~~
~~

Back in April, 2016, Lilia Shevtsova wrote in The American Interest about the powerful effect of US-European sanctions against Russia and Syria. Frozen assets in the U.S. of the oligarch Yuri Kovalchuk, a close ally of Putin, have totaled $572 million. In Italy, the Rottenberg brothers have also sustained losses worth nearly $40 million.

Ms. Shevtsova emphasizes that these “sanctions have exacerbated the economic recession in Russia: by accelerating capital flight and shrinking internal financial resources; by restricting Russia’s access to international financial markets and triggering a financial crunch; and by creating crisis of confidence in international business circles regarding Russia.” As a result, Russia could find no buyers or investors for its government-owned oil companies.

In March 2016, President Obama extended the sanctions on Russia for another year. (Apparently, this shocked the Kremlin, which expected that the U.S.-Russian agreement on Syria would mean softening of the sanctions regime.) Existing measures will stay in place as “Russia’s actions continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States,” the U.S. President’s decree says.

Curious, right? Putin's intent to seriously damage Hillary Clinton versus the unexpectedly propitious outcome of actually installing a flawed lunatic like Donald Trump paid dividends. Only eight months later, just one month after Election Day, this happened: Fortune Magazine reported:

Russia said on Wednesday it sold a stake in oil giant Rosneft for 10.5 billion €uros ($11.3 billion) to Qatar and commodities trader Glencore.

That $11.3 billion profit certainly makes a Trump victory seem much more financially appealing to the Kremlin indeed. ALWAYS follow the money. This election windfall really helps Putin mitigate losses from those sanctions that Trump will end, that have been costly and inconvenient.

It was personal too. Hillary Clinton not only supported the sanctions, but made it crystal clear that as President she would continue a hard line against Syria and Russia’s brutality. Not only would the current economic sanctions remain in place, but she promised more actions. Hillary was Putin’s number one threat to his power and to his country’s economic stability.
(more)

Cybersecurity experts are facing the daunting reality that they may have reached the limit of what humans can achieve in cyber defense. Thankfully, the answer to this issue may already have arrived, following in the form a platform known as AI-Squared.
Rise of the robots.

Unveiled to the world in April, AI-Squared is a collaborative project between MIT’s Computer Science and AI Laboratory (CSAIL) and a machine-learning startup known as PatternEx. Its function - to identify cyber-attacks.

The platform combines Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Analyst Intuition (AI) - hence the name AI-Squared. It works by parsing huge amounts of data - generated by users -- searching for odd activity using a recurrent neural network in combination with machine learning techniques. This is a process known as unsupervised learning, and it's used to find anomalies - the proverbial needles in the haystack.

Once identified, the platform notifies a human analyst, presenting its findings. The human analyst then confirms whether the user activity is an attack or a genuine visitor, which is relayed back to the AI. The AI turns these decisions into a model for use the next day. This is a process known as supervised learning.

(more)