Multibillionaire investor George Soros has issued a warning to Europe's democracies over the threat that a resurgent Russia poses to the continent.

In an essay published Thursday in the New York Review of Books, Soros calls for more economic and military support for Ukraine, as well as the abandonment of the eurozone's current austerity programs.

Here are his opening few lines [emphasis added]: 

Europe is facing a challenge from Russia to its very existence. Neither the European leaders nor their citizens are fully aware of this challenge or know how best to deal with it. I attribute this mainly to the fact that the European Union in general and the eurozone in particular lost their way after the financial crisis of 2008.

The fiscal rules that currently prevail in Europe have aroused a lot of popular resentment. Anti-Europe parties captured nearly 30 percent of the seats in the latest elections for the European Parliament but they had no realistic alternative to the EU to point to until recently. Now Russia is presenting an alternative that poses a fundamental challenge to the values and principles on which the European Union was originally founded. It is based on the use of force that manifests itself in repression at home and aggression abroad, as opposed to the rule of law.

What is shocking is that Vladimir Putin’s Russia has proved to be in some ways superior to the European Union — more flexible and constantly springing surprises. That has given it a tactical advantage, at least in the near term.

Soros is probably a better authority than most to talk about the threat from a divided Europe. In 1944, Soros was 13 years old and living in Hungary when Germany invaded. He goes on:

It is high time for the members of the European Union to wake up and behave as countries indirectly at war. They are better off helping Ukraine to defend itself than having to fight for themselves. One way or another, the internal contradiction between being at war and remaining committed to fiscal austerity has to be eliminated. Where there is a will, there is a way.

He ends on a call for the EU to be more "united, flexible, and efficient":

There must be something wrong with the EU if Putin’s Russia can be so successful even in the short term. The bureaucracy of the EU no longer has a monopoly of power and it has little to be proud of. It should learn to be more united, flexible, and efficient. And Europeans themselves need to take a close look at the new Ukraine. That could help them recapture the original spirit that led to the creation of the European Union. The European Union would save itself by saving Ukraine.          

Read the whole thing at NY Books >

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Senior US officials have provided new details of President Barack Obama's plan to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State in Syria, along with ideas as to why the strategy is fundamentally flawed.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post reports that the Syrian opposition force to be recruited, vetted, and trained by the US military and its coalition partners over the next year or so will defend territory held by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) as opposed to taking the fight to areas controlled by the Islamic State (aka ISIS or ISIL).

That's because an offensive force would require help of forward-deployed US combat teams, which Obama has ruled out in Syria.

“We have a big disconnect within our strategy," a senior US official involved in Syria and Iraq operations told The Post. "We need a credible, moderate Syrian force, but we have not been willing to commit what it takes to build that force."

Furthermore, the FSA — which Obama considers to be made up of doctors and pharmacists — is fighting for survival in Syria's largest city of Aleppo amid assaults from both ISIS and Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Hussam Marie, the Free Syrian Army spokesman for northern Syria, told The New York Times last month that the loss of FSA positions in and around Aleppo would be "unrecoverable" and "a blow to our shared goals of a moderate Syria."

Basically, the two obvious weaknesses in Obama's plan are being fully exposed: The US is not willing to partner with current FSA rebels on the ground and is also no longer willing to actively back the rebellion against the Assad regime.

Consequently, Assad is using the breathing room to intensify his bombing campaign on FSA areas, including "200 air force strikes"' in 36 hours recently. So it's unclear how much territory the FSA will actually hold when the US-backed force is ready in late 2015 or 2016.

“You cannot field an effective force if you’re not on the ground to advise and assist them,” a senior US military officer with extensive experience in training the Iraqi and Afghan militaries told The Post.

The US plans to train at least 5,000 moderate Syrian fighters, drawn from refugee populations, to fight ISIS.

The fighters would receive “basic training to secure their villages,” according to Lt. Gen. William Mayville, the director of operations for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. Mayville added that the force “won’t have the decisive effect” in the battle against ISIS.

Critics of the plan say that the lack of commitment to oust Assad will hinder the recruitment effort.

“It’s immoral to ask these young men to fight and die when we’re not going to protect them from Bashar Assad’s barrel bombs or from ISIS,” Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said recently. “You’re not going to get people to volunteer to do that.”

The CIA estimates that ISIS has as many as 31,000 fighters. US airstrikes in Syria have killed about 464 ISIS fighters since September, according to The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It's unclear how the plan as described would serve to "destroy" and "eradicate" ISIS. As experts have noted since the beginning of the campaign, the elimination of ISIS would require a much stronger commitment.

"If destroying ISIL becomes the near-term policy goal — which seems the likely outcome of saying you are going to 'roll back' the group — then 10,000, 15,000 troops vastly understates the true commitment, which will actually require years, direct military action on both sides of the Iraq/Syria border, tens (if not hundreds) of billions of dollars, and many more than 15,000 troops," counterterrorism expert Brian Fishman said in August.

However, despite the stated goal of the strategy, Obama and US officials are thus far unwilling to put American combat troops in harm's way in Syria (on top of Iraq).

"Thus far, senior military leaders have concurred in public with Obama’s decision not to send ground combat troops to Syria and Iraq," Chandrasekaran writes, "but the country’s top military officer, Gen. Martin Dempsey, has said that if he determines that it is necessary for US advisers to accompany local forces on attacks against Islamic State targets, he would make such a recommendation to the president."

SEE ALSO: The 2 Big Weaknesses In Obama's ISIS Plan Are Being Fully Exposed

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According to the US Treasury Department, the extremist group calling itself the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) is garnering wealth at an alarmingly quick pace, with large chunks coming from black-market oil sales and ransom payments for hostages. 

ISIS earns about $1 million each day in oil sales alone, said David Cohen, the Treasury Department's under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. He also said the group has netted approximately $20 million in ransom payments this year. Additionally, Cohen said ISIS has raised funds through local extortion and crime, like robbing banks.

"To some extent, ISIL poses a different terrorist financing challenge," Cohen said during remarks at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Thursday.

"It has amassed wealth at an unprecedented pace, and its revenue sources have a different composition from those of many other terrorist organizations. Unlike, for instance, core al-Qaeda, ISIL derives a relatively small share of its funds from deep-pocket donors, and thus does not, today, depend principally on moving money across international borders. Instead, ISIL obtains the vast majority of its revenues through local criminal and terrorist activities."

Cohen heads the Treasury Department's efforts to disrupt and diminish the group's finances, which is part of President Barack Obama's strategy to "degrade and ultimately destroy" ISIS. During his remarks, Cohen outlined what the Treasury Department knows about ISIS' funds and the department's strategy to undermine them. 

