Our picksSecrecy is dead; DoD dire climate warning; containing Iran, and more

The Iran conundrum: Serious containment versus stability (James Jeffrey, Cipher Brief)
Many have correctly analyzed the primacy of the Iranian threat, but much less is written on the reasons for the weak reaction to Iran’s regional actions. One key reason is the fear that pushing back hard would threaten the stability of the region’s many fragile states.

Russia, N. Korea eye bitcoin for money laundering, putting it on a crash course with regulators (Patrick Tucker, Defense One)
Thieves and sanctioned countries are targeting the digital currency’s exchanges, setting up a fight between governments and cryptocurrency powerhouses.

Estonia, the digital republic (Nathan Heller, New Yorker)
Its government is virtual, borderless, blockchained, and secure. Has this tiny post-Soviet nation found the way of the future?

Secrecy is dead. Here’s what happens next. (Alexis Sobel Fitts, Wired)
Texts and emails leave a trail, making it easier to document incidents and interactions. Secrets used to be the purview of people. Now they are owned by the platforms and databases into which we deposit them—and those have proven easy to penetrate. As more and more of our private lives are captured online, we build opportunities for our most embarrassing moments to leak.

Zinke reprimanded park head after climate tweets (Timothy Cama, The Hill)
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke brought David Smith, the leader of a California park, to his office last month to reprimand him for climate change-related tweets the park had sent via Twitter, two sources close to the situation said. Zinke made it clear to Smith that the Trump administration doesn’t want national parks to put out official communications on climate change.

Trump just signed a dire warning about climate change (Zoë Schlanger, Defense One)
The 2018 NDAA acknowledges and anticipates climate change as an urgent threat, in sharp contrast to his administration’s past denials.

California regulators back fire safety rules following lethal infernos (George Avalos, Mercury News)
PG&E and other utilities in the fire-prone Golden State would be required to increase the minimum clearances between trees and other vegetation and electrical equipment such as power and transmission lines.

Taking to the air: Drones and law enforcement (Jeff Brown; Dover Post)
Fiction has become a reality, and police agencies across the country increasingly are turning to these miniature aerial platforms to help in their work.