East over the labeling of the Muslim Brotherhood, the question of Hezbollah’s status splits countries around the world, growing perceptions of a jihadist threat in Africa may be stoking new legal architecture in Somalia and beyond, and some countries are designating white supremacist groups as terrorist organizations. In a new report, “An Assessment of Variation in National Processes of Defining and Designating Terrorist Groups,” New America’s International Security Program examined the designation practices of 196 countries. The report highlights how domestic politics, shifting conditions, and geopolitical competition have shaped variation globally.

To discuss the report, New America welcomes two of the report’s co-authors David Sterman and Melissa Salyk-Virk. Sterman is a Senior Policy Analyst with New America’s International Security program and Salyk-Virk is a fellow and former Senior Policy Analyst with the program. Salyk-Virk also previously worked with the United Nation’s Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate. New America also welcomes Edmund Fitton-Brown, former coordinator of the UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team concerning the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and the Taliban to discuss the report’s findings.

Join the conversation online using #DesignationVariation and following @NewAmericaISP.

PARTICIPANTS

Edmund Fitton-Brown, @EFittonBrown
Former Coordinator, UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team Concerning the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban
Former British Ambassador to Yemen

Melissa Salyk-Virk
Fellow, New America International Security Program
Co-author, “An Assessment of Variation in National Processes of Defining and Designating Terrorist Groups”

David Sterman, @Dsterms
Senior Policy Analyst, International Security Program
Co-author, “An Assessment of Variation in National Processes of Defining and Designating Terrorist Groups”

MODERATOR

Peter Bergen, @peterbergencnn
Vice President, New America
Co-author, “An Assessment of Variation in National Processes of Defining and Designating Terrorist Groups”

When
Jan. 18, 2023
12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
Where
Online Only
WEBCAST LINK
RSVP