Our picksCoronavirus’s Impact on Terrorism | Dark Art of Russian Disinformation | Security Lapses & Saudi Shoot Up, and more

How to Prepare for the Coronavirus’s Impact on Terrorism (Nikita Malik, National Interest)
In America, a task force of data-mining start-ups and technology companies is currently working with the White House to develop a range of tracking and surveillance technologies to fight the coronavirus.

Reading Fatal Stabbing Suspect Khairi Saadallah Was Known to MI5 (Fiona Hamilton, The Times)
The terror suspect who allegedly murdered three people in Reading came on to the radar of the intelligence services last year.
Khairi Saadallah, 25, is being investigated by the national counterterrorism command over what police described today as a horrific atrocity in Forbury Gardens last night.
Sources told The Times that MI5 was passed intelligence last year on Saadallah, who is originally from Libya, suggesting that he had an aspiration to travel abroad, potentially for terrorism.

Terror Groups “Exploiting Coronavirus Pandemic to Radicalize New Recruits,” QC Warns (Tristan Kirk, Evening Standard)
Terrorist groups are using the pandemic lockdown to gather and radicalize new recruits by blaming coronavirus on the “wrath of God”, a top QC has warned.
Lord Carlile of Berriew said extremists groups are trying to “use the Covid-19 global crisis to their advantage”, particularly targeting vulnerable people who have been isolated by the lockdown and social distancing rules.
He said ISIS and Al Qaeda propaganda is claiming the virus is a “divine punishment” from God, while far right groups are latching on to conspiracy theories around the pandemic to boost followers.

Team Trump Pushes Antifa Panic Hard on Facebook (Lachlan Markay, Daily Beats)
At least seven different pages associated with the campaign have run spots warning about the rise of the anti-fascist group.

Vehicle Attacks Rise as Extremists Target Protesters (Hannah Allam, NPR)
Right-wing extremists are turning cars into weapons, with reports of at least 50 vehicle-ramming incidents since protests against police violence erupted nationwide in late May.
At least 18 are categorized as deliberate attacks; another two dozen are unclear as to motivation or are still under investigation, according to a count released Friday by Ari Weil, a terrorism researcher at the University of Chicago’s Chicago Project on Security and Threats. Weil has tracked vehicle-ramming attacks, or VRAs, since protests began.
“The message they’re trying to send is, ‘You need to get out of the street and stop these protests,’ ” Weil said. “They’re trying to intimidate the most recent wave of BLM protesters, to stop their movement.”

Black Lives Matter Unrest in U.S. Makes It Easy for Vladimir Putin’s Election Trolls to Spread Fake News (Matthew Campbell, The Times)
Public gullibility tested with false promise of free hotdogs

Russian Operatives Behind Fake Claim that Real IRA Was Recruiting Jihadists (Brian Mahon, The Times)
Russian operatives spread false information online that the Real IRA was recruiting Islamist militias as part of campaign to sow division in the West, according to a new report.
The deception operation, titled Secondary Infektion, took place over six years in seven different languages and on 300 different online platforms.
Graphika, a New York-based analytics company behind the report, uses artificial intelligence to study and observe online communities. It described Secondary Infektion as a “long-running Russian information operation”. It included a number of social media campaigns run by a central entity, which was already active in 2014 and still running early this year.

Russia report: U.K. MPs Condemn “Utterly Reprehensible” delay (Mattha Busby, Guardian)
Failure to establish key scrutiny committee is also criticized as “unprecedented underhand behavior”

Fighting the Dark Art of Russian Disinformation This Election Season (Daniel N. Hoffman, Washington Examiner)
The Kremlin’s goal is to tarnish the U.S. political process

The Lapses That Let a Saudi Extremist Shoot Up a U.S. Navy Base (Michael LaForgia and Eric Schmitt, New York Times)
The gunman who killed three in Florida was not directed by Al Qaeda, nor inspired solely by online ideology. He was a new kind of terrorist, harder to spot: an extremely enterprising freelancer.