ISIS has tapped into a sophisticated oil black market in both Syria and Iraq, selling it at discounted prices to middlemen who then transport it out of ISIS strongholds. Cohen also said the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad has "made an arrangement to purchase oil" from ISIS. Beginning in mid-June, he said, ISIS has made approximately $1 million a day in oil sales.

Cohen said the Treasury Department would target with sanctions anyone who deals with ISIS' stolen oil. 

"At some point, that oil is acquired by someone who operates in the legitimate economy and who makes use of the financial system. He has a bank account. His business may be financed, his trucks may be insured, his facilities may be licensed. All that makes ISIL oil facilitators vulnerable," Cohen said.

He said the Treasury Department is "hard at work" identifying those individuals. 

The US military has also begun targeting ISIS oil refineries in its campaign in Iraq and Syria.

On ransom payments, Cohen said the US would work to make it an international consensus for countries to not pay ransoms for hostages — something that has long been US policy.

"This policy rests on the sound premise – confirmed by experience – that an explicit and consistently applied no-concessions policy reduces the frequency of kidnappings by eliminating the underlying incentive to take hostages in the first place," he said.

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A former Afghan interpreter who now lives in the US started a Reddit AMA with the goal of shedding light on the nightmarish process that Afghans who worked for coalition forces must go through in order to secure a visa. 

"FNU," First Name Unknown, Mohammad was an interpreter for the US military in Afghanistan from 2008 to 2012. During this time, he was fired upon multiple times by the Taliban as he attempted to provide unparalleled human intelligence for Marines on the ground. 

It took Mohammad almost three and a half years to secure a visa to come to the US. During that time, due to his aiding of Americans, the Taliban captured and executed his father. The militants also held his younger brother for a $35,000 ransom before eventually releasing him. Mohammad is continuing to work on securing the safe passage of his family out of Afghanistan to the US. 

Unfortunately, Mohammad's story is a common refrain for interpreters from Afghanistan. It is estimated that up to 80% of former interpreters are unable to acquire a visa to the US, despite their often life-saving service to coalition forces. 

In his AMA, Mohammad drew attention to the risks all Afghan interpreters face: 

All of them are targets. They want to kill us more than they want to kill Americans. I was particularly at risk because I was in Helmand and because I went out on a lots patrols.

Asked how he felt about having the name "FNU" as a legal first name, Mohammad responded:

My brother and I laugh about it. How is it that I was vetted for 3.5 years but the name on my visa is wrong? It's on our long list of things to fix, but obviously comes after saving my family. 

Mohammad also shed light on how difficult and exhausting the application process to get a visa was as government agencies would often not reply to questions: 

When asked about the most rewarding and most difficult parts of being in America, Mohammad responded: 

The most exciting thing is that I'm safe and I can live, that I can work and not constantly look over my back. The hardest thing for me is learning about the American culture. Luckily, I have my big brother to be my interpreter now ... My big brother is the Marine I worked with in Afghanistan who became my sponsor.

One Redditor asked Mohammad how his little brother was doing and if he needed anything: 

You guys came to help fix my country and free us from the Taliban, so I was taking care of my guests. He's doing well. He wouldn't talk for a few days and was severely dehydrated. He told us that they kept him in a shed. But now he is talking again and is a happy boy, but he misses his big brother and wants to be safe.

When asked about how to help Mohammad's family, and other Afghan translators, receive visas to America, he said: 

You can support this Fundly campaign to help my family: https://fundly.com/help-mohammad-resettle-in-america-and-support-his-family[1] We are trying to raise money so that we can pay for tickets and room and board.

You should also contact your local Congresspeople and tell them we need more Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs) for Afghans. Write a letter to your local newspaper or reporter, because it really helps when things are talked about in the media. Don’t forget about Afghanistan (or Iraq) even if the government says the U.S.’s work there is done. There are also groups working to protect people like me. I got support from the Iraqi Refugee Assistance Project - you can visit their website at www.refugeerights.org[2] (twitter.com/Refugee_Rights) (facebook.com/IraqiRefugeeAssistanceProject)

SEE ALSO: Some of the bravest people I've ever known are being abandoned in Iraq and Afghanistan

SEE ALSO: 20-year-old in Gaza says what he really thinks about Hamas in candid AMA

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Air strikes by the US-led coalition in Syria have killed 553 people since their launch a month ago, the vast majority of them jihadists, a monitoring group said on Thursday. However, a military spokesman said they have "not been able to verify" the report.

The strikes have killed 464 Islamic State group fighters, 57 militants from Al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front and 32 civilians, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Among the civilians killed were six children and five women, said the Observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria.

The US-led coalition against the Islamic State launched air strikes against IS on September 23, expanding a previous aerial campaign launched against the group in Iraq in August.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP the "vast majority" of jihadists killed in the strikes were not Syrians but foreign fighters who had joined IS and Nusra in the country.

US Central Command spokesman Maj. Curtis Kellogg told Business Insider on Thursday that the US military is evaluating reports of casualties on an ongoing basis, but has no evidence of civilian deaths at this time. 

"When an allegation of civilian casualties caused by U.S. forces is determined to be credible, we investigate it fully and strive to learn from it so as to avoid recurrence. That said, we continue to have no operational reporting or intelligence indicating U.S. or coalition airstrikes have caused civilian casualties in Iraq or Syria," Kellogg said in an email, adding, "We are aware of claims of suspected civilian casualties related to U.S. airstrikes in Syria and Iraq and we continue to evaluate them. To date, we have not been able to verify any of them. We determine the credibility of each allegation based on information available, including information provided by third parties, and information such as the proximity of the location to an airstrike, and any corroborating evidence presented."

Kellogg also said the US military takes unprecedented steps to avoid civilian deaths.

"In regards to civilian casualty allegations, I'd say up front that no other military in the world works as hard as we do to be precise. US forces have implemented significant mitigation measures within the targeting process and during the conduct of operations to reduce the potential of civilian casualties and collateral damage," Kellogg said. "While we strive to avoid civilian casualties in this extremely complex operating environment, we recognize the continued risk inherent in these strikes."

The US-led coalition has focused most of its efforts in Syria around preventing ISIS from taking Kobane, a Kurdish city on Syria's border with Turkey. The campaign has succeeded in stanching the jihadists' advance on the city, with one Kurdish fighter claiming that ISIS only controlled around 5% Kobane on October 21.

The Syrian Observatory has not responded to a request for comment from Business Insider about their report.

