A cyber warfare perspective on risks related to health IoT devices and contact tracing.

The wide use of IT resources to assess and manage the recent COVID-19 pandemic allows to increase the effectiveness of the countermeasures and the pervasiveness of monitoring and prevention. Unfortunately, the literature reports that IoT devices, a widely adopted technology for these applications, are characterized by security vulnerabilities that are difficult to manage at the state level. Comparable problems exist for related technologies that leverage smartphones, such as contact tracing applications, and non-medical health monitoring devices. In analogous situations, these vulnerabilities may be exploited in the cyber domain to overload the crisis management systems with false alarms and to interfere with the interests of target countries, with consequences on their economy and their political equilibria. In this paper we analyze the potential threat to an example subsystem to show how these influences may impact it and evaluate a possible consequence.

SYRIA-Everybody's War: The Politics of Aid in the Syria Crisis

Gabiam reviews Everybody's War: The Politics of Aid in the Syria Crisis edited by Jehan Bseiso, Michiel Hofman, and Jonathan Whittall.

Locating frontline workers' position up against COVID-19.

History of mankind has been brutal and marred by wars, attacks, invasions, occupying others territory and killing other human beings with their animals in the process. But now with arrival of Industrial Revolutions in last century or so, we gradually realized that for having and maintaining economic prosperity; we need others' cooperation and since then full- scale wars almost disappeared. But when we fight now and support others in the process, we realise that brute force is only occasionally used entity and most of the times technological methods are deployed to injure others. It is this rationale which makes way for people of either gender having capability to use highly advanced weaponry to enter the arena to decide fate of their side. Therefore, now war is not exclusively masculine entity and that analogy may not be appropriate in modern era. When we use masculine notion to explain our war against COVID-19, there are many shortcomings.

Truth Is a Human Right: Türkiye's Stance on the Fight against Disinformation

We are experiencing the rise of unprecedented opportunities as a result of the digital revolution, but regrettably this has also been accompanied by a number of novel threats. One of the most visible manifestations of these threats is the rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation. The implications of this threat extend from the individual to the national and international levels, where misinformation and disinformation bring the risk of hybrid warfare and power competition closer to home. Needless to say, the breadth of these implications makes dealing with digital misinformation even more difficult. This commentary focuses on several global events where misinformation and disinformation were used as a tactical tool, including the 2016 U.S. elections, Brexit, and COVID-19. Then, we discuss the situation involving Türkiye, one of the nations that serves as both a target and a focal point of regional disinformation campaigns. The commentary then shifts to some of the Communication Directorate's most significant initiatives, such as the creation of the Earthquake Disinformation Bulletins, the Law on the Fight Against Disinformation, and the Center for Fight Against Disinformation. Finally, above all, this commentary aims to raise awareness of the dangers of online misinformation and urges international cooperation to ensure that the truth always prevails.

Distorting Your Perception of Russia's Aggression: How Can We Combat Information Warfare?

Since the full-scale Russia-Ukraine war started recently, there is a lack of peer-reviewed scholarly literature directly discussing the war and the use of information warfare. [...]this article presents its findings mainly through content and documentary analysis of official and media publications in Russian, English, and Chinese. Information Warfare The term information warfare, or information war, was developed by Russia and is widely used. Since the early 1990s, Igor Panarin has been leading the discussion of information warfare.2 He considers information warfare a psychological 1 Andrew Anthony, "March in Support of Ukraine in London: Everything Was Turning Blue and Yellow," The Guardian, March 27, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/27/march-in-support-of-ukraine-in-london-everything-was-turning-blue-and-yellow. [...]it actively develops information warfare to gain the capability of influencing public opinions and counteracting Western influence. [...]China emulates Russia by using information campaigns to promote pro-China narratives, such as during the Covid-19 pandemic, to confront the West.11 Meanwhile, the West, especially the United States, has considered Russia and China a threat to the Western-dominated world order. [...]in the eyes of Western scholars or governments, the term information warfare represents the weaponized spread of pro-Russia and pro-China information to gain the Western audience's support.12 Take the United States National Security Strategy as an example.

