Our picksPower companies & wildfires; EMP attacks; battle after ISIS, and more

Health security is a crisis. And you can’t negotiate with a disease (Sian Bradley, Wired)
The world isn’t ready for the next health pandemic. But we can better prepare for the inevitable

Could a power company be responsible for the California wine country fires? (Zoë Schlanger, Quartz)
The cause of the California wine country fires is still under investigation, but a California power utility is emerging as a possible culprit.

The Trump administration has no plan for dealing with a North Korean EMP attack (John Kester, Foreign Policy)
Newt Gingrich says there’s a lack of staff in the administration to take on the issue. Critics say it doesn’t matter.

The Battles After ISIS (Krishnadev Calamur, The Atlantic)
Iraqi forces face off against the Kurds in a potential harbinger of conflicts to come.

North Korean official: No diplomacy until our missiles can reach U.S. (Will Ripley, Zachary Cohen, and Richard Roth, CNN)
A North Korean official told CNN the country would not consider diplomacy with the U.S. until it had developed a ballistic missile capable of striking “all the way to the East Coast of the mainland U.S.”

Homeland Security tells federal agencies to secure email now! (Alfred Ng, C/Net)
They’ve got 90 days to roll out an email validation system that should help protect against spoofed emails and phishing attacks.