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The Damage of Trump’s Voter-Fraud Allegations Can’t Be Undone (David A. Graham, The Atlantic)
A new study suggests that even fact-checking the president’s false claims won’t restore confidence in elections.
It’s too early to say who will win the 2020 presidential election, but there’s a good chance that one loser will be faith in the electoral system. President Donald Trump is alleging—as he did four years ago, though sooner in the cycle this time and with greater vehemence but no more evidence—that the voting system is subject to widespread fraud. Should he win, it will give him another four years to undermine the system from within and assail voting-rights protections. Should he lose, his defeat is likely to reinforce the spurious claims of fraud he is spreading now.
According to new research, unfounded claims of fraud from Trump and his allies significantly undermine faith in the American election system, especially among voters who support him. Worse, the damage seems to be resistant to repair by fact-checking.
Trust in institutions seems to be easier to destroy than to build,” says Brendan Nyhan, a political-science professor at Dartmouth and one of the authors of the new paper.

Inside the Boogaloos’ Facebook-to-Violence Pipeline (Kelly Weill, Daily Beast)
Six men who were recently arrested across the United States had one thing in common: all were members of Facebook groups for the “Boogaloo” movement, and had allegedly used those groups to threaten or plan violence.
“Because this movement was born online, it lives online,” Katie Paul, senior research associate at the Tech Transparency Project, an industry watchdog, told The Daily Beast. “You’re not going to be able to find some cell of Boogaloo supporters holed up in a house somewhere. As a result, Facebook—with the largest reach of any social media platform—has really become a home for these supporters because they’re able to use Facebook’s tools, namely private Facebook groups, to organize, to coordinate, to create local chapters and state-level chapters, and to coordinate to meet in person.”
The Tech Transparency Project flagged Boogaloo Facebook groups as a potential inspiration for violence in April, after Boogaloo adherents began showing up to protests that demanded the re-opening of businesses from COVID-19 lockdowns.

A Bold Vision for Infrastructure (Eli Lehrer, National Affairs)
There is broad, bipartisan support for the notion that America’s infrastructure is crumbling and more investment is needed to sustain it. But judged by its performance, our existing infrastructure works well. Rather than building more of what it already has, America should direct its new investments toward visionary projects of the sort that have helped the nation achieve its status as world leader.

DHS Alerts to Ransomware Campaign Targeting Remote Access Systems (Jessica Davis, Health IT Security)
Hackers are targeting enterprise networks through remote access systems, like RDP and VPNs, through unpatched systems and those lacking multi-factor authentication, as a foothold for later ransomware attacks.

Rising Seas Threaten an American Institution: The 30-Year Mortgage (Christopher Flavelle, New York Times)
Climate change is starting to transform the classic home loan, a fixture of the American experience and financial system that dates back generations.

Emails Show Army Corps Scramble after Trump Gutted Resiliency Project (Samantha Maldonado and Marie J. French, Politico)
The Trump administration’s February decision to abruptly pull funding for an Army Corps of Engineers study on how to protect New York and New Jersey from increased flooding blindsided local planners and environmental advocates.
Internal emails obtained by POLITICO show the decision also blindsided the Army Corps, leaving career officers and civilian staff in a scramble to identify ways to keep the five-year project on life support in hopes of securing funding in 2021.

Hidden Cyber War Between Israel and Iran Spills into Public View with Attacks on Physical Infrastructure (Scott Ikeda, CPO Magazine)
For decades now there has been something of a tacit agreement among nations that spying and hacking are not enough to constitute acts of war, and that these battles are to be kept in the shadows for the most part. The general public is occasionally impacted by this quiet cyber war in the form of a personal information breach or a state-sponsored raid on the confidential assets of a private company, but attackers have generally stopped short of executing virtual attacks that create real damage in the physical world.
Israel and Iran have crossed that line in recent months, and may be redefining the terms of cyber warfare. Attacks by each on the opposite’s public utilities and ports have caused physical disruptions that impact the general civilian population, a move that could force a change in the unspoken rules of cyber defense as non-government entities are increasingly drawn into the fray.