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.

US to Designate New Islamic State Leader as Global Terrorist

Friday, March 20, 2020

Categories: ASCF News Terrorism Emerging Threats

Comments: 0

The United States is preparing to label the Islamic State terror group’s new leader, introduced to the world as Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, as a “specially designated global terrorist.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the announcement Tuesday during a briefing with reporters, referring to al-Qurashi as Amir Muhammad Sa’id Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla, one of the IS leaders many aliases.

The move comes more than a month after U.S. defense and intelligence officials first unmasked al-Qurashi’s true identity, which IS had tried to keep hidden by assigning him a nom-de-guerre.

A religious scholar, al-Qurashi was imprisoned in the now infamous U.S.-run Camp Bucca in Iraq, starting in 2004, where he met former IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

Intelligence officials say he was active in IS’ predecessor organization, al-Qaida in Iraq, and eventually became one of Baghdadi’s most trusted deputies.

Al-Quashi is also seen as the architect behind IS’ slaughter of the Yazidi religious minority and oversaw some of the terror group’s global operations.

Intelligence officials credit him with keeping IS, also known as ISIS or Daesh, from falling apart following Baghdadi’s death in a U.S. operation in October 2019. Instead, they say he has helped make sure the terror group has continued its resurgence in both Iraq and Syria, while at the same time maintaining the allure of the global IS brand.

“ISIS supporters worldwide have rallied around the new caliph,” a senior counterterrorism official told VOA in January.

The move to designate al-Qurashi as a global terrorist is, in some ways, a formality, but will help the U.S. to cut off al-Qurashi from some financing and other resources.

“We’ve destroyed the caliphate,” Pompeo said Tuesday. “And we remain committed to ISIS’s enduring defeat no matter who they designate as their leader.”

The U.S. is currently offering a $5 million reward for information that leads to al-Qurashi’s capture.

It is unclear whether the State Department will increase that bounty to the $25 million it offered for any information that could help bring former IS leader Baghdadi’s to justice.

Photo: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during a news conference at the State Department, March 17, 2020, in Washington.

Link: https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/us-designate-new-islamic-state-leader-global-terrorist

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