I do not know with what weapons Space Jam II will be fought ...

Human stories from a world in conflict. No Images? [Click here]( April 5, 2019 If you read just one thing ... Last week, India completed Mission Shakti, its first successful test of an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon, by shooting down the satellite Microsat-R as it orbited some 175 miles above the earth. The test has all manner of strategic implications for India, especially regarding its competition with longtime adversary China, which has a growing presence in space and an ASAT capability of its own. This week, however, we learned about the effect of the test on the global commons that is low earth orbit, where crucial space infrastructure like GPS satellites live. It turns out that when you engineer what amounts to a cosmic car crash the main thing you create is debris, and in space, it’s hard to predict where that debris will end up. NASA [announced]( that it observed 400 pieces of debris resulting from Mission Shakti and that 24 of the larger pieces shot out to an altitude where they might hit an unintended target: the International Space Station. NASA estimates that Mission Shakti raised the probability of striking the space station by 44% in the 10 days following the test. As more countries seek greater ASAT capabilities, these kinds of dangers to the orbital commons will only increase. ## ... if you read more than one thing [Project Raven returns]( Critical State readers may remember a [story]( from January about former NSA spies having second thoughts about being asked to surveil Americans while working as contractors for the United Arab Emirates. This week it emerged that those same former spooks, employed by the UAE’s Project Raven, hacked the phones of at least 10 journalists in the Middle East in hopes of finding evidence that the UAE’s Gulf rival Qatar was driving news coverage on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood. - The hacks came during an unsuccessful push in 2017 by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states to pressure Qatar to shutter the influential, Doha-based Al Jazeera television news network, but Project Raven targeted journalists with the BBC, the Al-Arab newspaper and other outlets outside of Al Jazeera. - Every cybersecurity story has a dystopian lining, and this one is no different. The exploit Project Raven used to hack the journalists, called (incredibly) “Karma,” allowed them to access iPhone data at-will without the targets having to click a link. Apple declined to comment on the story. [What]([do you get for an alliance that has everything?]( The Trump administration celebrated NATO’s 70th birthday by issuing an ultimatum to treaty partner Turkey: Stop buying Russian anti-aircraft missiles or you’ll never see the F-35s we’ve agreed to sell you. The Pentagon this week suspended shipment of replacement parts for the F-35 fighter to Turkey, which had been scheduled to arrive ahead of the 100 full airframes set to be sold starting in June, and threatened once again to halt shipment of the aircraft entirely. The suspension is in response to Turkey’s determination to acquire Russian S-400 air defense systems, which the Pentagon claims would allow Russian technicians special insight into how to shoot down F-35s. - One wrinkle in the situation is that Turkish firms manufacture over 800 parts for the F-35, meaning that a breakdown in arms sale relations between Turkey and the US could leave other buyers out of joint … Strike Fighters. The Pentagon claims it is searching for suppliers to replace the Turkish firms, but has [offered]( no timeline. - The Turkish government seems unconcerned about the suspension. Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu claims President Donald Trump told President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that he would “take care” of the issue, while Erdoğan himself disavowed any attempt to withdraw from his agreement to buy the S-400, [saying]( “Nobody should ask us to lick up what we spat.” ## Deep Dive The last Deep Dive dealt with how private security firms interact with the politics and culture of the areas where they operate. Often, however, the money that pays private violence specialists in developing countries of the “global south” comes from outside, frequently from the more developed “global north.” This week, we’ll look at some recent research on how the employment of private security in the south by actors from the north shapes perceptions of violence among the global north's public. A new [article]( by Texas A&M professors Austin Johnson, Nehemia Geva, and Kenneth Meier in the Journal of Conflict Resolution takes on the question of who the global north’s public blames when a private security operation goes wrong. One of the attractive things about private security forces is that, in theory, they can take the fall in case of a SNAFU — it’s a lot easier for governments to say [“it wasn’t me”]( if it’s not actually their soldiers caught red-handed with the, um, girl next door. Logically, though, that probably shouldn’t be the case. If governments hire private security forces to do a job that the government defines and with resources the government agrees to, shouldn’t the government be seen as responsible if the job falls apart? Johnson et al. set out to decide whether public