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This Happened

This Happened — October 15: The Execution Of Mata Hari

Updated Oct. 15, 2024 at 11:00 a.m. The execution of Dutch exotic dancer Mara Hari, a World War I spy, happened on this day in 1917. Who was Mata Hari? Mata Hari, whose real name was Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, was a Dutch dancer and courtesan born on August 7, 1876, in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. She became […]

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Geopolitics

Kim Family Dynamics: We Overlook North Korea At Our Peril

What should the world make of Kim Jong-un, his young daughter Ju Ae in tow, flexing North Korea’s military hardware? Nothing good, though the scenario that it is mostly just a flex is still the most likely.

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In The News

Big Business, No Red Phone: Why U.S. v. China Is A Different Kind Of Cold War

To some, tensions between the U.S. and China look like a remake of the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. Yet the West’s nemesis this time is more sophisticated and tied to us commercially in ways Moscow never was. There are, however, also new kinds of danger.

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In The News

Balloons? UFOs? The Real Story Is The Perilous State Of U.S.-China Relations

Let’s call it the “war of the balloons”: Four unidentified flying objects have now been shot down by fighter jets in one week over North America. But the mystery of the details should not hide the bigger picture of how far U.S.-Sino relations have sunk in the past 10 days.

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In The News

Dismissal Of Iran Spy Chief Shows A Regime In Disarray

The recent departure of a top Iranian military intelligence chief, supposedly over security lapses and bad decisions, reveals regime weakness in an area key to its survival: espionage and state intelligence.

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Geopolitics Ideas

Putin Psychology 101: The World Tries To Get Inside Russian Leader’s Head

Experts in geopolitics and the workings of world leaders have accelerated a two-decade long quest to understand the motivations of the enigmatic man in the Kremlin.

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In The News

Beijing Sends Spy ‘Cousins’ To Infiltrate Uyghur Families

It has the makings of another TV spy drama with a family plot line. But the disturbing revelations of a Le Monde investigation come as a shocking reality for thousands of Uyghur families in China, who may have been infiltrated by agents sent by Beijing to monitor how members of the Muslim minority group lived. […]

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Society

The Case Of The Cold War Hacker Found Dead In A German Forest

Thirty years after a young West German computer whiz working for the KGB was found dead, we return to an unsolved mystery from the final days before the Wall fell.

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In The News

The Spy Who Came In From The Cold War

-Analysis- Former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia remain in critical condition, three days after they were found unconscious on a bench in the English city of Salisbury. The pair were presumably poisoned by what is so far referred to as an “unknown substance.” Britain’s counter-terrorism police have now taken over the […]

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In The News

Putin’s Long Shadow Hangs Over Dresden

The Russian president was a KGB agent in the city in the former East Germany when the Iron Curtain started to give way. The ghosts of the past are everywhere.

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blog Society

So You Want To Be A Private Eye?

Bruno Strebel spends his days tracking missing persons, insurance scammers and white-collar criminals. The former cop founded a detective school that teaches others to do the same.

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Eyes on the U.S.

What Watching Whistleblowers Tells Us About Ourselves

Why did he do that? And if you ever thought to do the same…?

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Geopolitics

Australian Spy HQ Allegedly Compromised By Chinese Hackers

REUTERS, BBC NEWS (UK), SBS, ABC (Australia) Worldcrunch CANBERRA – Australia’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that Chinese Hackers allegedly stole the digital blueprints of a $630 million spy agency headquarters, according to an ABC report. The news comes on the heels of the US reporting that classified military designs were compromised by Chinese hackers on […]

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Geopolitics

A Chilling Tale Of Ordinary Japanese Abducted By North Korean Spies

AGEO – Shigeo Iizuka still has the black-and-white photo of his little sister, Yaeko, stuck on the inside cover of his pocket diary. It was June 1978, when the 22-year-old suddently disappeared, taken from the bustling heart of Tokyo and transferred to North Korea to be used as a teacher of Japanese language and customs […]

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Future

Espionage In Academia: How To Stop Spies And Thieves From Swiping Top Research

PARIS – Pirates, spies, moles, thieves: those who want to steal the scientific treasures of French research laboratories had better be careful. With a new measure to protect the “nation’s scientific and technical potential,” in the next few months every organization, university and engineering school will be receiving instructions on how to protect themselves. Indeed, […]

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