This post was updated with Kellogg's email at 11:10 a.m.

SEE ALSO: The fight against ISIS will not succeed without the help of these tribes

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China has seemingly shifted gears in a bid to bring the disputed Senkaku Islands under its control, Hiroyuki Akita reports for the Nikkei Asian Review. 

The Senkaku Islands are an uninhabited island chain administered by Japan in the East China Sea. Despite the islands' lack of a human population, it is believed that vast undersea oil reserves are located around the islands. The islands are also in a particularly plentiful fishing area. 

China is now using its fishing industry to bolster its claim over the islands. 

As the Nikkei Asian Review notes: 

From January to September, the Japan Coast Guard told Chinese fishing boats operating within Japanese waters around the Senkaku Islands to leave on 208 occasions, a 2.4-fold jump from last year and 26 times larger than the figure for 2011.

China has drastically increased the number of fishing vessels that it is permitting to sail into the disputed area — at the same time that it's scaling back the number of its surveillance ships operating around the island chain. 

China is attempting to use civilian vessels to erode Japan's claim over the islands. It's an insidious but possibly effective strategy. It normalizes the activity of Chinese vessels around the island chain, while the lack of any overt military involvement allows Beijing to claim a veneer of respect for Japan's territorial integrity. 

This change of strategy bears a striking similarity to China's process of slowly eating away at disputed territory along its border with India.

Since the 1960s, China has slowly been moving its soldiers into disputed areas along the countries' shared border at a pace that is never drastic enough to warrant a military reaction. Over the years, China has made gradual yet substantial territorial gains.

It is possible that the change of Chinese strategy in the Senkaku Islands follows a similar line of thought as in India. It's part of a plan to slowly expand influence through measures that advance Chinese policy without being provocative enough to warrant a military response. 

China's disputes between Japan over the Senkaku Islands, as well as between various nations over the South China Sea, has the potential to destabilize southeast Asia, and even the broader world along with it. In September, one Chinese professor at a military academy warned that these maritime disputes could eventually lead to a third world war. 

SEE ALSO: 5 of the 10 deadliest wars began in China

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The war in eastern Ukraine is in a state of cease-fire, but if the past seven months are any indication, this halt in hostilities won't spell the end of the most severe geopolitical crisis between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War.

In the economic and diplomatic realm, Russia is attempting to choke off Ukraine's supply of natural gas as the EU and the US ratchet up sanctions on Moscow.

And the fight continues on the battlefield, in spite of the cease-fire — seven Ukrainian soldiers were killed in a separatist attack on Monday, at the same time the Ukrainian army continued its shelling of rebel positions in Donetsk.

Yet eastern Ukraine is just one hotspot along a larger, continent-wide fault line. The border between Russia and NATO-allied Europe is dotted with pockets of instability including several separatist regions that Moscow and its allies support. The fact that Russia and the NATO states possess all but around 550 of the world's estimated 17,100 nuclear weapons only raises the stakes.

This map depicts the larger confrontation between Russia and NATO and the possible return to Cold War power dynamics in Europe.

SEE ALSO: Nine nations have nukes — here's how many each country has

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Anonymous senior US officials began to criticize elements of President Barack Obama's strategy to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the extremist group calling itself the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL). But some analysts believe it's the best possible option.

Some limitations of the strategy were revealed by officials in The Washington Post on Thursday. The Syrian opposition force that the US will help train and arm in the fight against ISIS will be trained only to defend territory. It will not go on the offensive, because operations of that magnitude would require US ground troop commitments, something Obama has explicitly ruled out.

But that defensive-minded strategy could also be a significant, if unintentional, boost to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who helped foster the rise of ISIS. The Free Syrian Army, which is made up of the more moderate opposition forces the US will train and equip, is being squeezed by both Assad and ISIS in Syria's largest city of Aleppo.

"Assad clearly benefits from a US-led coalition fighting against his mortal domestic foe," Ian Bremmer, the president of Eurasia Group, told Business Insider in an email. "But Assad was already winning on the ground before the US bombing started, and there was neither a credible plan nor international willingness to remove him."

The key limitation of the coalition's strategy has been a general unwillingness to become more involved in Syria's still-deepening, three-plus-year long civil war. The US and other partners backed off airstrikes on Syrian regime targets last September, and they have been unwilling to help the moderate rebels in their fight against Assad.

Some former administration officials — like Fred Hof, a former special adviser for transition in Syria under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — have argued that the reluctance to get involved contributed to the eventual vacuum that has been filled by jihadists.

Meanwhile, Assad has used the breathing room allotted by the focus on ISIS to intensify his bombing campaign against Free Syrian Army-held territory, including a campaign of "200 air force strikes"' in 36 hours in recent days. 

But given the political constraints and the general unwillingness of partner nations, it might be the best workable strategy. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, 55% of Americans oppose sending ground troops to fight ISIS — just 39% support it.

Bremmer is skeptical the strategy as it stands will accomplish the mission of "degrading and ultimately destroying" ISIS. But he argues there isn't a strategy out there that's both realistic and a better option at this point. The danger, of course, is that by the time Syrian rebels are vetted and trained by late 2015 at the earliest, they may not have much territory to defend.

"I think the overall US strategy on ISIS is sensible — given the domestic political constraints (a key caveat)," Bremmer said. "Support for US boots on the ground is limited and would quickly grow into opposition over time and given casualties. And if you’re not planning on an actual substantial ground force, you’re left with a strategy that’s part pushback (where you have workable ground forces — for now, the Kurds in Iraq), part containment (west Iraq and Syria). 

"So if you’re asking is [the] present Obama strategy going to defeat ISIS — the answer is no. If you’re asking is there realistically a better, more workable strategy out there — the answer is also no." 

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MSNBC is running a hard-hitting story on Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), a leading Republican Senate candidate, after he released a campaign ad that seemed to use footage from a propaganda video made by the jihadist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS).

According to a BuzzFeed report published Wednesday, Cotton's ad uses video from a propaganda film called "Flames of War." In the ad, Cotton narrates over the footage, warning voters of the jihadist threat.

In a blog post Thursday, MSNBC producer Steve Benen said this amounted to helping the terrorists "disseminate" their message.

"The right-wing congressman claims in the ad that he'll 'make America safer' – and apparently he’ll do so by paying money to help disseminate footage from a terror video that ISIS is desperate to disseminate," his post on "The Rachel Maddow Show" blog said. "I honestly never thought I’d see the day. Far-right politicians, eager to seem 'tough' on terror, are deliberately putting terrorists’ propaganda on the air, on purpose, to advance their personal ambitions.