The Perspectives of Individuals with Comorbidities Towards COVID-19 Booster Vaccine Shots in Twitter: A Social Media Analysis Using Natural Language Processing, Sentiment Analysis and Topic Modeling

Individuals with comorbidities (i.e., Diabetes Mellitus, hypertension, heart diseases) are more likely to develop a more severe form of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), thus, they should take necessary precautions to avoid infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its emerging variants and subvariants by getting COVID-19 vaccination and booster doses. In this regard, we used text analytics techniques, specifically Natural Language Processing (NLP), to understand the perception of Twitter users having comorbidities (diabetes, hypertension, and heart diseases) towards the COVID-19 vaccine booster doses. Understanding and identifying Twitter users' perceptions and perspectives will help the members of medical fraternities, governments, and policymakers to frame and implement a suitable public health policy for promoting the uptake of booster shots by such vulnerable people. A total of 176,540 tweets were identified through the scrapping process to understand the perception of individuals with the mentioned comorbidities regarding the COVID-19 booster dose. From sentiment analysis, it was revealed that 57.6% out of 176,540 tweets expressed negative sentiments about the COVID-19 vaccine booster doses. The reasons for negative expressions have been found using the topic modeling approach (i.e., risk factors, fear of myocardial fibrosis, stroke, or death, and using vaccines as bio-weapons). Of note, enhancing the COVID-19 vaccination drive by administering its booster doses to more and more people is of paramount importance for rendering higher protective immunity under the current threats of recently emerging newer Omicron subvariants which are presently causing a rise in cases in a few countries, such as China and others, and might lead to a feasible new wave of the pandemic with the surge in cases at the global level. Copyright © The Author(s) 2023.

A historical review of pandemics with a dermatological perspective

We present a literature review of dermatology features in historical pandemics. A pandemic is an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and affecting a large number of people. Smallpox was the first documented pandemic, around 10 000 BC, spread by the inhalation of airborne droplets. A few days after an initial high fever, headache and fatigue, a mucocutaneous maculopapular eruption appeared, which then developed pustules and erosions. The last outbreak occurred in the USA in 1949. Smallpox was eradicated in 1980, following a vaccination programme. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), an ongoing global pandemic. The earliest documentations were 3300 years ago. In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) provisionally estimated 1.5 million deaths globally. Most commonly affecting the lungs, cutaneous TB may present with inflammatory papules, plaques, suppurative nodules and chronic ulcers. Requiring long, complex antibiotic regimens, multidrug resistant TB is an increasing problem. Now extremely rare, yet still with recent outbreaks in 2021 in Madagascar, bubonic plague arrived in Europe in 1346 causing 75-200 million deaths. It is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted through fleas that have fed on infected rodents. Clinical features include papules, pustules, ulcers and eschars, tender lymphadenopathy and systemic symptoms, and it responds to antibiotics. Syphilis, caused by the bacterium Treponema pallidum, is sexually transmitted. The first known outbreak was during warfare in 1494-5 in Naples, Italy. In 2020, the WHO estimated that, globally, seven million people had new infections. Primary syphilis typically produces a painless, genital ulcer (or chancre). Secondary syphilis presents with a nonitchy, maculopapular erythema over the trunk, palms and soles. Early recognition and antibiotic treatment usually lead to good outcomes. Estimated by the WHO to affect 37.7 million people in 2020, HIV is thought to have mutated from simian immunodeficiency virus by the 1960s in sub-Saharan Africa, spreading to the Caribbean and USA by the late 1960s. Initial symptoms include a fever, headache and lymphadenopathy. Dermatological features are common, including opportunistic cutaneous infections, nonspecific exanthemas, seborrhoeic dermatitis and Kaposi sarcoma. Advances in antiretroviral therapies mean people with HIV can have an excellent prognosis, although the WHO estimated in 2020 that more than 200 000 people with HIV died from concomitant TB. Since 2019, COVID-19 has had a considerable global impact on healthcare. With more than 300 million cases and 5.5 million deaths to date, some services have been overwhelmed owing to large case numbers, variable vaccine uptake, workplace changes to reduce transmission and staff shortages. Cutaneous features include perniosis, urticarial, purpuric, vesicular or maculopapular eruptions. Pandemics throughout history have been repeatedly shown to present with an element of skin involvement. We can utilize this to promote education and early recognition of these features, to facilitate diagnosis and raise awareness of the potential complications of serious diseases.

