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

and then the platform’s algorithms are manipulated to make the content go viral (or at least, to make it easily discoverable). These operations are exploiting weakness in our information ecosystem. To combat this evolving threat, we have to address those structural weaknesses…but as platform features change and determined adversaries find new tactics, it often feels like whack-a-mole. It’s time to change our way of thinking about propaganda and disinformation: it’s not a truth-in-narrative issue, it’s an adversarial attack in the information space. Info ops are a cybersecurity issue.

Waging cyber war without a rulebook (Derek B. Johnson, FCW)
For years, security experts have warned of an impending cyber Pearl Harbor: an attack so big and bold that it cripples U.S. infrastructure and demands a military response. However, in interviews with former White House and executive branch officials as well as members of Congress and staffers involved in cyber policy, many expressed more concern about the potential for a Cyber Gulf of Tonkin: a misunderstanding or misattribution around an event that precipitates or is used as a justification for war.

GOP senators tell contradictory stories about Moscow trip (Andrew Desiderio, Daily Beast)
A key Republican came back from the Kremlin seemingly shrugging off Russian aggression. His colleagues are confused as hell by his talk. Inside a controversial mission to Moscow.

Giuliani works for foreign clients while serving as Trump’s attorney (Josh Dawsey, Tom Hamburger, and Ashley Parker, Washington Post)
Rudolph W. Giuliani continues to work on behalf of foreign clients both personally and through his namesake security firm while serving as President Trump’s personal attorney — an arrangement experts say raises conflict-of-interest concerns and could run afoul of federal ethics laws. Giuliani said in recent interviews with the Washington Post that he is working with clients in Brazil and Colombia, among other countries. Among the clients represented by Giuliani’s consulting firm is the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine, whose mayor was a leading figure in the Party of Regions, the Russia-friendly political party at the center of the federal conspiracy prosecution of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. His firm worked for the mayor in 2018 and is expected to work for him again later this year, Giuliani said in an interview. Carrie Menkel-Meadow, a legal-ethics professor at the University of California at Irvine, said it is generally unwise for the president’s attorney to have foreign business clients, because of the high likelihood they will have competing interests. “I think Rudy believes because he is doing the job pro bono the rules do not apply to him, but they do,” Menkel-Meadow said.

Former Putin adviser has secret investment in US energy firm praised by Trump (Luke Harding, Guardian)
Vladimir Putin’s former chief of staff has a secret investment in an American energy company hailed by Donald Trump as creating jobs for American workers. Alexander Voloshin – who served as Boris Yeltsin’s chief of staff before working for Putin between 2000 and 2003 – has an undisclosed stake in American Ethane, a Houston-based firm that recently signed a multibillion dollar export deal with China.