Author: hpanahov

Can AI be creative?

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More than 2000 years ago, Plato made several interesting references to the notion of creativity, in the Socratic dialogues. In Meno, Socrates claims that “when poets produce truly great poetry, they do it not through knowledge or mastery, but rather by being divinely “inspired” by the Muses”. In another dialogue, Socrates contemplates the origins of new knowledge, which can be interpreted as creative thinking. Socrates wondered how can existing knowledge evolve into new ideas. When asked by Meno, “will we say, of a painter, that he makes something?”, Socrates responded, “no, he merely imitates”.

AI can be very good at imitating and learning from the creative works of humans. The below painting of the Healy Hall at Georgetown University, was produced by the Deep Dream Generator, an AI project sponsored by Google. I put in an image of Healy Hall, chose the “Starry Night” painting of Van Gogh as an overlay, and the program put out this painting within a minute. I find it aesthetically pleasing, but I understand it is not a completely original work. Nonetheless, do not all students of art learn by imitation? Can Artificial Intelligence learn to be truly creative?

AI-generated Painting of Healy Hall at Georgetown University, Washington D.C.

“Creative souls and glory seem,
Submissive and subtle and soft and serene.”

These two lines were produced by another Google project AI poem generator when I put in my keyword, creativity. The algorithm has learned to write poems “by reading over 25 million words written by the 19th-century poets.” Compare that to the below poem written by Lord Byron in 1816 during the First Industrial revolution.

“As the Liberty lads o’er the sea
Bought their freedom, and cheaply, with blood,
So we, boys, we
Will die fighting, or live free,
And down with all kings but King Ludd!”
– Lord Byron, 1816

Creativity is a challenging concept to define, but it is not difficult to recognize. Clearly, on a creativity scale, AI falls far behind Byron. By the way, Byron was not a Luddite but had sympathies for their cause. (Luddites were a radical anti-technology movement in 19th century England.) Interestingly, Lord Byron is also the father of Ada Lovelace, who is often described as the world’s first computer programmer. Lovelace is credited for creating the first algorithm that was put to use in her friend Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engines. Lovelace also proposed that “until a machine can originate an idea that it wasn’t designed to, it can’t be considered intelligent in the same way humans are.”  

In 2001, this approach inspired a group of engineers led by Selmer Bringsjord to come up with the Lovelace test, which many computer scientists consider a better replacement for the outdated Turing test. A computer can pass the Lovelace test only if it produces an outcome it was not programmed to. For example, a novel idea or an original painting. However, there is one more condition of the Lovelace test: the software output should surprise the human designer of the program. She should not be able to tell how the program achieved that outcome.

To this day, it is an open question whether any AI can pass the Lovelace test. In 1997, World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov (originally from my hometown Baku) lost to chess-playing supercomputer Deep Blue. Many people believe that mastering chess is associated with creative thinking. Deep Blue was calculating between 100 and 200 million positions on a 64-square chessboard, but it was following grammatical boundaries prescribed by its designers. The scientists behind Deep Blue at Carnegie Mellon University cannot beat the world champion in chess, but their brainchild can. Deep Blue’s victory over Kasparov marked a major milestone in the development of AI, but it did not prove that AI can be creative.

Maybe the challenge is that creativity belongs in the arts domain, and we are trying to explain it scientifically. Albert Einstein famously said “It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense. It would be a description without meaning—as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.” The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud believed that pain and repression are necessary ingredients for creativity. Does this mean we will have to teach AI to experience pain, so it can be creative?

Humans have been creative since the beginning of days, but across the globe, ancient cultures did not have a word to express creativity. The modern notion of human creativity emerged only in the age of Enlightenment in Europe, and it became a popular catchfrase during the 20th century. People applied it to the course of history and identified it as one of the driving forces behind our evolution. Various studies have demonstrated that even some animals have creative potential, but none of them can be a rival to human creativity. Now, recent breakthroughs in technology have inspired many ideas about the prospective of machines to compete with human creativity. However, there is no conclusive answer due to two reasons: there is no clear philosophical definition of creativity and AI is rapidly evolving.  

References

Devlin, E. (2019, May 2). Create a personalized poem, with the help of AI. Google. https://www.blog.google/outreach-initiatives/arts-culture/poemportraits/

Kaufman, S. B. (2014, May 12). The Philosophy of Creativity. Scientific American Blog Network. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-philosophy-of-creativity/

Miller, A. I. (2020, February 1). Machines have learned how to be creative. What does that mean for art? Salon. https://www.salon.com/2020/02/01/machines-have-learned-how-to-be-creative-what-does-that-mean-for-art/

Pearson, J. (2014, July 8). Forget Turing, the Lovelace Test Has a Better Shot at Spotting AI. Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/article/pgaany/forget-turing-the-lovelace-test-has-a-better-shot-at-spotting-ai

Plato. The Republic. (1998). The Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm

From cybernetics to posthumanism: Biological humans vs synthetic machines

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Cyberspace, cybersecurity, cyberinfrastructure and cyborg are some of the most popular words in modern vocabulary. If we look up the etymology of the prefix cyber, it is an abbreviation of cybernetics, which in turn traces its roots back to a Greek word “kybernētēs” that means steersman, governor or pilot. In the mid XX century cybernetics emerged as a transdisciplinary scientific approach, which applies to engineering and computer science, as well as to philosophy and psychology. One of its many definitions is that cybernetics is “the study of systems of any nature which are capable of receiving, storing, and processing information so as to use it for control” (Umpleby, 1982). Since its first public introduction, cybernetics paved a new path of research comparing human mind and computer machines. Over the decades, this line of inquiry has evolved and gained new layers as both the computer and cognitive sciences have advanced and reached new frontiers. By now there is a substantial scientific literature, which argues that in the near future we will be able to upload human mind onto computers, the line between biological human and synthetic machine will dissolve, and humans will no longer be identified by their physical bodies.

Modern cybernetics emerged in the post-World War II period, as a result of the Macy Conferences, but first scholarly works comparing humans to machines go back to the philosophers of the French Enlightenment in the 18th century. For example, in 1748 Julien Offray de La Mettrie published the book “Man a Machine”, where, as the title suggests, he argued that humans are basically machines. However, neither La Mettrie, nor his like-minded contemporaries such as Pierre Cabanis, and Baron d’Holbach had the depth and breadth of knowledge that the scientists attending Macy’s conferences had. Held in New York between 1941 and 1960, Macy Conferences aimed to stimulate a cross-disciplinary scientific discussion. The conferences were attended by the most influential scientists of the century including physicists John von Neumann and Heinz von Foerster, mathematicians Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon, neurophysiologists Warren McCulloch and John Young, anthropologist Margaret Mead, psychologist Heinrich Klüver and psychiatrist Ross Ashby, sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld, ecologist George Hutchinson, among many others. This created a rare opportunity for the emergence of a transdisciplinary concept like cybernetics.  

Norbert Wiener first introduced the cybernetics to general public in 1948 in his seminal book “Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.” Wiener was a child a prodigy, who earned his BA in mathematics at the age of 14 and enrolled in graduate studies in zoology at Harvard, but a year later transferred to Cornell, where he completed a graduate program in philosophy by the age of 17. This background explains how in his research Weiner is able to intertwine mathematical formulas with philosophical ideas. His first book on Cybernetics includes chapters “Computing Machines and the Nervous System”, “Cybernetics and Psychopathology”, “On Learning and Self-Reproducing Machines”, where one of the underlying themes is the comparison of human mind and computing machines. For example, Wiener writes that “a very important function of the nervous system, and, as we have said, a function equally in demand for computing machines, is that of memory, the ability to preserve the results of past operations use in the future” (Wiener, p. 121).

Another giant in the field of cybernetics is Ross Ashby, whose books “Introduction to cybernetics” published in 1956 and “Design of a Brain” from 1960, made him one of the most influential voices in the field of cybernetics. Psychiatrist by profession, Ashby analyzed the human mind as a complex system, and proposed to simplify it to well-defined constraints, rules and algorithms that shape our thinking and behavior. Ashby believed that cybernetics lifted the mystery of “brain and its higher functions” (Ashby, R. Mechanisms of Intelligence, p. 334) and that if properly taught future scientists will be able to “to demonstrate that the science of brain-like mechanisms is essentially clear, practical and useful” (Ashby, R. Mechanisms of Intelligence, p. 334).

