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

ASCF News

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

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

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

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

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

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

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Finland starts a fence on Russian border amid migration and security concerns.

Friday, April 14, 2023

Written by Anne Kauranen, Reuters

Categories: ASCF News

Comments: 0

IMATRA, Finland,

Finland is building the first stretch of a fence on its border with Russia on Friday, less than two weeks after it joined the NATO military alliance to complete a security U-turn taken in response to the war in Ukraine.

Fearing retaliation from the East following its NATO application, the government decided last year to construct the barrier, primarily in case Russia moved to flood the border with migrants.

Finland aims to guard against a repeat of events on the European Union's eastern frontier in Poland in winter 2021 when the bloc accused neighboring Belarus - a staunch Russian ally - of engineering a crisis by flying in migrants from the Middle East, giving them visas and pushing them across the border.

Made of steel mesh, the Finnish fence is scheduled to cover some 200 kilometers (125 miles) of the most critical parts of its border by the end of 2026. Project manager Ismo Kurki said on Friday that, while it is not intended to stop any invasion attempt, the fence will have surveillance equipment.

Meanwhile, there has so far been little human activity along the border, which stretches to 1,300 km in all.

Last year, Finland detected only 30 illegal crossings there, while Russian border guards stopped some 800 attempts to enter Finland, the Finnish Border Guard said.

"The situation at the Finnish-Russian border has been stable and is stable at the moment," said Border Guard Brigadier General Jari Tolppanen, as one of his teams worked on the first 3-kilometer (1.9-miles) stage of the fence at Imatra, some 250km (155 miles) northeast of Helsinki.

"But in this totally changed (security) situation, Finland must have more credible and more independent border control. And Finland needs to be less dependent on Russian border control," he added.

Poland and the Baltic States have already begun erecting fences on their borders with Russia and Belarus following the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Until now, the Finnish-Russian border has been a mere line in the vast forests covering the area, marked only by a low wire fence intended to stop cattle and other domestic animals but not people.

The new fence will be 3 meters (10ft) high, topped with razor wire, and tracked by a road, and cost an estimated 380 million euros ($417 million).

"Most of (the border area) is very remote and very difficult to access. We construct the target areas which are accessible by vehicle and where large-scale illegal immigration is likely," Tolppanen said.

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