confusion over who is actually in charge of mercenary forces protects governments from taking the blame for failed private security operations. They ran a survey experiment by presenting American adult respondents with a made-up scenario in which the US ambassador to Uzbekistan has been assassinated, despite being protected by bodyguards. They told some respondents that the ambassador was protected by guards from the fictional “Atlas Security LLC,” while they left others to assume the guards were government employees. Among respondents told that the guards were from Atlas, some were given an organizational chart showing the direct chain of command from the secretary of defense down to the guards on the ground, while others could only guess about the connection. When the researchers asked the respondents how the guards performed and the extent to which the secretary of defense was to blame for the assassination, two interesting results emerged. First, knowing that the guards were private contractors made people judge their performance much more harshly — around 1.5 points worse on average on a scale from 1-10. Second, seeing the organizational chart did have a measurable effect on how much respondents blamed the secretary of defense for the ambassador’s death. People who could see the direct connection between the secretary and the contractors blamed him about 0.8 points out of 10 more than people who hadn’t had the chain of command explained to them. The Johnson et al. article suggests that a government (or at least the American government) pays a reputational cost at home for relying on security contractors to do its work abroad, but that the cost is worth it if people understand the government’s role in putting contractors in a position to mess things up. So support your local journalists. Show me the receipts The physicist who never lost her humanity Peter Waring [profiled]( physicist Lise Meitner, who was half of the team that discovered nuclear fission. An Austrian Jew working in Berlin, Meitner escaped Germany in 1938 and continued her work in Sweden. An avowed pacifist, she declined an invitation to join the Manhattan Project, but her work was crucial in ushering in the atomic age. Her research partner, Otto Hahn, won a Nobel Prize for discovering fission, but Meitner was passed over for the award. [Learn more >]( [Sudan American teens protest in solidarity with Sudanese.] America has been at NATO’s helm for 70 years. Can it survive without US leadership? Christopher Woolf [asked]( a question that has been whispered in European capitals since the 2016 US presidential election: What does NATO become if the US abdicates leadership in the alliance? Speaking to American security experts on the 70th anniversary of NATO’s founding, he found mixed opinions. Some saw a reduced American role in the alliance as its death knell, while others portrayed it as freeing European states to have greater autonomy over their own security strategies. [Learn more >]( For Syrian refugee children in Turkey, a 'home with dignity' is hard to find Shawn Carrié and Asmaa Al Omar [reported]( on the plight of Syrian refugee children living in Turkey. Of the 1.25 million young people displaced from Syria to Turkey, almost 400,000 are not enrolled in school, and even those who have secured schooling are often denied the support necessary to process the traumas of war and displacement. UNICEF estimates that programs. [Learn more >]( Well played If, after reading the last couple Deep Dives, you’re interested in delving even deeper into the emerging study of private military and security companies, check out this newly-released [visualization tool]( from Deborah Avant and Kara Kingma Neu from the University of Denver. They gathered data on every violent incident involving mercenaries and private security from 1990 to 2012 and built a fantastic website where you can see the type, frequency, and geographic distribution of the incidents around the world. ## Mara Karlin has a [book]( out on the challenges the US has faced trying to build up partner militaries, but if you’re looking for a tl;dr summary, [this meme]( should do. ## This week in [archival]( [gems](. ## The greatest test of wills in Washington is between the president and his national security adviser’s [upper lip](. ## Brexit: still going terribly, still [comedy gold](. ## If you’re going to read a book and then tweet about that book using the author’s name, be sure you actually understand the point of the book, lest you end up living [this nightmare](. ## Please sir, can I have some more good tweets like [these](? ## Public Radio International (PRI) is a global nonprofit media company focused on the intersection of journalism and engagement to effect positive change in people’s lives. We create a more informed, empathetic and connected world by sharing powerful stories, encouraging exploration, connecting people and cultures, and creating opportunities to help people take informed action on stories that inspire them. Its mission is to serve audiences as a distinctive content source for information, insights and cultural experiences essential to living in our diverse, interconnected world. [Support PRI]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Website]( PRI Public Radio International Hear a Different Voice [Forward]( [Preferences]( | [Unsubscribe](