From the perspective of cybernetics human mind is a complex system, that receives, stores, and processes information, which makes it essentially similar to a computing machine. The main issue is to find the right code and build a machine that is powerful enough. In many ways, the computational power of modern artificial intelligence can surpass that of a human brain, but can it replace the human mind completely is another question. One of the most outspoken scholars, who argues that computers can only simulate certain functions of a human brain, but never replace it entirely is John Searle (Searle, 1980). Searle is the author of the well-known thought experiment Chinese Room Argument. Searle imagines himself alone in a room, where he is supplied with a string of Chinese characters and numerals under the door and expected to answer queries in Chinese language, even though he does not speak the language. Searle says that with the help of a rule book (with the right code in case of machines), he could produce the right answers to the questions, but yet not understand a word of it (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Searle’s famous proposition is that a computer can learn the syntax but it is not sufficient for semantic content.

Katherine Hayles took this debate to a whole new level in her book “How we became post-human,” where she suggests that not only computers have consciousness, but we can upload a human consciousness onto a machine. She builds on the findings of the cyberneticians, to propose that we are the information we have constructed and our body is just a prosthesis that stores and processes that information. According to Hayles, the creation of cyborgs “as a technological artifact and cultural icon” in the post-World War II years, is not a coincidence, but a sign of the direction we are heading to. Hayles proposes that we are already in the middle of a historical process that is transforming the conventional definition of human to a new construct called the post-human (Hayles, p. 2).  

Hayles offers 4 characteristics for her definition of post-human: first, it privileges “information pattern over material instantiation”; second, it identifies the human solely with the consciousness; third, our physical body is “the original prosthesis we all learn to manipulate”; fourth, there are no fundamental differences between physical existence and computer simulation, “cybernetic mechanism and biological organism” (Hayles p. 2-3). Basically, Hayles argues that an individual is not a physical body, but a cloud of information that could be transferred from one prosthesis to another. Hayles, cites a poignant quote from the influential study of the relation between humanism and anorexia by Gillian Brown, “you make out of your body your very own kingdom where you are the tyrant, the absolute dictator” (Hayles, p. 5). 

Post-humanism has a different meaning in social philosophy, but the definition of a cyborg-like posthuman emerged shortly after the invention of cybernetics. Around the 1960’s a new philosophical movement emerged, called transhumanism, which represents the people, who firmly believe in the coming of a posthuman and identify themselves as transitional between human and posthuman. Today, most influential transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, Vernor Vinge, believe that sometime between 2030s and 2040s, humanity will reach the point of technological singularity, when humans will no longer be able to either control or contain the artificial intelligence. They believe machines will outsmart humans, and then build even smarter machines. For example, Kurzweil writes that beyond that point of singularity, we, the humans, will be able to scan our brains and upload them onto a computer, and thus Human Body Version 3.0 will emerge. Human 3.0 will be able to transfer from one body to another, and will not be constrained by biological weaknesses characteristic to humans of our time. According to Kurzweil individuals will be compelled to upgrade to 3.0, in order not to lose in competition either to machines or other humans (Kuzweil, p. 310).

From this perspective of post-humanists and transhumanists the information stored in human mind captures the entirety of our consciousness and it is possible to separate the consciousness from physical body. This is a contentious topic that relates to the centuries old mind-body problem in philosophy. One of the earliest and most influential thinkers who discussed this subject is 17th century French philosopher Renee Descartes, who rejected Aristotelian school of thought that all knowledge comes from our sensory experiences and started his philosophical investigation with external world skepticism (Fieser, 2020). Some observers compare Descartes to the protagonist of the Matrix film series Neo, for this form of methodological skepticism, which is called Cartesian doubt in philosophy.

Descartes proposed that an evil demon could be misleading us, so we cannot blindly trust our sensory experiences. However, then Descartes concluded that, if he can doubt the world around him, question the potentially evil plot, then he can think and has an independent mind. Descartes famously proclaimed “I doubt therefore I think, I think therefore I exist” and developed on this premise to achieve that consciousness is distinct from the body and can exist on its own. Descartes was a devout Christian, who believed only the soul can be conscious neither the physical body nor brain. It is hard to tell now, whether Descartes would agree that the conscious soul would follow the memory, if it is ever possible to transfer all the information on human mind onto a machine.

Conversely, scholars like John Searle believe that “conscious states are entirely caused by lower-level neurobiological processes in the brain” and “they have absolutely no life of their own” (Searle, Mind: A brief Introduction. P. 113).  Searle argues that consciousness is a purely biological phenomenon, the same as “photosynthesis or digestion” (Searle, Theory of mind and Darwin’s legacy). From this perspective, even if you have the most powerful computers, you cannot separate the consciousness from physical body, since the first cannot exist without the latter.

Conclusion

Human mind is a very complex system and claims that we will be able to upload our consciousness onto machines are open to discussion. However, with regards to the dawn of artificial intelligence and its impact on our collective identity as human species, there are certain trends that are easily observable and undeniable.

First, as transhumanists like to emphasize, technology is developing very rapidly. Moore’s law, which basically proposed that the computing power you could fit in a certain device (number of transistors in a circuit) would double every 2 years (initially it was every 1 year), has proven true for more than 50 years now. Second, we are growing increasingly dependent on technology. It is already turning into a basic necessity both for our mundane daily lives and professional industries. An average cell phone user touches his/her phone 2617 times a day (Lee). A 2019 study demonstrated that algorithms are responsible for 92% of trade in the Forex market (Kissel). Third, evolution is a scientific fact. It might be hard to imagine that our species could change, but in the big scheme of things evolution is inevitability, not just a possibility.

Given these trends, I also believe that fundamental changes are in the making for our species. Changes so big that they will transform our very essence as a species. However, I think these changes will take a little more time than one or two decades. Also, I find it plausible that in that future, it will be possible to scan a human mind and upload it onto a computer, but I do not think that will be the same person. At best it will be a very good clone that will not be able to associate with the human feelings of its original copy.

References

Ashby, R. (1960). Design of a Brain.  Butler and Tanner LTD

Ashby, R., & Conant, R. (1981). Mechanisms of Intelligence. Intersystem Publications. http://www.rossashby.info/Ashby-Mechanisms_of_intelligence.pdf

Bell, L. (2016, August 28). What is Moore’s Law? WIRED explains the theory that has defined the tech industry. WIRED UK. https://www.wired.co.uk/article/wired-explains-moores-law

Bostrom, N. (2005). A History of Transhuman Thought. Journal of Evolution and Technology, 14(1). https://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/history.pdf

Dembski, W. A. (1999, October 1). Are We Spiritual Machines? | William A. Dembski. First Things. https://www.firstthings.com/article/1999/10/are-we-spiritual-machines

Descartes, R. (2021). Discourse on the Method Annotated. Independently published.

                        His famous work, where he proclaims Cogito, ergo sum.

Descartes, R., & Cress, D. A. (1993). Meditations on First Philosophy (Hackett Classics) (3rd ed.). Hackett Publishing Company.

Fieser, J. (2020, June 1). The History of Philosophy: A Short Survey. The University of Tennessee at Martin. https://www.utm.edu/staff/jfieser/class/110/8-empiricism.htm

Kissell, Robert. (2020, September 18). Algorithmic Trading Methods. Academic Press

Hayles, N. K. (1999). How We Became Posthuman. The University of Chicago Press.

Huxley, J. (1942). Evolution. The Modern Synthesis. London: George Alien & Unwin Ltd.

Keeling, D. M. and Lehman M. N. (2018, April 26). Posthumanism. Oxford Research Encyclopedias.

Kurzweil, R. (2006). The Singularity is Near. Penguin Books

Moravec, H. (1988). Mind Children: The future of Robot and Human Intelligence. Harvard University Press 

Naftulin, J. (2016, July 14). Here’s how many times we touch our phones every day. Business Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/dscout-research-people-touch-cell-phones-2617-times-a-day-2016-7

Rushkoff, D. (2019). Team Human. W. Norton & Company

Searle, J. (2013, June 18). Theory of mind and Darwin’s legacy. PNAS. https://www.pnas.org/content/110/Supplement_2/10343

Searle, J. R. (2005). Mind: A Brief Introduction (Fundamentals of Philosophy Series) (Illustrated ed.). Oxford University Press.

