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Category: War

Russia has ability to shut off power in the U.S.

Russia has ability to shut off power in the U.S.

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The New York Times reports: The Trump administration accused Russia on Thursday of engineering a series of cyberattacks that targeted American and European nuclear power plants and water and electric systems, and could have sabotaged or shut power plants off at will. United States officials and private security firms saw the attacks as a signal by Moscow that it could disrupt the West’s critical facilities in the event of a conflict. They said the strikes accelerated in late 2015, at…

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Novichok chemical attack near Porton Down fed catnip to conspiracy theorists

Novichok chemical attack near Porton Down fed catnip to conspiracy theorists

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Vladimir Putin has long understood that Russia can easily exploit the cynicism that permeates political perceptions across the West. The use of the Soviet chemical weapon, Novichok, in close proximity to the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, hardly seems coincidental. It accomplished two things: 1. By deploying this agent so close to the lab, operatives could be fairly confident that British authorities with the required expertise would be able to positively identify the chemical, i.e. Russia’s…

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Russia’s new trove of bizarre doomsday devices

Russia’s new trove of bizarre doomsday devices

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Jeffrey Lewis writes: The U.S. developed a nuclear-powered cruise missile in the 1960s, but it was canceled it because, well, it was insane. The nuclear-powered ramjet was literally deafening to people on the ground and left a trail of radioactivity from the unshielded reactor. The United States couldn’t even find a suitable place to fight-test this monster. Officials worried that if it went off course from the Nevada nuclear test site, it might crash into Las Vegas. Putin says Russia…

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Syria’s long war has reached its Srebrenica moment

Syria’s long war has reached its Srebrenica moment

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Roy Gutman writes: The Assad regime and Russia are poised to destroy totally the East Ghouta region just outside Damascus or expel its population of some 400,000, and nothing but the empty words of the United Nations, the United States, and Europe stand in their way. So, too, 23 years ago, the world sat mostly mute, watching events unfold in and around the small village of Srebrenica in a remote corner of eastern Bosnia. No government was ready to lift…

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Pentagon examines plans for a war against North Korea — ‘the brutality of this will be beyond the experience of any living soldier’

Pentagon examines plans for a war against North Korea — ‘the brutality of this will be beyond the experience of any living soldier’

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“A classified military exercise last week examined how American troops would mobilize and strike if ordered into a potential war on the Korean Peninsula,” reports the New York Times: A war with North Korea, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has said, would be “catastrophic.” He and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have argued forcefully for using diplomacy to address Pyongyang’s nuclear program. Commanders who attended the exercise in Hawaii were told that roughly…

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In Syria’s war economy the worst of enemies are also partners in business

In Syria’s war economy the worst of enemies are also partners in business

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Century Foundation Fellow, Aron Lund, writes: After the October 2017 fall of Raqqa to U.S.-backed Kurdish and Arab guerrillas, the extremist group known as the Islamic State is finally crumbling. But victory came a cost: Raqqa lies in ruins, and so does much of northern Syria. At least one of the tools for reconstruction is within reach. An hour and a half’s drive from Raqqa lies one of the largest and most modern cement plants in the entire Middle East,…

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