Deepfakes are coming: Is Big Tech ready?; school-security companies thriving; California’s “new normal”; and more

DHS spins the border numbers… again (Andrew Boyle, Just Security)
The July border numbers were released on Wednesday and, once again, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) saw it as an opportunity to dissemble to the American people in the service of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. The numbers show that in July there were 31,303 total apprehensions. This is a combination of 3,938 unaccompanied children, 9,258 persons arriving as part of a family unit, and 18,107 others. In a press release, DHS characterized this data by saying: “Southwest Border Migration numbers dropped in July for the second month in a row. This decrease shows that when there are real consequences for breaking the law, the conduct of those considering crimes will change.” However, the month to month comparison is a red herring, and the facts don’t bear the weight of DHS’s preferred causative analysis.
To begin, the total apprehensions for July 2018 (31,303) are higher than the same month for five of the last eight years. This would indicate that whatever “consequences” Trump is imposing they are, on average, less effective than the way immigration has been handled in recent years. Moreover, as any Statistics 101 student is taught, correlation does not imply causation. The fact that apprehension numbers fell from June to July (and from May to June before that) is predictable regardless of policy, given that numbers in the summer months typically fall as the extreme heat makes the crossing more dangerous. Thus, the causality that DHS would like the public to infer―that the decrease is a result of the Trump policy choices―is unsupported by the data.

Laura Ingraham’s anti-immigrant rant was so racist it was endorsed by ex-KKK leader David Duke (Kelly Weill and Tim Burke, Daily Beast)
Fox News host says ‘the America we know and love’ is being wiped out by immigrants. Former KKK leader agrees with her.

Synthetic biology: The promise and peril of a new dual-use technology (Al Mauroni, War on the Rocks)
Imagine being able to use biological organisms as tiny machines to produce rare and complex chemicals faster and more efficiently with less waste, using a deliberate engineering process that enables molecular biology to make new and reliable commercial products. This is synthetic biology, which seeks to take the science of genetic engineering and apply it to industrial manufacturing in the fields of medicine, chemical manufacturing, fuel and power systems, and agriculture.
Synthetic biology is a relatively recent technology whose future applications are being increasingly discussed within industry and academic circles. Like other technologies, it has potential dual-use (commercial and military) applications. As much as scientists and engineers are looking forward to creating new commercial processes and products with this capability, some experts are warning that synthetic biology could also lead to new military capabilities — specifically, new biological warfare agents and diseases that could be dangerous in the wrong hands. The John Hopkins Center for Health Security recently hosted a group exercise in which a bioengineered virus called “Clade X” was deliberately released by a violent extremist group, resulting in 150 million dead after 20 months. Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute warns that synthetic biology could allow the development of “a super pathogen threatening the survival of large populations, and even civilization.” While these concerns may be premature, the U.S. government must consider the possibility that state and nonstate actors could misuse this emerging life science.
The debate about the dual-use nature of nuclear, biological, and chemical technologies is not new. While nuclear physics have demonstrably improved power generation and health sciences, nuclear weapons have advanced states’ military capabilities and, in many cases, created proliferation challenges that are intertwined with commercial nuclear technologies. For decades, there were concerns that advances in chemical and biological sciences would result in the development of bioengineered viruses and novel chemical weapons. At the same time, industry has used these same technical advances to provide the general public with new household products and a broader selection of luxury services. Other dual-use technologies of concern include directed energy, commercial drones, and cyber systems. The challenge, in each case, is balancing the commercial growth of these technologies against the need to prevent them from being used against U.S. security interests.

North Korea reuses code in major hacks, researchers find (Ryan Duffy, Cyberscoop)
Most of Pyongyang’s highest-profile cyberattacks over the past decade were cobbled together with bits of reused code, overlapping networking infrastructure and the indelible fingerprint of North Korean military hackers, a pair of researchers have found.
North Korea has come a long way since it first emerged on the global stage as a nascent cyber threat. As it grew in power, hit new targets and conducted malicious activities, Pyongyang didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, it built on previous successes, leveraging code from previous campaigns to build out future malware.
After months of code analysis, Christiaan Beek and Jay Rosenberg, the two researchers, published blog posts outlining their findings, which trace reused code all the way from a DDoS attacks launched by a fledging outfit of North Korean hackers in 2009 all the way to WannaCry, one of the world’s most crippling cyberattacks launched last year by a North Korea-backed hacking group.

Energy security is the real way to put America first (John Hannah, Foreign Policy)
Looming Iran oil sanctions pose challenges for U.S. energy policy.

Deepfakes are coming. Is Big Tech ready? (Sara Ashley O’Brien, CNN Tech)
Mark Zuckerberg insisted at Facebook’s annual developer conference earlier this year that his company “will never be unprepared … again” for meddling and disinformation efforts like those run by Russian trolls on its platform during the run-up to the 2016 election. Yet the social media behemoth and its competitors may still be ill-equipped for their next great challenge: Fake videos that look so real you’d believe former President Obama really did call President Trump a “dipsh*t.”