To celebrate the end of 2014, the US Navy compiled a list of its top ten favorite photos the branch took this year. 

The Navy's 2014 list was selected from its photos that it had shared on Facebook and Instagram based on the number of fan likes. The top ten images represent the diversity of the Navy, ranging from the controversial littoral combat system to to the Navy Blue Angels and everything in between. The photos also give a sense of the branch's massive and even worldwide geographic sweep. 

Below are the Navy's most striking images of the past year.

In 2014, the Navy successfully deployed two of its littoral combat ships to the Pacific, putting the branch's proposed ship of the future in an area of increasing US interest. 

The USS Donald Cook, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, carried out a patrol on the Black Sea. 

Meanwhile, in California, the Navy flight demonstration team the Blue Angels practiced their formation flying. The team had to complete 120 practice flights before kicking off the 2014 air show season.

Prospective Navy SEALs participate din the Surf Passage, one of the first phases of the physically and mentally demanding SEAL training. 

Constant training is important across the Navy. Here, an MH-60S Sea Hawk participates in an exercise off the coast of the Hawaii during Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) Exercise 2014.

The Navy's constant vigilance can make heavy demands of its personnel. Here, submarine Sonar Technician 2nd Class Willian Wade holds his daughter for the first time moments after arriving back at Submarine Base New London from a deployment. 

The Navy's reach means that it has constant international obligations. Here, a Carrier Strike Group participates in a maneuvering exercise alongside a Peruvian submarine in the Atlantic Ocean. 

Of course, there is more to the Navy than just ships. Here, sailors with the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Training Evaluation Unit maintain their jump qualifications by parachuting out of a C2-A.  

In terms of missions, 2014 was a busy time for the Navy. Here, the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush passes through the Gulf of Aden after supporting strike operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.  

Navy sailors enjoy a selfie just as much as anyone else. Here, Capt. Greg Fenton, commanding officer of the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, takes a selfie with Capt. Carlos Sardiello, Master Chief Shaun Brahmsteadt, and 275 new petty officers after a command frocking ceremony.

SEE ALSO: These are the most incredible photos the Air Force took in 2014

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In this excerpt from The Red Circle: My Life In The Navy SEAL Sniper Corps And How I Trained America's Deadliest Marksmen, former Navy SEAL sniper instructor Brandon Webb, describes the deadliest sniper in US military history.

Everything I'd experienced in the navy up to this point, from those early days as an aircrew search-and-rescue swimmer to BUD/S and STT through deployment on the USS Cole, in the the Gulf, and in Afghanistan, all of it had gone into our work in revamping and refining this sniper course, and we were now turning out some of the most decorated snipers in the world.  

There is no better example of this than Chris Kyle.

Chris is a Texan who had been shooting since he was a kid, and like a lot of guys who grew up hunting, he knew how to stalk. He was also a champion saddle-bronc rider; in fact, the first time he applied to the navy he was flat-out rejected because of pins in his arm, the result of a serious accident he'd had while in the rodeo ring. The navy later relented and actually sought him out for recruitment. Good thing for our side, as it turned out.

Chris immediately made a big impression on all the staff and obviously had great potential, although it didn't jump out and bite you at first. Chris is a classic example of a Spec Ops guy: a book you definitely do not want to judge by its cover. A quiet guy, he is unassuming, mild-mannered, and soft-spoken — as long as you don't get him riled. Walk past Chris Kyle on the street and you would not have the faintest sense that you'd just strolled by the deadliest marksman in US military history, with more than 150 confirmed kills. 

Like me, when it came time for assignment to the teams, Chris had chosen SEAL Team Three as his top pick, and gotten it, too. For his first deployment, he was one one of the SEALs on the ground in Iraq with the first wave of American troops at the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003. While he was there, Chris saw some serious action; it was a helluva place to have your first deployment.

Upon rotating back home, one of the first things Chris did was to go through our sniper course. After graduating, he shipped right back out to Iraq, where he fought in the Second Battle for Fallujah, which turned out to be the biggest and bloodiest engagement in the entire Iraq war. Since the largely unsuccessful First Battle for Fallujah seven months earlier, the place had been heavily fortified, and we had big army units going in with small teams of our snipers attached to help give them the edge they needed. 

Our snipers would sneak in there, see enemy insurgents (sometimes snipers themselves) slipping out to try and ambush our guys, and just drop them in their tracks. It was no contest. 

Our guys were not only expert shots, they also knew how to think strategically and tactically, and they came up with all kinds of creative solutions on the battlefield. For example, they would stage an IED (improvised explosive device) to flush out the enemy.

They would take some beat-up vehicle they'd captured in a previous op, rig it up with explosives, drive it into the city, and blow it, simulating that it had been hit by an IED. 

Meanwhile, they would take cover and wait. All these enemy forces would start coming out of the woodwork, shooting off guns and celebrating, "Aha we got the Americans!" and the snipers would pick them all off like proverbial goldfish in a bowl. You didn't hear about this on the news, but they did it over and over, throughout the city.

Chris was in the middle of all this. In his first deployment he racked up close to 100 kills, 40 of them in the Second Battle for Fallujah alone. He was shot twice, in six separate IED explosions, and received multiple frag wounds from RPGs and other explosives.

The insurgents had a sniper there from the Iraqi Olympic shooting team, who was packing an English-made Accuracy International, about $10,000 worth of weapon. This guy was not messing around. Neither were Chris and our other snipers. They shot the guy and took his rifle. Al Qaeda put a bounty on Chris's head—but nobody ever collected. You can read about Chris's exploits in his book, American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in US Military History.

As remarkable as he is, Chris Kyle is quick to point out that he was not unique on that battlefield. There was a whole lineup of SEAL snipers in Iraq at the time who were cutting a wide swathe through the hotbeds of insurgency, providing clear zones for our marines and army forces to operate without being picked off by enemy snipers themselves or being ambushed by IEDs.

It's easy to have an image of these guys as trained killers—mean, ruthless men who think nothing of ending other people's lives. Maybe even violent and bloodthirsty. The reality is quite different. Think about the various ways we have gone about winning wars in the past. Think about American planes firebombing Tokyo and Dresden during World War II, which burned to death hundreds of thousands of civilians. And that's an awfully painful way to go...Now think about a trained Navy SEAL sniper like Chris, waiting, sighting, and finally squeezing the trigger of his .300 Win Mag. The supersonic round reaches its destination in less than a second—the man is gone before the rifle's report reaches his ears.

The reality is that the death that comes with the sniper's strike is typically clean, painless, and as humane as death can be. A cleaner death, if we're really going to be honest with ourselves, than most of us will experience when we come to the end of our own lives. The sniper is like a highly skilled surgeon, practicing his craft on the battlefield.

Make no mistake: War is about killing other human beings, taking out the enemy before he takes us out, stopping the spread of further aggression by stopping those who would perpetuate that aggression. However, if the goal is to prosecute the war in order to achieve the peace, and to do so as fast and as effectively as possible, and with the least collateral damage, then warriors like Chris Kyle and our brothers-in-arms are heroes in the best sense.

Brandon Webb is a former US Navy SEAL with combat deployments to southwest Asia, including Iraq, and Afghanistan. He was a Course Manager for the US Navy SEAL Sniper program, arguably the most difficult sniper course in the world. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

Excerpted with permission from The Red Circle: My Life In The Navy SEAL Sniper Corps And How I Trained America's Deadliest Marksmen. Copyright © 2012 by Brandon Webb. All rights reserved.

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The combat mission in Afghanistan officially ended last Sunday, marking the end of the longest war in American history. Now, a new non-combat mission centered at Bagram Air field will take its place.

Originally built in the 1950's, the Bagram Air Field in the Parwan province of Afghanistan served as an important base for the US first during the Cold War and later during the 1980's Soviet war in Afghanistan. During the US-led war in Afghanistan the base was greatly expanded — once nothing more than a runway, by 2007 Bagram had become the size of a small town. 

