OUR PICKSNihilistic Violent Extremism Online | U.S. Is Increasingly Exposed to Chinese Election Threats | The Doomers Who Insist AI Will Kill Us All, and more

The Novel Threat of Nihilistic Violent Extremism Online  (Amy Cooter, Matthew Kriner, and Pete Kurtz-Glovas, HSToday)
Nihilistic Violent Extremism (NVE) consists of individuals who want to enact a variety of targeted violence, including grooming minors towards violence and sexual exploitation, as previously reported in HSToday. The DOJ has remarked that NVE networks “seeks to destroy civilized society through the corruption and exploitation of vulnerable populations“ and has a goal of pursuing the “downfall of…the US Government.” Given the scope and online nature of NVE, some scholars and organizations have advocated for considering tech companies as first line practitioners in the fight to prevent targeted violence that originates online. However, there is currently not enough consideration of what that means in terms of implementation. This article examines the connection between tech and prevention frameworks for NVE with the goal of moving this conversation forward.

How Disinformation About the Minnesota Shooting Spread Like Wildfire on X  (Dvid Gilbert, Wired)
Under Elon Musk’s leadership, X has become the perfect platform to supercharge the spread of dangerous disinformation during breaking news events.

U.S. Is Increasingly Exposed to Chinese Election Threats, Lawmakers Say  (Julian E. Barnes, New York Times)
Two Democrats on the House China committee noted the use of A.I. by Chinese companies as a weapon in information warfare.

The Doomers Who Insist AI Will Kill Us All  (Steven Levy, Wired)
Eliezer Yudkowsky, AI’s prince of doom, explains why computers will kill us and provides an unrealistic plan to stop it.

Donald Trump Comes for America’s Public Universities  (Economist)
But, so far, only those in enemy territory.

The Return of the “War Department” Is More Than Nostalgia. It’s a Message.  (David E. Sanger, New York Times)
President Trump and his defense secretary say they want to return to the era when America won wars. They largely ignore the greatest accomplishment of the past 80 years: avoiding superpower conflict.

ICE Agents Are Wearing Masks. Is That Un-American?  (Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times)
One of the defining images of President Trump’s second term so far has been security officers in masks. Whether detaining a Turkish student on the street in Boston, raiding Home Depot parking lots in Los Angeles or, now, arresting immigrants on the streets of the capital, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in tactical gear and with their faces obscured have become a strange new national pageant.
Masking provides leeway for abuse, he said. People tend to be more scrupulous and vigilant when they can be personally held accountable for their actions. A mask allows more latitude for sloppiness or shortcuts —a punch or a kick, for example.
“The use of masks,” said Steven Levitsky, a political scientist who has studied Latin America and written about democratic decline, “is without question a bad sign.”
And it is extremely rare in functional democracies. “I cannot think of a democratic country with a reliable rule of law where security forces mask themselves,” Mr. Levitsky said. “It just doesn’t happen.”

Decades of Vaccine Synchrony, Gone in Seven Months(Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic)
The coming chaos could take decades more to undo.

Anti-Vaxxers Rejoice at Florida’s Scheme to End Vaccine Mandates for Kids and Everyone Else  (David Gilbert, Wired)
As experts warn about possible outbreaks of diseases like polio and measles in Florida, anti-vaxxers declare “freedom.”

Power-Law Online Extremism and Terrorism  (Stephane J. Baele, Perspective on Terrorism)
This research note draws attention to the ubiquity of heavy-tailed, power-law types of data distribution in all major dimensions of digital extremism and terrorism, and discusses the important implications stemming from this pattern as well as the mechanisms underpinning it. Highly unequal distributions with a very long lower tail and a sharply rising upper tail indeed characterize linguistic content, individual behaviours, and overarching structures of extremist/terrorist digital ecosystems –a striking feature that has largely escaped terrorism and extremism scholars’ scrutiny as well as Counter Violent Extremism (CVE) and Counter-Terrorism (CT) practitioners, despite its scientific and practical significance.

Beyond the Sandbox: Preparing AI for the Chaos of Homeland Security & Defense  (Mark M. Bailey, HSToday)
What happens when an algorithm makes a life-or-death decision and no one can explain why?