Searle, J. R. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3(3), 417–424. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x00005756

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The Chinese Room Argument. (2020, February 20). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

Umpleby, S. (1982). Definitions of Cybernetics. American Society for Cybernetics. https://asc-cybernetics.org/definitions/

Weiss, D. M. (1999). Posthuman Pleasures: Review of N. Katherine Hayles’ How We Became Posthuman. University of Chicago Press. https://jcrt.org/archives/01.3/weiss.shtml

Wiener, N. (1968). Cybernetics: or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine by Wiener (1961) Paperback (2nd Revised edition). MIT Press.

Privacy Regulations: EU’s GDPR vs China’s PIPL

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Published by Georgetown University Gnovis Journal

Since the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) came into force in 2018, Brussels has become a trailblazer in the field of data privacy regulation. The United States, home to the biggest tech industry in the world, does not have unifying federal legislation on privacy. So, many countries have followed the example of the EU and adopted privacy legislation similar to GDPR, which some observers call another “Brussels effect.” In August 2021, the National People’s Congress of China adopted the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), which entered into force November 1, 2021. Essentially, PIPL is quite similar to the GDPR and became another big step towards the government regulation of data handling practices in global cyberspace. This post outlines some of the main similarities and differences between the EU’s GDPR and China’s PIPL.

I. Broad Brush Strokes

GDPR was adopted in 2016 and came into force two years later, while the PIPL in China came into force only two months after it was adopted. In this regard, PIPL gives less time for data handling companies to adjust their practices and is likely to create time pressure for legal compliance. Additionally, GDPR has 11 chapters and is around 88 pages long, while China’s PIPL has 8 chapters and is only 20 pages. So, PIPL does not go into as much detail as GDPR in its provisions, but outlines general legal directives and expects the supervisory executive organizations to work on the specifics (Lee et al). The Cyberspace Administration is likely to take the leading role in supervising the implementation of the PIPL in China. In the European Union, each member state has its own Supervising Authority, which is responsible for enforcing the GDPR. For example, in Germany, it is the Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information, while in France it is the National Data Protection Authority (aka CNIL).

Both legislations have an extraterritorial reach, which means that any company, independent of its geographic location, is subject to these laws, as long as they process the data of individuals within the boundaries of the law’s jurisdiction. Neither law applies to anonymized data, which refers to any data that cannot be traced back to the individual owner. Both GDPR and PIPL impose less burden or restrictions on small businesses, but PIPL does not specify what exactly constitutes a “small-scale data handler”. GDPR identifies as a small business, companies that have less than 250 employees.

Table 1 shows different terminology used by the European and Chinese authorities, but they generally represent the same ideas. Overall, the two documents are quite similar in terms of how they define private information and the regulations they impose on data collection and processing practices.

II. Legal basis

Both documents emphasize consent as the primary legal basis for data processing. EU’s GDPR states that consent must be “freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous” (GDPR), while China’s PIPL clarifies that “consent shall be given by individuals under the precondition of full knowledge, and in a voluntary and explicit statement” (PIPL). However, in certain cases, consent is not necessary under either legislation. For example, when there is a contractual necessity. This means that if a company needs to collect and process personal information to implement a contract, where the data subject is an interested party, then it is not necessary to obtain individual consent.

GDPR also identifies legitimate interest as a legal basis for processing personal information. If the data-collecting organization has not obtained consent, and cannot show the data use is necessary for the provision of a service contract, then data collection is permissible if the data is needed for “preventing fraud, transmission of personal data within a group of undertakings for internal administrative purposes, including client and employee data; ensuring network and information security, including preventing unauthorized access to electronic communications networks and stopping damage to computer and electronic communication systems; and reporting possible criminal acts or threats to public security to a competent authority” (MacCarthy, p. 61). It is worth noting that in the specific cases of legitimate interest, the data collecting organization needs to notify the data subjects and the latter can rightfully object to it.

Chinese law does not include legitimate interest as a legal basis for data processing but has several provisions, which are not specifically mentioned in GDPR. Under Article 13 of the PIPL data collectors can skip consent, where data collection is necessary: 1) “to conduct human resources management”; 2) “to respond to sudden public health incidents”; 3) “to protect natural persons’ lives and health, or the security of their property, under emergency conditions”; 4) “other circumstances provided in laws and administrative regulations” (DigiChina). Regarding the last provision, as of today, there is no clear information as to what the “other circumstances” imply, and what the role of this clause in the law will be.

III. Automated price difference

Big data has enabled a new marketing strategy, which relies on algorithms to analyze the willingness of an individual to pay for a service or good, and offers prices individually adjusted for each customer. This approach called price discrimination or “big data swindling” is a growing public concern in China (Shazeda). So, in Article 24 of the PIPL Chinese government included a provision, which simply bans automated pricing strategies: “the transparency of the decision-making and the fairness and justice of the handling result shall be guaranteed, and they may not engage in unreasonable differential treatment of individuals in trading conditions such as trade price, etc.”

GDPR also has a provision regarding human profiling and automated decision-making, but not specifically about pricing. Article 22 of the GDPR states that “The data subject shall have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning him or her or similarly significantly affects him or her”, and offers a right to data subjects “to obtain human intervention on the part of the controller, to express his or her point of view and to contest the decision.” This means that by default GDPR does not ban automated pricing, but extends a right to data subjects to contest a price that was offered by an algorithm if they think it is worth their time and effort.

IV. Conclusion

There are more similarities and differences between the GDPR and PIPL, especially if we put them in context and compare the government structures in China and the European Union. However, outside their national realms, looking at their broader international implications these documents represent a new direction in the field of privacy regulation. In this regard, they are essentially similar as they both assume the need for unified government legislation to regulate the flow of private data. China was not the first country that followed the EU’s path and adopted national legislation on privacy, but it is the biggest. Put together, China and the EU account for almost a quarter of the internet users in the world.

References

DigiChina. (2021, October 14). Translation: Personal Information Protection Law of the People’s Republic of China (Effective Nov. 1, 2021).
https://digichina.stanford.edu/work/translation-personal-information-protection-law-of-
the-peoples-republic-of-china-effective-nov-1-2021/

Lee, A., Shi, M., & Chen, Q. (2021, October 14). Seven Major Changes in China’s Finalized Personal Information Protection Law. DigiChina.
https://digichina.stanford.edu/work/seven-major-changes-in-chinas-finalized-personal-
information-protection-law/

MacCarthy, M. (2020). “Enhanced Privacy Duties for Dominant Technology Companies.” 47 Rutgers Computer & Tech. L.J.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3656664

Shazeda, A. (2021, June 30). “Big data swindling.” AI Now Institute. Medium.
https://medium.com/a-new-ai-lexicon/a-new-ai-lexicon-81fe13991e31

SixFifty. (2021, September 2).  Privacy Laws Compared: GDPR vs PIPL. Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i08YZlS5vLU

Wolford, B. (2019, February 13). What is GDPR, the EU’s new data protection law? GDPR.Eu.
https://gdpr.eu/what-is-gdpr/

Terrorists’ Quest on the Dark Web

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Why the counter-terrorism strategies need an update?

Introduction

Two decades after the Global War on Terror was launched, the terrorist organizations that rallied around the Salafi-jihadist ideology are defeated. Their malicious plots are proactively disrupted, their most recognized leaders are eliminated and they are forced to operate from hideouts, following the defeat of the ISIS. However, the ideology is surviving by far more followers today, than in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that prompted the war on terrorism. Through effective use of the internet platforms, these terrorist organizations have recruited and indoctrinated a large number of supporters, who can operate semi-autonomously without a need for strict organizational hierarchy. In the last several years, a number of restrictions were introduced against the violent extremist content on the internet, but these measures pushed the terrorists to the dark web, where it is nearly impossible to regulate the content or monitor the data traffic, due to privacy and anonymity features. In the face of these new realities, it is high time to rethink and recalibrate the war on terrorism and allocate more resources to fighting the terrorist groups on digital platforms, especially on the dark web, which offers an unprecedented array of new opportunities for terrorist engagements. The new counter-terrorism strategy should be about chasing the terrorists on the dark corners of the internet, versus the mountains of Afghanistan or deserts of Syria.