Now, the base is being shrunk as large swaths of housing are demolished to accommodate the 13,000 foreign NATO troops who will stay behind in a reduced, NATO-led "Resolute Support" mission to train and advise Afghan soldiers. 

Located about 25 miles north of  Kabul International Airport, Bagram is the largest US military base in Afghanistan. At its peak, it had 40,000 inhabitants and conducted 14,000 operations per year.

Once controlled by the Northern Alliance, the base was mainly occupied by the U.S. Armed Forces, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and minimally by the Afghan Armed Forces throughout the US-led war.

In 2006, the US built a second runway at Bagram in order to land larger aircraft. The new runway was 11,500 ft long, 1,631 ft longer than the previous one. The dual runway is now capable of handling any size military aircraft.

The airfield was also home to The Bagram Theater Internment Facility, a makeshift US prison built in 2009 where hundreds of foreign prisoners were held without trial. The much-criticized detention center was closed on Dec. 10, 2014, one day after the Senate Torture Report detailed abuse at a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan.

The base was attacked by insurgents several times throughout the war. The base reportedly came under daily rocket attack in 2002, and the 2007 Bagram Airfield bombing killed up to 23 people. In 2010, insurgents stormed the base with rockets, grenades, and suicide vests but failed to breach the perimeter. 

Security forces have been on a smashing spree over the past year: joint task force Trailblazer, a combination of units tasked with managing the large deconstruction effort at Bagram, says it has dismantled more than 15,000 square feet of wooden structures to make room for more permanent facilities such as hardened barracks and dining halls.

Afghanistan's own security forces are currently dying at a rate of about 100 per week, which will be unsustainable once NATO forces leave Afghanistan for good. For this reason, foreign troops will advise Afghan soldiers on how to reduce their casualty rate and prepare them for battles against insurgents.

Bagram Air Field will be used as one of four regional centers during the "Resolute Support" mission, while NATO headquarters will remain in Kabul. Other small bases around the country will also be used, such as the airfield at Jalalabad and Shindand Air Base.

Although NATO hopes to end its non-combat mission in two years time, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said last weekend that the US might want to "re-examine" its deadline to withdraw by the end of 2016. US Army Ranger Eric Lightfoot remains optimistic, however. "They're getting better," he told Reuters. "They are having more successes."

SEE ALSO: Amazing Pictures From The Coldest Inhabited Town On Earth

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A journalist who spent nearly two years in eastern Ukraine before the war hit has written for Mashable about the stark differences he noticed when he returned to report on the conflict-ridden area.

Christopher Miller wrote about how he arrived in Artemivsk in 2010 as a Peace Corps volunteer and met many welcoming, hospitable people who were intrigued by life in America.

But by his return last year, the place had completely changed. He wrote:

When I returned in May, it felt like a different country. Blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag had been replaced with black, blue and red of the self-proclaimed 'Donetsk People's Republic' and the area suddenly seemed like a more violent, merciless version of itself.

...  People who had once warmly welcomed me into their homes now shut the door in my face. 'Americans support the neo-Nazis in Kiev!' one former acquaintance shouted at me before spitting at my feet.

A rebel who knew me from Artemivsk — his younger sister had been my student — told me it was fine for me to return. 'But,' he said, his finger resting on a Kalashnikov trigger, 'if I suspect you’re working as a spy, I'll shoot and kill you myself.'

Artemivsk is no longer under rebel control as it once was, but some pro-Russia separatists still populate the area.

Other cities in eastern Ukraine have it worse.

Miller wrote that "to say it looks post-apocalyptic is not a stretch." He described seeing dead bodies in bombed-out areas, tanks lying upended on the streets, and farmland being destroyed by rockets.

After Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who had a pro-Russian ideology, was ousted in February amid protests in Ukraine's capital Kiev, the new government that took his place didn't reach out to eastern Ukraine, making many in the region feel slighted, Miller wrote. This eventually led the region to become a stronghold of pro-Russian separatists.

Here's how the country was split as of November:

Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn't admitted that Russia is arming the rebels, but the separatists do have the support of Moscow.

In a December news conference, Putin said Russian soldiers in eastern Ukraine were volunteers and could not be called mercenaries because they were not paid (besides the special forces members who annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea). He also blamed Kiev for starting the conflict.

Kiev, meanwhile, says Russia is supporting the separatists and has 10,000 troops on the ground.

Estimates put the number of dead at about 4,000 since fighting broke out between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian rebels in April.

Read Miller's full account of how eastern Ukraine has changed >

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Confrontations between Turkish and Greek military warplanes escalated sharply in 2014, Metin Gurcan reports for Al-Monitor citing anonymous Turkish military officials. 

In the first month of 2014 alone, Turkish jets apparently violated Greek airspace 1,017 times. This was twice the number of total airspace violations between the two countries for the first half of 2013. Both are members of NATO.

These incidents have become so routine, Gurcan notes, that "reports of mock dogfights between Greek and Turkish warplanes over the Aegean Sea are now listed in the 'Daily Activities' section of the official website of Turkey’s chief of general staff."

The incidents almost entirely take place over the Aegean Sea, the island-filled stretch of water separating Turkey and Greece. The countries' exact maritime boundaries are still a matter of disagreement.

"The question of sovereignty over the Aegean in simplest terms is the difference between Greek territorial waters of six nautical miles and the 10-nautical-mile airspace Greece claims," Gurcan writes. "The conflict arises when Turkey recognizes the Greek national airspace over the Aegean as six miles and flies its planes within the 10-mile airspace claimed by Greece." 

These disputes over the Aegean have simmered and have hampered attempts for the two nations to fully normalize ties. Turkey still considers what it believes to be any Greek attempt to unilaterally expand its maritime claims in the Aegean as a cause for war, despite both countries being in NATO.  

The tensions between Turkey and Greece mirror a general increase in hostilities throughout the eastern Mediterranean. 

Cyprus has vowed to stay out of peace talks over the island's final status after Turkey sent a research ship to look for natural gas off of the north coast of the island. Cyprus is split between a Greek-backed south and a Turkish Cypriot North. Natural gas was discovered off of its coasts in late 2011. 

Turkey maintains that any natural gas found off of the shores of Cyprus should be shared equally with both Greek and Turkish Cypriots. But a flagging Cyprus peace process, conflicting maritime claims in the Aegean, and controversy over Cypriot gas could all raise the temperature between Greece and Turkey in the coming year.

SEE ALSO: The eastern Mediterranean is set to become the US's next big policy challenge

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A hacker going by the name Cyber Caliphate hijacked the Twitter feed of the Albuquerque Journal earlier today, posting documents the individual claimed to have stolen off of the newspaper's database. Cyber Caliphate also commandeered the Twitter feed of a television station in Salisbury, Maryland, posting additional documents that the hacker claimed to have taken documents from an FBI server.

Cyber Caliphate also defaced a page on the Albuquerque Journal's website late last month.

The hacker replaced both the Journal and WBOC's banner images on Twitter with this image, suggesting that the hacker is a supporter of the Islamic State, the jihadist group that now controls a Belgium-sized slice of Iraq and Syria:

On a personal Twitter account, Cyber Caliphate linked to a post on Pastebin that included three links to websites hosting "confidential documents," including one hosted on Gulfup.com, a file upload site that ISIS supporters have used before and whose registrant is based in Saudi Arabia. The Pastebin page included a warning specifically aimed at the people of Albuquerque:

It is unknown at the moment whether Cyber Caliphate has any actual connection to ISIS. It's also possible that the hacker is claiming an ISIS affiliation in order to distract from his actual identity and motives.

If the attack is in any way linked with ISIS or its sympathizers, it would signal a disruptive new tactic for the group: going after perhaps lightly-guarded servers and using soft targets like social media accounts to spread personal or otherwise sensitive information.

For instance, the hacker used the Journal's Twitter page and its nearly 20,000 followers to post arrest records, addresses, phone numbers, and other sensitive personal information, along with documents from local and federal law enforcement — all while claiming a jihadist motivation:

ISIS has been active in the cyber sphere before, and has waged malware attacks against the web presence of Syrian organizations opposed to the jihadist group.

