Google pulls Huawei’s Android license

Following the US crackdown on Chinese technology companies, Google has cut off Huawei’s Android license, dealing a huge blow to the besieged phonemaker. Reuters first reported the news, and The Verge subsequently confirmed Google’s suspension of business with Huawei with a source familiar with the matter. Reached for comment, a Google spokesperson said only “We are complying with the order and reviewing the implications.”

The order, in this case, appears to be the US Commerce Department’s recent decision to place Huawei on the “Entity List,” which as Reuters reports is a list of companies that are unable to buy technology from US companies without government approval. Speaking to Reuters, a Google spokesperson confirmed that “Google Play and the security protections from Google Play Protect will continue to function on existing Huawei devices.” So while existing Huawei phones around the world won’t be immediately impacted by the decision, the future of updates for those phones as well as any new phones Huawei would produce remains in question.

How China Is Buying Its Way into Europe

For more than a decade, Chinese political and corporate leaders have been scouring the globe with seemingly bottomless walletsin hand. From Asia to Africa, the U.S. and Latin America, the results are hard to ignore as China has asserted itself as an emerging world power. Less well known is China’s diffuse but expanding footprint in Europe.

Source: bloomberg.com

Iran hit by global cyber attack that left U.S. flag on screens

The statement said the attack, which hit internet service providers and cut off web access for subscribers, was made possible by a vulnerability in routers from Cisco which had earlier issued a warning and provided a patch that some firms had failed to install over the Iranian new year holiday.

Source: reuters.com

China Slaps Tariffs on U.S. Products

The Chinese Ministry of Commerce indicated that the tariffs, which it first publicly suggested almost two weeks ago, were intended to pressure the Trump administration to back down from a simmering trade war. In addition to imposing additional tariffs on steel and aluminum from China and other countries, President Trump has threatened to put protective duties on other Chinese-made products worth $60 billion.

Source: nytimes.com

Asian Powers Step Up Their Readiness For Space Warfare, Following America’s Lead

In its “active defense” military strategy, China was very clear about the importance of outer space, identifying it as a critical security domain, along with the oceans, cyberspace, and nuclear force. Outer space was also singled out as a command post along with cyberspace. In Japan, as the country began to orient its national space strategy on the basis of a new Basic Space Law in 2008, there is evidence to suggest that the defense policymakers already thought of outer space as the fourth domain, after land, sea, and air.

How On Earth Did Russia Hack Our Energy Systems?

The traps themselves are pretty imaginative. Many are based in social media. No one would suspect a cute kitten video of hiding malware.

But they do. And if your co-worker is a kitten-nut, they may not hesitate to download that video without thinking that it is a trap.

Source: forbes.com

Hansen: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, and then he lost his dream job

Roy Jones says he got no training on how to handle issues that might inflame the Chinese government. “My job isn’t to decide whether Tibet is a country. I’m a customer care rep in Omaha, Nebraska,” he said.

Source: omaha.com

There’s a New Cold War Brewing in Space

Much of the push to formalize an off-planetbranch of the U.S. armed forces is motivated by space investment by Russia and China, the latter of which is eager to establish itself as a superpower with plans for an orbiting space station and a permanent outpost on the moon. Meanwhile, Russiaunder President Vladimir Putinhas become increasingly aggressive, annexing Crimea, deploying more sophisticated nuclear weapons and waging conventional warfarein eastern Ukraine and Syria. But he, too, has aspirations, albeit troubled ones, up above.

Best Buy will stop selling Huawei smartphones

Huawei was widely expected to announce a partnership with AT&T in January at CES to carry the Mate 10 Pro smartphone, but the carrier reportedly backed out because of political pressure. A few days later, Verizon reportedly nixed its own plans to sell Huawei phones. Instead, Richard Yu, CEO of the company’s consumer business, spent his time talking about the phones, which were already in the market elsewhere, as well as touting the Porsche Design variant of the smartphone.