Transnationalisme pentecôtiste et précarité enchantée : le cas du Monte de Oración dans la périphérie suburbaine de Lima, Pérou

This article presents the study of a popular Pentecostal center, Monte de Oración (MO), located in the suburban outskirts of Lima, Peru. The MO, founded by an illiterate woman originally from Cuzco, self-proclaimed pastor, began its trajectory (1970s, 1980s) as a community site of Catholic popular piety, anchored in the Andean traditions of mountain worship until it became a family religious enterprise. The MO is connected with some forty independent churches in Lima which organize retreats there and is, as well, in the process of being integrated into the networks of North American missionary denominations. The MO maintains a connection with transnational Pentecostal currents that make sense, locally, through similarity and affinity (Foucault, Han). At MO, are adopted and adapted, with creativity, issues and rites, among others, spiritual warfare, Israelophilia / Zionism, gender complementarity, refusal of vaccines against COVID. © The Author(s) 2023.

COVID and Cognitive Warfare in Taiwan

In this study, we examine China's cognitive warfare coordinated with military air operations during the COVID pandemic in Taiwan. In May 2021, Taiwan experienced its first novel coronavirus outbreak with up to 500 daily cases. The Chinese government launched a series of coordinated "cognitive warfare” campaigns targeting Taiwan in addition to the People's Liberation Army (PLA) frequent air force incursions into Taiwan's air zone. Meanwhile, through manipulation of the vaccine supply, China turned COVID vaccine into a political issue in Taiwan involving multiple players including pharmaceutical developers, tech giants, and local politicians. Combining multiple sources of data, we analyze the Chinese Government's orchestrated cognitive and information warfare (IW) efforts targeted at influencing the Taiwan public's trust in the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) government as well as its home-developed vaccine. Identifying the patterns of influencing using cognitive and IW, we found China's ultimate goal was to instill skepticism and confusion in Taiwan's public about the President Tsai Ing-wen's health policy and more generally undermine the creditability of the DPP government.

ASSESSING WORKFORCE PERCEPTIONS OF Productivity and Success AFTER 730 DAYS OF Distributed Operations IN RESPONSE TO COVID-19

[...]unless NIWC Pacifics leadership directed that performance of a specific, approved tasking required that it take place at a particular physical workplace location, the laboratory workforce was directed to telework from a safe location while practicing social distancing. [...]the authors distributed two surveys to a subset of the workforce in the early days of the pandemic to assess the perceived work effectiveness of the organization. While Phase 1 of this study targeted a single project and Phase 2 focused on a single division, the researchers felt that expanding the study to a larger number of projects within a department, including the associated support and leadership roles, would help confirm whether or not distributed operations in the form of maximum telework has been an effective means to support the Warfighters. [...]similar survey questions from the previous phases were posed to the department organization on how productive the workforce is and how successful the projects are while operating under maximum telework. Research typically manifests strong evidence in that a large majority of no options or neutral responses reflect an unwillingness of respondents to provide a thoughtful answer (Hopper, 2016a). [...]the authors considered it an imperative for the survey questions to encourage thoughtful answers gleaned only after an extended period of time, and following a major shift in operations from onsite work to telework.

Knowledge and attitude toward biological warfare among health-related students: A cross-sectional questionnaire-based survey.

Purpose: Many types of research have been published on the history of biological warfare, the agents used, and the medical implications. However, no studies measure how people are aware of the magnitude of these health problems and international threats. The present study aimed to produce and make background about biological warfare information for health college students to be used as a basis for future studies or research and prepare the hospitals' bases for similar disasters. Methods: This observational, cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted among undergraduate students (N = 626) enrolled in health-related colleges at Jazan University, Saudi Arabia. A preliminary survey of 30 participants was then undertaken to improve the questionnaire's understanding and validity. The questionnaire encompassed three primary sections, including (1) sociodemographic characteristics, (2) knowledge, and (3) awareness. Sociodemographic characteristics consisted of age, gender, college type, academic level, and specialty. All data were gathered using an online self-reported questionnaire using Google Forms and participants were recruited using a random sampling strategy. Results: The total participants were 626 students; 514 were females, whereas 112 were males. Knowledge and attitude indices were 3.8650 ± 0.48 and 4.06 ± 0.51 (maximum is 5). The indices showed variable statistical differences among sociodemographic factors. With adjusted and crude odds ratios of 0.53 and 0.54, attitude score is the sole significant (P = 0.05) predictor of knowledge as analyzed using logistic regression. Conclusion: The results of the present study are the first of their kind in the region and can be used to shape public awareness among specialists and decision-makers, especially in light of the recent pandemic.

The prospects of strategic imagination in explaining international security challenges.

