The Bear Island

The possible conquest of Taiwan is not being fought only with warships, missiles, and military aircraft. According to a study by German journalist and researcher Jürgen Kremb, Beijing has long been conducting a far quieter war: a strategy based on espionage, economic pressure, cyber operations, propaganda, and the infiltration of Taiwanese society. Taiwan, the author argues, has become the world’s main laboratory for so-called “cognitive warfare”: a form of conflict designed not necessarily to destroy an enemy, but to confuse, divide, and paralyze it from within. Winning Without Fighting The objective attributed to the Chinese Communist Party is not limited to obtaining classified military information. The strategy is much broader: weakening public confidence in institutions, questioning the effectiveness of Taiwan’s armed forces, amplifying political divisions, and spreading the belief that resisting China is either pointless or too dangerous. In this kind of conflict, propaganda ...

Aristocrat, intelligence officer and politician: the story of the British figure who operated in the shadows between the Battle of Caporetto and the rise of Fascism In conventional historical accounts, Sir Samuel Hoare is remembered primarily as one of the most enduring Conservative politicians of twentieth-century Britain. He served as Secretary of State for Air, Secretary of State for India, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary, First Lord of the Admiralty and, later, British ambassador to Francisco Franco’s Spain. Before becoming one of the most recognisable representatives of the British establishment, however, Hoare had been an intelligence officer. His activities during the First World War belong to a far less familiar story, one involving confidential reports, propaganda operations, covert funding, political intermediaries and networks created to defend British strategic interests abroad. In Italy, particularly after the military disaster of Caporetto, Hoare emerged as a sophi...