SEE ALSO: Everyone is using drones in Syria, and it's an alarming glimpse into the future of war

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Iraq is getting a lot more American armor.

According to Defense News, the US donated $300 million in military equipment to Iraq in 2014, and will deliver 6 M1 Abrams tanks and 50 humvees to the Baghdad government at no cost.

And in late December, Defense News also reported that the US State Department authorized Iraq to purchase 175 M1 Abrams tanks and other vehicles from the United States, stocking up on an asset that has already proven useful for US allies across the region.

The State Department approved the $2.4 billion deal in late December "to facilitate progress towards increasing [Iraq's] ability to quickly mobilize and defend its border."

Over the past two weeks, the US has also delivered 250 MRAPs to Iraq, the mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles that replaced the under-protected humvee during the course of the American-led war in Iraq last decade.

The Iraqi army has a poor recent record of allowing US-supplied weaponry to fall into the wrong hands. US-supplied firearms and vehicles were seized from the Iraqi military when ISIS blitzed through northern and western Iraq in June.

And at least 40 units of the M1 Abrams have been lost "to enemy action or panic" in Iraq intelligence commentator Matthew Aid wrote, likely referring to the wave of desertion that swept the Iraqi army as ISIS swept through the country. Indeed, four of the country's fourteen army divisions — representing roughly 30,000 troops — disbanded during the ISIS offensive last June.

That month, an unnamed member of the Obama Administration told The New York Times that 28 Abrams tanks were damaged and five "sustained full armor penetration by antitank guided missiles" in the first half of 2014, which culminated in ISIS's capture of Mosul.

At the height of the US-led war in 2008, Iraq ordered 140 such tanks, 60 tank transporters, and 21 armored recovery vehicles capable of towing large military vehicles. They received the order in 2010.

In 2009, the year between order and delivery, the US-based Abrams factory was operating at its peak, putting out two or three refurbished tanks daily. Today the military is doubtful of the need to keep producing or fixing up battle tanks suited for conventional warfare, according to The Washington Post. This time last year, the Abrams factory was down to 500 employees, from a peak of 1,220.

But aid wrote that other American allies operating the tank — Egypt, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia — are "quietly pleased" with the tank's abilities. "Iraqi army officers have spoken to fellow Arab officers who have used the M-1, and were told this was the way to go."

SEE ALSO: Everyone is using drones in Syria, and it's an alarming glimpse into the future of war

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China's fifth-generation fighter moved much closer to operational capability last year, Richard D Fisher Jr. reports for IHS Jane's 360. 

In 2014 China's Chengdu Aircraft Corporation released four new prototypes of its J-20 fifth-generation fighter, with the two latest iterations having been unveiled in November and December. This brings the total number of J-20 prototypes to 6.

The prototypes' debut signals a major scaling up of development of the J-20 since until 2014, only two prototypes had previously emerged, in 2009 and 2010. 

The speed at which operational prototypes of the J-20 are now emerging signals that the J-20's initial operational capability could be reached as soon as 2017 or 2018. 

This advance comes during a period of technical difficulties for America's own fifth-generation fighter. The latest problems facing the F-35 include the jet's engines shutting down if the fuel becomes too hot, along with the Air Force's variant of the F-35 having a software glitch that stops the aircraft from being able to fire its main cannon. The glitch is not expected to be fixed until 2019. 

The J-20 bears striking external resemblance to both the F-35 and the F-22. 

At the independent Australian think-tank Air Power Australia, Aviation expert Carlo Kopp notes that China imitates the basic shapes and skeletal designs of existing aircraft to speed development while minimizing the risk of a costly and embarrassing engineering failure later on. 

"By cleverly exploiting contemporary United States-developed stealth fighter shaping design rules," Kopp writes, "Chengdu engineers were able to rapidly get an excellent basic shaping design with a minimum of risk and cost, and significant long-term stealth performance growth potential." 

Aside from reverse engineering, the J-20's design has also likely benefited from acts of Chinese espionage. 

In July, a Chinese entrepreneur was arrested after stealing gigabytes of data related to US military aviation projects. Previous extensive theft of F-35 data is thought to have been behind a number of redesigns among the successive stages of J-20 prototypes. 

SEE ALSO: These Chinese military advancements are shifting the balance of power in Asia

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Last week, the US announced additional sanctions on North Korean government officials and state-owned entities in response to the cyber-attack on Sony, which both the FBI and President Barack Obama have attributed to Pyongyang.

The Kim regime should be well-versed with US and international sanctions by now. UN Security Council resolution 1874, passed in 2009, proscribes just about any cooperation with North Korea's arms industry. The US has banned most forms of business with government-linked North Korean entities since 2008, thanks to a series of provocations from Pyongyang that includes the construction and repeated testing of nuclear weapons. The new measures seemed aimed at closing the last remaining holes in the sanctions regime, targeting "seven officials who represent North Korea's arms dealing trade in Africa, Iran, Russia and Syria,"according to CNN.

Outside of its often-fraught alliance with China, North Korea has been shunned and essentially banished by virtually every mainstream member of the international community, limiting its close relations to fellow sanctioned regimes like Syria, Iran, and Sudan. But there's an odd and persistent exception to this involving a key US strategic ally.

As Royal United Service Institute scholar Andrea Berger explained in an article for Johns Hopkins University's 38 North website last month, there are "two Ethiopian defense industry sites believed to have ties to North Korea."

The Ethiopian state-owned Homicho Ammunition Engineering Complex produces "small, medium and heavy ammunition; tank shells, mortar bombs and grenades; and 120mm ‘Katyusha’ rockets," Berger writes. A UN Group of Experts Report determined that North Korea may have assisted in production at the site as late as 2014. But Homicho, which opened in the late 1980s when Ethiopia's then-communist government was fighting two brutal and inevitably futile counter-insurgency campaigns in Eritrea and Tigray, owed much of its capabilities to the Kim regime.

"Pyongyang’s involvement probably centered on the design and establishment of production lines for munitions," Berger writes. "These forms of assistance apparently continued through to at least late 2007, and included help manufacturing rocket-propelled grenades and truck-mounted multiple rocket launchers."

Another facility, the Gafat Armament Industry, was also founded by Ethiopia's embattled communist regime in the late 1980s and produces small arms of North Korean and Chinese design. According to a US diplomatic cable published by Wikleaks, US officials questioned their Ethiopian counterparts over North Korean assistance in upgrading an AK-47 production line at Gafat in early 2008.

North Korea is a veritable pariah state. In contrast, Ethiopia is one of the US's security partners in the Horn of Africa and a major recipient of American aid. The US often coordinates policy with Ethiopia in neighboring Somalia, most notably during Ethiopia's 2007 invasion of the country to dislodge the jihadist Islamic Courts Union from power. Addis Ababa is set to receive $485 million in American aid in 2015 and the country has hosted American drones.

It might seem puzzling that a close US ally and the host country of the African Union's headquarters would have defense ties with perhaps the most sanctioned regime on earth. As Berger explained to Business Insider, Ethiopia's relationship with North Korea is one perhaps-regrettable result of the east African country's longstanding and by no means unique desire to develop a domestic defense industry.

“Over the past few decades, numerous countries have sought North Korean assistance with arms production," Berger explained. "Most want an inexpensive shortcut to indigenous capability, without first developing the scientific and technological base within their own country to be able to wean themselves off of North Korean supplies and expertise further down the road.”

The defense relationship with North Korea began in the late 1980s, when Ethiopia was ruled by a fellow communist government and Pyongyang wasn't under restrictive international sanctions. The Ethiopian government's investment in a domestic defense industry outlasted the fall of the communist regime. And Addis maintained a need for North Korean help in running its arms facilities even as the Kim regime turned into one of the most despised governments on earth.