This paper will study the potential applicability of the strategic imagination method to international security analysis, which has been previously used to improve prognostic quality in business studies. The method should allow security experts to think about the future by considering "what if" situations, and creatively assess the probability of different threats, even those that appear as improbable to others. The components of the method include strategic fit (the actor's competence between its abilities and the needs of market), structure (the degree of concentration and maturity), competitive advantages (the extent to which the resources denied to the competition can be gathered, for example, access to novel technology), and strategic focus (i.e., on cost advantages, a differentiated product or exploitation of a market niche), in which a strategic advantage can be obtained by changing rules or deliberately creating turbulence. Strategic imagination can promote an academic discussion on changing nature of global processes like the emergence of global security market and provide nonorthodox methods for advancing a qualitative security analysis. Educated forecasting by connecting today's developments with strategic imagination offers an important component in building successful security strategies and supportive public policies, especially in what concerns psychological warfare. For example, in the current COVID-19 crisis, main efforts have been made to defend against its national consequences (e.g., various restrictions introduced by individual countries), and less attention has been paid to cooperative strategies that can significantly reduce the global spread of the virus.

Learning the lessons of COVID-19: homeland resilience in the United Kingdom - is it now time for both a dedicated civil defense organization and a paramilitary force?

The United Kingdom's homeland resilience capacity is poor. The COVID-19 pandemic proved this. Back in 2019, the UK had been labeled as the best prepared country in the world for a pandemic. And yet, by 2020, and once COVID-19 had struck, the UK became "unequivocally” the hardest hit country in Europe – particularly in terms of excess mortality. In this article it is argued that the UK's continental neighbors coped better than the UK because they had better homeland resilience capacity. This was provided by their having civil defense organizations, paramilitary forces and militaries which are specifically designed to contribute to homeland emergencies. The UK, in contrast and almost uniquely in the world, lacks both civil defense and paramilitary bodies and, moreover, it has armed forces that are not actually structured to provide help in domestic emergencies. Given the problems highlighted during COVID-19, is it now time for the UK to set up its own bodies specifically tasked with alleviating domestic emergencies? This article explores this question by comparing the UK's pandemic response with that of Spain – a country which, according to all available data, should have performed worse than the UK. But it did not. Why?

AI and the Automation of Warfare

Packer and Reeves also collaborated on the forthcoming co-authored book Prison House of the Circuit: Politics of Control from Analog to Digital (Packer, Nuñez de Villavicencio, Monea, Oswald, Maddalena, & Reeves, in press). [...]just two or three weeks ago, the U.N. released a report explaining that it's likely that the first instance of autonomous drones making their own decision to kill soldiers occurred in a skirmish in Libya in March 2020 (United Nations Security Council, 2021). [...]I think there's a general recognition by folks in the military, by journalists writing about this issue, by intellectuals, that there has been a shift in the past half century, 75 years, to a different kind of warfare. In terms of a paradigm, too, I'm also just interested because the American military, post-Vietnam, has described itself as subscribing to the idea of information warfare-using embedded journalists, managing the flows of information surrounding conflicts. Media doot only manipulate soldiers to fight better and citizens to support various military efforts but rather, the scale of warfare has reached a level of complication that without a vast logistical apparatus, war is going to be lost-that logistical terrain of war is going to be lost-and the "logistically dominant" force, nation, (or) group of allies will prevail.

Spike ferritin nanoparticle (SpFN) WRAIR's COVID-19 vaccine and SARS-CoV-2 spike receptor-binding domain ferritin nanoparticle RFN vaccine from American Walter Reed Institute during pandemic of SARS-CoV-2

In general, it can only be stated that new or emerging diseases are dangerous diseases and have high potential for spreading. Their common denominator is high mortality, dangerous spread in the population and limited treatment options. Today, there is a real possibility of introducing these diseases from the areas of their occurrence due to massive tourism, population migration and foreign workers. Another possibile way of their spread may be abuse in the form of bioterrorism, i.e. the use of an infectious agent as a biological weapon. The World Health Organization (WHO) continuously monitors and quantifies dangerous events in several well-defined categories (e.g. nuclear hazards, chemical hazards, natural disasters), however, annual as well as long-term statistics lead infectious diseases worldwide, which, due to epidemics and pandemics, account for more than 80% of the overall picture. The current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is unprecedented. This is also because it is the first pandemic in human history, during which we are able to develop both drugs and vaccines against the biological agent. Copyright © 2022, EEZY Publishing, s.r.o.. All rights reserved.