Our picksUnprepared to Combat Cyber Threats | Blindsided FBI | 100 Million Malware Infections, and more
· Lessons for Reintegrating Islamic State Detainees
· Federal Laws and Grants Are Insufficient to Combat Against Cyber Threats
· Economic Freedom, Pandemics, and Robust Political Economy
· Separation of Power and Expertise: Evidence of the Tyranny of Experts in Sweden’s COVID‐19 Responses
· Self-Declared Hunter Trades Big Game for Jihadists in Burkina Faso
· Why Did the FBI Miss the Threats about Jan. 6 on Social Media?
· We Cannot Let Fear Create a New PATRIOT Act for Americans
· F.B.I. Finds Contact between Proud Boys Member and Trump Associate Before Riot
· The U.S. Government Can Do More to Fight Domestic Terror without Any New Laws
· Royal Navy Eyes “Catapult System” to Launch Drones and Jets from Aircraft Carriers
· Over 100 Million Malware Infections Detected on Windows in 2020
Lessons for Reintegrating Islamic State Detainees (Mary Beth Altier, Lawfare)
Best practices drawn from three decades of research on disarmament, demobilization and reintegration.
Federal Laws and Grants Are Insufficient to Combat Against Cyber Threats (Michael Garcia and Patrick Shilo, Lawfare)
The coronavirus pandemic has been a boon for malicious cyber actors who engage in criminal activity.
Economic Freedom, Pandemics, and Robust Political Economy (Rosolino Candela and Vincent Geloso, Southern Economic Journal)
What is the relationship, if any, between economic freedom and pandemics? This paper addresses this question from a robust political economy approach. As is the case with recovery from natural disasters or warfare, a society that is relatively free economically offers economic actors greater flexibility to adapt to pandemics. The authors argue that societies that are more economically free will be more robust to the impact from pandemics, illustrated by shorter time for economic recovery. They illustrate this relationship by testing how initial levels of economic freedom (at the start of the major influenza pandemics of the 20th century) temper contractions and accelerate recoveries for 20 OECD countries.
Epidemics and Trust: The Case of the Spanish Flu (Arnstein Aassve et al., Health Economics)
Recent studies argue that major crises can have long‐lasting effects on individual behavior. While most studies focused on natural disasters, this study explores the consequences of the global pandemic caused by a lethal influenza virus in 1918-19: the so‐called “Spanish Flu.” This was by far the worst pandemic of modern history, causing up to 100 million deaths worldwide. Using information about attitudes of respondents to the General Social Survey, the authors find evidence that experiencing the pandemic likely had permanent consequences in terms of individuals’ social trust. Their findings suggest that lower social trust was passed on to the descendants of the survivors of the Spanish Flu who migrated to the United States. As trust is a crucial factor for long‐term economic development, the research offers a new angle from which to assess current health threats.
