Our picksU.S. AI strategy falls short; the next school shooting; what border emergency?, and more

Facebook is a law-breaking “digital gangster,” UK government report says (Jon Brodkin, Arstechnica)
UK shouldn’t let Facebook “evade all editorial responsibility,” lawmakers say.

Rebuilding after Michael and divided between emotion and economics (Zachary T. Sampson, Tampa Bay Times)
After Hurricane Michael, many residents of Mexico Beach described themselves as falling into two categories: those who did not have insurance and those who did not have enough.

Trump’s Artificial Intelligence strategy: Aspirations without teeth (Caleb Watney, Lawfare)
On Feb. 11, the White House released an executive order on “Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” (AI)—the latest attempt to develop a national strategy for AI. The order envisions the United States taking significant steps to increase research and development efforts while reforming its executive agencies to better compete with the Chinese government’s investments in AI development through its Made in China 2025 plan. Although the order is full of promising language and constructive suggestions for executive agencies, it is unlikely to have much of a long-term effect without further support from Congress.

Trump wants better AI. He also wants less immigration. He can’t have both. (Sigal Samuel, Vox)
If America plans to win a global AI race, it needs to welcome non-Americans.

DARPA thinks AI could help troops telepathically control machines (Jack Corrigan, Defense One)
The Pentagon is looking to build artificial intelligence into neural interfaces to let humans control machines with their thoughts.

State senator unveils bill to allow California to buy insurance for disaster response (Bill Swindell, The Press Democrat)
State Sen. Bill Dodd, D-Napa, said his bill would function like homeowner’s insurance for the state, allowing it to pay an annual premium for coverage for an emergency response during disaster events.

Preparing for the next school shooting (Sam Shriver, The Lima News)
‘Everybody wears name badges. We have secure entrances. We have sign-in/sign-out sheets. We walk visitors to and from their destinations.’

White House to probe intelligence community’s finding that climate change poses national security threat (Juliet Eilperin and Missy Ryan, Washington Post)
The White House is preparing to launch a committee that will scrutinize the intelligence community’s repeated insistence that climate change poses a threat to national security. The Presidential Committee on Climate Security would be led by William Happer, a senior director at the National Security Council, and would reportedly “advise the President on scientific understanding of today’s climate, how the climate might change in the future under natural and human influences, and how a changing climate could affect the security of the United States.”
Happer, a professor emeritus of physics at Princeton University, is not a trained climate scientist—but he has insisted repeatedly that carbon dioxide is actually good for the planet. “We’re doing our best to try and counter this myth that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant,” he said in 2016. “It’s not a pollutant at all… We should be telling the scientific truth, that more CO2 is actually a benefit to the earth.” That comment flies in the face of established climate science, which says that carbon dioxide is a major contributor to rising temperatures. The documents proposing the committee come just weeks after Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats labeled climate change a serious security concern, a characterization Trump has repeatedly rejected.

DHS immigration stats make strong case against border emergency (Stuart Anderson, Forbes)
After losing a spending battle, Donald Trump bypassed Congress by declaring a “national emergency” to find money for building the wall along the Southwest border that he had campaigned for in 2016. The New York Times reports, “The Trump administration is preparing a colossal seizure of private property on the border.” One would hope a president taking such extraordinary actions possesses a strong empirical case. However, a look at the government’s own data shows the case for the existence of a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border appears weak.