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For hundreds of years, states have sought to intervene in the affairs of others in a surreptitious manner. Since the professionalization of intelligence services in the aftermath of the Second World War, this behaviour has become known as covert action, which—for generations of scholars—has been defined as plausibly deniable intervention in the affairs of others; the sponsor’s hand is neither apparent nor acknowledged. We challenge this orthodoxy. By turning the spotlight away from covert action and onto plausible deniability itself, we argue that even in its supposed heyday, the concept was deeply problematic. Changes in technology and the media, combined with the rise of special forces and private military companies, give it even less credibility today. We live in an era of implausible deniability and ambiguous warfare. Paradoxically, this does not spell the end of covert action. Instead, leaders are embracing implausible deniability and the ambiguity it creates. We advance a new conception of covert action, historically grounded but fit for the twenty-first century: unacknowledged interference in the affairs of others.

Many analysts argue colorblindness as the reigning ideological buttress of a historically distinct form of structural white supremacy, color-blind racism. In contrast to slavery and legal segregation, color-blind racism is theorized as covert and highly institutionalized. As such, analyses of contemporary racial reproduction often emphasize the structure of colorblindness, particularly the habitual routines and discursive patterns of everyday white actors. Though invaluable, this work may conceal whites’ innovation in reproducing, revising, and at times resisting white supremacy and corresponding logics. As opposed to focusing on the structural elements of colorblindness, I elevate colorblindness as a culturally recursive accomplishment grounded in an epistemology of ignorance—that is a process of knowing designed to produce not knowing surrounding white privilege and structural white supremacy. Qualitatively analyzing 105 family wealth analyses produced by white college undergraduates researching racial inequality and the wealth gap, I identify four epistemic maneuvers by which students creatively repaired a breach in normative colorblindness. Demonstrating innovative means by which ordinary whites bypass and mystify racial learning highlights their vested commitment to maintaining and creatively defending the ideologies that buttress racial domination and white supremacy. As such, this research additionally advises updating strategies for challenging whites’ colorblindness in efforts to advance racial justice.

O'Rourke's book offers a onestop shop for understanding foreignimposed regime change. Covert Regime Change is an impressive book and required reading for anyone interested in understanding hidden power in world politics. ― Political Science Quarterly States seldom resort to war to overthrow their adversaries. They are more likely to attempt to covertly change the opposing regime, by assassinating a foreign leader, sponsoring a coup d'état, meddling in a democratic election, or secretly aiding foreign dissident groups. In Covert Regime Change , Lindsey A. O'Rourke shows us how states really act when trying to overthrow another state. She argues that conventional focus on overt cases misses the basic causes of regime change. O'Rourke provides substantive evidence of types of security interests that drive states to intervene. Offensive operations aim to overthrow a current military rival or break up a rival alliance. Preventive operations seek to stop a state from taking certain actions, such as joining a rival alliance, that may make them a future security threat. Hegemonic operations try to maintain a hierarchical relationship between the intervening state and the target government. Despite the prevalence of covert attempts at regime change, most operations fail to remain covert and spark blowback in unanticipated ways. Covert Regime Change assembles an original dataset of all American regime change operations during the Cold War. This fund of information shows the United States was ten times more likely to try covert rather than overt regime change during the Cold War. Her dataset allows O'Rourke to address three foundational questions: What motivates states to attempt foreign regime change? Why do states prefer to conduct these operations covertly rather than overtly? How successful are such missions in achieving their foreign policy goals?

The increasing demand for clandestine communication in underwater acoustic environment reflects the remarkable growth of research in underwater acoustic communication and networking. Mariners are driven to transmit information covertly in the ocean keeping it hidden from unfriendly users and intruders. This research introduces a novel technique of covert underwater acoustic communication that mimics false killer whale whistles. The secret information is embedded using cepstrum transform to imitate Pseudorca crassidens whistles. This covert communication can be achieved even in the presence of eavesdroppers, who are unable to recognize the communication signal due to unique watermarking characteristics. The proposed model uses machine learning to assess imperceptibility and demonstrates exceptional robustness and improved capacity. To validate the model for secure communication and networks, underwater experiments were conducted, resulting in superior bit error rate and high watermark capacity with a perfect low probability of recognition constraint covert communication.

