Our picksUnplugging U.S. grid; DHS to overhaul data centers; fringe groups are using QAnon, and more

National emergency jeopardizes $6 billion in funding for states (Liz Farmer, Governing)
The president’s plan to build a border wall could cost the most for California, Hawaii and Maryland — three of the 16 states suing to block the declaration.

As Europe prepares to vote, Microsoft warns of Fancy Bear attacks on democratic think tanks (Sean Lyngaas, Cyberscoop)
Three months before parliamentary elections in Europe, Microsoft says it has detected hacking attempts on democracy-focused think tanks from the Russian hacking group that breached the Democratic National Committee in 2016.
From September to December 2018, hackers conducted cyberattacks on employees of the Aspen Institutes in Europe, the German Council on Foreign Relations, and the German Marshall Fund, Microsoft said late Tuesday. Microsoft said it was “confident” the hacking group it calls Strontium, more commonly known as Fancy Bear or APT28, was responsible for many of the attacks. Western officials have attributed the group to Russia’s military intelligence directorate.

‘Sometimes the old stuff is the best.’ Sen. King wants the U.S. to unplug parts of electric grid (Joseph Marks, Washington Post)
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) thinks the United States can learn something from Ukraine when it comes to cybersecurity.
King, who serves on the Senate Energy Committee, wants the government to consider unplugging some digital systems at strategic positions in the nation’s power grid — and replacing them with physical ones that hackers can’t compromise.

Coast Guard officer accused of racist mass-murder plot, kept ‘hit list’ of Democrats and MSNBC hosts (Spencer Ackerman, Daily Beast)
Lt. Christopher Paul Hasson hoarded guns and drugs and wrote about ‘kill[ing] almost every last person on the earth’ in pursuit of a white homeland in America.

Long-term effects following acute exposure to sarin nerve agent (Global Biodefense)
The National Toxicology Program, on behalf of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats (CounterACT) program, recently conducted a systematic review to evaluate the evidence for long-term neurological effects in humans and animals following acute exposure to sarin.

DHS looks to overhaul data centers, move to cloud (Derek B. Johnson, FCW)
The Department of Homeland Security is looking for industry advice about how to consolidate two main enterprise computing data centers and modernize with a more cloud-based infrastructure.

Say WHAT? — A case of low-yield nuclear thinking (Thomas Gaulkin, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
Can a small nuclear weapon really make the world safer?
The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review reaffirmed the Trump administration’s commitment to the broad (and costly) modernization of the nuclear weapons complex. But it also introduced two new weapons, one of which, the W76-2, is rolling off the assembly line in Texas right now.

AFRICOM adds logistics hub in West Africa, hinting at an enduring U.S. presence (Katie Bo Williams, Defense One)
From Ghana’s capital, a new supply network will ferry supplies and arms to special forces troops across the region.

ATM hacking has gotten so easy, the malware’s a game (Brian Barrett, Wired)
As long as there are ATMs, hackers will be there to drain them of money. Although ATM-targeted “jackpotting” malware—which forces machines to spit out cash—has been on the rise for several years, a recent variation of the scheme takes that concept literally, turning the machine’s interface into something like a slot machine. One that pays out every time.

How fringe groups are using QAnon to amplify their wild messages (Kelly Weill, Daily Beast)
The German far right has jumped on the bizarre Trump-vs.-Satanic-pedophilia-ring bandwagon to amplify its own agenda on social media.