Our picksReporting political violence; giving bots a bad name; quantum computing & the military, and more

Using common social media tactics to subvert U.S. elections (Mae Anderson, AP)
The latest efforts to disrupt the U.S. midterm elections through Facebook manipulation seem to be following a persuasion playbook refined by legitimate companies and organizations — but with a twist. The aim of these possibly Russia-linked perpetrators appears to be to draw in as many people as possible with emotional appeals and then spur them to action. In this case, though, the action is public protest rather than affinity marketing, and the goal is to sow dissension rather than to build brand awareness. “They’re almost functioning like social media editors, figuring out what the trending topics are in the U.S. and figuring out where they can insert themselves,” said Jennifer Grygiel, a communications professor at Syracuse University.

DOD unveils ‘Hack the Marine Corps’ bounty program (Mark Satter, Cyberscoop)
A new bug bounty program intended to find vulnerabilities in the Marine Corps’ public-facing websites was unveiled in Las Vegas Monday. The Hack the Marine Corps program, which was jointly created by the Department of Defense (DOD) and vulnerability disclosure platform company HackerOne, was announced with a live hacking event. Participants discovered 75 unique vulnerabilities during the event and were awarded more than $80,000 collectively.

‘Patchwork’ system leaves some Californians out of emergency alerts (Anita Chabria, Ryan Sabalow, Taryn Luna, The Sacramento Bee)
Increased wildfire activity in the state has called attention to gaps in the systems that deliver wireless emergency alerts to residents in harm’s way.

DARPA wants to explore practical tech impact of quantum computing (Phil Goldstein, FedTech)
The DOD’s research arm aims to understand how quantum computing will affect AI, physical systems, data analytics and more.

End the double standards in reporting political violence (David French, National Review)
The refusal by many media outlets to offer proportionate coverage empowers the worst elements of the radical Left.

Here’s how to actually stop Google from tracking your location (Simone Stolzoff, Nextgov)
The search giant can be thwarted.

Trump is the first president to get Turkey right (Steven A. Cook, Foreign Policy)
Good riddance to the so-called strategic relationship between Washington and Ankara.

Russia gave bots a bad name. Here’s why we need them more than ever. (Laurent Sacharoff, Politico Magazine)
Election meddling and social media fakery has made the automated applications politically toxic, but they can do a world of good in the right hands.