The post, which was subsequently circulated by the Arkansas Democratic Party,  said the ad displayed a lack of "basic human decency."

"Cotton instead used ISIS propaganda, putting the same footage on the air that the terrorists want to see on the air," it continued. "Forget basic human decency for a moment. Which strategic genius in Cotton Campaign HQ decided this was a good idea with the election season nearly over?"

Cotton is running in a highly competitive race against incumbent Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Arkansas). The Cotton campaign didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider about criticism of the ad.

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Researchers are now using US Department of Defense funding to explore what could be the next big step in drone technology: mind control.

Daniel Pack, who manages the Unmanned Systems Laboratory at the University of Texas at san Antonio, told Business Insider that his goal is to be able to create entire groups of drones that can be controlled with a simple thought.

Thanks to a $300,000 grant from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, professors and graduate students from various departments at UTSA are exploring how brain waves can be translated into commands for nearby drones. The US Army Research Laboratory was also involved in some of the funding for the research, which will run until spring 2016.

A separate, $400,000 grant provided brain-wave measuring equipment — electroencephalography, or EEG — which includes a set of electrodes. Placed on the subject's scalp (see below), these pick up on the wearer's brain waves, which vary depending on thought processes or activities. Machines are programmed to translate specific brain waves into commands, meaning that they can be controlled just by thinking. 

Researchers claim the technology could help make soldiers more mobile and less dependent on static infrastructure. It could make some elements of drone infrastructure obsolete, as pilots would no longer need a ground station to relay instructions to the vehicles flying overhead.

The UTSA team even "hope[s] to eliminate the need for ground stations" altogether. It imagines drones that would be able to "extract vehicle control signals directly from brain signals of a soldier operating one or more aerial vehicles."

The technology for inputting commands with thoughts alone — known as brain-computing interface, or BCI — is less speculative than it seems.

Back in 2006, a paralyzed man was able, with some difficulty, to move a mouse cursor on a computer, and even open and close a prosthetic hand. He wore the same type of scalp electrode technology that UTSA's researchers are mow exploring.

And the University of Minnesota even released a video last year showcasing a mind-controlled drone maneuvering through large hoops in a gym.

The study claimed to demonstrate "for the first time the ability to control a flying robot in 3D physical space using noninvasive scalp recorded EEG in humans."

Bin He, who led the Minnesota study, told Business Insider he didn't have any military application in mind when he decided to undertake his research. A quadcopter drone was used only because it offered a showcase for motion control in three dimensions.

Another study led by He and published last month showed that test subjects with experience in yoga or meditation were better at controlling a mouse cursor with their minds — again using brain-wave sensors — than people without that background (this another possible reason for the US military to continue its meditation program).

The mechanics of piloting a mind-controlled drone are amazingly simple, even if the technology behind it is not. In the University of Minnesota video, one of the graduate students involved in the project explains that making the drone turn is as simple as imagining yourself making a fist with your left or right hand.

Commanding the drones can be done almost by instinct alone. Alex Doud, who spent seven years working with He, told Business Insider the technology reacts "in that intense anticipatory moment where you're not actually sending activation signals to your muscle." It works off of the same mental flinching required of an activity like a child's hand-slap game, he said.

A similar approach was used by Tim Fricke, who was involved in the intra-European "Brainflight", the results of which were published earlier this year. Users were able to pilot a virtual plane in a simulated cockpit with brain signals linked to the movement of their hands.

That's not the route the University of Texas at San Antonio is planning on taking with its own research.

Instead of translating specific brain waves (like those emitted when you intend to clench your hand) into commands for the drone, Mr. Pack and his team want to make the interaction more direct, without the need for a what Fricke calls "motor imagery."

"There's a big difference between those two things. One is indirect control," Pack said, while his team "is really trying to understand the interaction between humans and machines."

Ideally, drone operators would simply be willing the machines under their control into action.

Fricke told Business Insider that flying a drone could be as seamless as that most emblematic of instinctive, unthinking activities: "It's like riding a bike," he says. "You learn it only once but you can do it your whole life."

SEE ALSO: Why the US drone war could last forever

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It's one of the great paradoxes of nuclear power politics.

Strategic missile defense was meant to make inter-continental nuclear warfare obsolete, creating a protective shield that negates an enemy's first strike advantage. The idea is that one side won't even bother launching nukes if they know their missiles can be shot out of the sky en-masse. And the deadly logic of nuclear warfare hopefully collapses once a first-strike becomes an impossibility for one side.

But that might not actually leave the world any safer. It's impact can be just the opposite. It's conceivable that missile defense could actually make the world less safe.

A recently declassified paper from Studies in Intelligence, the CIA's internal journal, looks at how Moscow reacted to US missile defense efforts during the Cold War and the decade or so following the breakup of the Soviet Union. The paper's author, whose name is redacted, found that the Soviets, and then Russia, were desperate to undercut the advantages of a future US missile defense system — an objective that led them to act in potentially destabilizing ways. The paper's publication date is redacted as well, but it includes a quotation from Russian President Vladimir Putin from 2000, so it must have been written after that date.

In the early 1980s, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was a centerpiece of Ronald Reagan's defense policy. It would have relied upon technologies that are still unproven, like space-based Star Wars missile interceptors. The Soviets were worried about what such a tilt in the balance of global power could mean for them.

"In response to SDI, Moscow threatened a variety of military countermeasures in lieu of developing a parallel missile defense system," the paper states.

Moscow wanted to improve its negotiating position with the US in order to force Washington to suspend the project. And according to the paper, Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov considered several options for countering SDI, like "increasing the number of missiles, reinforcing missile silos to increase their survivability, using decoys on missiles to make intercepts more difficult," and "developing and deploying an underwater missile that would not be affected by the space-based missile shield."

Most worryingly, Andropov considered employing a "'forgotten division' concept, whereby Moscow would secretly forward-deploy an SS-20 intermediate-range missile unit only to allow it to be 'discovered' and bargained away in SDI negotiations." 

All of these potential Russian responses to an SDI would have brought dangerous uncertainty to the Cold War's ever-fragile balance of power.

A 1987 CIA assessment cited in the paper concluded the Soviets had in fact been researching technologies in preparation for an operational SDI of their own. The SDI never became a reality and the paper implies that one of the initiative's more tangible consequences was forcing a cash-strapped and slowly-collapsing Soviet Union to dedicate scarce resources to an as-yet conjectural problem.

