Our picksNew Assange charges; undercover Fascist; terrorism & domestic violence, and more

U.S. charges Assange with publishing classified information, a move unprecedented in American history (Kevin Poulsen and Betsy Woodruff, Daily Beast)
In a stunning escalation of the war on the free press, the Trump administration has indicted a publisher for revealing government secrets.

If we start to link terrorism and domestic violence, we might just stop the next attack (Joan Smith, Telegraph)
Home can be a dangerous place. Every week, two women in the United Kingdom. are killed by current or former partners, and the number of domestic homicides in London tripled last year to 29. But there’s another connection between domestic violence and murder that doesn’t appear in official figures. Most terrorists – and indeed most of the men responsible for mass shootings in the U.S.– have a history of abusing women and children.

Correcting course: Avoiding the collision between humanitarian action and counterterrorism (Scott Paul and Kathryn Achilles, Just Security)
When the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2462(2019), aimed at combating the financing of terrorism, it included language meant to protect humanitarian action. Just Security’s Nathalie Wiezmann did an excellent job outlining the reasons such safeguards are necessary and situating the included language in various provisions of national and international law. Indeed, there is a substantial amount of support in law and practice for ensuring that counterterrorism measures do not unduly impact humanitarian action.
Unfortunately, in our view, UNSCR 2462 fails to effectively mitigate against its potential impacts on humanitarian action and humanitarians’ longstanding concerns. The responsibility for that failure rests largely with U.N. member states and their overzealous approach to combating terrorism and the financing of terrorism (CFT), but also, to a lesser degree, with the humanitarian community, which has often failed to articulate the full extent of the impact and threats posed by the CFT agenda to our mission.

If Huawei loses ARM’s chip designs, it’s toast (Brian Barrett, Wired)
How do you kill a company? The answer, in the context of Chinese electronics giant Huawei, appears to be deprivation, removing ready access to the elements that distinguish smartphones from very expensive chunks of anodized aluminum and glass. The latest blow: Chip designer ARM has reportedly severed ties with the company. Huawei could arguably survive without Google. Without ARM? Not so much.

The undercover Fascist (Ed Caesar, New Yorker)
A young Englishman got mixed up in a white-supremacist movement. Then he learned of a plot to kill a politician.

Why the internet is so polarized, extreme, and screamy (Derek Thompson, The Atlantic)
We talk with journalists and internet researchers about the rise of online extremism in the latest episode of the podcast Crazy/Genius.

42 countries agree to international principles for AI (Brandi Vincent, Defense One)
The Organization for Economic Coordination and Development released its global standards, which aim to ensure artificial intelligence is designed to be robust, safe, fair and trustworthy.

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson accused of parroting Russian propaganda about 5G health fears (Douglas Perry, The Oregonian)
Russian disinformation operatives in recent months have been pushing scare stories about 5G networks. RT America, formerly known as Russia Today, has claimed that 5G signals “might kill you” and constitute an “experiment on humanity.” The U.S.-based Russian TV network and other Russian sources have repeatedly proposed, without scientific support, that the technology causes brain cancer and various other diseases.
“Experts suggested that the [RT America] broadcasts are an attempt to undermine U.S. enthusiasm for the wireless technology, which could well give nations who adopt it first a competitive edge over international rivals,” Britain’s The Telegraph reports.
Now Fox News’ popular “Tucker Carlson Tonight” has weighed in on the 5G scare, causing social-media denizens this week to attack Carlson for parroting Russian propaganda. Various pundits on Twitter, including author and former FBI counterterrorism expert Clint Watts, discussed “the birth of a conspiracy” and passed around images from Carlson’s show that featured blood-pressure-spiking chyrons like “5G Is Coming: Should We Be Worried?” and “Potential Negative Health Effects of 5G.”
Russia, while ratcheting up health fears about the technology in the rest of the world, is reportedly moving forward aggressively with its own 5G network.
Ryan Fox, the CEO of the disinformation-monitoring firm New Knowledge, says Russia’s 5G propaganda amounts to “economic warfare.”