Content:

1. Evolution of the Salafi-Jihadist movement           
2. Dark Web                                                             
3. Terrorists’ quest                                                     
4. The counter-terrorism strategies                           
5. Conclusion             

1. Evolution of the Salafi-Jihadist movement

Deaths from Terrorism fell by 15% for the fifth consecutive year to 13, 800 in 2020, according to the Global Terrorism Index report, released by the US National Consortium for “Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism” (START). ISIS is forced out of its strongholds in Iraq and Syria and retreated to hideouts. Al Qaeda has not made the news headlines in the past five years. Most recognized terrorist leaders, such as Osama Bin Laden, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Anwar al-Awlaki, were killed by the US-led anti-terrorist coalition. These are the positive results of the 20 years of the War on Terror that was launched in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in 2001. However, the problem of the Salafi-Jihadist ideology that inspires organizations like ISIS and Al Qaeda is far from resolved. According to the datasets of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, there were between 100,000 and 230, 000 Salafi-Jihadists around the world in 2018, which is several times more than in September 2001 (Jones, et al, 2018, p. 9). Their organizations have been defeated, their leaders were taken down, but the ideology survives with a lot more followers today, who are connected over the internet.

The increase in the number of supporters was paralleled with structural changes in the Salafi-Jihadist movement, which has become more decentralized and more diffuse. Jarret Brachman, a terrorism expert at the University of Maryland, wrote an analytical brief in 2014, where he suggested that as a result of innovative approaches on social media platforms global jihadist movement has achieved a critical mass of supporters, which can maintain itself without an organizational leadership. According to the expert’s view, there is a paradigm shift in the global jihadist movement, “moving away from the organization-centric model advanced by Al-Qaida, to a movement unhindered by organizational structures” (Brachman, 2014). “The global Salafi-jihadi movement was and remains more than just al Qaeda—or ISIS… it consists of individuals world­wide, some of whom have organized, who seek to destroy current Muslim societies and resurrect in their place a true Islamic society,” according to Katherine Zimmerman, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (Zimmerman, 2017). Another subject matter expert, Charles Lister of Middle East Institute, responding to the question “Where is ISIS today?” in 2018, suggests that having lost much of its territory ISIS is retreating to its virtual caliphate to recruit new members, inspire new terrorist attacks and capitalize on its past achievements and thousands of operatives in various countries (Lister, 2018).   

Al Qaeda or ISIS, the flag bearers of the Salafi-Jihadist movement, might be incapable of launching a strategic attack today, but that does not mean their movement is not a critical threat to international peace and security. The violent jihadis might project the image of medieval barbarians, but they have demonstrated advanced skills in modern technologies, which allowed them to recruit thousands of followers in all parts of the world. Many researchers studying ISIS, agree that effective online marketing tactics conditioned the initial breakthrough successes of the terrorist group. ISIS exploited social media platforms such as Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, among others, to recruit new sympathizers, collect money, and to deceive its opponents in the region by projecting the image of a more powerful organization than it really was. With more than 40 thousand tweets in a day, #AllEyesonISIS was one of the top trending hashtags on Twitter, at the time of the 2014 Mosul attack (Berger, 2015).

The United Nations estimates that more than 25,000 foreign terrorist fighters from more than 100 countries traveled to Syria and Iraq, between 2011 and 2015, the heydays of the ISIS (United Nations Security Council). The online propaganda of the terrorist organizations did not just recruit foot-soldiers to join the war in the Middle East, but also brainwashed people vulnerable to radicalization to launch attacks in their home cities and guided them about technical know-how. For example, Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek migrant in the United States, who killed 8 people in New York City in 2017 by driving a truck into the crowd, was inspired by the Islamic State propaganda videos found on his phone. The New York Police Department revealed that Saipov followed the instructions in the online propaganda materials of the terrorist group to the letter (Mueller, et al, 2017). The Tsarnaev brothers from the North Caucasus who carried out the 2013 Boston bombings, followed the instructions of an article titled “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom”, published in the online magazine of Al Qaeda “Inspire” (Khan, 2013). During 2014-2016, ISIS published numerous online magazines for propaganda purposes, including Istok (in Russian), Konstantiniyye (in Turkish), Dar al-Islam (in French), Dabiq, and Rumiya (multiple languages).

Initially, giant tech companies were reluctant to intervene and block the extremist content emphasizing the “right to freedom of expression”, but the scale and consequences of the terrorists’ online campaigns convinced them to take action. On February 2016, Twitter revealed that in the past six months it suspended 125, 000 accounts associated with the Islamic State, adding that “there is no “magic algorithm” for identifying terrorist content on the internet, so global online platforms are forced to make challenging judgement calls based on very limited information and guidance” (Twitter Inc. 2016). Other big tech companies took similar actions, but content moderation is not as simple as it may sound. Google employees, who watch 4-5 hours of extremist videos per day to moderate content on Youtube, have reported PTSD, chronic anxiety, and other long-term mental issues (Newton 2019). Terrorists know that their communications could be monitored and deliberately adjust their public messages, to avoid either artificial or human sensors on social media. However, big tech companies have increased the labor force and engineering resources devoted to content moderation and it is paying off. Terrorists and violent extremists are a lot more restricted on the internet today than they were five years ago. Subsequently, they rely more and more on the Dark web, which offers less control and more space for maneuvering.

2. Dark Web

Now, let us clarify what the Dark Web is and what it is not, since there are many popular misconceptions. Some people refer to is as a darknet, which is correct. However, dark web is often used interchangeably with deep web, which is a mistake. Deep web constitutes all the data on the world wide web that you cannot access through regular search engines. For example, all the data that is publicly available through a google search is part of the “surface web” or “Clearnet”, which are synonyms. Everything else is part of the deep web. All the password-protected information, such as email contents, bank account or company intranet are all considered part of the deep web, which accounts for more than 95% of the information on the internet. Most of us use the deep web regularly, maybe without even knowing. Dark web is only a tiny part on of the deep web that was initially created by the US Government for secure online communication.

In the mid 1990’s, a mathematician and two computer scientists, working for a project funded by the US Navy, wrote a software called onion routing that conceals the privacy of the internet user with many layers of protection (which explains the name choice onion). Since 2004, The Onion Routing (TOR), has become a free and open-source software, so anyone, can download, use, edit, improve and share the program. In a short period of time, it became a popular software among netizens who like anonymity and privacy. According to the TOR project statistics, in the period of January- February 2021, an average of 2.5 million users per day accessed the internet directly via TOR (The TOR Project).

While the initial purpose of TOR was a secure line of communication for government agencies, afterward it became a popular platform among civil rights activists, and, unfortunately, criminals for illicit engagements online. It has turned into a contentious topic in the public discourse of security vs freedom of expression. Today, the TOR Project is supported with funding from the “U.S. Department of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor”, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Media Democracy Fund, among many other organizations and thousands of individual donors. Many famous news outlets, such the New York Times, Deutsche Welle, the Guardian have .onion websites for informants, who would like to make a pitch, but remain incognito. Unlike .com, .org, .net etc. on surface web, domains on TOR end in .onion.

According to various estimates, the number of .onion websites ranges between 55 and 80 thousand, but only around 15% of them are active (Stone, 2020). Dark web is a relatively new phenomenon and there is a limited number of researches in this area. Moreover, the secretive nature of the data traffic on the dark web creates additional challenges for research. One of the insightful studies was conducted by Dr. Gareth Owen from the University of Portsmouth, who observed the traffic on the Darknet over six months in 2014. Dr. Gareth concluded that illicit websites and markets accounted for more than 80% of the data traffic on the dark web, even though the majority of the websites on it can be classified as legal (Greenberg, 2017).

There are several other software tools, like I2P, Freenet, among others, to access the dark web, but TOR takes up the lion’s share of the market.“Traffic to hidden services on Tor represents approximately 1.5% of all the data passing across the internet on any given day” (Bausch, 2015).It is a big number and makes an even bigger difference. The dark web is a very challenging turf for the law enforcement to fight against illegal enterprises, because the Onion routing shields the privacy of its users.That is exactly the reason it has become an attractive platform for terrorists and violent extremists.Imagine a scenario, where law enforcement agencies have to detain criminals, who have no identity, who speak their own encrypted language and who can make payments with their own currency without a trace. That is the opportunity that the dark web presents to the terrorist groups.

