Forged in the fires of war: the rise of a new Ukrainian identity
Ukraine has always been a plural state comprised of multiple ethnic, linguistic, religious, and regional subcultures. Yet, since 2014 and, in particular, since February 2022, these often-competing identities have been codified under a more overarching identity. The forging of unified plural Ukrainian identity as concept has arisen out of a mutual struggle for survival, international diaspora mobilization, the elevation of diverse narratives of experience from across Ukraine, and a connected digital environment that links and reinforces concepts of social capital. Rooted in theories of constructivist identity formation, this analysis examines those attributes of Ukraine and Ukrainian society which have been fused together under great pressure to create a new and perhaps more unified national identity. Leveraging cases examining discourses on identity and the production of shared socio-cultural artifacts and quantitative data from both public opinion surveys and large-scale social media sentiment, this analysis finds that Ukraine, often thought of in the West as fractured along multiple lines, is, in fact unifying behind a common national idea. This unification and the creation of a new national identity have profound implications for post-war Ukraine.
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Narrative Battles: The Impact Open-Source Intelligence on the Framing of Russia’s War on Ukraine
The War in Ukraine has been ongoing since 2014. Since the outset hostilities have coincided with a new era in decentralized, technologically enabled intelligence known as open-source intelligence (OSINT). OSINT increasingly shapes the domestic and global narratives surrounding the conflict. Winning the narrative war is critical to overall strategic and tactical successes on the battlefield and beyond. The volume and velocity of OSINT generated since the escalation in hostilities initiated by the Russian Federation on February 24th, 2022, is the result of a confluence of factors that creates an information battle that contextualizes and frames the political, military, economic, societal, informational, infrastructural, physical environmental, and temporal aspects of the conflict (PMESSI-PT). Shaping global, and in particular allied, perceptions of all the variables within of the PMESSI-PT model are critical sustaining and building support. This analysis examines how the dramatic increase in OSINT in Ukraine has both facilitated and hindered the Ukraine’s efforts to counter Russian aggression.
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Utopia Lost – Human Rights in a Digital World
The long progress towards universal human rights is regressing. This regression is pronounced within digital spaces once thought to be potential bulwarks of a new era in human rights. But on the contrary, new technologies have given rise to threats that undermine the autonomy, empathy, and dignity of human beings. Early visions of human rights being strengthened by networked technologies have instead crashed into technological realities which not only fail to advance human rights discourses, but rather serve to actively undermine fundamental human rights in countries around the world. The future of human rights is increasingly threatened by advances that would make George Orwell blush. Omnipresent data collection and algorithmic advances once promising a utopian world of efficiency and connection are deeply interwoven with challenges to anonymity, privacy, and security. This paper examines the impact of technological advances on the regression of human rights in digital spaces. The paper examines the development of human rights through changes in concepts of autonomy, empathy, and dignity, it charts their regression as technologies are used to increasingly prey on these very same characteristics that undergird human rights discourses.
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Critical Protection for the Network of Persons
Abstract. The world is facing a future of sensored surveillance, filled with pervasive ultra-small connected devices, added to relatively larger ones already present in appliances and everyday technology today. Sensors will be bound to people as well as the environment, and people will provide much of the data that will compose the fundamental building blocks of a decisional infrastructure. Threats emanating from incompetence, unethical conduct, criminals, and nation states will put national security at increased risk because of new levels of potential harm to individual citizens as well as potential damage to physical infrastructure. A future that includes intimate electronic connections with a person's body creates an imperative to secure a Network of Persons (NoP), rather than of things. Sensor driven collection of huge amounts of data from individuals can impact the fundamental meaning of citizenship, affect economic prosperity, and define personal identity, all in a world composed of dwindling nodes of mediation between humans and automated systems.
Patient Centric Cybersecurity
Advances in technologies relating to the provision of medical care are rapidly proliferating globally. These advances are being addressed piecemeal through a bevy of new laws, policies and regulations. Presently these efforts often fail to place the patient and his or her wellbeing at the core of legal, policy and regulatory developments. Rather there are efforts to balance issues of health outcomes, financial incentives and liability. An increasing threat particularly acute to patients resides in an inability to understand and manage their own health associated cybersecurity concerns. This paper builds the case for patient-centric approaches to not only medical care but also cybersecurity within health care.
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