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Ex-DHS Official: Trump Appeared to Side with Team Russia (Betsy Woodruff Swan, Politico)
In the eyes of a former top official at the department that handles election security, President Donald Trump appeared to side with Russia on the matter.
Miles Taylor, who worked at the Department of Homeland Security during the first two years of Trump’s presidency, including a stint as the department’s chief of staff, told POLITICO it often felt like his office had to fight against the president to secure U.S. elections from foreign meddling.
“He was playing for the other team, it felt like, a lot of the time,” said Taylor, a political appointee, in an interview. “That’s what it felt like. Sometimes it felt like the president was on the Russian team and not the American team, and we were having to run the football into the end zone against the president to secure our own country.”Taylor said his biggest regret from his time at DHS was that they couldn’t do more to secure U.S. elections from foreign interference.

“We did a lot in that space but we had to do it despite the president, not because of the president,” he said.

Narcoterrorism: Venezuela, Hezbollah and a cocaine invasion (Peter Speetjens, Middle East Eye)
Washington says Nicolas Maduro and his Middle East allies are conspiring to hook Americans on drugs and carry out terror attacks on US soil. What’s the truth?

How to Protect Data from Natural Disasters (Jack M. Germain, TechNewsWorld)
With hurricane season in full bloom and the additional prospect of natural disasters, the importance for companies to have disaster data plans in place is paramount. Companies that fail to make recovery plans for their electronic gear and essential data are inviting serious financial injury when an emergency strikes.

Inside NSO, Israel’s Billion-Dollar Spyware Giant (Patrick Howell O’Neill, MIT Technology Review)
The world’s most notorious surveillance company says it wants to clean up its act. Go on, we’re listening.

The Women Making Conspiracy Theories Beautiful (Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Atlantic)
How the domestic aesthetics of Instagram repackage QAnon for the masses

Health Misinformation Pages Got Half a Billion Views on Facebook in April (Charlotte Jee, MIT Technology Review)
Health misinformation has received almost four times as many Facebook views as information from reliable sources

Here’s How to Keep California’s Grid from Buckling under the Heat (James Temple, MIT Technology Review)
It’s time to modernize our electricity systems—and pay people to crank down power during critical shortages.

There Is a Crisis of Face Recognition and Policing in the U.S. (Tate Ryan-Mosley. MIT Technology Review)
The deeply flawed technology is in wide use, largely out of the public eye.

Some California Cities Think They’re Safe from Sea Level Rise. They’re Not, New Research Shows (Rosanna Xia, Los Angeles Times)
sea level rise is a lot more complicated than just waves breaking over seawalls and beaches disappearing.
Imagine the groundwater beneath your feet. As the ocean moves inland, it will push all this trapped water upward until it breaks the surface. Basements will heave, brackish water could corrode sewer pipes, toxic contaminants buried in the soil could bubble up and spread.
In many areas along San Francisco Bay, this sea beneath us is already leaking out of the ground, said Kristina Hill, whose research at the University of California, Berkeley focuses on this less-talked-about vulnerability. With even 1 foot more of sea rise, an unexpected swath of Marin City could increasingly flood.
Aside from homes and roads, human health is also a huge concern, she said. “Any pollution in the soil, capped from above but lying just below, will be re-mobilized.”