This tension isn't lost on the Ethiopians. "Recently, Ethiopia is more of a reluctant than a determined customer of North Korea’s," said Berger. "Though it probably prefers to buy from other countries, or eschew the need for foreign assistance at these two particular arms factories entirely, North Korea’s historical involvement has created unwanted dependency.”

David Shinn, who served as the US ambassador to Ethiopia in the late 1990s, believes Addis continued its defense relationship with North Korea in order to keep its options open. "Ethiopia's always been a fairly major purchaser of weapons," Shinn told Business Insider. "It's maintained a longstanding policy of keeping supply corridors open, perhaps with the thought that they might lose sources from one or another country."

Shinn doesn't believe there's any deeper political motive attached to Ethiopia's relationship with North Korea. As he notes, Ethiopia and South Korea enjoy excellent relations. Shinn recalls only a scant and even invisible North Korean diplomatic presence in Addis Ababa during the period he served as US ambassador. 

Even so, Shinn says that Ethiopia purchased weapons from North Korea during its war with neighboring Eritrea from 1998 to 2000 — a time when both combatants were eager to obtain weaponry from anyone willing to supply them. Ethiopia is still on a war footing towards Eritrea and has troops in Somalia fighting al Shabaab, an Al Qaeda affiliate. Its government might also worry about internal uprisings by the country's Oromo and Somali communities. Since the fall of communism in the early 1990s, Ethiopia's by no means democratic leaders have had several reasons for wanting to remain as armed as possible.

Still North Korean cooperation with Ethiopia is an odd historical holdover, albeit an an instructive one. North Korea has a domestic arms industry that produces weaponry largely based on Chinese and Soviet design. And Africa and the Middle East are full of countries with Soviet-supplied arsenals that may need to be maintained or replaced — countries like the Republic of Congo, which was caught using North Korean-supplied parts to repair its Soviet-built tanks as recently as 2010.

And the ties with Ethiopia are a stark reminder that weapons and defense expertise are North Korea's single export that's potentially worth breaking sanctions to obtain.

North Korea has produced its own firearms and ballistic missiles — not to mention nuclear weapons. For all its poverty and recalcitrance, very few countries can say the same.

And because North Korea is desperate for foreign currency and external trade, Pyongyang will always be among the cheapest suppliers for a purchaser that wants to kickstart its defense industry or maintain its existing arsenal. Even now there are several actors that are too isolated or impoverished to turn elsewhere: North Korea provided ballistic missile technology to Syria's Assad regime and North Korean arms have ended up with both Hamas and Hezbollah.

Ethiopia shows that even a country with reliably western-friendly foreign policy can go into business with Pyongyang. Even if it's a reluctant or even waning relationship it's still a sign of what the Kim regime can still provide to the few remaining countries that are willing to cooperate with it.

SEE ALSO: China tripled its number of 5th generation fighter prototypes in 2014

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RAWASHID, Iraq (AP) — Sunni residents of this tiny village north of Baghdad are all gone. Their homes now have Shiite graffiti scrawled on the walls. Shiite banners, many emblazoned with images of revered saints, are hoisted on the roofs.

The only people here now are Shiite fighters, who nearly two weeks ago helped Iraqi forces wrest the town from the Islamic State group. Outside one of the homes the fighters have occupied, their leader sat with his men on a recent day, warming themselves by a fire where tea brewed.

He made it clear: They have no intention of allowing the Sunnis back, accusing them of supporting the extremists.

"If we allow the residents of this village to return to their homes, they will do it all over again to us," said Adnan Hassan, 59. The militants used the village to fire mortars at the nearby, mainly Shiite city of Balad — and they still hold villages only a few miles away.

"These are our lands. They were taken away from us centuries ago," he told The Associated Press, pointing to the orchards and lush farmlands surrounding the village's relatively affluent homes.

Hassan's claim of Shiite ownership of the lands is tenuous at best. But his comments expose a grim side of Iraq's fight against the Sunni militants of the Islamic State group: The war is being used by Shiite militiamen to change the demographics of Sunni areas, in an attempt to solidify Shiite control. The practice appears mostly focused on Sunni areas astride roads leading to important Shiite shrines to the north and south of the capital, Baghdad.

The apparent sectarian cleansing plants the seeds of future conflict — or even an outright civil war that could eventually break up the nation along sectarian and ethnic lines, a fate that a growing number of Iraqis, particularly Sunnis, see as the solution to the nation's bloody turmoil.

Tens of thousands of Iraq's Sunnis fled their home regions over the past year to escape the brutal rule of the Islamic State group. The militants swept over much of the north and west of Iraq, overrunning Sunni-majority regions all the way down to the doorstep of Baghdad.

Shiite-led security forces and militias made up of Shiite volunteers have since driven the militants out of some of those areas. But the Sunni residents have mostly been prevented from returning, on the grounds that the regions are not yet safe. In many cases, they have been unable to return because their homes have been destroyed in the fighting or blown up by militiamen.

Sunnis who stayed put and endured Islamic State governance face a worse predicament when Shiite forces recapture their areas. They are accused of helping the militants, often their homes are blown up, men jailed or entire families banished, with their properties given to Shiites.

The militiamen appear to be the ones enforcing the demographic change, unsettling the Shiite-led government. The danger is real enough that Shiite Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has spoken forcefully about the need for national unity. Addressing graduating army cadets Tuesday, he called for residents of liberated areas to be allowed to return to their homes, so that their suffering ends. In an unusually bold gesture of reconciliation, he visited the capital's two landmark Sunni and Shiite shrines on Friday.

Iraq's top Shiite cleric, the Iranian-born Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, condemned the excesses of militiamen in a fatwa, or an edict, issued last weekend, specifically citing the theft of property in areas liberated from the Islamic State group.

"What we are dealing with here is a real attempt at demographic change, coupled with blatant abuses," Sunni politician Hamed al-Mutlaq told The Associated Press. "It is now extremely difficult for the Sunnis to return to their homes"— not because their homes have been destroyed, he added, "it is genuine fear that is stopping them."

The sectarian shift comes on top of one that occurred in the wave of vicious sectarian fighting sparked in 2006, when Sunni militants blew up the Shiite shrine of Imam al-Askari in the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad. That conflict became a virtual civil war, and it purged Baghdad of most mixed neighborhoods, leaving it sharply divided between Shiite and Sunni districts.

In Diyala province, northeast of the capital, Islamic State militants have almost completely been driven out, but Sunni Arab families have not been allowed back, said Raad al-Dahlaki, a Sunni lawmaker from the province. The province is a major route for Iranian pilgrims traveling overland to shrines in Iraq.

"They say they will only allow 'loyal' residents to go back. This is an excuse to change the demographics of the province," al-Dahlaki said.

Al-Mutlaq and other Sunni politicians said the area around Balad, about 65 kilometers (40 miles) north of Baghdad, is also targeted to keep out Sunnis.

Balad is home to the shrine of one of the imams revered by Shiites and sits on the main highway from Baghdad to Samarra. While many of the larger towns in the area have Shiite majorities, the surrounding countryside along the Tigris River is dotted with Sunni towns and villages like Rawashid. Over the past weeks, Iraqi forces backed by Shiite volunteer fighters swept across the area, pushing back the extremists and trying to clear a corridor to Samarra.

Iraqi federal police and Shiite volunteers battled for five hours late last month to retake Rawashid. On Saturday, when AP journalists visited, the police were gone, and the volunteers led by Hassan were settled in, taking over several houses. Other houses were blackened, possibly by fire or shelling, or flattened by airstrikes.

It is not clear whether the village's estimated 1,000 residents fled when the Islamic State militants took over in the summer or when the village was retaken. Either way, none were in sight Saturday.

Laith Ahmed, an official with the "Popular Mobilization Authority"— the state agency overseeing the volunteers — painted the entire village population as Islamic State supporters.

"They own some of the most fertile farms in Iraq, so it's beyond me why they chose to take the side of the armed militants," he said.

Anti-Sunni bias is just as pronounced in Balad. There, Shiite residents successfully kept the Islamic State militants at bay during a weeks-long siege in June and July. The city's small Sunni population fled.

