From CSIS to Crypto
A little bit of intelligence and security news housekeeping to start your week
Hello, Insight Monitor subscribers! Today, we’re looking at the CSIS Annual Report released last week (celebrating 40 years since the creation of the Service!). I’ve a few highlights to share with you, along with a recent podcast I was featured on and an article I published over the weekend. Stay to the end for a former CSIS insider’s highlight. Have a read, share, and subscribe!
I’m kicking off this newsletter with an article I published over the weekend—a rare move, since I usually wait for the workweek (better engagement, to be honest). But with the fast-moving developments in the Iran-Israel- (and now U.S.) conflict, I decided to hit “publish” early. The piece explores Iran’s use of cryptocurrency to finance its threat activities, and how recent cyberattacks by Predatory Sparrow targeting Bank Sepah and Nobitex, Iran’s largest bank and crypto exchange, could disrupt the country’s ability to move and manage illicit funds. This one is free to read thanks to my ongoing postdoctoral position at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Law (where I’m focused on cyber threats, sanctions, and crypto).
I also wanted to share a Click Here Show that I was on that was released last week. We talked about TRON, Tether, and terrorist financing. They also produced some cool artwork (LinkedIn link) to accompany the podcast. Be sure to check it out on Apple Podcasts.
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CSIS Annual Report
Last week, CSIS released its annual report (2024), so I wanted to take a moment and share some highlights. The report celebrated the Service’s 40th anniversary. (I was there for the 30th anniversary. Time flies!) The report covers the usual threats to the security of Canada: foreign interference, espionage, and terrorism, but there were a few things that stood out for me.
First, youth radicalization got a significant mention. For anyone following the issue, this will come as no surprise. There has been an alarming number of young people who have been radicalized and are mobilizing to violence. However, this has been an issue for many years (a good decade now, at least); what I think this signals is that it remains a significant issue and hasn't been easily tackled or solved. Investigations involving youth are complex, sensitive, and disturbing.1
In the section on serious violence for political, ideological, or religious purposes (aka terrorism), I did note that the Service included commentary about the listing of the Houthis (aka Ansarallah). What struck me was the inclusion of this under their discussion of politically-motivated violence. It’s always interesting to see how the Service categorizes terrorist and violent extremist activity, especially when a case could be made for including Ansarallah as a religiously-motivated violent extremist actor.
In her Bluesky thread,
discussed how religiously motivated terrorism got top billing in this year’s report. For the last few years, ideologically motivated terrorism has received top billing. There wasn’t anything explicitly stated on this shift, but I agree that it was a soft signal from the Service about the shift in threat environment, and one that my data agrees with.Terror on the Rise: What the increase in terrorism charges in Canada can tell us about the threat
The terrorist attack in New Orleans this year has reignited the discussion about terrorism in the US, and, by extension, Canada. Some media outlets have talked about the return of ISIL (they never went away), while some experts have talked about the
I also thought it was interesting how Deputy Director Vanessa Lloyd’s commentary (CSIS’s former interim director, and the first woman director of the Service), spoke about the rise of sabotage in Canada. Earlier this year, we discussed Russian sabotage with Matthew Redhead on our Secure Line podcast, and I noted that we haven’t seen that here. I think Deputy Director Lloyd might be flagging that I wasn’t exactly right in saying that. Interesting!
Foreign Interference: The annual report also flagged a murder-for-hire plot in the United States that involved the arrest of two Canadians. We’ve increasingly seen states using criminal networks to carry out targeted assassinations, as I wrote about here. There’s also a whole book about to be released on this fall. The report also highlighted Iran’s use of criminal and proxy networks to carry out transnational repression and targeted assassinations. I’m sure we’ll hear more about that in the coming months.
The report also contained some interesting historical anecdotes, including a retrospective on the Air India attack (40 years ago Monday), which happened within the first year of CSIS’s founding. This attack demonstrated the clear need for a domestic intelligence service (and one that could coordinate with international partners), but it was an early intelligence failure that marked CSIS’s first year.
My favourite part of the report was the infographic that provides a nice visual summary of security and intelligence issues in Canada for 2024. It’s handy to have a timeline like this pointing to all the developments, legislative, listing, and arrests.
My second favourite part, however, was the official portraits of senior executives. If you have always wondered what the inside of the CSIS building looks like, take a close look at the background of these portraits — they’re all taken in different locations at Service headquarters. Almost makes me nostalgic.
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If you think I’m wrong and the youth radicalization and mobilization problem is worse than ever, convince me with a well-constructed research paper that shows a statistically significant rise in youth radicalization and mobilization over time, and as a proportion of everyone involved in terrorism and political violence.