Our picksReplacing DHS with Something Better? | Should Ransomware Payments Be Banned? | Treating Wildfires as Hurricanes, and more
· Replacing the Department of Homeland Security with Something Better
· Wildfires Are So Dangerous Now that the National Guard Prepares for Them Like Hurricanes
· Extremist Threat Expected to Spread Across Africa as Terrorists Consolidate Power
· Pieces of Science Committee Innovation Push Falling into Place
· Biden Pushes Cybersecurity Upgrades for Critical Infrastructure After Recent Hacks
· How AI Is Revealing the Secrets of Iran’s Nascent Centrifuge Factory
· Analysis: Biden’s COVID-19 Strategy Thwarted by Anti-Vaxxers, Delta Variant
· Hold the UAE Accountable for Meddling in US Politics
· Should Ransomware Payments Be Banned?
· Police Are Telling ShotSpotter to Alter Evidence from Gunshot-Detecting AI
Replacing the Department of Homeland Security with Something Better (Richard A.ke, Brennan Center)
A mistake made in panic would be best fixed by starting over.
Wildfires Are So Dangerous Now that the National Guard Prepares for Them Like Hurricanes (Tara Copp, Defense One)
For West Coast units, there’s no wildfire season anymore. ‘It’s really a fire year now,’ top general says.
Extremist Threat Expected to Spread Across Africa as Terrorists Consolidate Power (Thomas Harding, National News)
Terrorist groups in Africa are consolidating their power before potentially launching a global campaign, according to leading security analysts. ISIS and Al Qaeda have a world view that could lead them to “knit together” other groups in order to launch a continent-wide offensive and establish hardline policies, the US Combating Terrorism Centre heard. The warnings come as French forces reduce numbers in the Sahel region of West Africa and international forces withdraw from Libya, giving terrorists greater freedom to operate. Various extremist groups have grown in recent years and could be readying to commence a coordinated campaign, the online seminar, Scoping the Threat: do African Salafi-jihadi groups threaten the West? was told. “It seems that these groups are really consolidating their positions across the continent from the west to the east with new beltways to the southern region to Mozambique,” said Idriss Lallali, of the African Centre for the Research on Terrorism, based in Algeria. He highlighted the extremist motorway going from the Atlantic coast in Mauritania across to Djibouti, allowing terrorists to travel around the continent. Previously, security analysts told The National that ISIS attacks in Mozambique are probably being coordinated with the terrorist group’s core leadership as part of an expanding campaign across Africa.
Pieces of Science Committee Innovation Push Falling into Place (American Institute of Physics)
The House Science Committee is considering a set of recently introduced bills on Tuesday that add to its recent push to advance far-reaching, bipartisan science and technology policy legislation:
· The National Institute of Standards and Technology for the Future Act would update policies for programs across NIST and recommend that Congress increase the agency’s annual budget to nearly $1.6 billion by fiscal year 2026, largely to expand its research in areas such as engineering biology, greenhouse gas measurement, quantum information science, artificial intelligence, and advanced communications, among other areas. (Cont.)