"By God, I will never allow the Sunnis to come back to Balad," said Mudhafar Abdul-Reddah, a Shiite in his 50s. "They were in contact with the Islamic State during the siege."

"We are better off without any Sunnis in our midst," said restaurant owner Hussein Shamel. "We (Shiites) all know each other and we are like one family," he said. During the IS siege, he said, Balad residents shared the little food they had and organized resistance, manning sand barriers set up around the city.

All along the highway from Baghdad to Balad, the depopulation is clear — along with the sectarian nature of the fight.

Shiite banners and images of saints fly over every military checkpoint and vehicle. Graffiti on concrete barriers and walls speak of Shiite victory. Farmland and homes along the road showed no sign of life.

Salah al-Karkhy, a farmowner, said that in late July Shiite militiamen came to his home village of Roufayaat near Balad and told its Sunni residents to leave as the Shiites fought IS nearby.

Al-Karkhy, his wife, daughter, son-in-law and two grandchildren moved to Baghdad's Sunni stronghold of Azamiyah where they remain.

"Death awaits us if we return," he said, speaking of a "deliberate plan to force Sunnis from their homes."

"We never supported (the Islamic State)," he said, "but, as always in Iraq, the innocent are made to pay."

___

Associated Press reporter Sameer N. Yacoub contributed to this report from Baghdad.

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In this excerpt from National Insecurity: American Leadership In An Age Of Fear, David Rothkopf, CEO of the FP Group and National Security Council expert, compiles candid interviews with more than a hundred key players to reveal the hidden struggles and shocking failures of Obama's administration.

Whereas it was the vice president and the secretary of defense with the back channel under Bush, it was Obama's closest political advisors and former campaign aides who enjoyed an insider track that some of their cabinet colleagues (and even their national security advisor) did not. 

A hint as to how that emerged is suggested by  [former National Security Advisor in the Obama administration Tom] Donilon's comments about the regular internal White House meetings, which ultimately were more influential in driving the policy process than were the formal National Security Council (NSC) structures: "perhaps most importantly we have had a daily discussion each morning around the president's daily briefing. Again we've done this quite consciously. It's thirty to forty minutes. We have the intelligence briefing at the top of the meeting."

"And then, every morning since January 20, 2009, we have made a presentation either commenting on the stuff that's in the intelligence or moving around the world to key things that are happening or saying 'we have a couple decisions we have to make today' or 'Hillary Clinton really needs a decision on this and she has asked me to bring this to you today' or 'we have a personnel issue that we really need to work through."

"Alternatively, he might say, 'I read X, Y, or Z overnight and I want to have a conversation about that now.' And you know, these conversations have built upon one another. We also would try to take, every Thursday afternoon, ninety minutes or two hours with the president for something we would call 'national security staff time.' And in those sessions we would concentrate on one or two issues where he can have a detailed discussion."

Although Donilon argues that this approach has resulted in a great deal of comity among the principals in the administration, others including even senior officals, very early on began to sense that the daily inner circle meetings with the president left some NSC principals out of the loop.

Attending these daily meetings from the outset were the president, James Jones, Tom Donilon, John Brennan, Rahm Emanuel, and, depending on their role in the administration at that time, Denis McDonough and others.

Donilon asserts that political advisors like Axelrod and Jarrett never participated in these meetings, although administration insiders with whom I spoke felt they regularly influenced outcomes via the parallel formal and informal political advisory process that took place.

Bill Burns thought the Obama team had started well but he recognized an early sign of a flaw that would grow: "I think part of a bigger structural problem that I've seen over the past thirty years is that too much gets pushed up too high in the system ... Much of what gets talked about in deputies and principals meetings now, compared to what I remember as a note-taker on the NSC staff in the late '80s, can or should be handled at the assistant secretary level.

"This is a challenge that has been building for a number of years, and it's not unique to the current administration. But what it does, I think, is squeeze time and attention out of some of the bigger strategic issues that ought to be discussed."

One other senior Obama official said of the inner-circle-dominated process: "the trouble with this is that it excluded a lot of people and ideas that should have been at the table. And it was terrible for morale in the agencies. Policymaking by small groups is sometimes needed, but the key is to have the right people in these groups and those in the Obama inner circle were not always the right ones.

"And often it took a long time for those in these small meetings to communicate with others in the administration, so much time was wasted in people doing work that they need not have done because they were going in a different direction from the president. Few people in the administration felt they were on the Obama Team."

David Rothkopf is the CEO and editor of the FP Group. The FP Group publishes Foreign Policy magazine, ForeignPolicy.com, and presents FP Events. 

Excerpted with permission from National Insecurity: American Leadership In An Age Of Fear. Copyright © 2014 by David Rothkopf. All rights reserved.

SEE ALSO: There Was Never Any Room For Hillary In Obama's Inner Circle

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A street magician in Syria beloved by children was beheaded by militants with the Islamic State group after his performances were deemed to be insulting to God, the Daily Mirror reported Wednesday.

The murder of the magician, who was known as “Sorcerer,” was called “barbarism and butchery” by a Syrian activist who knew him but fled to safety in nearby Turkey.

"The magician was a popular man who entertained people with little tricks on the street like making coins or [a] phone disappear,” the activist told the British tabloid. "He was just called Sorcerer by people and children loved him. He was doing nothing anti-Islamic but he paid for it with his life.”

But to the Islamic State, the group also known as ISIS, the street magician’s tricks were anti-Islamic because they were performed through “illusions and falsehood,” according to the Mirror. They also said the Koran forbids the tricks because the time people spent captivated by them could have been better used by going to a mosque, the tabloid added.

The street magician was a staple in Raqqa, the eastern Syrian city where the Islamic State has its base of operations. He was performing there when he was whisked away by militants and later beheaded in a public square.

"This is the reality of life in Raqqa, murdered in the name of Allah for performing a few tricks,” the activist said.

Reports of the street magician’s beheading surfaced one day after a deputy in the Islamic State's police force in Syria was found beheaded, Reuters reported, citing the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The body of the deputy “emir” of the Islamic State's al-Hebah force in the Syrian province of Deir al-Zor was also found to be tortured. A message that read, “This is evil, you Sheikh,” was found on his corpse. 

NOW WATCH: 11 Facts That Show How Different Russia Is From The Rest Of The World

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Secretary of State John Kerry spoke passionately about the principles of free expression after a Wednesday shooting at a French satirical magazine left 12 dead.

"Free expression and a free press are core values. They are universal values, principles that can be attacked but never eradicated," Kerry declared at a press conference held hours after the attack.

The targeted satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, published a series of controversial cartoons over the years, including of the Prophet Muhammad. Muslims widely find such depictions offensive and Charlie Hebdo received violent threats in response. 

But Kerry argued that "no matter what your feelings were" about Charlie Hebdo, "the freedom of expression it represented is not able to be killed by this kind of act of terror."

"I agree with the French imam, who today called the slain journalists 'martyrs for liberty,'" Kerry said. "Today's murders are part of a larger confrontation, not between civilizations ... but between civilization itself and those who are opposed to a civilized world. The murderers dared proclaim, 'Charlie Hebdo is dead.' But make no mistake, they are wrong."

Kerry also spoke in French directly to the people of France and referenced the country's history as an American ally and the first modern democracy in Europe.

"Our countries are still united. Liberty. That's it," he said, according to a translation by Business Insider. "No country knows better than France that liberty has a price." 

Additional reporting by Hunter Walker.

NOW WATCH: How To Use Excel's New Flash Fill Feature To Recognize Data Patterns

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On November 3, 1969, president Richard Nixon addressed the nation, at one point laying out "what has been described as the Nixon Doctrine," a three-point foreign policy "to prevent future Vietnams."

The third of these has cast a long shadow over the US's foreign affairs. Nixon called for the US to "furnish military and economic assistance when requested in accordance with our treaty commitments." Instead of losing blood and treasure in tomorrow's wars, Nixon suggested, the US could simply arm its preferred side.