In 2014, Russia denied that its military was assisting separatists in eastern Ukraine, despite overwhelming evidence. Why do countries bother to deny hostile actions like this even when they are obvious? Scholars have argued that making hostile actions covert can reduce pressure on the target state to escalate. Yet it is not clear whether this claim applies when evidence of responsibility for the action is publicly available. We use three survey experiments to test whether denying responsibility for an action in the presence of contradictory evidence truly dampens demand for escalation among the public in the target state. We also test three causal mechanisms that might explain this: a rationalist reputation mechanism, a psychological mechanism, and an uncertainty mechanism. We do find a de-escalatory effect of noncredible denials. The effect is mediated through all three proposed causal mechanisms, but uncertainty and reputational concern have the most consistent effect.

What are the effects of partisan electoral interventions on the subsequent character of the regime in the targeted country? Partisan electoral interventions have been frequently used by the great powers ever since the rise of meaningful competitive elections around the world. Such interventions have been found to have significant effects on the results of the intervened elections determining in many cases the identity of the winner. Nevertheless, there has been little research on the effects of partisan electoral interventions on the target’s subsequent level of democracy. This study investigates this question, testing three hypotheses derived from relevant political science literatures. I find suggestive evidence that covert electoral interventions have a significant negative effect on the target’s democracy increasing its susceptibility to a democratic breakdown. I also find preliminary evidence that the identity of the intervener has a mediating effect on the negative effects of covert interventions.

This article focuses on applying the provisions of the Criminal Intelligence Law to detect criminal offences. Based on the recent case law of the Supreme Court of Lithuania, the author provides insights into the problematic aspects of the application of certain provisions of the Criminal Intelligence Law. It examines the extent to which the tools of criminal intelligence can legitimately invade a person’s private life. The conditions for provocation by criminal intelligence, the criteria for (non-)recognition of evidence collected by private individuals, the problems of establishing a factual basis for initiating a criminal intelligence investigation, and the nuances of the duration of non-public actions are discussed. The Code of Criminal Procedure does not regulate the conditions for the use in criminal proceedings of data obtained in the course of a criminal intelligence investigation; therefore, it is decided on a case-by-case basis, taking into account, inter alia, the case law of the Supreme Court of Lithuania, and whether the information obtained in the course of a criminal intelligence investigation meets the requirements for evidence set out in the Code.

Ofir discusses the attack of Israel on Lebanon using exploding electronics which is part of a long history and strategy of targeting civilians. The ongoing attack, which can only be described as terrorist in nature, is unprecedented in its scope and method, but the nature of its indiscriminate attack is far from unique for Israel. In fact, Israel's doctrine of inflicting massive harm to civilians is named after the area of Beirut, Dahiya, where this very attack was centered. The most recent development marks a shocking advancement in Israel's wholesale disregard for human life but it is not new, even if one would never learn that from reading the Western press. The name of the Dahiya Doctrine stems from the Dahiya quarter of Beirut that Israel targeted and leveled during the 2006 war, a quarter where many families affiliated with Hezbollah lived. (Reprint 2024)

Traditional maritime vessel tracking methods based on multi-static passive radar stations typically process all available observations, leading to substantial computational overhead and estimation variance. Furthermore, discrepancies in refresh rates and noise levels among stations often cause significant jumps in estimated positions between updates, resulting in trajectory discontinuities. To mitigate these issues, this paper introduces a multi-station cooperative vessel tracking framework based on a motion-constrained resample-move particle filter (MC-RMPF). In the proposed method, systematic resampling is first used to alleviate particle degeneracy, and a markov chain monte carlo (MCMC) move step is subsequently applied to rejuvenate the resampled particles under vessel-motion feasibility constraints. Additionally, a distributed detection network is constructed using directional data from multiple stations, dynamically selecting optimal observation subsets to balance localization accuracy with computational load. The experimental results demonstrate that, compared to the baseline methods, our method reduces the Root Mean Square Error and Circular Error Probability of position tracking by 23.5% and 21.7%, respectively. It exhibits strong reliability in challenging scenarios such as target maneuvers and temporary observation loss.