Time to Fold America’s Nuclear Umbrella | Surveillance Nation | Crisis of Command, and more

·  “This view has been advanced before—most notably by Kenneth Waltz in a controversial Adelphi Paper 40 years ago. … [H]is central point was that trying to prevent the slow spread of these weapons was not without costs of its own and that in some cases, as he put it, ‘more may be better.’ The question is: Is that becoming the case today?”

·  “To be sure, folding the nuclear umbrella might well have some negative effects. … It might make states long accustomed to U.S. protection question its commitment … It could also reduce U.S. influence or leverage if certain allies were no longer as dependent on U.S. protection … Removing the U.S. nuclear guarantee might encourage a few states to pursue nuclear arms of their own.”

·  “Nuclear weapons are extremely useful for deterring direct and all-out attacks on one’s own homeland but not much else. For that purpose, a great power doesn’t need an enormous arsenal or some hypothetical capability to “fight and win” a nuclear exchange. … Fetishizing the bomb and using it to try to protect others isn’t just expensive; it may also be dangerous.”

10 + 10 Over 10: A Funding Vision for the U.S. Fight Against Biological Threats  (Andrew Weber and Yong-Bee Lim, Council on Strategic Risks)
Operation Warp Speed – the program of major U.S. government investments that drove the rapid development of multiple vaccines for the COVID-19 virus – teaches us a lesson about how to fund the fight against biological threats in the future. That lesson is about establishing a vision of significant, sustained and stable government funding to drive focused and rapid private sector-developed solutions. We propose $10 billion per year for the Department of Defense, and $10 billion per year for Health and Human Services, over 10 years, for biodefense-related programs and initiatives. Or 10 + 10 Over 10.

Atomwaffen Division Leader Pleads Guilty to Terror-Related Crimes  (Ben Makuch, Vice)
The neo-Nazi terror group is basically over and its leader is facing a lengthy prison sentence.

Surveillance Nation  (Ryan Ma et al., BuzzFeed News)
A BuzzFeed News investigation has found that employees at law enforcement agencies across the US ran thousands of Clearview AI facial recognition searches — often without the knowledge of the public or even their own departments.

Group-Chat App Discord Says It Banned More Than 2,000 Extremist Communities  (Bobby Allyn, NPR)
Discord, the group-chat app that has grown rapidly during the coronavirus pandemic, removed more than 2,000 communities dedicated to extremism and other violent content in the second half of last year, the company reported on Monday.
Officials at Discord said that of the 2,212 extremist and violent communities taken down from its platform, about 1,500 were first detected by the company. That is nearly double the number that was banned for extremist content in the first half of 2020.

Congress Says Foreign Intel Services Could Abuse Ad Networks for Spying  (Joseph Cox, Vice)
A group of bipartisan lawmakers asked Google, Twitter, and others about the transfer of bidstream data to foreign entities.

Top Federal Watchdog Probing State Department Following Hacks  (Natasha Bertrand and Betsy Woodruff Swan, Politico)
GAO is requesting additional documents to assess whether State’s cybersecurity is up to snuff.

Watchdog Reveals New Warning about Map of Capitol’s Underground Tunnels Posted Before Insurrection  (Zachary Cohen and Whitney Wild, CNN / WENY)
A scathing report by the US Capitol Police watchdog obtained by CNN reveals that there were even more law enforcement failures prior to January 6 than previously known, including new details about expired ammunition, ineffective shields and a previously unreported warning more than two weeks ahead of the insurrection about a map of the Capitol’s underground tunnels that was posted on a pro-Donald Trump website.