Upper School Intersession 2025

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK - aka North Korea) government has made extensive investments into offensive cyber security capabilities. What separates the DPRK from other top tier countries in the cyber space is their full embrace of financially motivated crime in addition to more classic state activities like espionage and covert operations / disruption. In this session we’ll spend time talking through the various branches of DPRK cyber activities including crypto/bitcoin attacks, attacks targeting security researchers, the billion dollar raid targeting the Bangladeshi National Bank, and recent efforts to plant DPRK operatives under stolen identities in western countries as regular remote IT workers.

I will talk about why there is often a shift which states are "swing states" over time, as well as how politicians choose certain topics & themes to focus on in their campaigns based on what is politically viable. Example questions include: How did Barack Obama carry several states that are now considered strongly Republican? Aside from purely just changes in public opinion, why do political parties shift their political stances over time? This session will be taught in a non-partisan fashion and is intended to teach students about the salience of political issues and how campaigning works from a calculated standpoint.