The problem, underscored by the Obama Administration's longstanding hesitance to give guns to secular militants fighting the Assad regime in Syria, is that weapons can fall into the wrong hands, tipping the scales of a conflict in unintended and unforeseen ways.

"Smart guns"— weapons that, through various technical means, become inoperable over time or only fire when in the hands of their intended user — could change that.

Particularly dangerous weapons could be engineered in order to have a short shelf life. An unnamed former national security official in the Bush administration told TIME that "You can build obsolescence into MANPADS," the highly portable, shoulder-fired surface-to-air missile launchers built to shoot down aircraft.

Speaking with The Economist, Patrick McCarthy, head of the UN's office on International Small Arms Control Standards, spoke of one mechanism for such a design feature: special chemical propellants in missile-launchers and mortars that break down and become inert over time.

In an article exploring possible solutions to the war in Syria, defense policy expert Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies speculated that weapons could be shut off "in the presence of US and allied forces or civil aircraft" or remain locked behind periodically changing passwords that only the weapons' intended recipients would know.

"These are ideas that I know were raised in DDR&E [design, development, research and engineering] more than 20 years ago," Cordesman, who worked at the Defense Department for much of his career, told Business Insider. "The issue is always how urgent is the need. And it's obvious that while the need may be urgent, it isn't one that anyone is prepared to act upon," he said in reference to the situation surrounding ISIS, the extremist group that has killed thousands in Iraq and Syria.

Given the chaos gripping both countries, the US may have an interest in sending arms to Iraq and Syria that ISIS militants wouldn't be able to use if those weapons were ever captured. During the group's seizure of Mosul in June of 2014, ISIS got its hands on weapons and vehicles that the US had once given to the Iraqi military. If those weapons had been password-protected or otherwise blocked from improper end-use the impact of the Iraqi military's defeat would have been somewhat lessened.

But as Cordesman notes, it's unclear just how much practical interest there is at the moment in making smart guns a part of American foreign policy — assuming this is even desirable.

In a world saturated by GPS-friendly smartphones that can be unlocked with the read of a fingerprint, it's easy to envision smart guns' eventual proliferation. But in reality they're only just beginning to appear and haven't yet proven commercially viable in the US.

Blaine Konow, whose company works to keep a tab on guns' locations thanks to installed chips, thinks that market forces will favor a military and police application for smart guns first. "I'm trying to work with military because civilians, they don't want their guns chipped," Konow said. "Nobody wants that. But as far as military and police, law enforcement, FBI and all that — it'd be beneficial to them."

Smart guns have potential uses for domestic law enforcement. Guns could be locked when they aren't being used, or password protected in case they're stolen or lost. But foreign policy is a far different matter, and not everyone's convinced that the weapons should be introduced into the US's strategies abroad.

A blogger at The Arabist called Cordesman's speculation a "Dr. Strangelove-of-insurgency moment" and argued that smart guns weren't necessarily the route towards more responsible US engagement abroad.

Smart guns might skew policymakers' views of the consequences of their decisions, creating a superficial safety-net that causes problems of its own: "Handy to see Bashar al-Assad go because it hurts Iran?," the Arabist writes. "Give al-Qaeda fighters MANPADs (which are not a hygiene product for men) that can be turned off when they're done wrecking the kind of havoc you don't have too much of a problem with."

Jonathan Mossberg, the CEO of iGun Technology Corporation, points to different problems. His company is working on a smart shotgun which, according to a report by the National Institute of Justice, "could be considered the first personalized firearm to go beyond a prototype to an actual commercializable or production-ready product."

The gun is keyed to a low-frequency chip embedded in a ring using magnetic technology. If you're not wearing it, you can't fire the gun. This could save lives in the US by rendering a stolen firearm — like the one used in the Sandy Hook massacre — inoperable. But that doesn't mean the technology is ideally suited to an arms shipment to a US proxy or ally.

"A lot of guys that talk about this technology and write about it and stuff, they don't know that guns need to be taken apart to be maintained to be reliable," said Mossberg. "Every time you do something to make it more difficult for the bad guy to access it, you make it more difficult for the good guy to make it reliable."

Mossberg isn't skeptical of remote shutdown technology but of the feasibility of scaling that function without the costs being prohibitive.

He also warns that disabled smart guns could be hacked back into functionality, although that's a problem more expensive and higher-quality models could all but eliminate.

Robert McNamara, founder of the Ireland-based company TriggerSmart, agrees. "A gun like that could be dismantled, of course. Any gun can be dismantled ... it's like someone stealing a car, you know. They can take the wheels when they get it to some secret lockup."

But McNamara said it would be possible to build a gun that breaks down if anyone tampers with it.

"If you had the technology built right into the chassis of the gun, into the frame of the gun, you can have what they call acid spills and things like that to destroy them," he told Business Insider. RFID tags are already used in a similar fashion to discourage shoplifting — walk out the store with an item that hasn't had its tag removed, and it will break a small container of ink, ruining the item and marking it as stolen.

Some guns could also be programmed to work only in certain areas. In a military setting, this might reduce the chance of an accident outside a shooting range — or the damage done when a rogue shooter picks up a weapon at the armory.

But these applications are modest compared to limiting a gun's use to a particular city, country, or war zone. Though the smart gun concept might get its trial run with domestic US police, the day in which they're used to selectively arm foreign fighters is probably far off.

The seemingly distant and futuristic character of the technology could lessen the sense of urgency to develop it. And as Cordesman notes, the US isn't very good at assessing its future technological needs in the defense sphere.

"Time and cost are often factors based on estimates of what takes place in peacetime," Cordesman said. "And that is a very poor way of meeting war-time needs." Smarter weapons would need to receive funding and concerted research to see the light of day (DARPA has specified to Business Insider that it is not working on smart weapons).

Cordesman said the common logic was that "we can't get it done, according to the calendar we have set for [a] particular incident. Now, since some of these crises last a decade, the calculation is usually not terribly accurate."

Smart gun use in US policy might be hampered by deficiencies in long-term strategic planning. But few believe the Syrian civil war will end in 2015, or expect that the humanitarian disaster in the country won't brew future conflict. The coming decades might hold no shortage of crises where the technology could be applicable from Washington's perspective.

But there's still the question of whether smart guns would only help elide deeper, more general issues in US policy. There isn't universal agreement on how and whether the US can benefit from arming foreign militias, or if the US and its allies should ever be tinkering with the balance of power in the Middle East.

Smart guns might eventually become a way of allowing the US to arm its allies while keeping usable weapons out of the hands of bad actors. But they're no shortcut towards resolving the larger dilemmas at the heart of US foreign policy.

SEE ALSO: A look at the 'smart guns' that could prevent future tragedies

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The last cartoon by Stéphane Charbonnier, the editor of the French magazine attacked by gunmen Wednesday, seemed to refer to the near-term possibility of a terrorist attack on French soil.

"Still no terrorist attacks in France," the top of the cartoon drawn for the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo reads.

The subject of the cartoon, a befuddled man with loopy eyes and what appears to be an AK-47 on his back, butts in: "Wait! We have until the end of January to present our wishes." 

AK-47s were used on the attack targeting Charlie Hebdo's offices in eastern Paris. The three gunmen killed 12 people, including two police officers, and injured five before fleeing the scene.

In 2012, Charbonnier, also known as "Charb," told Le Monde he was "not afraid of retaliation. I have no kids, no wife, no car, no mortgage. It may come off as a bit arrogant but I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees."

Charb dans le dernier @Charlie_Hebdo_ // prophétie glaçante pic.twitter.com/52WHijF6gN

— jerome bermyn (@jbermyn) January 7, 2015

Le Monde, France's newspaper of record, had been interviewing Charlie Hebdo's staff after a surge in police protection following their office's firebombing in 2011. Le Monde republished the article online today in response to the attack.

Charb went into his motivation, crediting satire for breaking the taboos of "Eros and Thanatos" (concepts dating from ancient Greek thought regarding sex and death, respectively). "But there remains that of religions," Charbonnier said. "We have to go on until Islam is made as ho-hum as Catholicism."

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SEE ALSO: The terrorists in France were well-trained

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A secret network of North Korean hackers known as "Bureau 121" work out of the Chinese city of Shenyang, according to North Korean computer science professor.

"It's easy for them to work secretly. It also has great Internet infrastructure," Kim Heung-kwang, a former teacher in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, told CNN.

"Bureau 121 began its large-scale operation in China in 2005," Kim, who escaped North Korea in 2004, told CNN."It was established in the late 90s."

The US government has accused North Korea of hacking American-based Sony Entertainment, a cyberattack which reportedly destroyed about three-quarters of the computers and servers at the studio’s main operations.

US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that he suspects his North Korean counterpart, General Kim Youn Chol,ordered the hack.

A different North Korean defector who took classes with the hackers that are now in Bureau 121 told Business Insider that the hackers are taught "to develop its own hacking programs and computer viruses without having to rely on programs already built in the outside world."

The malware that wiped Sony's systems bears resemblance to malware previously linked to North Korean hackers. The US says there is a body of evidence, some of it currently classified, that points to Pyongyang. 

On Wednesday FBI Director James Comey said that threats made against Sony were traced to IP addresses used exclusively by the North Koreans. 

'The location, security, as well as infrastructure'

Many North Koreans work in Shenyang as the city is the largest Chinese metropolis near North Korea.

Kim said that some of his students went on to join North Korea's army of an estimated 6,000 government hackers, working regular jobs during the day while otherwise concealing their whereabouts and activities in the city.

"Team members entered China separately — in smaller groups — 20 members at a time," he says. "When they entered China, they came under different titles. For example an office worker, an official with a trade company or even as a diplomatic staffer."

Will Ripley of CNN notes that North Korea used to dial in to servers in Shenyang long before Pyongyang had Internet. Today, all North Korean internet traffic passes through China and specifically through a single meta-network based in Shenyang.

Steve Sin, a terrorism expert at the University of Maryland and former US military intelligence analyst who wrote a paper about North Korea's hacking hub in Shenyang, told CNN that the city "has the location, security, as well as infrastructure."

He added: "Right now, the best information available to us is that they are still conducting such an operation and they can still conduct such an operation from that location."

And Shenyang has a "distinctly North Korean flavor," according to CNN.

"At the state-owned 'Pyongyang Restaurant,' waitresses told us they came to China on what is considered a prestigious three-year assignment,"Ripley reports. "They say they're all from the same university in Pyongyang. They serve 'North Korean meals,' in far more substantial portions than the food rations at home."

The notion that China may have abetted the attack raises the stakes considerably as the US seeks ways to deter cyberwarfare on US-based companies.

"The only lever that I can see is China,"Dave Aitel, a former NSA research scientist and CEO of the cybersecurity firm Immunity, told Business Insider in an interview. "And what you may see is that it comes out there were some Chinese resources involves in this, and then pressure them to get on board."

The Sony hack's rapid, destructive nature contrasts with China's strategy of slowly siphoning off intellectual property such as military technology and business information "to learn about how a company might approach negotiations with a Chinese company,"according to FBI Director James Comey.

SEE ALSO: 17 Mindblowing Facts About North Korea

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President Barack Obama made remarks about the shooting that took place at the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris on Wednesday before holding a meeting with Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden.

Obama said his "thoughts and prayers" were with those affected by the shooting, saying his administration is doing all it can to "remain vigilant" against threats to Americans in France and in the US.

"I've reached out to President Hollande of France and hope to have the opportunity to talk to him today, but thought it was appropriate to express my deepest sympathy to the people of Paris and the people of France for the terrible terrorist attack that took place earlier today," Obama said.

Obama's meeting with Kerry and Biden was scheduled in response to the shooting.

In his remarks, Obama noted that France is "one of our oldest allies" and "one of our strongest allies." He said the country has "been with us at every moment" in "dealing with terrorist organizations" since the September 11th attacks in 2001.

"For us to see the kind of cowardly evil attack that took place today I think reinforces why it's so important for us to stand in solidarity with them as they do with us," said the president.

Obama also said the shooting, which left 12 people dead, including several staffers of the magazine, "underscores the degree to which these terrorists fear freedom of speech and freedom of the press." Charlie Hebdo has published cartoons and articles lampooning jihadists and Islam including caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, which many Muslims find offensive.

"The values that we share with the French people, a universal belief in freedom of expression is something that won't be silenced because of senseless violence," Obama said.

While no terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the shooting at the magazine's headquarters, a witness reportedly said the gunmen made statements indicating they were "avenging the prophet."

Charlie Hebdo was previously attacked in a 2011 firebombing at its headquarters. Obama concluded by noting "our counterterrorism cooperation with France is excellent" and vowed "we will provide them with every bit of assistance that we can going forward."

"I think it's going to be important for us that we recognize these kinds of attacks could happen anywhere in the world," said Obama. The president said he would be talking with Kerry about how to "make sure that we remain vigilant" to protect Americans inside and outside of the country.

He also expressed confidence the US and French governments would continue to work to "hunt down and to bring the perpetrators of this specific act to justice and to roll up the networks that advance these plots."

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Responsibility for the deadly attack on the offices of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo hasn't been established yet. Although a French newspaper is reporting that the Paris police have identified the three people involved in the shooting, no group has claimed responsibly and the gunmen, who killed 12 people including high-profile magazine staffers and police officers, made a clean getaway. 

Analysts are left with shreds of evidence, none of it conclusive and much of it difficult to confirm.

The gunmen displayed a high level of competence, although it's unclear whether that's necessarily a reflection of professional-quality military training. There are reports that one of the gunmen was speaking Russian, and that another claimed they were working on behalf of "Al Qaeda in Yemen."

But these reports aren't considered airtight. And there are conflicting accounts of the quality of the attackers' French, a matter with potential bearing on the origin or nationality of the terrorists themselves.

There are still data points that can taken out of this thick analytical morass — circumstantial but possibly useful evidence as to who might have carried out the attack.

Terrorism analyst Clint Watts, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, performed an "analysis of conflicting hypotheses" based on his tentative conclusion that there are four likely "potential perpetrators or scenarios:"

1. An Al Qaeda Central (AQC) or al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) directed plot from Yemen or potentially Pakistan (AQAP is AQC at this point)
2. An ISIS directed plot from Syria and Iraq
3. An al Qaeda inspired plot by supporters in the West
4. An ISIS inspired plot by supporters in the West, of which there have been several in recent months. 

His analysis is reflected in this chart. A red #JeSuisCharlie is pasted where Watts has seen "evidence or potential evidence supporting each assessed factor in the scenario."

The size and training of the attack team, along with its successful escape plan and use of advanced weaponry, all suggest that the attack was carried out by terrorists with some kind of larger group infrastructure behind them. It has few of the characteristics of "lone wolf attacks"— although there's always the chance this attack represents a new, virtually unseen type of ISIS and Al Qaeda-inspired action.

That leaves two possibilities: Al Qaeda and ISIS. 

Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonie, who was killed in the Paris attack, was identified as one of 12 individuals "wanted dead or alive for crimes against Islam" in the October 2012 issue of Inspire, Al Qaeda's English-language propaganda magazine. At the same time, the magazine had published cartoons satirizing Ayad al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader. So both groups had a potential motive for attacking the publication.

An estimated 800 people from France have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight with ISIS, a possible data point suggesting the group's involvement. But reports of the attackers proclaiming their allegiance to "Al Qaeda in Yemen" would suggest that Al Qaeda's franchise in the Arabian peninsula or even Al Qaeda Central could be responsible.

"A few data points suggest Al Qaeda. A few data points suggest ISIS. And we just don't have enough information to really know right now," Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Business Insider.

Gartenstein-Ross added that the competition between Al Qaeda and ISIS, which represent differing strains of jihadist practice and thought and are competing for recruits, affiliates, and support around the world, makes it very likely that one of the organizations will claim responsibility, assuming one of them is in fact responsible.