Though it turns out Moscow might not have had the resources to make missile defense a reality, the dilemma the paper identifies is still a real one: by trying to make itself more safe the US might have altered the strategic environment in a way that actually made the country less safe. Strategic defense didn't end the arms race and instead it threatened to begin another and radically different one, only with dynamics and an internal logic that were unknowable to both sides.

This was most starkly on display during the US-Soviet "war scare" of 1983, when concerns over SDI might have caused the Soviet military to go on a heightened and possibly quite dangerous state of alert.

"The argument against [missile defense] is that it disrupts the balance of deterrence," Nate Jones, a scholar at George Washington University's National Security Archive and an expert on the 1983 war scare told Business Insider. "Russia was worried that if there's nuclear parity and one side is suddenly at a disadvantage because of so-called missile defense, it would upsets the decades of money and resources that they put into deterrence."

This disruption wouldn't even come with the advantage of added security for the US, given how unproven strategic missile defense technology still is.

"These systems don't provide absolute security," says Jones "and the destabilizing effects quite possibly outweigh the stabilizing effect."

The Studies in Intelligence paper closes with a quote from Andropov that gets at the troubling flip-side of the advantages that missile defense could offer.

"All attempts at achieving military superiority over the USSR are futile," the Soviet leader said in March of 1983. "The Soviet Union will never allow them to succeed."

On SDI, the Soviet Union of the 1980s didn't have the means or the initiative to follow through on this kind of threat. But that doesn't make the mindset behind it any less alarming.

SEE ALSO: THE EUROPEAN CHESSBOARD: Here's a map of the confrontation between Russia and NATO

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Good morning! Here's what you need to know for Friday.

1. The US military said Thursday that forces in Iraq were "months away from being able to start waging any kind of sustained ground offensive against the Islamic State," while a similar campaign in Syria would take even longer, Reuters reports.

2. A doctor who traveled to the Ebola-stricken country of Guinea and then returned to New York has been placed in isolation after testing positive for Ebola. 

3. Canadian authorities said the gunman who killed a solider at Ottawa's war memorial before being shot dead in the Parliament building was not identified as a threat, "despite his criminal record in three cities, embrace of extremist ideas, and intent to travel to Syria," The New York Times reports.

4. The 58-year-old guard credited with killing the man who opened fire in Canada's parliament on Wednesday morning received a hero's welcome when he returned to work the following day.

5. North Korea has barred tourists from entering the country over concerns about the spread of Ebola. 

6. The UK has been ordered to pay an extra €2.1 billion to the EU budget by December "because the UK economy is doing better relative to other European economies," The Guardian writes.

7. Venezuela has placed fingerprint scanners in grocery stores to ration food as shortages of basic goods, like cooking oil and milk, worsen. 

8. Following a four-day plenary meeting, China's Communist Party unveiled a blueprint for legal reforms as part of its push to stamp out government corruption. 

9. The European Central Bank will release stress-test results for 130 eurozone banks on Sunday, with many banks expected to fail. 

10. Chinese housing prices fell for the fifth consecutive month in September, continuing the country's real estate decline.  

And finally ...

These seven innovations will radically transform sex.

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"Citizenfour" premiered at The New York Film Festival on October 10 and opens in theaters October 24.

Documentarian Laura Poitras spent a lot of time with Edward Snowden in his Hong Kong hotel room from June 3 to June 10, and her new film sets the stage for what is arguably the biggest national security leak in American history.

"Citizenfour" presents fascinating footage from the Mira Hotel, revealing the raw interactions in room 1014 as Snowden, Poitras, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and Guardian reporter Ewan MacAskill unravel the first of many stories that exposed National Security Agency spying activities worldwide.

Unfortunately, the film, while revealing details about Snowden's time in Hong Kong (and Moscow), does little to answer fundamental questions regarding the former NSA systems administrator's alleged theft of more than a million NSA documents.

'What you know as Stellarwind has grown'

Snowden, 31, allegedly began copying documents in April 2012 while working as an NSA contractor in Hawaii. He emailed journalist Glenn Greenwald on Dec. 1, and helped run a "Crypto Party" on Dec. 11 that taught people how to could protect themselves online.

The former CIA technician reached out to Poitras in January 2013 with promises of top secret documents detailing pervasive spying by the US government on Americans and foreign citizens worldwide, and they began communicating. In June 2013, Poitras and Greenwald flew to Hong Kong to meet Snowden.

"Citizenfour" establishes the context of the Snowden leaks through whistleblowers who have come public about the US government spying on Americans.

One is Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician who revealed that the NSA built a special room at the central AT&T office in San Francisco that allegedly "vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T."

William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the US intelligence community and one of the best code breakers in NSA history, tells Poitras how he built a program called "Stellarwind" that served as a pervasive domestic spying apparatus after 9/11.

Snowden told Poitras that "What you know as Stellarwind has grown" into a worldwide spying apparatus that includes an increasing amount of data related to US citizens.

What is not mentioned in "Citizenfour" is that beyond the estimated 200,000 documents given to Poitras and Greenwald, Snowden also took up to 1.5 million documents detailing NSA operations targeting American adversaries.

Two days after leaving the Mira Hotel, Snowden provided documents revealing"operational details of specific attacks on computers, including internet protocol (IP) addresses, dates of attacks and whether a computer was still being monitored remotely" to Lana Lam of the South China Morning Post.

"I did not release them earlier because I don't want to simply dump huge amounts of documents without regard to their content," Snowden told the Hong Kong paper in a June 12 interview. "I have to screen everything before releasing it to journalists."

'But now he is starting to talk about ... hacking into China and all this kind of thing'

Poitras, who narrates that she was in Hong Kong until about June 16, has not commented on the SCMP leaks.

Greenwald subsequently told the Daily Beast that he would not have "disclosed the specific IP addresses in China and Hong Kong the NSA is hacking."

Binney, another central figure in "Citizenfour," had a clear response after the implications of Snowden's decision to leaking details about operational national security information unrelated to civil liberties.

The mathematician told USA Today in June 2013 that Snowden's disclosures to SCMP went "a little bit too far" and said Snowden "is going a little beyond public service."

Binney subsequently described Snowden as a "patriot" and supports him in "Citizenfour," but has not retracted his comments about the documents Snowden stole but did not give to Poitras or Greenwald.

Those disclosures are crucial, and their omission from "Citizenfour" highlights key questions about Snowden's multifaceted theft.

"He is a whistleblower in the case of some documents, and not a whistleblower in the case of other documents,"Edward Jay Epstein of The Wall Street Journalsaid in an August interview with Powerline.

