Taking Domestic Nuclear Terrorism Seriously | Russia Stepping Up Its Hacking Game | The Power Struggle of Anti-Semitism, and more

Under questioning by Judge Robert J. Jonker in court, Mr. Garbin said he realized that his testimony might end up hurting people he knows. His sentencing was scheduled for July 8. The defendants, arrested in October, were accused of planning to kidnap Ms. Whitmer around the time of the Nov. 3 election and to either abandon her in a boat in the middle of Lake Michigan or take her to another state, possibly Wisconsin, and put her on trial. They accused Ms. Whitmer of acting like a “tyrant” for restrictions the state had put in place to combat the spread of the coronavirus. The plot came amid heightened political tensions surrounding the presidential election, tensions that had been building all year in Michigan with protests against lockdowns that armed groups helped to organize starting in April.

Man Arrested on Pipe Bomb Charges Discussed Attacking Twitter and Facebook, Aimed to Keep Trump President (Dan Mangan and Hannah Miao, CNBC)
A California man charged with possessing five pipe bombs talked about targeting Democrats and the social media giants Twitter and Facebook, as part of a discussion about going “to war” to ensure former President Donald Trump remained in the White House. “I want to blow up a democratic building so bad,” the man, Ian Benjamin Rogers of Napa County, wrote in a text message detailed in a criminal complaint filed in federal court for the Northern District of California. The complaint described a large array of firearms, ammunition, bomb-making equipment and warfare manuals found in his possession. “The democrats need to pay,” wrote Rogers, a married father of two, who owns British Auto Repair of the Napa Valley. In another text message, Rogers said he was “thinking sac office first target,” which an FBI agent said is suspected of being the Sacramento office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. “Then maybe bird and face offices,” the 44-year-old wrote, according to the complaint. “Sad it’s come to this but I’m not going down without a fight … These commies need to be told what’s up.” The agent said the text appeared to reference Twitter, whose logo is a blue bird, and Facebook, “because both social media platforms had locked Trump’s accounts to prevent him from sending messages on those platforms” on the heels of the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters.

3 People from Extremist “Oath Keepers” Indicted on Capitol Riot Conspiracy Charges (Dustin Jones, NPR)
Individuals tied to what the Justice Department calls a paramilitary group were indicted Wednesday on federal charges related to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6. They face up to 20 years in prison. Jessica Marie Watkins, 38, and Donovan Ray Crowl, 50, both from Champaign County, Ohio, and Thomas Caldwell, 65, of Clarke County, Va., were arrested about two weeks after the insurrection in Washington, D.C., a Justice Department news release said. They face a slew of charges: conspiracy, obstructing an official proceeding, destruction of government property and unlawful entry on restricted building or grounds. All three have ties to the Oath Keepers, which is described by the Justice Department as “a paramilitary organization focused on recruitment of current and former military, law enforcement, and first responder personnel.” The organization encourages its members and prospective recruits to uphold their sworn oath to defend the Constitution, according to the Oath Keepers website. Watkins, Crowl and Caldwell are accused of communicating their plans long before the assault in Washington. The Justice Department said the three coordinated their attack on the Capitol. Additionally, they documented their participation in the attack on social media, investigators said. Watkins posted a video of herself inside the Capitol on Parler.

The Power Struggle of Anti-Semitism (Josh Lipowski, Times of Israel)
As the United Nations this week marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day, anti-Semitism remains just as pervasive. True, there are no stormtroopers rounding up Jews into concentration camps today. Nor are Jews widely barred from owning land or gaining citizenship rights as they had been in the past. But there are still those who idealize those times and believe mankind remains under threat from the Jews. To them, Jews remain the shadowy puppeteers who orchestrated the Great Depression and the world wars. Radical Islamists view Jews as rejected by God. On the far left, Israel is vilified as a Nazi state and individual Jews are condemned for her actions based solely on their religious affiliation. The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) has completed a comprehensive historical overview of anti-Semitism that looks at the historical causes and evolution of anti-Semitism. CEP has concluded that, contrary to reports of a new anti-Semitism, what we see in the world today is very much the same anti-Semitism we have witnessed for thousands of years but repackaged to fit modern narratives. And at the core of that historic anti-Semitism is power —accusing Jews of having too much power and seeking to take it away.

Intel Report Warns Officials Are “Very Likely” to Be Cyberattack Targets Amid Remote Transition (Will Steakin and Josh Margoli, ABC News)
The document details several tactics attackers could employ to gain access.

It’s Time to Take Domestic Nuclear Terrorism Seriously (Jayita Sarkar, Washington Post / Newsday)
The policy community perceives the threat of nuclear terrorism as almost uniquely emanating from outside of U.S. borders, specifically from Islamist terrorism networks such as the Islamic State, al-Qaida and their splinter groups. But in fact, U.S. far-right extremist groups have a history of attempted procurement of nuclear weapons and radiological materials to use against the federal government. Members of neo-Nazi groups such as Atomwaffen Division, which literally means “atomic weapons” in German, and the National Socialist Movement have attempted in the past to access nuclear materials with the intent to cause harm.

Social Media Influencer Charged by Feds for Spreading Disinformation in 2016 Election (David Smiley, Miami Herald)
In a case likely to explore the limits of free speech and the policing of disinformation, a social media influencer from West Palm Beach was arrested Wednesday and accused of attempting to dupe New Yorkers into skipping the 2016 election.
Douglass Mackey, known online as Ricky Vaughn, was taken into custody Wednesday morning in West Palm Beach, according to federal prosecutors in New York. Authorities say Mackey, 31, exploited his substantial social media following by encouraging people to vote in the 2016 presidential election by social media and text — both invalid methods.

Why Russia May Have Stepped Up Its Hacking Game (Dina Temple-Raston, NPR)
Back in November, Kevin Mandia, CEO of the cybersecurity firm FireEye, opened his mailbox to find an anonymous postcard. It had a simple cartoon on the front. “Hey look, Russians,” it read. “Putin did it.”
He might not have given it a second thought were it not for one thing: His company had recently launched an internal security investigation after officials discovered someone had tried to register an unauthorized device into its network. That inquiry eventually led to the discovery of something even more worrisome: the breach of a Texas-based network monitoring company called SolarWinds.
U.S. officials now believe that hackers with Russia’s intelligence service, the SVR, found a way to piggyback onto one of SolarWinds’ regular software updates and slip undetected into its clients’ networks. That means potentially thousands of companies and dozens of government departments and agencies may have been compromised.

How a Dystopian Neo-Nazi Novel Helped Fuel Decades of White Supremacist Terrorism(Aja Romano, Vox)
Following the Capitol insurrection, Amazon removed The Turner Diaries from its shelves. Will it be enough?