From December until today, we are facing a disease that took the world by surprise. The pandemic caused an economic and social crisis that diverted the attention of the authorities from crime. Police and the military are being used to implement quarantine, many businesses have collapsed and many jobs have been lost. Hospitals have been, and still are, overflooded with patients for whom there is no cure, and those suffering from other diseases have remained almost neglected. This set of circumstances is ideal for the rise of criminal activity around the world.

In the overall situation we are in, we wonder where are the additional activities of the police during the pandemic? Until now, they have included enforcing curfews, as well as conducting state quarantine,compliance with the orders for self-isolation, supporting the staff from public health facilities in establishing contacts with an infected person, specific tasks and responsibilities of border police officers, and so on. It is more than clear that these additional activities carry an additional, but also a very large burden on the already stretched resources. (more…)

In the newest operational warfare domain, cyberspace, there are armies of nefarious hackers from around the globe who use cyber warfare for economic, political, or military gain. One aspect of cyber warfare that needs to be looked upon more closely is cyber espionage. Cyber spying is the act of engaging in an attack or series of attacks that let an unauthorized user or users view classified of sensitive material. These attacks are often subtle, amounting to nothing more than an unnoticed bit of code or process running in the background of a mainframe or personal workstation, and the target is usually a corporate or government entity. The goal is typically to acquire intellectual property or government secrets. Attacks can be motivated by greed or profit, and can be used in conjunction with a military operation or as an act of terrorism. Consequences can range from loss of competitive advantage to loss of materials, data, infrastructure, or loss of life. (more…)

While war has long been viewed as a competition between adversaries, peace has been defined by absence of such conflict. But what happens when the line between war and peace is blurred and hardly visible? Countries today face a number of actors who use a wide range of political, informational, military, and economic measures to influence, coerce, intimidate, or undermine its interests or those of its friends and allies. To accomplish military goals without putting one’s nation, civilians, or even opposition troops at mortal risk is certainly the ideal manner in which to win a war. (more…)

The spread of the Corona pandemic has changed the dynamics of most political processes at the local, regional, and international levels. However, it is remarkable that actors of current terrorist groups from various ideologies have demonstrated significant abilities to adapt rapidly to those changes caused by the spread of Corona virus. Indeed, some terrorist groups have tended to use the virus as a tool to achieve their goals, such as the attempt of some terrorists in Tunisia to spread the virus among security personnel earlier this month. Through monitoring the behavior of violent extremist groups worldwide during the past weeks, it was possible to identify a number of paths through which Corona virus have influenced the movement of such extremist groups, or rather the paths that these groups are employing, to serve their purposes.
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