Epstein reported that Snowden quit his job at Dell on March 15, 2013, before joining Booz Allen to "get access to the crown jewels, the lists of computers in four adversary nations — Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — that the agency had penetrated."

James Bamford of Wired, who met Snowden in Moscow this summer, reported that Snowden went to Booz Allen to steal documents detailing"the highly secret world of planting malware into systems around the world and stealing gigabytes of foreign secrets."

'I'm not the story here ... [Nail] me to the cross'

"Citizenfour" presents Snowden's rendezvous with Poitras and co. in vivid human detail, including several segments of him watching CNN and fixing his hair. Consequently, the footage raises questions and contradictions about Snowden's formal introduction to the world.

"I'm not the story here," Snowden told the camera, emphasizing at another point that he didn't want to personally bias the reporting.

At the same time, Snowden is effusive about not hiding his identity — on the subject of anonymously leaking, Snowden says "Fuck that." He has subsequently appeared on camera dozens of times since June 2013.

"My personal desire is that you paint the target directly on my back," Snowden reportedly told Poitras.

He added, according to chats featured in "Citizenfour," that the best action to prevent people close to him from falling under suspicion was "immediately nailing me to the cross instead of protecting me as a source."

Snowden says he wanted the US government to know where he was, but how he spent his time in the first few days after leaving Hawaii are still a mystery.

He told Vanity Fair that he "used a personal credit card so the government could immediately verify that I was entirely self-financed [and] independent."

That claim has been refuted. Epstein traveled to Hong Kong this summer and reported for WSJ that while Snowden arrived in Hong Kong on May 20, he didn't check into the Mira Hotel until June 1.

"Mr. Snowden would tell Mr. Greenwald on June 3 that he had been 'holed up' in his room at the Mira Hotel from the time of his arrival in Hong Kong. But according to inquiries by Wall Street Journal reporter Te-Ping Chen, Mr. Snowden arrived there on June 1," Epstein reported. "I confirmed that date with the hotel's employees. A hotel security guard told me that Mr. Snowden was not in the Mira during that late-May period and, when he did stay there, he used his own passport and credit card."

Assange's curious cameo

While "Citizenfour" also does not go in depth about how Snowden spent his time before and after Poitras filmed him in Hong Kong, his eventual flight to Moscow on June 23 is addressed.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sent his trusted adviser (and former girlfriend) Sarah Harrison to Hong Kong to find the American asylum somewhere out of the reach of the US government.

The Australian publisher of US secrets makes a brief appearance in "Citizenfour," telling someone on the phone that the organization had helped Snowden leave Hong Kong and that the "CIA agent" was trapped in Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport since the American government revoked his passport on June 22.

"We are trying to arrange a private jet to take him from Moscow to Ecuador or perhaps maybe Venezuela, or maybe Iceland, some of these places would be safe," Assange says.

However, Assange has stated multiple times that he advised Snowden to stay in Russia, as opposed to attempting to obtain asylum in Venezuela and Ecuador.

"In Russia, he's safe, he's well-regarded, and that is not likely to change," the Australian publisher told Janet Reitman of Rolling Stone in December 2013. "That was my advice to Snowden, that he would be physically safest in Russia."

And in May, the official WikiLeaks Twitter account (which Assange runs) stated that they "advised Snowden to take Russia. Not safe elsewhere."

A very important film

"Citizenfour" is an engrossing account of Edward Snowden's collaboration with US and UK journalists to expose pervasive surveillance activities by the American government and its allies.

What is left unmentioned — including details about Snowden's time in Hawaii, why he took a cache of documents unrelated to civil liberties, his first 11 days in Hong Kong, the fate of documents he didn't give to journalists, and the circumstance of his asylum in Russia — is equally fascinating.

The film is well constructed and disciplined, and Poitras presents a never-before-seen side of Snowden.

But crucial questions remain, and the work does little to address the unflattering choices that the American icon made.

SEE ALSO: We Now Know A Lot More About Edward Snowden's Epic Heist — And It's Troubling

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The Mexican Drug War, which is approaching its eighth anniversary in December, has spanned two Mexican presidential administrations and resulted in the arrest or death of several high-ranking drug trafficking figures.

Despite some successes, like the February capture of the infamous Chapo Guzman, the war has resulted in a horrific death toll and the erosion of civil liberties and basic public safety in large parts of the country. 

October has brought a wave of drug war news. Some of it has been positive: three major trafficking figures have been arrested since October 1, including the heads of the Gulf and Juarez cartels and the founder of the Beltran Leyva organization.

But in early October, corrupt police officers working with drug traffickers and local politicians abducted and possibly murdered 43 student teachers from a town halfway between Mexico City and the Pacific coast, in Gurerrero State. On October 10, Mexican journalist Leon Krauze described the incident as "the latest rearing of the beast's head"— the worst in a series of troubling incidents in the state.

"Guerrero," Krauze wrote in The New Republic, "[is the] current epicenter of Mexico’s nightmare. For a while now, rival gangs have been fighting for control of the state. The result has been the usual parade of horrors: cities besieged (including Acapulco), governments infiltrated, journalists threatened, police corrupted. And death. And vengeance."

The drug war, originally launched by former President Felipe Calderon, was first undertaken using a kingpin strategy that aimed at severing the head of each of the cartels operating in the country — backed with the mass deployment of the Mexican military to the country's worst trouble-spots.

Both efforts have had a profound effect upon Mexican society: at least 60,000 people died between 2006 and 2012 as a result of a war that pitted various criminal enterprises against the Mexican army and a constellation of vigilante groups — as well as against each other.

Calderon's successor, President Pena Nieto, promised that he would reform the drug war when he took office. Instead of focusing on arresting the heads of the cartels, Nieto said he would undertake a general policy of combating crime and fostering rule of law.

Despite these promises, Nieto's policy towards the drug war remains strikingly similar to Calderon's — even though, as Krauze argues, he's been far more hesitant than his predecessor to talk about the country's crisis. Within the past month, three major kingpins from three different cartels have been arrested, including the first ever arrest of a Mexican cartel leader on US soil. 

Despite the arrests, the security situation continues to deteriorate throughout the country as various gangs and organized crime organizations splinter and compete, sometimes as a result of the uncertainty that follows the takedown of a cartel kingpin.

Organized crime groups “are every day more fragmented,” Steven S. Dudley, a director of InsightCrime.org, a website that tracks crime in Latin America, told The New York Times on Oct. 21. “In principle, this is what the government wants, but in places like Tamaulipas, this has not resulted in less violence. In fact, this process has contributed to making the state one of the most violent in Mexico.”