Best bad idea ever? Why Putin’s nuclear-powered missile is possible… and awful

Russia’s advanced arms are based onthecutting-edge, unique achievements ofour scientists, designers, andengineers. One ofthem is asmall-scale, heavy-duty nuclear energy unit that can be installed inamissile like our latest X-101 air-launched missile ortheAmerican Tomahawk missile—asimilar type but with arange dozens oftimes longer, dozens—basically anunlimited range. It is alow-flying stealth missile carrying anuclear warhead, with almost anunlimited range, unpredictable trajectory andability tobypass interception boundaries.

Chinese Companies Are Buying Up Cash-Strapped U.S. Colleges

Chinese companies are taking advantage of America’s financially strapped higher-education system to buy schools, and the latest deal for a classical music conservatory in Princeton, New Jersey, is striking chords of dissonance on campus.

Source: bloomberg.com

50M Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach

A whistleblower has revealed to the Observer how Cambridge Analytica – a company owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon – used personal information taken without authorisation in early 2014 to build a system that could profile individual US voters, in order to target them with personalised political advertisements.

Chinese Hackers Hit U.S. Firms Linked to South China Sea Dispute

The suspected Chinese cyber-espionage group dubbed TEMP.Periscope appeared to be seeking information that would benefit the Chinese government, said FireEye, a U.S.-based provider network protection systems. The hackers have focused on U.S. maritime entities that were either linked to — or have clients operating in — the South China Sea, said Fred Plan, senior analyst at FireEye in Los Angeles.

Russia Hacks Into U.S. Power Plants, But Nuclear Reactors Should Be Impervious

According to an alert from the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team yesterday, Russia has hacked into many of our government entities and domestic companies in the energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation and critical manufacturing sectors – essentially most of what makes our country go.

Source: forbes.com

An Energy War in the Balkans Has Slowed Europe’s Electric Clocks by 5 Minutes

On Saturday, the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSOE) put out a statement claiming that the Continental European Power System, an electric grid linking 25 European countries, has experienced a shortage of power supply since mid-January. This power supply shortage has caused all the non-quartz electric clocks in Europe to slow down by almost six minutes over the past month and a half.

Clocks in Europe are slowly deviating because of an energy war in the Balkans


​​The Continental European (CE) Power System -a large synchronized area stretching from Spain to Turkey and from Poland to Netherlands; encompassing 25 countries- is experiencing a continuous system frequency deviation from the mean value of 50 Hz, and this since mid of January 2018. The power deviations are originating from the control area called Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro (SMM block) and specifically Kosovo and Serbia.

Brain-damaging “health attacks” spur US to permanently cut Cuba embassy staff

In December, an investigation by a panel of Cuban scientists concluded that there likely were no attacks. The panel determined that the most likely explanation was mass psychogenic illness (MPI), which is essentially a collective delusion among a cohesive group of people that a sickness is spreading among them. But the US doctors who evaluated the affected individuals dismissed this idea, noting that their observed symptoms and injuries were not ones that could be consciously or unconsciously manipulated.

Brit semiconductor tech ended up in Chinese naval railgun

A Chinese firm’s buyout of a British semiconductor company may have directly led to China developing railgun weaponry and electromagnetic aircraft carrier catapults for its navy, according to reports.

Source: co.uk

A Likely Explanation for the “Sonic Weapon” Used at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba

Last August, reports emerged that U.S. and Canadian diplomats in Cuba had suffered a host of mysterious ailments. Speculation soon arose that a high-frequency sonic weapon was to blame. Acoustics experts, however, were quick to point out the unlikeliness of such an attack.

Among other things, ultrasonic frequencies—from 20 to 200 kilohertz—don’t propagate well in air and don’t cause the ear pain, headache, dizziness, and other symptoms reported in Cuba. Also, some victims recalled hearing high-pitched sounds, whereas ultrasound is inaudible to humans.

Putin’s Hypersonic Weapon Appears to Be a Modified Iskander Ballistic Missile

Yesterday’s bizarrely ominous presentation by Russian Vladimir Putin, where he showcased six super weapons that will supposedly give Russia an asymmetric edge over its potential foes—namely the United States—is still reverberating throughout the national security community. After we posted our master recap of the event and the weapons concepts featured in it, we and our incredible discussion crew here at The War Zone went to work dissecting what was presented in an attempt to parse fact from fiction.