Our picksU.S. Botching Coronavirus Testing | U.K. “Further Restricts” Huawei | FBI Counterterrorism Assessments, and more

Exclusive: The Strongest Evidence Yet That America Is Botching Coronavirus Testing (Robinson Meyer, Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic)
“I don’t know what went wrong,” a former CDC chief told The Atlantic.

We Can Still Avoid the Worst-Case Coronavirus Scenario (Lawrence Gostin, Defense One)
The spread of COVID-19 may be inevitable, but the choices we make now will determine how bad the outbreak will get.

Trump’s Coronavirus Musings Put Scientists on Edge (Joanne Kenen, Politico)
The president’s habit of favoring his own judgments over those of the experts is vastly complicating efforts to fight the outbreak.

Twitter Starts to Tackle Doctored Videos—Not a Moment Too Soon (Economist)
The platform has been slower than Facebook to stamp out fake news

Russian Cyber Attacks Against Georgia, Public Attributions and Sovereignty in Cyberspace (Przemysław Roguski, Just Security)
A large-scale cyber attack knocked out thousands of websites in the country of Georgia on October 28, 2019. The attack—and the chorus of state responses to it—provide an important window into the current status of international law in this domain and the politics of attributing cyber attacks to other governments. I argue that the Georgia attack shows the opportunity costs of states not firmly grounding their reactions in the language of international law.

U.S., U.K. Agree to ‘Further’ Restrict Huawei, Defense Secretary Says (Patrick Tucker, Defense One)
But it’s not clear whether any actual changes emerged from Thursday’s meeting between the top U.S. and British defense leaders.

Germany Underestimated Far-Right Terror for “Too Long” (Richard Connor, DW)
The threat of far-right terror in Germany has not been taken seriously, the head of Germany’s parliament told lawmakers in the wake of the Hanau attacks. Wolfgang Schäuble said the violence did not occur in a vacuum.

About Those FBI Counterterrorism Assessments … (Patrick Eddingron, Just Security)
The Department of Justice Inspector General, Michael Horowitz released a report this week on the FBI’s use of counterterrorism assessments to find and stop so-called “Homegrown Violent Extremists” (HVEs). The report notes that the FBI “defines HVEs as global jihad-inspired individuals who are in the United States, have been radicalized primarily in the United States, and are not receiving individualized direction from a foreign terrorist organization (FTO).”
That definition excludes the white supremacist or Neo-Nazi domestic terrorists that in the post-9/11 period have actually accounted for more U.S. homeland terrorism-related deaths than those inspired by Salafist ideology. Why Horowitz and his team did not question the FBI’s very selective definition of who is considered an HVE is just one troubling aspect of the report.

Hotter Climate Upped Risk of Australia’s Record Fires by 30 percent (Christina Larson, AP)
Climate change raised the chances of Australia’s extreme fire season by at least 30 percent, according to a study released Wednesday by climate scientists at the World Weather Attribution group.
Scientists from Australia, Europe and North America calculated just how much human-caused global warming elevated the likelihood of Australia’s record-setting fire season by comparing high-resolution computer models of the continent facing varying levels of climate change.