Our picksSelf-Isolation & Extremism | Adversarial Capital | Strategy for 5G Security, and more

Self-Isolation Might Stop Coronavirus, but It Will Speed the Spread of Extremism (Nikita Malik, Foreign Affairs)
Millions of people stuck at home will turn to social media, where disinformation is rife. Radical Islamists and far-right groups are exploiting widespread confusion and fear to spread hate.

The Coronavirus Is the Worst Intelligence Failure in U.S. History (Micha Zenko, Foreign Policy)

It’s more glaring than Pearl Harbor and 9/11—and it’s all the fault of Donald Trump’s leadership.

Fiona Hill: Trump’s Coronavirus Talk Sounds a Lot Like Russia’s (Eleanor Clift and Adam Rawnsley, Daily Beast)
Into an already toxic brew of political discord and hyperventilating social media, a pathogen of foreign origin arrives. To fight it, the country must unite. At the same time, the coronavirus makes us more vulnerable to manipulation, especially if people are scared and nobody seems to have good answers.
Some of that manipulation is from Russia, and some from China, and while the two countries are “not working in close cooperation, they are working in concert because they have similar goals,” said Fiona Hill, former national security official and Russia expert in the Trump White House. 
Hill gained public notice when she testified before Congress last year on how a “domestic political errand” about Donald Trump’s potential challenger hijacked U.S. policy toward Russia and Ukraine.

The Intelligence Contest in Cyberspace (Joshua Rovner, Lawfare)
The ongoing competition in cyberspace is largely an intelligence contest. Although the technology is different, the underlying contest exhibits all the characteristics of traditional spy-versus-spy battles.

White House Releases National Strategy for 5G Security (Brandi Vincent, Defense One)
The strategy focuses on four lines of effort and will guide how the government approaches 5G for the near future.

DOD Official: “Adversarial Capital” Threatens Industrial Base (Lauren C. Williams, FCW)
The Defense Department is concerned that foreign investment will take advantage of small businesses in the defense industrial base reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ellen Lord, DOD’s top acquisition executive, told reporters March 25 the defense industrial base, which consists of more than 300,000 companies, is “vulnerable to adversarial capital,” and DOD wants them to “stay in business without losing their technology” or be subject to intellectual property theft.
“The foreign investment issue is something that I have been tracking for the last couple years. There is no question that we have adversarial capital coming into our markets through nefarious means,” Lord said.