Our picksPentagon’s Spectrum Defeat | Combating Coronavirus Misinformation | Convicted Terrorists’ Recidivism, and more

The Pentagon’s Spectrum Defeat May Presage a Loss of Other Key Frequencies (Mariam Baksh, Defense One)
Rejecting appeals by Defense officials and their Congressional allies, the FCC approved a private company’s use of spectrum near ones used by GPS.

Hackers Spoof SBA to Try to Compromise Companies’ Computers (Sean Lyngaas, Cyberscoop)
With the U.S. Small Business Administration continuing to play a high-profile role in getting cash to companies that are struggling because of the coronavirus pandemic, cybercriminals are stepping up their efforts to steal money from those very firms.

What Experts Say Works for Combating Coronavirus Misinformation (Sara Fischer, Axios)
When it comes to combating misinformation, research shows that it’s more effective for authoritative figures to present accurate facts early and routinely alongside misinformation, rather than to try to negate every piece of misinformation after-the-fact by labeling it false or by calling it out as false.

Top Russian General Identified as Key Official in Shootdown of MH17, Says Report (Jamie Ross, Daily Beast)
The highest-ranking Russian official identified as a person of interest in the criminal investigation into the 2014 shootdown of MH17 has been named as top FSB Colonel General Andrey Ivanovich Burlaka. Bellingcat reports that the general oversaw the movement of weapons from Russia to Ukraine, and he would have had to authorize the transfer of the Russian Buk missile launcher that downed the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet in July 2014.

UN Chief: Extremists Using COVID-19 to Recruit Online Youths (AP / New York Times)
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Monday that extremist groups are taking advantage of COVID-19 lock downs to intensify social media efforts to spread hatred and recruit young people who are spending more time online.
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, he said, one of every five young people was not getting an education, training or working, and one of every four was affected by violence or conflict. And he lamented that every year, 12 million girls become mothers when they are still children.

Convicted Terrorists Less Likely to Reoffend Than Other Criminals – Study (Jason Burke, Guardian)
Convicted terrorists are extremely unlikely to reoffend compared with other prisoners, research by academics and security services in Europe has found.
The research shows that less than 5% of convicted terrorists commit a second terrorist offence after leaving prison. In England and Wales, around 45% of all prisoners will reoffend within a year of release.
The research was conducted in Belgium, which has faced Islamist terrorism since the early 1990s and became one of the centers of the Islamic State campaign in Europe in 2015 and 2016.
The forthcoming release of thousands of extremists imprisoned for terrorist offences has worried security services in the UK and elsewhere.

Symbolism and the Construction of “Cultural Imaginaries” in Contemporary Far-Right Movements (Linda Schlegel, EER)
Recent years have seen an upsurge in right-wing extremist activity and attacks. From Christchurch to El Paso and Halle, right-wing extremist violence has come to temporarily dominate the terrorism-related headlines in Western countries. In fact, in 2018 every extremist murder in the United States was connected in some form or another to right-wing ideology and the old wisdom that jihadist attacks cause more casualties than right-wing extremism might not always hold true anymore. In Australia, too, right-wing extremism has grown, prompting warnings that an attack in the near future is ‘probable’. However, while the violence and the racist, extremist and often anti-Semitic or Islamophobic attitudes of the perpetrators are regularly discussed in popular discourse, right-wing extremist organizations are not only places of blind hate and rage. The right-wing extremist milieu has also constructed its own culture, its own narratives and ‘cultural imaginaries’, as well as a specific symbolism interwoven with and signifying these imaginaries. The cultural imaginaries serve various purposes, including potentially facilitating radicalization processes.

Trump’s Politicization of U.S. Intelligence Agencies Could End in Disaster (Michael Morell, Avril Haines, David S. Cohen, Foreign Policy)
Purging seasoned professionals and politicizing the work of analysts and agents endanger American lives.
The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident occurred because the work of Soviet nuclear engineers—trained to analyze complex systems based on inferences drawn from objective facts—was politicized. Instead of speaking the truth as they saw it, they were intimidated by their government to conceal the true dimensions of the catastrophe unfolding before them. The result was the worst nuclear disaster in history.
Last week, U.S. Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, published an op-ed in the Washington Post outlining his growing concern about the politicization of the intelligence community. Warner wrote: “Efforts by this president to intimidate … U.S. intelligence services may be politically advantageous in the short term, but over time the consequences for our country will be disastrous.”
We share Warner’s concerns.