Our picksThe Wild West of Cyberspace | New Missile Defense? | Tunnel-Digging Robots, and more

U.S. Anti-Vaxxers Aim to Spread Fear over Future Coronavirus Vaccine (Adam Gabbatt, Guardian)
Anti-vaxxers’ influence and power could affect Americans’ willingness to take a Covid-19 vaccine, experts warn

Trump’s Social-Media Order Is a Gift to Disinformation Bots, Experts Say (Patrick Tucker, Defense One)
But much of the order may be legally unenforceable.

NSA Calls Out Russian Military Hackers Targeting Mail Relay Software (Shannon Vavra, Cyberscoop)
Hackers working for Russia’s military intelligence agency have been exploiting a vulnerability in a mail relay software since August of last year, according to an alert issued Thursday by the National Security Agency.The NSA publicly attributes the actions to the Russian military’s Main Center for Special Technologies (GTsST). That group is more commonly known as Sandworm, the hacking group believed to be responsible for Ukraine grid disruptions.

America Rethinks Its Strategy in the Wild West of Cyberspace (Economist)
The challenge of defense in the world’s most lawless battlefield.

DARPA Funds Earthworm-Inspired Soft Robot to Dig Tunnels (Brandi Vincent, Defense One)
As part of the Underminer program, General Electric’s innovation arm is perfecting a soft robot to boost battlefield operations.

Rebuilt Islamic State Growing ‘More Brazen’ in Syria, Iraq (Jeff Seldin, VOA)
Fighters and followers of the Islamic State, undaunted by the collapse of the terror group’s self-declared caliphate in Syria and Iraq, are growing bolder and more dangerous, according to recent assessments by U.S. counterterrorism officials.
The new appraisals attribute the change less to a leap in IS capabilities than to gradual progress due to long-term planning, which has masked the severity of the threat.

‘Valak’ Gives Crooks Flexibility in Multi-Stage Malware Attacks (Sean Lyngaas, Cyberscoop)
Hackers often plant their malicious software on computers in stages. One piece of code can be a foothold onto a network, another delivers the malware, and yet another executes it to steal or manipulate data. But looks can be deceiving. The same code used as a staging tool in one attack might be the tip of the spear in another. For targeted organizations, spotting the difference can mean saving your data.

Florida Prepares for Hurricane Season amid Coronavirus Pandemic (Julius Whigham II, Palm Beach Post)
NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center said it expects to see 13 to 19 named storms in 2020, including six to 10 that could become hurricanes and three to six that could develop into a major hurricane, meaning Category 3 strength or higher

How to Enhance Mobile Endpoint Security as Users Telework (Phil Goldstein, FedTech)
IT leaders can use ongoing remote work deployments to bring additional security controls to smartphones and tablets.

Failed Maduro Coup Leader Flew on Pro-Govt Magnate’s Plane (AP / VOA)
It was mid-January and Jordan Goudreau was itching to get going on a secret plan to raid Venezuela and arrest President Nicolás Maduro when the former special forces commando flew to the city of Barranquilla in Colombia to meet with his would-be partner in arms.
To get there, Goudreau and two former Green Beret buddies relied on some unusual help: a chartered flight out of Miami’s Opa Locka executive airport on a plane owned by a Venezuelan businessman so close to the government of the late Hugo Chávez that he spent almost four years in a U.S. prison for trying to cover up clandestine cash payments to its allies.
The owner of the Venezuela-registered Cessna Citation II with yellow and blue lines, identified with the tail number YV-3231, was Franklin Durán, according to three people familiar with the businessman’s movements who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Durán over two decades has had numerous business ties with the socialist government of Venezuela, making him an odd choice to help a band of would-be-mercenaries overthrow Maduro, the handpicked successor of the late Chávez

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency Has A Bold New Plan For Protecting America. What’s ‘Plan B’ If It Doesn’t Work? (Loren Thompson, Forbes)
The assumption undergirding the U.S. nuclear deterrence strategy is that leaders in Moscow and Beijing aren’t crazy, and therefore won’t launch a  nuclear attack against the United States knowing that such aggression will bring down a rain of nuclear destruction on their countries.
In the case of North Korea, though, we aren’t so sure. Ditto for a future nuclear-armed Iran. The leaders of those nations may not be deterrable in some circumstances.
To deal with a smaller, and possibly non-deterrable, nuclear state, the Pentagon wants to abandon efforts to upgrade the existing Ground Based Interceptor—the only system America currently has that can intercept ICBMs—and leap ahead to a Next Generation Interceptor.
But what if the NextGen Interceptor system does not work?