Brandon Valeriano

Russia’s Coercive Diplomacy against Ukraine: The Power Politics Story

by Brandon Valeriano | 3 March, 2014 | Featured

*The following post is written by Ryan Maness and myself. Events are in motion that many thought were past us, part of a bygone era where conventional war still had a prominent place in deciding the course of nations. Having done a great amount of work on Russia’s strategic behavior and use of power (we have a book on the topic under review), we were a bit caught off guard too. Not by the course of events, but that our vision was focused on cyber conflict and thus were distracted from the real world developments. The events in Ukraine fit a recent pattern of Russia’s coercive diplomacy...

Why the Crimea is the Third Rail of International Politics

by Brandon Valeriano | 1 March, 2014 | Featured

*this is a guest post by Konstantinos Travlos, currently a Visiting Assistant at Georgia Southern, who writes on international conflict and history. The arguments presented below are based on past research. Russian policy towards Ukraine is partly driven by short term political reasons such as protecting an investment in the form of Yanukovych, the Russian view of Ukraine as a “little brother”, a legitimate worry over the future of the Russian minority in Ukraine, and a very real opposition to what is seen by the Kremlin elite as the meddling of Western powers in its Near Abroad. However, I...

Cyber Spillover: The Transition from Cyber Incident to Conventional Foreign Policy Dispute

by Brandon Valeriano | 27 February, 2014 | Featured

*Post written with my coauthor Ryan Maness. We are currently rounding the corner and almost ready to submit the final version of our Cyber Conflict book. This post represents ongoing research as we fill out unanswered questions in our text. My coauthor and I have dissected the contemporary nature of cyber conflict in many ways, from cataloging all actual cyber incidents and disputes between states, to examining cyber espionage, and finally, examining the impact of cyber incidents on the conflict-cooperation nexus of states. What we have not done until now is examine the nature of what we...

You Think You Have a Facebook Problem? The IDF and Social Media

by Brandon Valeriano | 25 February, 2014 | Featured

Dan Levine sent on this great write up of the Israeli Defense Force’s (IDF) problems with social media. A few highlights: “In 2010, a soldier in the artillery corps posted this status: “Cleaning up Katana and home on Thursday.” Katana is a village in the West Bank. The status revealed the time of the planned raid and the unit involved. The other soldiers in the unit, also apparently glued to their screens, saw the update and, feeling imperiled, let the authorities know.” “Later that year the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate sent out a bulletin to soldiers featuring photos of drones...

Denying Tenure and Moving On

by Brandon Valeriano | 17 February, 2014 | Featured

For some people this has been a very good month, for others, no so much. Tenure (and by proxy promotion) is the thing most American Professors strive for, desire, believe is the crowning moment in their careers.* I will say for one, tenure denials, whether justified or outrageous – happen. Our careers are determined by many things but tenure is not one of them. It is a process filled with problems, but important nonetheless. For me, there was some liberation in having the process go poorly. Who I am kidding, I relished being denied. It freed me, allowed me to work on things I was too...

What is Cyber Hygiene?

by Brandon Valeriano | 4 February, 2014 | Featured

I was struck this morning to read a post on a Cyber Security forum with a link stating the "Super Bowl was Hacked!" Clicking on the link lead to this write up and picture. I can't think of better visualization of the need for basic cyber hygiene. The cyber security industry kills many trees and wastes much bandwidth on discussions of cyber offensive and defensive strategies. Yet, if we can't practice basic cyber hygiene, what is the point? The UK Cabinet estimated that as much of 80 percent of cyber crime can be prevented with basic cyber hygiene. While that figure is pretty much a wild...

Can You Pass the Cricket (errr.. Soccer) Test?

by Brandon Valeriano | 28 January, 2014 | Featured

Its World Cup season again. That time a year when I start getting interview requests about soccer/football, fandom, and loyalty. The assumption for many seems to be if you are a citizen of a state, you must give a certain amount of loyalty to said state. Fixed nationalism for many is an assumption. With global immigration patterns and international connectivity, these sorts of ideas can no longer be assumptions. This leads us back to the mythical test of national loyalties. Can you pass your local cricket test? It’s a simple proposition, basically, do you support your national team...

Public Opinion in the Midst of the Syrian Civil War

by Brandon Valeriano | 20 January, 2014 | Featured

I have been an admirer of Sam Whitt’s work for some time. He has always done interesting research, being one of the first to study and publish on Katrina and run surveys/experiments on divided post conflict societies. Whitt and his colleague Vera Mironova, conducted a survey of civilians and rebels in Syria during the Civil War. This fascinating study points out many problems and issues the international community will face as it tries to push for a peaceful solution to the Syrian Civil War. Moving beyond the civil-military gap and also the more modern socio-military gap, Mironova and...

Digital Video Games and International Interactions

by Brandon Valeriano | 10 January, 2014 | Featured

It has been an interesting week, I have been at a small conference in the US on cyber security and the question frequently asked is what are you working on? I think the assumption was that I would reply with something in the realm of cyber security, but that would be too clichéd for me. This week my research focus has been video games (we prefer to use the digital games since it encompasses all forms of the gaming industry). Digital games have surpassed movies as the most profitable dimension of the entertainment industry. Due to this shift, an interesting question is if there are...

In Cyber Security, it is the little things that matter…

by Brandon Valeriano | 30 December, 2013 | Featured

I really like the point of this brief little article on a “cyber attack” against a power plant. The money quote highlighted from the Foreign Policy article, “A shooter could get 200 yards away with a .22 rifle and take the whole thing out…A metal sheet that would block the transformer from view…[is] a lot cheaper than billions the administration has spent in the past four years beefing up cyber security of critical infrastructure.” A quick and dirty point can be made about waiting for the facts to come in before jumping to conclusions, but this tact is evident every time there is a...

The Duck of Minerva