Dwight Dyer of Control Risks had the same concern, telling the Financial Times on Oct. 2 that "the security situation is worsening in general in the country."

The drug war has created an environment in which human rights are violated at an "alarmingly high rate" by criminal elements and the country's various levels of government, according to the UN Human Rights Council. 

The council found that the general militarization of Mexico during the drug war has created an atmosphere of lawlessness and impunity, with drug traffickers executing their enemies at will and the vast majority of murders going unpunished. The report found that between December 2006 and November 2012, 102,696 homicides took place, of which 70% were drug related. 

Of these homicides, only 1-2% were investigated to the point of conviction. 

This state of lawlessness has permeated Mexico's public sector. The 43 students who disappeared in the southern town of Iguala had been protesting against the local government. It is now believed that the students were arrested by local police and handed over to the gang Guerreros Unidos under the orders of the mayor and his wife in an effort to stop political dissent. 

The students have still not been found, even after an extensive search. The hunt has uncovered nine mass graves containing the remains of 30 other missing people.

At the same time, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission determined in an Oct. 21 report that the army had carried out extra-judicial executions of suspects in June 2014. In total, the military executed 12 people, including two minors. The report found that military personnel then tortured and sexually harassed two female detainees, while a third was subjected to inhumane treatment. In a rare sign of accountability, eight members of the military have been arrested following the release of the report.

Although Mexico's Drug War is far from over, increasing accountability for the military may help the country begin to turn a corner on at least one source of violence.

At the same time, Leon Krauze wrote that he doesn't think Neito is serious about combatting the deep-seeded rot that's allowed the drug war to rage for so long.

Krauze asked Nieto how he planned on combatting corruption during a televised interview. "Corruption in Mexico 'is a cultural matter,' he said, not realizing the implications of the sentence. For a second, the room fell silent. Was he saying there was no escaping corruption?"

If that's the attitude Nieto's administration takes, there may be no escaping the drug war either.

SEE ALSO: Nearly eight years into the drug war, these are Mexico's 7 most notorious cartels

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As the crisis in Ukraine continues to grind along and casualties continue to mount, despite the existence of a ceasefire, Russia holds a trump card.

Winter is coming and Europe will have little option but to turn to Putin for its gas purchases. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday he did not expect European countries to stop buying natural gas from Russia as there is no real alternative.

"Can you imagine that this will happen at the desire of our partners in Europe? I can hardly imagine this," Putin said in a response to a question during a meeting with Russian and foreign political experts.

Russia provides one third of the natural gas that European countries rely upon to heat their homes and drive industry. Any disruption in natural gas flows could be a potential knock against Europe's economy.

However, a long term shut off of gas would likely be unthinkable. Just as Putin can not imagine a future in which Europe could live without Russia's gas exports, so too is it difficult to imagine Russia surviving without Europe's market. Russia is simply too reliant upon energy exports to completely shut off gas to Europe for a long haul. 

This reliance means that any disruption in gas to Europe would likely only be a short-term interruption meant to pressure governments. However, Europe's options are limited. Although some countries in Western Europe, such as Spain, Portugal, and Ireland, do not use any Russian gas, other nations such as Bulgaria are completely reliant upon receiving imports to heat their homes. 

The country most at risk of any potential gas shut off would be Ukraine. In 2013, Russian gas accounted for half of the gas the country used. Russia has said that it will shut off gas to supplies to the country unless it can pay over $5 billion for past expenses. 

Shutting off gas to Ukraine could have a trickle down effect on the rest of Europe. In 2008, Ukraine siphoned gas from Russian pipelines passing through its territory after Russia stopped supplying the country. Putin has warned that any repeat of this action would lead to him reducing the total volume of gas he would supply to Europe.

SEE ALSO: Putin's trump card in Ukraine: Winter is coming

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Russian President Vladimir Putin just gave one of the most stridently anti-Western speeches of his career, a 40-minute "diatribe ... that was reminiscent of the Cold War,"according to Reuters.

Putin was speaking before an "informal group of experts" at a mountain resort outside the former Olympic city of Sochi that included Western specialists critical of his rule. The Russian president held little back rhetorically, blaming the US for military escalations in the former Soviet space and accusing the US and its partners of "pushing [Ukraine] into chaos."

"We did not start this," Putin said before accusing the US of trying to "'remake the whole world' based on its interests"— an accusation often lobbed at Putin's Russia by its foreign critics.

But Putin's speech went beyond critiquing American actions or defending his own. He made several statements that don't really fall within the realm of policy disagreement.

Instead, the Russian president began to attack American society and its system of government, according to tweets from ABC News' Moscow bureau chief.

Putin on the United States: "There is no true democracy there."

— Kirit Radia (@KiritRadia) October 24, 2014

Putin: "Where is Occupy Wall Street? It was choked in its cradle."

— Kirit Radia (@KiritRadia) October 24, 2014

Putin also expressed a certain confusion over one of the central pillars of American electoral democracy (although in fairness, a lot of people are baffled about this stateside, as well): 

Putin continues to be baffled by the American Electoral College...

— Kirit Radia (@KiritRadia) October 24, 2014

Putin's speech included metaphorical appeals to Russian national greatness:

Putin: "The bear isnt asking anyone for permission. The bear is considered a strong & a very traditional animal... (but) will not surrender"

— Kirit Radia (@KiritRadia) October 24, 2014

Putin's speech may dispel the idea that the conflict over Ukraine is simply about legitimate Russian concerns over the persecution of Ukraine's Russian minority or NATO encroachment into Moscow's traditional zones of influence.

The Russian president instead seems to be going out of his way to say there are larger and more fundamental motivations at play — ones that may have little to do with the politics of the moment and may be more tied to Putin's hostility against the West.

SEE ALSO: A Newly Declassified CIA Paper Details A Tense Subplot In The Cold War Arms Race

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A top US general has told reporters that North Korea has likely achieved the capability of being able to miniaturize nuclear weapons that could be placed on top of a rocket, Felicia Schwartz reports for The Wall Street Journal. 

Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of US forces on the Korean peninsula, told reporters at the Pentagon today that he believes that North Korea is likely able to miniaturize a nuclear device. However, the US has not yet seen evidence that North Korea has actually conducted a miniaturized nuclear weapon test. 

Scaparroti said at the briefing that he believes North Korea has "the capability to miniaturize a device at this point and they have the technology to actually deliver what they say they have."

Although he is unsure of where North Korea may have acquired the technology necessary to overcome the technological hurdle, the general said that the advance may have been aided by proliferation efforts from Iran or Pakistan.