3. Terrorists’ quest

Terrorists have been using the dark web for as long as it has been available to the general public. However, there have been two important changes in the past several years that made the dark web even more attractive for terrorist groups: 1. Shrinking space for terrorist content on the surface web; 2. New opportunities on the dark web. Previously they relied on the dark web mainly for communication and coordination purposes. However, since the invention of the crypto-currencies and booming illicit darknet markets they face a whole new array of opportunities that did not exist previously. They can fundraise money, sell and purchase drugs, hacker services, small arms and even chemical weapons.

Terrorists feel the restrictions on the surface web not only because of the counter-measures by tech companies and law enforcement agencies, but also due to cyber-attacks from independent hacker groups. One of the pivoting points in the terrorists’ transition to the dark web was the aftermath of the November 2015 Paris attacks, when terrorists backed by the Islamic State coordinated three simultaneous attacks in various parts of Paris on Friday, November 13, 2015. The horrible attacks that took the lives of 130 people led to the outrage of a hacker group called Anonymous, an international decentralized group of hacktivists (activist hackers), who announced, November 14, that they are launching their biggest operation ever against ISIS. The same day Al-Hayat Media Center, the media wing of ISIS, shared through forums and its Twitter and Telegram channels a new “.onion” domain, a mirror of ISIS propaganda site on the darknet, adding that it is not able to maintain its website on the surface web. This was one of the posts on ISIS affiliated Telegram channels that was viewed by 7,629 followers of the channel:

“Due to severe constraints imposed on the #Caliphate_Publications [Isdarat Releases] website, any new domain is deleted after being posted.
We announce the launch of the website for “dark web.”
*It will work for the Tor users and the normal users.
Link for the Tor users: http://isdratetp4donyfy.onion” (INSITE Blog). 

This was not the beginning of the war between Anonymous and ISIS, but only of a new major operation. By November 13, 2015, the hacktivists were already claiming close to 149 000 Islamic State-linked websites dismantled and roughly 101, 000 Twitter accounts and 5900 propaganda videos flagged (Brooking, 2019). In December 2015, “al-Aqsa IT Team” affiliated with Al-Qaeda distributed a manual among its networks “Tor Browser Security Guidelines”, to ensure online anonymity (Weimann, 2016). 

An even more important turning point for terrorist engagements on the dark web was the introduction of Bitcoin, digital currency, which is the “first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network that is powered by its users with no central authority or middlemen” according to the Bitcoin Foundation established in 2012. Bitcoin has been around since 2009, following the international banking crisis of 2008, but it started gaining traction after 2011 (Lopatto, 2019). The main feature of bitcoin is that it keeps all transactions private, “names of buyers and sellers are never revealed – only their wallet IDs” (Yellin, et al, 2013). This has made bitcoin the currency of choice for illicit activities online. A number of other cryptocurrencies have emerged in the last several years: Ethereum, Litecoin, Cardano among many others. However, Bitcoin is the largest shareholder in the crypto market. The exchange rate of crypto-currencies is very unstable, but as of spring 2022 the overall value of the crypto-market fluctuates around two trillion dollars.

The anonymous currency factor has stimulated the resurgence of black-markets in the darknet, where hackers and drug dealers were even offering Black Friday deals in 2020 (Gilbert, 2018). According to the Chainalysis 2021 Crypto Crime Report, $10 billion worth of bitcoins were spent on criminal activities in 2020, while in 2019 that number was roughly $21.4 billion (Chainalysis Team). The darknet markets, fueled by cryptocurrencies have opened a new breathing line to money launderers, drug dealers, criminal hackers, human traffickers, weapons dealers and several other illicit ventures. Bill Conner, CEO of SonicWall cybersecurity company writes that “the world of cybercrime has evolved from a hacker hobby into a capitalist market”, with hacker products such as, ransomware as a service (RaaS), malware-as-a-service and phishing-as-a-service (Conner, 2018). According to one report, full credit card details including associated data costs $12-20 on the dark web, while a complete set of documents and account details allowing identity theft can be obtained for $1,500 (Gomez, 2021). RAND Europe researchers, who collected data from the dark web for a weeklong period, found 18 darknet markets that were involved in arms dealing (Paoli, et al, 2017). In the summer of 2018, a hacker sold US Military Drone Documents on the Dark Web for just 200$ (Brewster, 2018).  

This presents a whole array of unprecedented opportunities for the terrorists. Combatting terrorist financing has been a long-time challenge for law enforcement agencies. The resurgence of crypto-currencies has brought this challenge up to a new level. There are numerous reports of terrorists’ attempts to collect fundraising with bitcoins, pay for their logistical needs, or even attempts to buy Weapons of Mass Destruction.In 2016, anonline jihadist propaganda unit based in the Gaza Strip, The Ibn Taymiyya Media Center (ITMC) ran a social media fundraising campaign using bitcoins, which is the first verifiable instance of a terrorist group using bitcoin (Fanusie, 2016). In January 2017, terrorist activities of Islamist militants in Indonesia were funded through bitcoin (Zenko, 2017). According to the United States Department of Justice, in the beginning of 2019, the al-Qassam Brigades posted a call on its social media page for bitcoin donations to fund its campaign of terror, where the group also “boasted that bitcoin donations were untraceable and would be used for violent causes” (The Department of Justice).    

There have also been numerous warnings and alerts from high-level state officials and subject matter experts on what these cryptocurrencies could be used for in the dark web. In April 2016, speaking to a group of 50 heads of state and foreign ministers in Washington, D. C. President Obama described how a terrorist group had bought isotopes through brokers on the Dark Web (Weimann, 2016). At a meeting of the UN Security Council June 28, 2017, U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs Izumi Nakamitsu said that “the global reach and anonymity of the dark web provides non-state actors with new marketplaces to acquire dual-use equipment and materials”, while a senior official with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Joseph Ballard, added that “the use by non-state actors of chemical weapons is no longer a threat, but a chilling reality” (Besheer, 2017).

4. The counter-terrorism strategies  

The United Nations Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy was adopted in 2006, but it has been reviewed several times to adjust it to the changing security landscape. However, the latest review from 2018 makes no reference to the dark web. The 17-page document uses the word “internet” four times but does not capture the complexity of the threats posed by the darknet markets. The most notable reference to the internet is that the UN General Assembly “expresses concern at the increasing use, in a globalized society, by terrorists and their supporters, of information and communications technologies, in particular the Internet and other media, and the use of such technologies to commit, incite, recruit for, fund or plan terrorist acts” (United Nations General Assembly, 2018).  

The latest US National Strategy for Combatting Terrorism was adopted in 2018, but it has no mention of the “dark web”. The word internet is used only twice in the 25-page document and that is in the context of “terrorist propaganda”: “They take advantage of technology, such as the Internet and encrypted communications, to promote their malicious goals and spread their violent ideologies” (The United States, 2018). There is only one reference to the “dark web” in the Council of Europe Counter-Terrorism Strategy (2018-2022), which is a good step forward, but not enough to highlight the importance of the issue:

As such, it could be of benefit to member States to examine and share effective practices to monitor, survey, disrupt and interdict opportunistic collaboration between organised crime and terrorist actors… including where such activities take place on the internet and the so-called “dark web” (Council of Europe).

5. Conclusion

All this demonstrates that at the strategic level the approaches to counter-terrorism have not been adequately calibrated. Internet and dark web play an essential role for terrorist activities today. That means these digital platforms should be in the center stage of the counter-terrorism strategies, but they are not. The war on terror has achieved many tangible successes and check-marked most of its strategic objectives. The anti-terrorist coalition was able to hit and destroy the center of mass of the Salafi-Jihadist movement that involves terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda and ISIS. However, the violent-jihadist movement was able not only to survive but even grow in numbers. This was possible largely due to the role of the internet. In recent years, terrorists have found completely new prospects on the dark web, enabling their malicious plans and activities. These developments require a revised counter-terrorism strategy that will put forth new targets and objectives. Tackling terrorist engagements on the internet and especially dark web should be top priorities.

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Russian Expectations for Post-Sanctions Iran

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by Huseyn Panahov | Feb 19, 2016

Published by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Also available العربية

Joint support of Basher al-Assad’s regime has highlighted Moscow and Tehran’s developing political alliance. In contrast, the level of economic cooperation between the two states has historically been very modest: 2014 trade between the two countries amounted to $1.68 billion and was just 0.2% of all Russian foreign trade. Yet now that Iran’s nuclear sanctions have been lifted and Russia has lost many of its trade partners, Moscow is demonstrating a markedly increased interest in economic cooperation with Tehran.

