Defeating Domestic Terror | Convertible Jet Design | Vaccine Diplomacy, and more

Since late 2019, nine members of the Base, the group he founded, have been arrested in the U.S. for alleged crimes as wide-ranging as an assassination plot, ghost-gun making, plans for train derailments, and a mass shooting. The Canadian government has designated it as a terrorist group. While it wouldn’t authenticate the letter addressed to Nazzaro, DHS verified he had worked with the department in the past. “I can confirm that Rinaldo Nazzaro worked at DHS from 2004 to 2006,” said a DHS spokesperson.

Convertible Jet Design Backed by RAF Might Just Have Wings  (Larisa Brown, The Times)
The RAF has backed a British company to develop an aircraft that can be converted from a trainer to a faster, more aggressive jet by swapping out its engines and wings.
Aeralis, based in Suffolk, has been given £200,000 by the force to develop its “revolutionary” modular plane, which it says would be the first fully developed in Britain since the Hawk was launched in 1974.
The two-seater aircraft will have at least three variants based around the same fuselage but fitted with different engine and wing configurations: a basic trainer, a speedier, more maneuverable fighter-style plane and a reconnaissance model with long wings and a more efficient engine.

Department Of Homeland Security Confirms Neo-Nazi Leader Used To Work For It

DARPA Hacks Its Secure Hardware, Fends Off Most Attacks  (Samuel K. Moore, IEEE Spectrum)
DARPA’s SSITH program aims for hardware architecture for IoT that’s immune to the seven major types of hardware hacks.

Nuclear Modernization under Competing Pressures  (Rebecca Hersman and Joseph Rodgers, Defense360)

The Biden administration will face early decision points regarding the modernization of critical elements of the U.S. nuclear weapons enterprise in an environment buffeted by competing forces and pressures.

Review of David Shimer’s 2020 book, “Rigged: America, Russia, and One Hundred Years of Covert Electoral Interference”  (Angela Stent, Survival)

·  “A persistent question dogged Donald Trump’s presidency after 2016: how far was Russia responsible for putting him in the White House, given what is now known about its social-media manipulation and cyber interference during the election campaign? And how much did Russia continue to interfere in U.S. domestic politics during his presidency and into the 2020 presidential race? These issues have made Russia a uniquely toxic subject in American politics because, for many of Trump’s opponents, Russia and Trump are virtually synonymous.”

·  “David Shimer addresses the 2016 campaign by situating the issue of electoral interference in the broader context of a century of covert U.S. and Soviet/Russian attempts to influence voting outcomes around the world. He stresses that, while Russian interference in the 2016 election represented continuity with previous practices, ‘the digital age has irrevocably enhanced the weapon of covert electoral interference.’”

·  “The first half of the book covers accounts of electoral interference that are well known to those familiar with Cold War history … The second half of the book focuses on contemporary Russia. … Once Putin … came to power, the intelligence services resumed their former modus operandi. Putin, convinced that the United States was behind the mass opposition demonstrations in Russia in 2011, determined that it was appropriate to interfere in U.S. elections.”

·  “The 2019 Mueller report detailed how Russia used both social media and cyber penetration against Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in 2016. Shimer postulates that Russian actions might have affected the election outcome by influencing how people viewed her presidential bid. What is indisputable is that Russia was able to take advantage of the deep divisions in American society to exacerbate its fissures.”

·  “Shimer reminds us that, once in office, Trump never showed any interest in securing America’s elections, concluding that the president was ‘the newest member of a distinct club: leaders who came to power psychologically indebted to foreign actors and insecure about their electoral legitimacy.’”

Weaponized: How Rumors about COVID-19’s Origins Led to a Narrative Arms Race  (DFR Lab / Atlantic Council)
In December 2019, a previously unknown virus started to infect the population in Wuhan Province, China. The spread of this novel coronavirus would subsequently become not only one of the deadliest pandemics in modern history, but also a dominating flashpoint in the global competition for information among nations, with competing narratives reflective of competing political systems. Particularly in the period immediately following COVID-19’s initial spread, factual information about the disease, its origin, and its symptoms was lacking or withheld – most notably by China – providing the ample space for misleading and malicious information to take root.

Among the many rumors widely circulating around the globe in early 2020 were claims that the virus was engineered as a potential bioweapon. Some versions of this conspiracy theory posited that it was intentionally released on an unsuspecting public. This genre of misleading narrative about a grave issue of national security was utilized predominantly by a range of actors for domestic purposes sometimes at the expense of the type accurate information necessary to an international response to a global public health crisis.

Vaccine Diplomacy: West Falling Behind in Race for Influence  (Michael Safi, Guardian)
While the UK and US strive for herd immunity, Russia and China are leveraging their Covid jabs.

The Essential Role of DHS in the Economic Recovery from COVID-19  (Daniel M. Gerstein, The Hill)
The name Department of Homeland Security belies an important set of roles, missions and functions of the department related to the economic security of the United States. Perhaps nowhere has this become more evident than in the response and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Wielding these powers to their full extent could set the conditions for a more rapid recovery, reduce the human suffering and stimulate the development of a more resilient and “built back better” U.S. economy. 

Biden Homeland Security Nullifies ICE Union Agreement  (Mazin Sidahmed, Documented)
The Department of Homeland Security’s agreement gave ICE’s union the ability to indefinitely delay the implementation of agency policies.