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Russia Doesn’t Want Bernie Sanders. It Wants Chaos (Brian Barrett, Wired)
If there’s one line intelligence officials have stuck to about Russian interference in U.S. elections, it’s that it never stopped. Not after the 2016 election, not after the 2018 midterms, and certainly not now, well into the 2020 primary season. Which is why it should be no great surprise that, as The Washington Post first reported Friday, U.S. officials warned Bernie Sanders that Russia is “attempting to help” his presidential campaign. It also shouldn’t be read as any kind of endorsement.Special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of the Internet Research Agency troll farm detailed how IRA operatives were instructed to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump—we support them).”
To close observers of Russian interference, this all sounds wildly familiar. In 2016, Russian misinformation agents and hackers worked to boost Trump’s electoral chances, but also threw some of their support behind Sanders as he ran against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary.
But the distinction between Russia’s support for Trump and Sanders then, as now, is that Russia wanted only Trump to win. Promoting Sanders was simply another means to that end, driving a wedge between two already fraught factions of the Democratic Party.

U.S. Officials Warned Bernie Sanders Russia Is Trying to Help His Campaign (Chas Danner, New York Magazine)
U.S. officials have informed Senator Bernie Sanders that Russia is attempting to aid his presidential campaign in an effort to interfere in the 2020 Democratic primary, the Washington Post reported on Friday. It’s not yet clear how Russia is backing Sanders this time around, but in its efforts to help elect President Trump in 2016, the Kremlin used social media to support the Sanders campaign and fuel discord and division among the U.S. electorate to weaken support for Hillary Clinton.

Sanders told the Post, “I don’t care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president. My message to Putin is clear: Stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do.” Speaking with reporters on the campaign trail, Sanders later confirmed the briefing had taken place about a month ago.

In South Korea, Coronavirus Meets the Second Coming (Donald Kirk, Daily Beast)

It was only through GPS tracking that a person diagnosed with COVID-19 was linked to a highly-secretive religious sect in South Korea.

How the Coronavirus Revealed Authoritarianism’s Fatal Flaw (Zeynep Tufekci, The Atlantic)
China’s use of surveillance and censorship makes it harder for Xi Jinping to know what’s going on in his own country.

UN Study: 1 of Every 3 Venezuelans is Facing Hunger (AP)
One of every three people in Venezuela is struggling to put enough food on the table to meet minimum nutrition requirements as the nation’s severe economic contraction and political upheaval persists, according to a study published Sunday by the U.N. World Food Program.

Trump’s Nevada Play Leaves Nation’s Nuclear Waste in Limbo (Eric Wolf and Anthony Adragna, Politico)
The president wants to win the state he narrowly lost in 2016, but he may be jumping into an energy issue.

US: Free Speech no Excuse for Crimes of WikiLeaks’ Assange (AP)
The U.S. government began outlining its extradition case against Julian Assange in a London court on Monday, arguing that the WikiLeaks founder is not a free-speech champion but an “ordinary” criminal who put many lives at risk with his secret-spilling.
U.S. authorities want to try Assange on espionage charges that carry a maximum sentence of 175 years in prison over the 2010 publication of hundreds of thousands of secret military documents and diplomatic cables. Assange argues he was acting as a journalist entitled to First Amendment protection.