One element driving this interest is Russia’s increasingly restricted trade options in the past few years. Putin’s 2014 military intervention in Ukraine resulted in trade restrictions between Russia and a substantial list of countries that included the European Union, the United States, Japan, Canada, Norway, and Australia. Despite the ensuing economic recession in Russia and the harmful drop in oil prices, the Kremlin also recently cut off economic relations with historic trade partners Ukraine and Turkey. Instead, Russia has begun to offer special trade privileges to Iran.

After meeting with his Iranian counterpart, the Russian minister of agriculture emphasized this new economic interest, stating that, “We need to establish modern logistics [for transportation] of Iranian goods to Russia, to create a ‘green corridor’ on the Russian border for Iranian goods and to ease customs formalities to speed up clearance of Iranian cargoes.” Iranian businessmen may even begin to receive the same tariff-free privileges that are offered to the members of the Kremlin-backed Eurasian Customs Union.

In another effort to foster an economic relationship, Russia organized the largest business exhibition in the history of the countries’ bilateral relations during December 2015. Representatives from over eighty leading Russian companies from defense, energy, and other industries attended the conference in Iran. According to Iranian Press TV, Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak attended the event and referred to Tehran as Moscow’s “most important economic and trade partner,” adding that the two countries have devised a new trade bundle worth $35 to $40 billion.

The largest element of this package is the agreement that the Russian company Rosatom will construct a new nuclear power plant in Bushehr, Iran, an agreement worth $11 billion. The package also reportedly includes Russian produced satellite-operation equipment and Sukhoi-100 passenger jets, which are jointly worth $21 billion.

A significant part of other recent economic agreements between the two states have related to the defense sector. Months before the nuclear agreement was signed, Moscow resumed its 2007 agreement to deliver five S-300 missile systems to Iran. It had previously reneged on this agreement after the adoption of the United Nations Security Council arms embargo against Iran in 2010. Iran is also planning to purchase Russian Sukhoi-30 fighter jets, which are similar to the American F-15E fighter bomber.

However, the current spate of economic activity between the two states belies the considerable friction that remains between the two countries. When Moscow withheld delivery of the S-300 systems, Tehran filed a lawsuit in International Court against Russia. Iran has agreed to drop the case, but only after Russia delivers the first regiment of the missile systems. Iran has also lost interest in purchasing Russian T90 battle tanks, since according to Ground Force Commander Ahmad Reza Pourdastan, “We were once interested in buying the Russian tanks. But since we can manufacture similar models within the country and we plan to do so in the near future, the deal is now off.”

Relations are further hindered by the fact that conservative and traditionalist Iranian politicians do not consider Russia to be a partner that can be trusted. Iran has a long track record of attacking foreign embassies on its soil, but the Russian diplomatic mission to Tehran is the only one that has been attacked multiple times. An angry mob first attacked the Russian embassy in Tehran in response to the Turkmenchay treaty that ended Russo-Persian war of 1826-1828.  The mob killed the ambassador, who played a key role in negotiating the treaty that had conceded control over the South Caucasus from Persian to the Russian empire. Even today, many Iranians use the term Turkmenchay Treaty to refer to an unfair settlement.

Iranians also attacked the Soviet embassy over a century later in 1988 during the Iran-Iraq war, responding to the Soviet army provision of missiles to Saddam Hussein. Moreover, Iran’s religious leaders found the communists’ atheistic views incompatible with Islam. Soviet intervention in Afghanistan only made matters worse, since the move drove almost a million Afghan refugees to relocate to Iran.

It took the collapse of the Soviet Union for comparatively warm relations to develop between Moscow and Tehran. Shared political animosity against the West and joint support for Assad has brought Russia and Iran closer together. Russia also played a constructive role during Iran’s nuclear negotiations, making no attempts to compromise the negotiation process and helping Iran facilitate the terms of the agreement. On  December 28,  the Russian ship Mikhail Dudin carried 11,000 kilograms of low-enriched uranium material from Iran to Russia via Caspian Sea in order to fulfill one of the key provisions of the nuclear agreement, since Iran could not dilute the uranium domestically. In turn, sanctions relief made Iran a more attractive economic partner, as Iran received $56 billion in unfrozen foreign assets and set the country on a new path towards economic rehabilitation.

Now, Russia wants to convert its recently developed political friendship with Iran into economic benefits. An expert on Iran at the Moscow-based PIR Center think tank, Andrei Baklitskly, explained that, “There is a feeling in Russia that, “We’ve been your friends for all this time and now you should give something to your friends.” However, other experts believe that Russia has already missed its opportunity for a sturdy economic partnership. Prominent Russian expert on Iran Rajab Safarov commented that, “Prior to sanctions relief Russia could be a real queen in Iran, since at the time there was no one else and Iranians were ready to let Russians into their projects without competition.” Now, Iranians may be more discerning since their diplomatic and economic options have widened.

Many Russian economists have also expressed concerns over Iran’s return to the international energy market and its consequences for Russia, a sector where Russia and Iran are natural competitors. Currently, Russia exports around 3.5 million barrels of oil per day to Europe and 988,000 barrels to China. Under sanctions, Iran supplied 992,000 barrels to China and none to Europe, but both numbers are expected to increase substantially through Iran’s post-sanctions oil exports. Considering that neither Europe nor China’s energy market is likely to grow significantly in the near future, Iran’s reentry into the field will shrink Russian shares in both markets.

Tehran has offered a $6.55 discount on oil for European customers in an attempt to regain its share of the market. And in China, Iran has already made considerable headway: during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s official visit to Iran, both sides agreed to increase the bilateral trade tenfold to $600 billion in the next decade. Right after, President Rouhani left for a four-day tour of Europe, where he spoke about a “New Spring” in the relations with the European Union. President Rouhani returned to Iran with dozens of new contracts and memorandums that will help promote Iran’s return to the international market.

Between signing of the JCPOA in July 2015 and lifting of the sanctions in January 2016, Moscow had a special window of opportunity to gain economic benefits from its politico-military friendship with Tehran that may bear fruit in the future. But in return, Russia must now prepare itself for competition: Russia will compete with Iran in the international energy markets while also competing with European, Chinese, and American investors for a slice of the newly opened Iranian market. This will be an especially challenging task in light of the domestic economic challenges that Russia currently faces, but the payoff may be worth it.

Will Iran Keep Its Promises?

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by Huseyn Panahov | 2016, February 02

Published on the The Diplomat magazine

When the P5+1 struck a deal with Iran on its nuclear program in July 2015, general expectations were that the sanctions could be lifted as early as spring 2016. Within the agreed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iranian Foreign Ministry signed several obligations that needed time for legislative approval and final implementation. However, on January 16, the IAEA experts reported that Iran had already fulfilled all of its obligations; the sanctions were lifted the same day. This was a breakthrough for the Rouhani administration, which needed to complete the deal before elections slated for late this month. The elections will be crucial to determining whether Iran will adhere to the commitments it made under the deal.

The JCPOA does not envisage lifting all sanctions against Tehran, only those tied to the nuclear enrichment program. As noted in the White House summary of the agreement “U.S. statutory sanctions focused on Iran’s support for terrorism, human rights abuses, and missile activities will remain in effect and continue to be enforced.” That means the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which bears the primary responsibility for the crackdown on civil society groups in Iran and supports military proxies across the Middle East, will largely remain under the sanctions.

The IRGC, also known as Pasdaran, was established following Iran’s 1979 Revolution, and was charged with protecting the Islamic system of governance. Nowadays, through its Special Forces branch, known as the Quds Force, the IRGC supports militant groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis forces in Yemen and Shiite militias in Iraq. Pasdaran is also the main benefactor of the Assad regime in Syria.

Besides the Special Forces branch, ground, aerospace and naval forces, as well as a 90,000-strong militia, IRGC also owns much of the business sector in Iran. Considering that many high-level officials are former officers of the Revolutionary Guard Corps and through control of major news outlets in Iran (such as Fars News and Tasnim), Pasdaran exerts extensive influence over Iran’s politics. Generally, senior officials affiliated with the IRGC are known as hardliners, opposed to any kind of foreign policy compromise.

In the case of the nuclear deal, the IRGC had several pragmatic reasons to oppose it. First, the nuclear development program in Iran was under the control of the Revolutionary Guards, and it gave them a special edge in Iranian politics. Now they had to give up much of their hard earned achievements: all of the medium-enriched uranium, and 98% of the low-enriched uranium stockpile.

