Guerrilla Strategy for Activists

Swarm tactics are the use of autonomously-acting cells on the battlefield, acting in coordination without a centralized or hierarchical command structure. This way of carrying out actions mimics swarms in nature, such as bees or piranhas. Humans have used swarm tactics for thousands of years, especially for guerrilla and insurgent forces facing better-funded occupying forces.

The mobile caravan tactic takes the analysis of the pipeline fight as an asymmetric, “guerrilla” struggle against an occupying force to its logical next step. Rather than relying solely on stationary camps set up to block a pipeline, the mobile caravan approach relies on disrupting production up and down the pipeline, stretching police and security forces thin and maximizing disruption.

Car Bombs as Weapons of War: ISIS’s Development of SVBIEDs, 2014-19

The suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (SVBIED) has been one of ISIS’s most powerful and versatile weapons. The group consistently adapted its SVBIED designs based on operational environment and other factors, with modifications in armor, payload organization, color, and detonation technology. Advanced SVBIED designs have been shared between various ISIS provinces through technology transfer, not only within Iraq and Syria, but also globally to provinces in Nigeria and the Philippines. ISIS’s research and development of SVBIED technology presents a continued threat, even after the collapse of the territorial caliphate, due to the group’s ability to share and export its designs, enabling nascent ISIS provinces halfway around the world to launch powerful attacks on unsuspecting communities.

Here’s How The Marine Corps Is Dealing With Underground Combat

As the Army pushes specialized trainers out to brigade combat teams to build underground battle skills, the Marine Corps has constructed its own simulated underground fighting section at its combat center and is figuring out what formations will deal with the growing subterranean threat.

Here’s the New Marine Corps Weapon that Just Destroyed an Iranian Drone

The LMADIS is a maneuverable system installed on MRZR all-terrain vehicles. One of the MRZRs is a command vehicle and the other an electronic-warfare platform, according to a Marine Corps video that describes the system. It’s typically used on the ground, but has recently been put to the test on several Navy ships.

The system uses a radar and cameras to scan the sky to detect drones and distinguish between friendly and hostile systems. Once it locates a threat, it uses radio frequencies to jam the drone, C4ISR reported in May.

The Middle East’s Authoritarians Have Come for Conservationists

Across the Middle East and North Africa, environmentalists are coming under attack like never before. Conservation NGOs have been closed or so suffocated that they’re as good as dissolved. Activists and experts have been threatened into silence—or worse. A community that had until recently mostly escaped the fate of much of the region’s civil society has suddenly fallen afoul of the authorities. Its plight mirrors the difficulties faced by environmentalists worldwide. Globally, 197 environmental defenders were killed in 2017, according to the UN Environment Programme, a fivefold increase from a decade ago.

Michael Cohen warrants show how the FBI can unlock your phone and track your movements

Notably, the FBI made use of Cohen’s use of Touch ID and Face ID on his Apple devices, which allow users to quickly log into iPhones and computers by scanning their face or fingerprint rather than typing in a password. Those features are marketed as faster and more secure ways to securely log into one’s devices, as it’s harder, though not impossible, to replicate someone’s fingerprint or appearance.

But that gives law enforcement an additional means to access those devices. In one warrant application for Cohen, an FBI agent requested authorization “to press the fingers (including thumbs) of Cohen to the Touch ID sensors of the Subject Devices, or hold the Subject Devices in front of Cohen’s face, for the purpose of attempting to unlock the Subject Devices via Touch ID or Face ID.”