ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

A Forrester Research study revealed that the US National Security Agency's PRISM surveillance program could cost US-based cloud and outsourcing vendors an overall three-year loss of $47 billion in revenues. The US National Security Agency's (NSA) PRISM surveillance program could cost US-based cloud and outsourcing vendors an overall three-year loss of $47 billion in revenues, a Forrester Research study revealed. Lost revenue from spending on cloud services and platforms is expected to amount to over $500 million in the period between 2014 and 2016, according to the analysis, released by the independent technology and market research company on April 1. © FLICKR/ ERIC NORRIS This Is How NSA Spying Screws US Businesses  Twenty six percent of business and technology decision makers outside of the United States have already reduced or halted spending with US-based service providers, Forrester said. Between 2014 and 2016, the cloud revenue hit is projected to be $528 million...

Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya an award-winning author and geopolitical analyst, who is also a member of the Scientific Committee of Geopolitica, spoke to Sputnik about the Saudi led coalition in Yemen. Nazemroaya said that all military experts around the world including American ones and the ones in the Middle East agreed that airstrikes are never enough to defeat any force. He also mentioned Libya saying that in that country airstrikes were not enough either. “You need operations on the ground”. “The Saudis would be very foolish to embark on the ground operations. It will be their Vietnam in the Middle East, in the Arabian Peninsula. I can categorically tell you that airstrikes are not enough to stop any military action on the ground.” He said that in fact Houthis have basically taken over Aden in the south and because of that he feels that Saudis are going to try and expand the war and bring in troops from Pakistan or mercenaries from other parts of the world. “They might come under th...

By Liz Sly SANLIURFA, Turkey — When Abu Hamza, a former Syrian rebel, agreed to join the Islamic State, he did so assuming he would become a part of the group’s promised Islamist utopia, which has lured foreign jihadists from around the globe.Instead, he found himself being supervised by an Iraqi emir and receiving orders from shadowy Iraqis who moved in and out of the battlefield in Syria. When Abu Hamza disagreed with fellow commanders at an Islamic State meeting last year, he said, he was placed under arrest on the orders of a masked Iraqi man who had sat silently through the proceedings, listening and taking notes. Abu Hamza, who became the group’s ruler in a small community in Syria, never discovered the Iraqis’ real identities, which were cloaked by code names or simply not revealed. All of the men, however, were former Iraqi officers who had served under Saddam Hussein, including the masked man, who had once worked for an Iraqi intelligence agency and now belonged to the Islami...

The USA is developing a new nuclear doctrine. American experts believe that today’s system of U.S. nuclear forces is out of date. Now they are going to change nuclear targets on the territory of Russian federation. The U.S. is going to retarget their nuclear missiles from large Russian cities to 12 most important Russian economic facilities. According to the U.S. experts destruction of these facilities will paralyze Russia’s economy and Russia will not be able to maintain military resistance. This information was provided in the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) report calling for fundamental changes to U.S. nuclear war planning, a vital prerequisite if smaller nuclear arsenals are to be achieved. "From Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence - A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons" calls to abandon the almost five-decade-long central mission for U.S. nuclear forces, which has been and continues to be "counterforce," the capability fo...

Iron-clad security contrasts beautiful sculptures. State-of-the-art equipment, biometric scanners, strong rooms, seven-tonne doors, vibration-detection technology and even systems to suck oxygen from the vaults in the case of a fire, releasing inert gas to extinguish the flames…. all to protect the precious commodities stored between these walls. It’s a scene out of Mission Impossible, but the reality is that these freehold ports are now a growing trend across countries which wish to store art and other precious collections of the super wealthy and tax-savvy entrepreneurs. The elite have found another way to dodge financial laws as they stow away their art for years at a time without incurring levies, saving them up to 34% on taxes, according to a report in The Economist. [1] “Freeports” can be found in several international airports, including Luxembourg who has finished their architecturally-sound structure sporting all the high tech security that an uber-geek could imagine. Technic...

A man stands by the wreckage of a van hit by an air strike in Yemen's southern port city of Aden March 31, 2015. (Reuters / Anees Mansour) Download video (19.66 MB) 1.2K The Russian Consulate General in the Yemeni sea port of Aden has been damaged during airstrikes launched by the Saudi-led military coalition against the Houthi rebels, said a source in the Russian embassy in Yemen. “There is not a single intact window left,” the source told Sputnik. A possibility of consulate closure and the evacuation of Russian nationals is currently under review, the source added. Earlier on Wednesday a Russian plane charted for the evacuation of Russian citizens caught in the conflict had been diverted to Cairo, after the coalition denied it landing in the Yemeni capital Sanaa. The evacuation has now been delayed until Thursday, when the chartered flight“accompanied by two other aircraft” is expected to arrive in Sanaa, according to a source of Russian daily Kommersan. In addition to Russians...

An activist inside the besieged refugee camp talks to MEE about how the Islamic State has gained so much ground in the Syrian capital Rebels take cover in Damascus' Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp (AFP/Ward Al-Keswani) News that fighters from the Islamic State (IS) had entered Yarmouk refugee camp in southern Damascus on Wednesday morning sent shockwaves around the world. Yarmouk, a once-thriving Damascus suburb home to 150,000 Palestinian refugees and Syrians, has been under siege by government forces for more than a year. In 2014 the camp entered the world’s consciousness when a local photographer took a picture of hundreds of men and women queuing for food in a street lined with destroyed buildings. As well as hunger, lack of water and electricity, residents of Yarmouk are now confronted by violent militants who have captured large parts of Syria and Iraq. But while IS has only recently entered Yarmouk - five miles from the center of the capital - the group has, a...

The Syrian conflict has entered its fifth year, and Bashar al-Assad is still in power defiant as ever. In fact, he appears to be increasingly confident after weathering the worst of the storm. The prospects for his removal or his regime’s collapse now appear increasingly remote after the US switched priority to defeating the Islamic State, relegating regime-change in Syria to the back burner indefinitely. So why has he survived for so long in the face of such seemingly overwhelming odds? Why has he been able to withstand the major global powers, hostile neighbours on every border and tens of thousands of well-armed rebel fighters against him? The rise ISIS and its terror networks certainly played a large role by shifting the global focus away from his regime and onto how to counter the serious threats to global security posed by the group. The unwavering political, financial and military support of Assad’s ardent allies Russia, Iran and Hezbollah were also a significant factor in stabi...