Weaponizing Uncertainty | 5 Theories about Conspiracy Theories | ISIS Legacy, and more

Iowa Chaos Highlights Threat of Domestic Misinformation (Emily Birnbaum, The Hill)
The disastrous Iowa caucuses on Monday night underlined one of the most pressing challenges that social media platforms will face this year: misinformation from real, influential people in the United States, not just Russian trolls and other foreign actors.

“No Country Is Fully Prepared”: Why the Coronavirus Outbreak Is a Huge Wake-Up Call (Dylan Matthews, Vox)
A top biosecurity expert says the US and the world aren’t ready for a big, mass-casualty pandemic.

Truth Decay: When Uncertainty Is Weaponized (Felicity Lawrence, Nature)
From tobacco to food and fuels, industries use denial, deceit and doubt to corrupt.

The Grassroots Deradicalization Efforts withing Canada’s Muslim Communities (Steven Zhou, CJN)
Around 100 people have left Canada over the past four years to join terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria. Many are set to return to this country and the debate over what to do with them has become a national issue.
Deradicalization – the reverse engineering of an individual’s descent into violent extremism – has thus become particularly relevant to national security officials.

The Enduring Legacy of French and Belgian Islamic State Foreign Fighters (Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Eurasia Review)
The Islamic State’s attacks in Paris in November 2015 and Brussels in March 2016 demonstrated ISIS’s reach from the heart of its “caliphate” in the Middle East to major European capitals. Foreign fighters from France and Belgium consistently proved themselves as capable members, as they have been responsible for recruitment, propaganda, and external operations.
Overall, 1,300 French and 400 Belgian citizens traveled to Iraq and Syria. Around 700 French and 150 Belgian foreign fighters remain in Iraq and Syria, while another 270 French and 125 Belgian foreign fighters have returned home. Some of those still in Iraq and Syria will inevitably look for opportunities to leave. While not all French and Belgian foreign fighter returnees will engage in dangerous or threatening activities upon leaving Iraq and Syria, some may radicalize others, plot attacks, and join or create extremist networks inside and outside of prisons.
In the penitentiary system, interaction between returnees and other criminals could facilitate the spread of violent extremism. The threat of radicalization in prisons is especially pronounced in Belgium, where returnees are dispersed throughout the country’s standard prisons and have the opportunity to indoctrinate fellow prisoners. Belgium’s overcrowded prisons could make it difficult for prison authorities to monitor returnees’ activities.
Radicalization will likely occur outside of prison as well. By the end of 2020, most Belgian returnees and many French returnees will be released. While authorities will continue to monitor returnees, there will be people radicalized by returnees who escape authorities’ radar. Returnees who were never prosecuted or imprisoned may radicalize others. France maintains a list—the so-called S list or Fiche S—with more than 26,000 names that correlate to individuals in the country suspected of radicalization, however poorly defined the term is.

Collapsing the Russian Tripod (Neil Barnett and Andrew Foxall, American Interest)
Successfully fighting disinformation and influence operations of authoritarian adversaries requires understanding how these efforts have been developed by—and are run out of—the intelligence services.

5 Theories about Conspiracy Theories (Max Read, New York Magazine)
Every faction in American politics now has a series of pet conspiracy theories believed by a significant portion of its supporters. We live in the age of red yarn and corkboard, of YouTube hypothesis and Twitter-thread investigation. No one seems able to avoid falling back into conspiracy-theory logic when explaining geopolitical events.
Why, though? There is, fittingly, no easy explanation for the appeal or spread of conspiracy thinking. Instead, there are many, well, theories — some overlapping and reinforcing, some contradictory, all of them useful in understanding the shadowy power of the conspiracy theory in the 21st century.

Our Laws Have a Problem Calling Domestic Terrorism What It Is (Jon Lewis and Seamus Hughes, The Hill)
A former Coast Guard lieutenant, Christopher Hasson, was sentenced to 160 months in prison last week for plotting a series of potential attacks on targets ranging from the media to elected officials. His sentencing follows his arrest last year on a litany of charges ranging from unlawful possession of unregistered silencers to unlawful possession of firearm silencers unidentified by serial number to possession of firearms by an unlawful user of an addict to a controlled substance, and possession of a controlled substance. Notably absent was one criminal offense. The Justice Department did not, despite clear evidence of intent, charge Hasson with terrorism. The current legal framework would not allow for it.
However, in early court filings, the government alleged that Hasson was a domestic terrorist, with a clear desire to commit acts of political violence. Despite this, his plea agreement and judgment make no mention of his list of targets, or his statements calling for a “white homeland.” Nor do they reference the government’s detention motion, which states in no uncertain terms that Hasson “intends to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country.”
The prosecution, in its sentencing documents, presented a detailed roadmap of Hasson’s actions in furtherance of his plans to “kill almost every last person on earth.” Across 43 pages of search history are searches Hasson made for, in no particular order: homemade biological weapon, homemade C4, where George Soros lives, Jews in U.S. gov, Russian immigration law, Russian nationalism, how can white people rise against Jews, Russian right, and race war.
The sentencing of Hasson on minor firearms and drug violations demonstrates a lacuna in the way the federal government prosecutes domestic terrorists, and reinforces the need for a federal statute on domestic terrorism.

Cyborgs, Trolls and Bots: A Guide to Online Misinformation (AP)
Cyborgs, trolls and bots can fill the internet with lies and half-truths. Understanding them is key to learning how misinformation spreads online.
As the 2016 election showed, social media is increasingly used to amplify false claims and divide Americans over hot-button issues including race and immigration. Researchers who study misinformation predict it will get worse leading up to this year’s presidential vote.