“They have proliferation, relationships with other countries, Iran and Pakistan in particular,” Scaparrotti said. 

The miniaturization of warheads by North Korea could lead to a serious rebalancing of power dynamics in the region.  

The Wall Street Journal: 

Such nuclear warheads would be small enough to fit on a ballistic missile and would be a major improvement to Pyongyang’s weapons technology. Gen. Scaparrotti said he believed North Korea also had developed a launcher that could carry an ICBM with a miniaturized warhead. 

However, successfully fitting nuclear warheads on a missile and carrying out a successful launch is still technologically taxing. Experts believe that an actual launch may be currently beyond North Korea's ballistic capabilities. 

This announcement comes on the heels of a recent charm offensive carried out by North Korea. Representatives of the Hermit Kingdom have visited South Korea and the EU, and Kim Jong-Un personally ordered the release of imprisoned American Jeffrey Fowle. 

SEE ALSO: Chinese state-run media has started attacking North Korea over the country's 'flip-flop attitude'

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The V-22 Osprey, a heavy aircraft capable of taking off and landing vertically, is a mainstay in 21st century US troop transportation.

But its tiltrotor technology, which allows the Osprey to take off like a helicopter and then fly like a fixed-wing plane, took decades to develop. One of its key ancestors belonged to the legendary family of Air Force "X" planes, the record-setting experimental aircraft that still represent the cutting edge of American aviation.

The Hiller X-18 was first built in 1959 and employed a single moving "tiltwing" crossing through the aircraft's body. As the wing shifted, so did the orientation of the plane's engines and blades. The X-18's 16-foot blades gave it the nickname the Propelloplane.

It wasn't the first aircraft to use this kind of wing, or the first attempt at creating an airplane-helicopter hybrid. Several earlier experimental planes of the '50s and '60s used the same type of tiltwing, starting with the more rickety-looking Vertol VZ-2, built in 1957.

The plane's shifting wings can be seen in action here:

The idea of a tiltrotor aircraft was to marry the maneuverability of a helicopter — which needs far less space to take off and land than any fixed-wing aircraft — with the speed, range, and size of a plane.

This presents a number of technological challenges for engineers who want to reap the full benefit of a prospective heli-plane. After all, a transport plane is heavier and requires both a larger fuel load and a higher cruising altitude than even the most advanced helicopter. And the aircraft has to be able to tilt its rotors or wings in mid-air while still managing to stay aloft.

Even so, in the 1950s, engineers realized that it might actually be possible to build a working airplane-helicopter hybrid. And they became aware that helicopters were soon going to hit their technological ceiling. "As helicopters progressed past their World War II infancy, researchers started to run into the expected speed limitations inherent to all rotorcraft that generate 100% of their lift and thrust from a rotor in edgewise flight," an article at Jalopnik on the history of tiltwing aircraft noted. The solution was the build helicopters that looked and behaved more like traditional airplanes — flying machines like the X-18.

Only one X-18 was ever built, and it was eventually grounded after spinning out and nearly crashing during its 20th test flight in 1961. A historical document from the US Air Force cites the prototype's "susceptibility to wind gusts when the wing was rotating. Also, the turboprop engines were not cross-linked, so the failure of one engine meant a crash."

But it was a pioneering aircraft despite its short operational lifespan. The X-18 could fly at over 35,000 feet, and weighed over 20,000 pounds. The VZ-2, in comparison, couldn't break 20,000 feet, and weighed only about 3,500 pounds. It pushed the limits of what a heli-plane could do.

The X-18 would be used in safer ground tests for several years before being scrapped in 1964. That killed the X-18, but engineers would keep experimenting with some of the concepts the plane employed.

The true proof of concept would be a long time in coming — the V-22 Osprey was in development for decades, and was nearly killed by then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in 1989. Four separate accidents killed 30 US military personnel before the plane was even officially put into service in 2007.

But today, the Osprey is one of the US military's workhorse planes. One of them have even been dispatched to West Africa to aid in the American response to the Ebola epidemic.

It's another sign of how once-distant-seeming technology has now become routine — and it's another contribution that the storied X-plane series has made to aviation.

SEE ALSO: These are the X-planes, the astounding cutting edge of American aviation

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Opium poppy cultivation sprawled to more than a half-million acres in Afghanistan last year, a record according to a report by the Inspector General responsible for overseeing Afghanistan's reconstruction.

Two charts in the report convey the sheer depth of the US's failure to end a globally illegal industry that directly funds the Taliban.

One of the report's charts used UN data to show how market forces appear to hold sway over the country's opium production levels.

That market paid amazingly little heed to over a decade of external efforts to crush it.

The US has spent $7.6 billion to date in Afghanistan to eradicate poppy crops and incentivize farmers into growing alternatives. But as the chart shows, the troughs in Afghanistan's total poppy production follow low opium prices while opium yields exploded after a crop disease destroyed half of the country's poppy fields in 2010.

When poppy yields declined, it was because of market forces and a literal act of God — not US efforts. And the overall level has risen substantially since 2002.

A map created for the report gives an additional, national-level picture of where opium production has actually increased.

Taken as a whole, the Afghan poppy industry is worth $3 billion in opium and its derivative products (such as morphine and heroin). This is actually a $1 billion increase since 2012, according to the Inspector General's report.

This map shows that the increase was a national phenomenon. It's not as if a couple of regions enjoyed a bumper crop. Opium is a growth industry everywhere:

Responding to the report, an official at the American embassy in Kabul notes that "well over 80 percent of the world's illicit opium" comes from Afghanistan. It's "a windfall for the insurgency, which profits from the drug trade at almost every level."

It also shows how one of the central US objectives in Afghanistan has failed. After 13 years and over $7 billion, the country's economy, and its armed groups, are as dependent on the narcotics trade as ever.

Meanwhile, the Taliban are resurgent in Afghanistan's north, just months before US combat operations are scheduled to conclude at the end of 2014.

SEE ALSO: Mexico's drug war is entering a dark new phase

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US Military Central Command released declassified footage of a US airstrike against the jihadist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS and ISIL).

In a statement sent to reporters along with the clip, CENTCOM described the video as footage of a strike on an ISIS "vehicle-borne improvised explosive device" near the crucial Syrian border town of Kobani.

"This strike was conducted as part of Operation Inherent Resolve, the operation to eliminate the terrorist group ISIL and the threat they pose to Iraq, the region and the wider international community," the statement said. "The destruction of ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq further limits the terrorist group’s ability to project power and conduct operations."

The short clip shows the vehicle driving for a moment before it seems to be taken out by a missile. Watch it below.

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