Harvey: Face of the future; wobbly flood insurance program; paying for Harvey aid, and more

insurance. That’s because only US homeowners in the “100-year floodplain”—areas that have a 1% chance of flooding in any given year—have to buy flood insurance, and then only if they’re taking out a federal mortgage loan or their private lender specifically requires it.

The National Flood Insurance Program was already $24 billion in debt before Harvey(Ella Nilsen, Vox)
Post-Harvey, America needs to dramatically rethink how it handles flood insurance.

No, USS McCain probably wasn’t hacked. But what if it was?(David Fidier, NextGov)
The collision between the USS John S. McCain and an oil tanker in the Straits of Malacca has led some to speculate—without any evidence—that the tragedy could have been caused by a foreign nation that hacked the destroyer’s navigation system.

Look for military drones to begin replacing police helicopters by 2025(Patrick Trucker, Defense One)
General Atomics is working hard to put a close cousin of its Reaper anti-terrorism drone in the hands of local law enforcement.

Researchers built an invisible backdoor to hack AI’s decisions(Dave Gershgorn, Quartz)
A team of NYU researchers has discovered a way to manipulate the artificial intelligence that powers self-driving cars and image recognition by installing a secret backdoor into the software.

Agroterrorism, food security back in the spotlight(P. J. Griekspoor, WallcesFarmer)
No immediate threat is seen, but being prepared for quick response should the need arise is a high priority.

Lower-yield weapons will raise, not lower, the threshold for nuclear use(Derek Williams, Adam B. Lowther, Defense One)
Giving the U.S. president more flexible options will improve deterrence.

The “500-year” flood, explained: why Houston was so underprepared for Hurricane Harvey(Dara Lind, Vox)
It’s the city’s third “500-year” flood in the past three years.

Senate intel bill bars creation of U.S.-Russia cyber working group(Joseph Marks, NextGov)
A major intelligence policy bill would bar President Donald Trump from establishing a cybersecurity working group with Russia and order top administration officials to develop a plan to counter Russian meddling in future U.S. elections. 

The Western belief that refugees are a burden is the root cause of today’s global crisis(Noah Berlatsky, Quartz)
Conventional wisdom holds that the global refugee crisis has placed an unprecedented burden on the world’s resources. argue that the refugee crisis is the result not of numbers, but of policy. In other words, the problem isn’t that a great number of refugees create an unsustainable burden.

Time’s running out to prevent a massive cyberattack on