The other battlefield

A cyberattack on a U.S. medical device company didn’t ask for money—it tried to wipe systems clean. It may be the start of a wave of Iran-linked hacks as tensions rise in the Middle East. So this week, we revisit a story about how Iranian hackers wage war from the shadows. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Sky Lakes Medical Center in south-central Oregon never imagined it could become the target of a cyberattack. Then, one day, its computer systems went dark. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Noura Al-Jizawi thought she’d left the repression of the Assad regime behind when she left Syria with her sister. Instead she became the target of an online subversion campaign.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

After Tehran throttled the internet during nationwide protests in 2022, Iranians started preparing a workaround: Starlink. Smugglers brought thousands of satellite terminals into the country. So when war began, and the regime tried to cut its people off from the rest of the world, they still found a signal. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

When a new tool starts appearing in places where humans once wrestled with right and wrong, it’s worth asking not just what the technology can do — but what it may be doing to us. Shannon Vallor, a philosopher at the University of Edinburgh, examines the hidden costs of offloading our moral judgment to machines. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Churches are turning to AI to write sermons and reach new congregants. But when faith is filtered through an algorithm, does it change what – or who – we’re actually listening to? Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an air-defense officer named Zhan describes a battlefield dominated by drones and connectivity — and we return to a story about the tech detectives who trace the component parts that keep those weapons flying. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

You’ve likely received a scam call or text at some point. Some of these messages come from elaborate compounds found mostly in Southeast Asia. These compounds look like call centers but operate more like prisons. In this CyberMonday crossover with WAMU’s 1A, we return to an episode and hear from listeners — on how these centers cropped up and what’s being done to stop them. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The early Internet was ushered in with this widespread hope about its utopian possibilities. But the founder of The Citizen Lab, Ron Deibert, suspected there was a dark underbelly of government surveillance and censorship lying beneath and he was determined to unmask  it. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As reports grow that Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter could soon be formally designated as his successor — extending the family’s rule to a fourth generation — we’re revisiting a story about the outsiders who watch North Korea when almost no one else can. In a country closed to inspectors and journalists, open-source “tech detectives” comb through satellite images, videos, and propaganda for tiny clues, trying to piece together what the regime is actually doing — and what it wants the world to believe — as it prepares for what could be a historic handoff of power. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices