Election security concerns remain; Putin’s fourth term; Russian conspiracy theories, and more

The Pentagon is seeking money for a new nuclear weapon. Congress should be skeptical. (Walter Pincus, Washington Post)
Top Pentagon officials are telling some pretty tall tales in seeking congressional support for a new, low-yield, nuclear warhead to put on a long-range, submarine-launched ballistic missile. … The stated purpose of this new weapon is to deter the Russians from using any of their low-yield nuclear weapons … officials say an additional weapon is needed … because the aircraft that would deliver our bombs … might not be able to get through Russian defenses. … should the Russians initiate the use of tactical nukes on the battlefield, the United States would launch one or two low-yield weapons from submarines … How are the Russians going to know the warheads on those incoming missiles are low-yield, and not … 10 times more powerful than the bombs used to strike Hiroshima and Nagasaki? … Hyten suggested that Putin … would wait 30 minutes for the … U.S. missiles to hit Russian targets before deciding whether to launch a major nuclear response back … Defense Secretary Jim Mattis made a simpler claim … Russia, facing defeat in a conventional battle, ‘would escalate to a low-yield nuclear weapon knowing that our choice would be … to either respond with a high-yield [nuclear weapon] or surrender’ … Rep. Adam Smith … offered the more traditional understanding of [deterrence] … ‘We have over 4,000 nuclear weapons, and if you launch one, we will launch ours back at you. And we are not going to sit there and be concerned to make sure that ours isn’t bigger than yours when you started this.’”

Did Trump collude? Depends on your expectations. (Leonid Bershidsky, Bloomberg)
Absent definitive evidence, guilt is in the eye of the beholder.

What to expect from the Russian government in Putin’s fourth term (Andrey Movchan, Carnegie)
“The newly nominated [Russian government] officials perfectly fit the country’s current internal political moment and represent the conclusion of a long transition to authoritarian governance. … Putin’s new term … already stands out for the total clarity of its domestic policies. They will be based upon the quiet rejection of development and change amid enormous successes in ‘creative accounting’ and reporting the country’s achievements and propaganda. … For example, what does Putin’s promise to make Russia one of the five largest economies on Earth mean? … If we measure GDP by purchasing power parity … then Russia lags behind fifth place (held by Germany) by only 4.5 percent. … All Russia’s statistical agency must do is lower purchasing power parity by a further 10 percent … and Russia will have overtaken Germany. Or how … shall we treat the task of ensuring a ‘total fertility coefficient of 1.7,’ if it is already above 1.7 in Russia? … Russia already has a fertility rate higher than any European country while having a population with a fairly European lifestyle and social behavioral patterns. … there is likely some flexibility here. For example, the coefficient may be treated as only applicable to Russians of child-bearing age. … Speaking metaphorically … Russia has recognized that it is stuck in the middle of the ford between socialism and capitalism. Luckily, the stream dividing them is full of oil. Its fate in the coming decades is life without movement, sunken into the stream. We will hear constant assurances that Russia will soon cross over onto the proper shore. … And one task will consume Russia’s leaders: how to convincingly declare the river’s muddy bottom to be solid ground and standing half-submerged to be Russia’s successful end destination.”

We surveyed 100 security experts. Almost all said state election systems were vulnerable. (Derek Hawkins, SF Gate)
The midterm elections are less than six months away, but an overwhelming 95 percent of digital security experts surveyed by The Cybersecurity 202 say state election systems are not sufficiently protected against cyberthreats.

Everyone against Russia: Conspiracy theories on the rise in Russian media (EUvsDisnfo)
There has been a significant increase in the appearance of conspiracy theories in Russia over the past seven years. A new study shows that references in Russian media to a select group of popular conspiracy theories are on average six to nine times more frequent now than they were in 2011. Disinformation is among the factors experts name as the reason for this increase.