Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Two Brazilian Brothers Arrested in Spain for Alleged Islamic State Links

Friday, December 1, 2023

Original article taken from Reuters
By Emma Pinedo and Ricardo Brito
November 28, 2023

SpanishCivilGuard_wikicommons

Spanish Civil Guard. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

MADRID/BRASILIA, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Spanish police have arrested two Brazilian brothers in the southern city of Estepona over alleged links to the Islamic State militant Islamist group, the Civil Guard police force said.

The police said the siblings had been radicalized and had distributed IS propaganda over the internet.

The Civil Guard's statement on Monday said it had identified "significant international links" between the brothers and individuals arrested or under investigation in European countries related to what it described as "the jihadist threat".

The arrest comes days after Brazil's Federal Police, in cooperation with Israel's Mossad spy agency, took down an alleged cell of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah seeking to establish itself in Latin America's largest country. Mossad's unusual trumpeting of its involvement in the operation has strained Brazil-Israel ties.

A Brazilian Federal Police source identified the brothers arrested in Spain as Thaylan Padilha Palomanes and Thauann Padilha Palomanes, requesting anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

The Federal Police had been tracking them for a while, the source said, adding that Thauann had lived in the Netherlands before joining his brother Thaylan in Estepona. They were arrested on Monday "for activities related to terrorism," the source said.

The brothers' legal representatives could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Civil Guard were assisted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Brazilian police, the Spanish force said.

The brothers have appeared before a judge and are being held in jail while the investigation continues.

Since 2004 train bombings in Madrid carried out by Islamists that killed 191 people, Spanish police have arrested more than 1,000 alleged jihadists, 56 of them in 2023, according to data from the interior ministry.

Reporting by Emma Pinedo in Madrid and Ricardo Brito in Brasilia; Editing by David Latona and Rosalba O'Brien

Comments

There are no comments yet. Be the first to add a comment by using the form below.