Second, under the sanctions regime the IRGC made billions of dollars on the black markets of Iran. In a 2010 article for Newsweek, Iranian reporter, Babak Dehghanpisheh writes that “the trouble with sanctions is that they squeeze out legitimate businesses and leave the field wide open for the IRGC.” He adds that “the size of Iran’s smuggling industry has been estimated at $12 billion a year, and the IRGC is believed to control much, if not all, of it.”

Third, many of the senior officers and affiliated businesses of the Pasdaran will remain under the sanctions. And last, but not least, even the IRGC entities that do not fall under the sanctions and are engaged in legal businesses in Iran will now have to compete with foreign companies. During the sanctions Revolutionary Guards earned huge revenues by monopolizing almost all major industries in Iran: energy, construction, car manufacturing and telecommunications. So, while repealing the nuclear sanctions will contribute to the overall development of Iran, they will diminish the relative power of the Pasdaran within the country.

That’s why the reformists in Iran, led by President Hassan Rouhani, had to work very hard to avoid the IRGC blocking of the nuclear deal. During his address to the 21st National Assembly of IRGC commanders in September 2015, Rouhani stressed the need for national unity and said that “Today the enemy is not only the Zionists, the Americans and terrorists, but today the enemy is also dust [pollution], unemployment, recession, inflation and loosening of morals and faith in society, which are all dangerous.” Nonetheless, approval of the nuclear deal by the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was the only reason IRGC was unable to block it.

The Revolutionary Guards are directly subordinate to the Supreme Leader, whose decision proved vital for the implementation of the agreement. However, in their own way, the IRGC commanders have still tried to compromise the deal. On October 8, 2015, five days before the Iranian parliament voted on the nuclear agreement, the IRGC Commander, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, made a public statement warning about a secret U.S. plot. He claimed that “the adoption of the nuclear deal by the Iranian parliament would create a “new atmosphere” that would give Iran’s external and internal enemies more fuel to lead the country away from revolutionary ideals.”

On October 10, the IRGC test-fired a ballistic guided missile, drawing condemnation in the international media. Yet, on October 13, the Iranian Parliament passed the nuclear deal, following the approval of the U.S. Congress a month earlier. It is also hardly a coincidence that a month before Congress was to vote on the nuclear agreement, the Revolutionary Guards announced plans to hold “huge ballistic missile exercises.” The news certainly helped to stir debate in Congress and gave fuel to the arguments of those who opposed the deal.

To date, the IRGC’s efforts to derail the deal have backfired, because a day after the nuclear sanctions were lifted, the U.S. Treasury imposed new sanctions targeting 11 companies and individuals involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program. Meanwhile, the nuclear deal is a loss for the Revolutionary Guards of the Iran, though it’s a major victory for the country as a whole.

It was essential that Rouhani implement the deal before the upcoming elections: This month Iranians will be voting for seats in two major government institutions: parliament and the Assembly of Experts (the supreme council of clerics). An intense power struggle is underway between the reformists and hardliners over the seats in these bodies. On January 21, Iranian reformists called on the Guardian’s Council of Iran to reverse its decision disqualifying 99 percent of the moderate candidates from running for the parliament.

The Assembly of Experts are elected for eight years, and will have the authority to select a successor to the 76-year-old Supreme Leader, in case the latter steps down or is unable to fulfill his duties due to ill health. In short, this month’s elections will largely determine whether Iran will adhere to the commitments it made to the P5+1.

Where Does the Caspian Sea Figure in Russia’s Strategic Calculus?

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by Huseyn Panahov | 2015, Oct 23

Published on Eurasianet.org

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced in early October that Russian warships in the Caspian Sea launched 26 missiles against targets in Syria. The revelation caught Western analysts off guard, and demonstrated that the Kremlin has developed in recent years a significantly enhanced ability to project force.
 
According to Russian media reports, ships belonging to the Caspian Flotilla fired a version of 3M14 missiles on October 7 that travelled roughly 1,500 km, hitting targets in the Syrian cities of Raqqa, Idlib and Aleppo. The strategic implications of the Caspian Flotilla’s involvement in the operation are significant.
 
Russian planners clearly meant to send a signal that would reverberate well beyond Syria’s borders: the missile strike had the tactical goal of weakening rebel elements seeking to topple Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. The strategic aim would seem much broader: intimidating governments across the Caucasus and Central Asia.
 
It is worth noting that Russia maintains a Mediterranean naval base at the Syrian port city of Tartus. But none of the 10 Russian warships believed to be operating in the Mediterranean are equipped with the Kalibr system that fires the 3M14 missiles.
 
So why are Russia’s military vessels in the Mediterranean not equipped with the country’s latest missile launching systems? One plausible explanation is that Russia’s Defense Ministry did not have enough time to deploy its most modern warships to the area. But many regional analysts believe the Kremlin’s primary motivation was a strategic desire to exhibit its improved offensive military capacity, which is the product of massive defense spending in recent years.
 
According to Western media reports, Russian involvement in the Syrian conflict was brokered by Qassem Soleimani, a top commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, during his visit to Moscow in July 2014. Following that visit, Russia proceeded rapidly to transform an airfield in Latakia, Syria, into its operational hub for military actions there. Russia had plenty of time, then, to either equip its naval ships at Tartus with Kalibr missile systems, or deploy them at the Latakia airbase. It seems fairly clear that Russian defense planners opted not to.
 
It would have made tactical sense to deploy Kalibr systems to either Tartus or Latakia. The distance from either of those spots to intended targets inside Syria is around 300 kilometers, a much shorter distance than a Caspian Sea-based launch.
 
There is also the matter of cost. Russia could have launched shorter-range missiles from Tartus or Latakia, or tried to achieve the same result with tactical bomber raids. Either option would have had a cheaper price tag than the use of 3M14s. Russia has not disclosed the cost of its 3M14s, but the most analogous missile in the American arsenal is the Tomahawk, which costs around $1.5 million. While it is likely the 3M14s cost the Russian government less to produce, it is reasonable to assume that the 26 rockets launched from the Caspian Sea cost at least $15 million collectively.
 
The 3M14 missiles are believed to have a maximum range of 2,600 kilometers. By demonstrating that it can carry out a successful strike from the Caspian Sea against a distant target, Russia made every government in Central Asia and the Middle East take notice.

On a practical level, the Russian launch from the Caspian has forced at least one civil aviation change. The Kazakhstani carrier Air Astana announced it was altering the route of its Almaty-Baku flight to reduce the risk of a potential missile-related accident. The shoot-down of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine in July 2014 no doubt helped prompt Air Astana officials to take such action.
 
The political ramifications are harder to discern. Top officials in Central Asia have not publically commented on the appearance of Kalibr missile systems on the Caspian Sea.
 
Silence in this case, however, should not be construed as indifference. The show of Russian force may well have encouraged Central Asian leaders to agree to a Kremlin-backed military cooperation agreement  that was signed during a meeting of CIS leaders in Kazakhstan on October 16. At the summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned ominously that the cooperation pact was needed to contain Islamic militants in Afghanistan. “The situation [in Afghanistan] is close to becoming critical,” Putin told a news conference, adding that Islamic militants were aiming “to penetrate the Central Asian region.”
 
Regional media outlets have offered other reasons why Russia decided to launch the missiles from the Caspian Sea. Some see it as a marketing opportunity intended to make 3M14 missiles more attractive to potential foreign buyers. Others suggest it was a domestic propaganda exercise designed to reinforce popular support for the Kremlin’s massive defense expenditures amid generally hard times for the Russian economy. Yet another hypothesis attributes it to vanity: Shoigu, the defense minister, ordered up the raid to please President Putin, who celebrated his 63rd birthday on October 7, the same day as the missile strike.
 
Whatever the reason, or combination of reasons, it is clear that Russia is trying to position itself not only as a political alternative to the United States and European Union, but also as a military rival and counterweight. The main unanswered question at this point is whether Putin’s Russia has a purse large enough to successfully implement that goal.

Data explains: who’s to blame for the Syrian Crisis?

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The unfolding crisis in Syria is a subject of intense scrutiny in the global media landscape, yet its root causes remain poorly understood by the public. The narrative pushed by the Assad regime and its allies, accuses vaguely defined Western forces and distracts from the more substantive issues at play. A detailed examination of three statistical trends: demographic shifts, climate change, and growing unemployment rate, yield an evidence-based explanation for the triggers of the spiraling crisis in Syria.

