Our picksCoronavirus Vaccine Race Pits Spy Against Spy | California Burning | U.S. Cyber Strategy, and more

The Terrifying Inadequacy of American Election Law(Larry Diamond and Edward B. Foley, The Atlantic)
The country has narrowly averted catastrophic deadlocks over the presidential-election outcome before. We may not be so fortunate in 2020.

The Left Secretly Preps for MAGA Violence After Election Day (Sam Stein, Daily Beast)
The progressive coalition Fight Back Table has been meeting to game out what happens if Joe Biden doesn’t win by a landslide. It’s not pretty.

Fake Election Domains Could Put U.S. Voters at Risk Online (Anthony Spadafora, Techradar)
Cybersquatting sites can host misinformation or even malware.

Race for Coronavirus Vaccine Pits Spy Against Spy (Julian E. Barnes and Michael Venutolo-Mantovani, New York Times)
The intelligence wars over vaccine research have intensified as China and Russia expand their efforts to steal American work at both research institutes and companies.

A Snowden Pardon Could Have a Snowball Effect on Protecting National Security Secrets (Sina M. Beaghley and Marek N. Posard, National Interest)
If the president were to pardon Edward Snowden, then he would risk encouraging similar vigilante behavior that puts at risk the very sensitive information and operations—meaning American interests and lives—that the U.S. national security system is intended to protect.

QAnon, the Scarily Popular Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theory, Explained (Jane Coaston, Vox)
How a conspiracy theory that Trump (and Robert Mueller) were saving the world from cannibal pedophiles got from 4chan to Trump rallies to Donald Trump himself.

California Sets Record With 2M Acres Burned So Far This Year (AP / VOA)
Wildfires have burned more than 2 million acres in California this year, setting a state record even as crews battled dozens of growing blazes in sweltering temperatures Monday that strained the electrical grid and threatened power outages for millions.

U.S. Cyber Command Shifts from Defense to Offense (Dan Arkin, Israel Defense)
The command moved to a new headquarters in Georgia where an advanced operations center was established to enable the command to combine data and intelligence with operations and thus participate fully in offensive and influential operations

Anti-Vaxxers: How to Challenge a Misinformed Movement (Hannah Kuchler, Financial Times)
Jonathan Berman’s book is a guide to strategies for converting the ‘vaccine hesitant’

Amid Broad Mistrust of FDA and Trump Administration, Drug Companies Seek to Reassure Public about COVID-19 Vaccine Safety (Lev Facher, STAT)
A group of nine leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies pledged on Tuesday to only seek approval for Covid-19 vaccines demonstrated to be safe and effective, an apparent attempt to provide public reassurance despite the widely held view that the Covid-19 vaccine development process is politically tainted.
As President Trump continues to push for a rapid vaccine approval, repeatedly pointing to late October as a potential approval date, top U.S. health officials have further damaged the Food and Drug Administration’s reputation for making independent, science-driven decisions. Both FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn and HHS secretary repeated Trump’s false claim that that blood plasma could reduce COVID-19 deaths by 35 percent (the true number of a partial, non-random and not blind trial was 3.2 percent). Hahn has since apologized for his misrepresentation, but not Azar.
Already, the Trump administration’s rhetoric, and scientists’ criticisms, have led to dramatic shifts in how Americans view the FDA and vaccine safety. In a recent STAT-Harris survey, 82% of Democrats and 72% of Republicans expressed concern that the Covid-19 vaccine approval process would be driven more by politics than by science.
More than 80% of independents, Republicans, and Democrats said they would worry about the safety of a vaccine that was approved quickly.

“Significant Flaws” by Police Led to Delays in Treating Manchester Arena Victims (Nazia Parveen, Guardian)
Inquiry into Ariana Grande concert attack to hear force did not declare major incident for three hours