Our picksBioterrorists Cooperation | Russia Targets U.S. Infrastructure | EMP First Strike, and more

Far-Right Obsession with Bioterror Could Lead to Work with al-Qaeda, Iran (Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post)
Coronavirus spiked interest in bioweapons, far-right ideology

Sahara Dust Cloud Looms Over Cuba, Caribbean and Florida (AFP / VOA)
A massive cloud of Saharan dust darkened much of Cuba on Wednesday and began to affect air quality in Florida, sparking warnings to people with respiratory illnesses to stay home. The dust cloud swept across the Atlantic from Africa over the past week, covering the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico since Sunday and hitting south Florida in the United States on Wednesday, authorities there said.

China is Retooling, and Russia Seeks Harm to Critical Infrastructure (Kimberly Underwood, Signal)
Intelligence leader warns of the mounting threats of cyber espionage, digital attacks and influence operations from adversaries.

U.S. Soldier’s Alleged Connection to Satanic Nazi Extremist Group Renews Calls to Ban It (Linda Givetash, NBC News)
Anti-racism group Hope Not Hate says Britain should ban the far-right Order of Nine Angles after a U.S. soldier allegedly gave it classified information.

Neo-Nazi Memoir Describes Terror Group’s Acid-Soaked Ram Sacrifice (Ben Makuch, Vice)
The bizarre ritual by the terror group The Base was infiltrated by the FBI.

Lawsuit Alleges Scientific Misconduct at U.S. Nuclear Weapons Lab (Adrian Cho, Science)
An unusual lawsuit alleges scientific misconduct at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, one of the United States’s three nuclear weapons labs. Peter Williams, a 50-year-old physicist, worked at Livermore from January 2016 until May 2017, when he says he was fired in retaliation for complaining that his superiors were mishandling a computer program that simulates the detonation of high explosives, undermining their ability to predict how a particular nuclear weapon would perform if used. Williams, who now works at a private research lab, has sued Livermore and seven individuals for reinstatement and $600,000 in damages.

How the U.S. military has failed to address white supremacy in its ranks (Lois Beckett, Guardian)
A recently uncovered extremist plot has put fresh scrutiny on the relationship between US service members and white supremacist groups

Rise in Far-Right and Islamic Extremism Activity in Ireland Last Year, Says Europol (Connor Gallagher, Irish Times)
EU’s joint police agency warns ‘criminal elements’ are involved in far-right protests

China Has “First-Strike” Capability to Melt U.S. Power Grid with Electromagnetic Pulse Weapon (James Conca, Forbes)
Last week, the Department of Homeland Security issued a scary report on China’s ability to conduct an Electromagnetic Pulse attack on the United States. The key takeaway, according to Dr. Peter Pry, executive director of the department’s EMP task force, is that China now has super-EMP weapons, knows how to protect itself against an EMP attack, and has developed protocols to conduct a first-strike attack, even as they deny they would ever do so.

What Are the Key Tenets of China’s Propaganda Regime? – Analysis (Atharv S Desai, Eurasia Review)
China has unleashed an international propaganda offensive, and demonstrated its ability to obscure truth while changing narratives, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Beijing is efficiently exploiting the platforms of journalism and social media to further its cause. Along with the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) traditional approach to cultivating China’s positive image globally, this new strategy, drawing on Russian media warfare tactics, is to “sow doubt, dissension, and disarray” to cause public information anarchy.
However, unlike Russia’s covert strategies, the CCP employs more direct tactics of flooding mainstream global media coverage with pro-China messaging, and garnering support from ‘neutral’ global institutions, to back Chinese narratives. The real strength of contemporary Chinese propaganda—such as sophisticated message delivery, subtlety, and the professionalism of its information manipulation—is the obscuring of sources and intentions driving propaganda. To exhume the subversive nature of these activities and go beyond the technical aspects its information warfare, this commentary analyses five key tenets of the Chinese propaganda regime.