Trump-Putin summit anxiety; cyberwar without a rulebook; combating disinformation, and more

disciplined Russian leader picks Trump’s pocket just as nimbly as Kim did.
What can head off this looming train wreck, now that Trump is by most accounts less interested in expert advice and increasingly inclined to trust his own flawed instincts? I don’t know, but we do know that the president is very sensitive to criticism and hates to be made fun of. If I were trying to steer him in the right direction, I’d tell him I was worried that leaders like Kim, Xi Jinping, and Putin were starting to laugh at his diplomatic naiveté, and that the only way to stop their snickering would be to spend a few days acting like a statesman rather than a stooge.

Greece to expel, ban Russian diplomats (RFE/RL)
Greece will expel two Russian diplomats and ban entry to another two over suspicions they attempted to undermine a deal between Athens and Macedonia last month, Greek newspaper Kathimerini reports. The deal Greece brokered with Macedonia last month that ended a decades-old standoff over its name. The two countries agreed to the renaming of the former Yugoslav republic’s name to North Macedonia. The deal is expected to pave the way for Macedonia to join NATO in a region where Russia and the West are jostling for influence.

What Trump’s Supreme Court pick means for the Russia probe (Darren Samuelsohn, Politico)
Kavanaugh could find himself weighing in on thorny legal issues related to Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, including whether a sitting president can be indicted.

Information operations are a cybersecurity problem: Toward a new strategic paradigm to combat disinformation (by Jonathon Morgan and Renee DiResta, Just Security)
Disinformation, misinformation, and social media hoaxes have evolved from a nuisance into high-stakes information war. State actors with geopolitical motivations, ideological true believers, non-state violent extremists, and economically-motivated enterprises are able to manipulate narratives on social media with ease, and it’s happening each and every day. Traditional analysis of propaganda and disinformation has focused fairly narrowly on understanding the perpetrators and trying to fact-check the narratives (fight narratives with counter-narratives, fight speech with more speech). Today’s information operations, however, are materially different – they’re computational. They’re driven by algorithms and are conducted with unprecedented scale and efficiency. To push a narrative today, content is quickly assembled, posted to platforms with large standing audiences, targeted at those most likely to be receptive to it,