Our picksCoronavirus Outbreak: Bigger Than We Know | Inconvenient Truth about ISIS | Future of Encryption, and more

Why the Coronavirus Outbreak Might Be Much Bigger Than We Know (Julia Belluz, Vox)
What the situation in countries like Singapore and the US tells us about the risk of global spread.

Coronavirus or Antibiotic Resistance: Our Appetite for Animals (Wild and Domestic) Poses Big Disease Risks (Laura H. Kahn, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
Selling and eating wild animals, disrupting ecosystems, and destroying forests all contribute to the risks of novel deadly microbes spreading into human populations. Just as worrisome is the impact that raising hundreds or thousands of domesticated animals in densely packed quarters has on the worsening problem of drug-resistant microbes. While the new coronavirus in China has killed more than 1,300 people, about 35,000 people in the United States die each year after developing drug-resistant infections.

A Coronavirus Quarantine in America Could Be a Giant Legal Mess (Polly J. Price, The Atlantic)
America’s defense against epidemics is divided among more than 2,000 individual public-health departments, which makes implementing a national strategy very difficult.

Mark Zuckerberg Admits Facebook Was Slow on Russian Disinformation (Helen Warrell, Guy Chazan, and Michael Peel, Financial Times)
Tech companies see Europe as a more eager regulator of the sector than the US

The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President (McKay Coppins, The Atlantic)
How new technologies and techniques pioneered by dictators will shape the 2020 election

From Disinformation to Hackers, New “Cybernavigator” Racing to Protect Minnesota’s 2020 Elections (Stephen Montemayor, Star Tribune)
Cybernavigator warns of multiple threats, including attempts at “hacking the mind.”

The Code Breakers: This Vault Is the Epicenter in Law Enforcement’s Battle to Unlock Encrypted Smartphones (Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY)
Despite the formidable resources of a $10 million cyberlab operated by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office – including costly assistance provided by private sleuths – the phone has won.
More than 8,000 devices have poured into the facility since 2014. Each year, more of them are locked, rising from 24% in 2014 to 64% last year. For Apple devices, it’s gone from 60% to 82%.
Nearly 2,500 of the locked devices remain inaccessible to investigators, hindering investigations into child exploitation, financial fraud, theft, violence and other crimes.

Israel Has a Secret Nuclear Weapons Program (Well, Maybe Not-So-Secret) (Kyle Mizokami, National Interest)
Here is what we know.

Congress, Not the Attorney General, Should Decide the Future of Encryption (Alan Z. Rozenshtein, Lawfare)
The debate over end-to-end encryption focuses on the substantive question: Should encryption be restricted to help law enforcement, or do the privacy and security benefits of this technology outweigh its costs? A draft copy of the EARN IT Act, which could deprive platforms that use end-to-end encryption of their immunity from civil suit under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act for child exploitation materials posted by users, has a set off a new round of debate.

The Inconvenient Truth about ISIS (Mike Giglio, Kathy Gilsinan, Defense One)
The group is even bigger now, and America’s conflict with Iran is only making the fight against it more complicated.