But there's no clear time-frame for a claim of responsiblity. It took Al Qaeda about a year to declare itself responsible for the July 7th, 2005 attacks in London, although Gartenstein-Ross believes that competition between ISIS and Al Qaeda will make the groups more eager to connect themselves to the Paris attack.

At this point, one of the likelier possibilities — relatively speaking — is the attackers probably aren't finished.

"I think there's a strong possibility they intend to carry out a secondary attack," Gartenstein-Ross says. In that case, the Paris attack could be reminiscent of the 2008 Mumbai assault, another "urban warfare"-style gun attack in which terrorists from the Pakistani jihadist group Lashkar-e-Taiba moved between multiple targets. But Gartenstein-Ross notes that in Paris, the attackers "launched the attack and then made a getaway," which wasn't the case in Mumbai, where terrorists "stood and fought every step of the way."

A possible precedent here could be Mohammed Merah, a jihadist who killed 7 people over a 8-day period in the French city of Tolouse in March of 2012. His rampage that culminated in an attack on a Jewish school in which 4 people were killed. The Toulouse killer carried out his attacks over a span of a week, and it's possible that a secondary attack in Paris could be days rather than hours away.

But like Watts, Gartenstein-Ross cautions that any analysis at this point has a degree of speculation behind it: "The fact is we have very little information right now."

SEE ALSO: The terrorists in Paris were well-trained

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Marches and other displays of solidarity are popping up across France and Europe in the wake of the deadly attack on the offices of satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Many of them are being captured on social media under the hashtag #JeSuisCharlie. On the afternoon of Jan. 7, the words appeared on Twitter over 21,000 times in just an hour.

In the French capital, Parisians held up pens in a show of support for freedom of expression.

This is real strength: Parisians silently hold up pens in protest of #CharlieHebdo massacre via @oemoral@GoSruthipic.twitter.com/Q7dI0ixlf4

— Laura Wells (@wellsla) January 7, 2015

More than 10,000 people assembled in Lyon, according to France 24.

Les Terreaux noirs de monde #Lyon#JeSuisCharliehttps://t.co/rgHEtZjMyK

— Rodolphe Koller (@RodolpheKoller) January 7, 2015

Crowds also gathered in the port city of Marseille.

#Marseille#JeSuisCharliepic.twitter.com/TQCcvKtuMw

— Nicolas. (@Soul_Brotha) January 7, 2015

And in Toulouse, where regional media estimated close to 10,000 attendants.

La foule, silencieuse, place du Capitole a #Toulouse#jesuisCharliepic.twitter.com/H7jeCmtHts

— Stephane Thepot (@canardumidi) January 7, 2015

People also gathered in London's Trafalgar Square:

Trafalgar Square, people gathering #JeSuisCharliepic.twitter.com/ykGQ7ihwRX

— Äl Mürräy (@almurray) January 7, 2015

One Twitter user shared that a crowd in Madrid chanted "Todos somos Charlie," or "We are all Charlie."

Shouts of "todos somos Charlie" @ French embassy Madrid #CharlieHebdo#JeSuisCharliepic.twitter.com/wsDNXrHEEE

— Helen Darbishire (@helen_access) January 7, 2015

The white-on-black "Je Suis Charlie" sign also appeared in Berlin, as captured by an AFP photographer. A crowd gathered around the German capital's French embassy.

A woman holds a poster reading #jesuischarlie during a spontaneous vigil in front of the French embassy in Berlin pic.twitter.com/k7cMRwUcTd

— Stephanie Beauge (@sbeaugeAFP) January 7, 2015

B.Z., a newspaper based in Berlin, printed a spread made of a few dozen Charlie Hebdo covers.

BZ est Charlie pic.twitter.com/7fpIskiF9y

— Peter Huth (@PeterHuth) January 7, 2015

The AFP's own newsroom passed copies of the motto around for a solidarity photo (the American embassy in Paris also changed its Twitter profile image to present the words).

#JeSuisCharlie tribute to #CharlieHebdo at #AFP news room in Paris pic.twitter.com/J1vTDttDwg

— AFP Photo Department (@AFPphoto) January 7, 2015

And Le Monde used the image of a crowd carrying the words "Not Afraid" as the banner for its main web story covering the attack.

Amazing image on the homepage of Le Monde. That's the image and that's the message. pic.twitter.com/LfdQhaak1F

— Rob Williams (@BobJWilliams) January 7, 2015

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SEE ALSO: Some possibilities for who might be involved in the Paris attack

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The US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has named the North Korean official who he believes to be personally behind the Sony hacks. 

Clapper announced at a cybersecurity conference that he suspects North Korean General Kim Yong Chol to have been behind the attack. This is not the first time that Kim, a four-star general in charge of the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), the country's top intelligence agency, has been specifically singled out by the US. 

In August 2010 President Barack Obama specifically sanctioned Kim Yong Chol along with three North Korean government entities — the RGB; the Green Pine Associated Corporation, a subordinate organization to the RGB associated with arms proliferation; and Office 39, which was involved with narcotics trafficking — through an executive order. 

Obama's sanctions came five months after the sinking of the Cheonon, a South Korean Navy vessel sunk by a North Korean torpedo on March 26, 2010. The incident killed 46 South Korean sailors. 

The consensus among US and South Korean policy makers was that the RGB, under the command of Kim, was responsible for the order to sink the Cheonon. Following the attack, former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il promoted Kim Yong Chol, along with two other military officials within the RGB, to North Korea's Central Military Commission. 

The attack on the Cheonon demonstrated Kim Yong Chol's hawkishness towards South Korea, as well as his willingness to carry out belligerent and highly provocative policies on Pyongyang's behalf.

Almost immediately after the destruction of the Cheonon, in April 2010, South Korea captured two North Korean agents posing as defectors. Kim Yong Chol had sent the two in order to assassinate Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking North Korean defector to date. 

Both the attack on the Cheonon and the assassination plot are typical of the general's willingness to engage in high-stakes moves aimed at North Korea's southern opponents. Kim Yong Chol was one of the regime's most trusted high-ranking officials when the late Kim Jong Il was at his most belligerent — as well as his least predictable.

During the succession of Kim Jong Un in late 2011, Kim Yong Chol attempted to ingratiate himself with the new leader. Kim Yong Chol frequently appeared alongside Kim Jong Un during military visits and inspections. These efforts paid off. Kim Yong Chol was made a four-star general in 2012. 

This high rank didn't last long, though. Kim Yong Chol was quickly demoted back the rank of a two-star general during a power struggle following the merging of the intelligence department of the governing Worker's Party and part of the Ministry of the People's Armed Forces into the RGB. 

This demotion, according to an unnamed South Korean intelligence source cited by Tom Nichols, a professor at the US Naval War College and a senior associate at the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs, led to a gunfight in the streets of Pyongyang that may have escalated into an assassination attempt on Kim Jong Un.

The new leader quickly allied himself to Kim Yong Chol, who was apparently fighting against the faction that attempted the assassination, in an attempt to stay in power. Afterwards, Kim Yong Chol was again promoted to a four-star general, a rank he still holds. 

The story of an attempt on Kim Jong Un's life should be taken with a note of caution due to the inherently closed nature of North Korea and the difficulty of confirming anything happening in Pyongyang.

However, Kim Yong Chol managed to retain his rank and influence following Kim Jong Un's rise to power. If Kim Jong Un does feel indebted towards the general, it could explain North Korea's increasingly hawkish moves. Kim Yong Chol, under Kim Jong Un, could have freer rein to operate and carry out his own warlike maneuvers.

At the same time, Kim Yong Chol's own once-precarious position under Kim Jong Un might make him more willing to carry out more provocative or outlandish plots, like the Sony attack.

Either way, the man the US now believes to be responsible for the Sony breach has a long history of doing Pyongyang's dirty work.

SEE ALSO: Defector: Elite North Korean hackers work in this Chinese city

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