Our picksPost Katrina: Building Biloxi Better | Conspiracies & Herd Immunity | The New Nuclear Threat, and more

Don’t Let Social Media Hinder a Future Vaccine (Paul McNamee, Big Issue)
The last thing we’ll need are conspiracy theory anti-vaxxers marching proud

Hurricane Katrina Hit Biloxi 15 Years Ago. Here’s What Other Coastal Cities Can Learn from Its Recovery (Jennifer Trivedi, Fast Company)
Recovery is a long-term process that’s largely shaped by local forces.

How the QAnon Conspiracy Theory Gained a Foothold in America (Reuters / The Wire)
A core tenet of the conspiracy theory is that Trump is secretly fighting a cabal of child-sex predators that includes prominent Democrats, Hollywood elites and “deep state” allies.

Trump Offered FBI Director Job to John Kelly, Asked for Loyalty (Jonathan Swan, Axios)
The day after President Trump fired FBI boss James Comey, the president phoned John Kelly, who was then secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, and offered him Comey’s job, the New York Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Michael Schmidt reports in his forthcoming book, Donald Trump v. The United States.
“But the president added something else — if he became FBI director, Trump told him, Kelly needed to be loyal to him, and only him.”

·  “Kelly immediately realized the problem with Trump’s request for loyalty, and he pushed back on the president’s demand,” Schmidt writes.

·  “Kelly said that he would be loyal to the Constitution and the rule of law, but he refused to pledge his loyalty to Trump.”

·  “Kelly has told others that Trump wanted to behave like an authoritarian and repeatedly had to be restrained and told what he could and could not legally do.”

·  “Aside from questions of the law, Kelly has told others that one of the most difficult tasks he faced with Trump was trying to stop him from pulling out of NATO — a move that Trump has repeatedly threatened but never made good on, which would have been a seismic breach of American alliances and an extraordinary gift to Putin.”

Mexican Drug Cartel Carries out ‘Drone Strikes’ in Gang War (David Hambling, Forbes)
Mexican drug cartels are using weaponized consumer drones in their latest gang war, according to reports in El Universal and other local news media.
A citizens’ militia group in Tepalcatepec, Michoacán, formed to protect farmers from the cartel, found two drones in a car used by gunmen belonging to the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), a group estimated to control a third of the drugs consumed in the U.S. The drones had plastic containers taped to them filled with C4 explosive and ball bearing shrapnel. The militias say that they have heard explosions, and believe that the drones are the latest weapons an ongoing gang war.

The New Nuclear Threat (Jessica T. Mathews, New York Review of Books)
The cold war ended peacefully, and the deployed nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and Russia have been reduced by nearly 90 percent, but we are not safer today—quite the reverse. After decades of building just enough weapons to deter attack, China is now aggressively modernizing and enlarging its small nuclear arsenal. Russia and the US are modernizing theirs as well with entire menus of new weapons. Activities in space are enlarging the global battlefield. Advances in missile technology and conventional weapons “entangle” scenarios of nuclear and nonnuclear war, making outcomes highly unpredictable. The risk of cyberattacks on command and control systems adds another layer of uncertainty, as does research on artificial intelligence that increases the prospect of accidents and the unintentional use of nuclear weapons. Arms control agreements that significantly limited the US–Soviet arms race are being discarded one by one. And from Russian efforts to destabilize America through social media attacks on its democracy, to Chinese bellicosity in the South China Sea and clampdown on Hong Kong, to erratic lunges in US foreign policy, there is deep and growing distrust among the great powers.
Yet the public isn’t scared. Indeed, people are unaware that a second nuclear arms race has begun—one that could be more dangerous than the first.