Officially, the ruling party in Syria is still the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party, which came to power through a coup d’état in 1963. From an economic standpoint, the first years of the Ba’ath party rule were quite successful, due to the close ties of the socialist government with the Soviet Union. In the 1960s, Syrian GDP per capita grew 80% and then peaked during the 1970s with 336% of total GDP growth.[1] The Soviet Union became the  biggest export destination for Syrian agricultural products, oil, and minerals such as phosphate rock. 

Economic prosperity paralleled with global improvements in public health care led to a  population boom in Syria. Traditional Syrian families had 4-5 children, who were seen as extra working hands in the family farmhouses. Agriculture accounted for almost one-third of the Syrian GDP, thus many Syrians were motivated to have more children. Consequently, the population of Syria grew from 4 million in 1950 to 22 million in 2010, which turned into a heavy burden for a socialist government to accommodate, especially as the economy started to slow down.  

The number of Syrians who belong to the age group of 15-24 grew from 2.5 million in 1990 to 4,6 million in 2010, which meant that every year during this period there was a demand for 400 thousand new workplaces.[2] It was a very challenging task for the government that suffered from rampant corruption and lack of proper free-market mechanisms. The honeymoon phase of an economic model that relied mainly on extractive industries was coming to an end, but the population growth was not. Traditional and conservative Syrians look down on either using contraception or generally any attempts to limit family size.[3]

This became an especially heavy burden for the Assad regime, during the drought of 2006 – 2010 in Syria.[4] According to meteorologists the drought and high temperatures during this period were unprecedented in the recorded history of Syria, where winter rainfall decreased by at least a third. In a country where almost 90 percent of fresh water is used for agricultural harvests, such drought devastated the economy. Close to 800 000 farm households were left out of business and nearly 1,5 million Syrians migrated from agricultural regions to the cities.

In March 2011, economically devastated, and politically oppressed, but stimulated by popular revolts in the neighboring countries Syrian citizens in big cities went out on the streets to demand political and economic reforms. Unfortunately, instead of trying to address the problems of Syrian citizens, the Assad regime retaliated by shooting at its people, and the events snowballed into a Civil War from there. 

So, contrary to various narratives promoted by the ousted Assad regime and its sympathizers, the Syrian crisis is not a conspiracy plot of external forces. Syria was impacted by the global technological evolution, decentralized media space, and uprisings in the broader Middle East region. Additionally, the lack of international consensus contributed to the protraction and even escalation of the conflict. As Assad’s army continued to kill its people many countries around the world called for his resignation, but others like Russia and Iran supported the Assad regime, as they did not want to lose an ally in Damascus. However, at the bottom of it all, the root causes of the Syrian crisis are tied to domestic issues: population trends, climate factors and most importantly government mismanagement.

[1] Syria, Country Study Guide: Strategic Information and Developments. Vol. I. Washington DC: International Business Publications, 2013. p. 124

[2] Бологов, Петр. “Война на перекрестке цивилизаций. 10 причин, почему именно Сирия.” 

Slon Magazine, 18 Sept. 2015. https://slon.ru/posts/56638 

[3] Sands, Phil. “Population Surge in Syria Hampers Country’s Progress.” The National. March 6, 2011. Accessed October 1, 2015. http://www.thenational.ae/news/world/middle-east/population-surge-in-syria-hampers-countrys-progress. 

[4] “Did Climate Change Help Spark The Syrian War?” Columbia University: Earth Institute. March 2, 2015. http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/did-climate-change-help-spark-syrian-war.

NATO Needs an Emergency Council for Timely Crisis Management 

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Authored by Daniel Bennett and Huseyn Panahov

Published on the NATO Source blog of the Atlantic Council

September 24, 2015

At the 2014 NATO Summit and as a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the leaders of the Alliance agreed on a Readiness Action Plan (RAP) to improve NATO’s ability to deal with immediate security threats. The RAP includes a Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) of 3,000 – 5,000 troops that can be deployed within 2-7 days. Considering the volatile nature of the current security environment, NATO’s new plan is a timely initiative. However, the RAP leaves open a question about the decision-making mechanism that threatens to undermine its overall efficacy: who authorizes the VJTF to deploy and engage?

In other words, the RAP will enable the Alliance, at the operational level, to rapidly deploy troops in crisis situations, but it lacks the political level decision-making mechanism needed to rapidly initiate the process. Based on current rules and regulations, this decision still rests with the North Atlantic Council (NAC). The NAC is the primary decision-making body of NATO, where high-level representatives of 28 member states hold regular consultations. The NAC holds emergency meetings on occasion, including consultations under Article 4 of the NATO treaty whenever “the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the parties is threatened.” Reaching a decision in the NAC is a lengthy process, since every decision needs a unanimous consensus of all member states. Subjecting NATO’s high readiness units to the political lethargy of the NAC’s unwieldy 28-member consensus model undermines its ability to deter incursions in the first place and respond rapidly when they do occur. 

One could argue that tying the VJTF to the NAC may actually create a greater political advantage for aggressors, such as Russia, who deftly calculate their actions to intentionally create discord and paralysis within the NAC. For adversaries planning to use such hybrid strategies, the insertion of one more decision-point requiring NAC debate increases the time between when their incursion takes place and the eventual response, allowing more latitude for aggressors to consolidate gains while NATO debates the appropriate course of action. This encourages further aggression. 

NATO is aware of this challenge. At the last Defense Ministerial, members collectively recommended that special powers be granted to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) to streamline the decision making process by readying the VJTF without NAC approval. While a step in the right direction, this does not eliminate the proverbial “chokepoint” of requiring complete agreement at the NAC for the decision to actually deploy the VJTF. 

To resolve this problem, NATO members should agree on a mechanism that respects the overall authority of the NAC, while delegating the decision to deploy at least part of the VJTF to an “Emergency Council” (EC). The EC should consist of three parties – a representative of the VJTF lead country (these rotate every year), the NATO Secretary General, and NATO military commander, SACEUR. The EC would greatly streamline NATO’s decision making process during times of crisis, so VJTF troops can actually be deployed within hours, instead of days. 

Considering the magnitude of this responsibility, the EC would need detailed procedural guidelines. The NAC would retain overall control by reviewing the decision of the EC and ultimately deciding if deployment should be recalled. The NAC would also decide the duration of the VJTF’s deployment. The NAC would review the EC decision to deploy as soon as possible after it was made. 

If we compare the EC to the internal decision-making process of a country, in some NATO members the head of state can deploy troops and initiate a war for limited periods of time. However, long-term military engagements often also require the approval of legislative institutions. The reasoning behind granting such authority to one person is to ensure the state responds to national security threats as quickly as possible. 

A similar precedent also exists in NATO itself. On January 30, 1999, amid a rapidly deteriorating crisis in Kosovo, the NAC empowered Secretary General Javier Solana to authorize airstrikes against targets in Yugoslavian territory at his own discretion if he deemed them necessary to halt the crisis, without the need to further consult the NAC. In March, further authority was granted for the Secretary General to authorize a broader range of air operations in Yugoslavia. These decisions by the NAC were explicitly taken to “contribute to creating the conditions for a rapid and successful negotiation on an interim political settlement.” Such a precedent establishes the feasibility of the NAC granting limited deployment decision-making authority to individual alliance leaders specifically to allow for rapid military reaction in time-sensitive situations, whether to expedite a political agreement, halt the ongoing military actions of an opponent, or deter future aggression. 

In a similar fashion, the EC would allow NATO to become more united and agile in response to contemporary time-sensitive threats. We live at a time when various non-state actors, self-proclaimed states, terrorist organizations, and authoritarian regimes demonstrate undeterred aggression and are ready to exploit any vulnerability to achieve their ambitions. As Russian hybrid tactics demonstrate, this includes vulnerabilities in NATO’s political decision-making structure.

Today, NATO remains the largest military alliance in history. However, it’s not only sheer size that matters, but also the agility and speed of forces to respond to rapid changes in the security dynamic. Given the volatile nature of the security environment in Europe, even a one-day delay could come at a high cost. For this reason, NATO should consider developing an Emergency Council that can trigger a defensive deployment when a threat requires an immediate response.