Iran Probably Already Has the Bomb | Why Pirates Attack | Shoring Up the Metals Supply Chain, and more

Four People Matching Terror Watchlist Arrested at Border  (Stef W. Kight, Axios)
The Customs and Border Protection agency confirmed to Congress today that four people arrested at the southern border since Oct. 1 match names on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Database, a congressional aide briefed on the correspondence told Axios. Three of the people arrested were from Yemen and one was from Serbia. The four arrests are more than the number of similar people taken into custody during recent full fiscal years, according to the source. In fiscal 2018, six people from Yemen and Bangladesh were arrested.
Former President Trump and other conservatives have frequently warned — sometimes inaccurately — about foreign terrorists entering the United States via the southern border. The Department of Homeland Security stopped more than 3,700 people on the watchlist from coming into the country during fiscal year 2017, ending Sept. 30, 2017. Most were stopped at airports.

Morocco’s ‘FBI’ Boss Decries Lack of Anti-Terrorism Cooperation with Algeria  (Hassan Toumi, Africa Report)
Appointed at the end of November as head of the ‘Bureau Central des Investigations Judiciaires’ (BCIJ), also known as the Moroccan “FBI”, Cherkaoui Habboub is now at the forefront of Morocco’s fight against terrorism. Cherkaoui Habboub will always remember 4 December 2020. On that day, he led his first field operation as director of the Bureau Central des Investigations Judiciaires (BCIJ). The aim of this operation was to dismantle a “dangerous terrorist cell” in Tetouan, northern Morocco, with the help of the Groupe d’Intervention Rapide (GIR). A few days earlier, on 29 November, he had been appointed by Abdellatif Hammouchi, the director-general of the Direction Générale de la Surveillance du Territoire (DGST), and the Direction Générale de la Sûreté Nationale (DGSN) to head the BCIJ. The appointment was made at the headquarters of the BCIJ, located in the heart of the “triangle of death”, as the inhabitants of the city of Salé call it. The institution is located behind the high walls of the Zaki prison and a few steps away from Salé’s anti-terrorism court.

American Soldiers Help Mozambique Battle an Expanding ISIS Affiliate  (Declan Walsh and Eric Schmitt, New York Times)
With a small military training program, the United States military has joined efforts to fight a brutal insurgency that has devastated northern Mozambique.

U.S. Soldier Pleads Not Guilty to Plotting ISIS Attacks on NYC Landmarks  (Stephen Rex Brown, New York Daily News)
A U.S. Army soldier pleaded not guilty Monday to plotting terrorist attacks on city landmarks with an undercover FBI employee posing as a member of ISIS. Cole Bridges faces a maximum of 40 years in prison for attempting to provide material support to ISIS and attempted murder of U.S. military service members. Prosecutors say Bridges, 20, shared his disenchantment with the military in online chats with the undercover FBI employee starting in 2019. The radicalized soldier eventually began advising the fake ISIS sympathizer on how to thwart U.S. military attacks in the Middle East and “provided advice” on potential targets in New York City, including the 9/11 Memorial, according to a complaint. Bridges, a resident of Stow, Ohio, and member of the Third Infantry Division, was arrested in January at the Army base at Fort Stewart, Ga. The accused traitor even recorded a video of himself in body armor in front of an ISIS flag and narrated another video hyping what he believed was an an imminent ISIS ambush of U.S. troops, authorities say. Bridges’ attorney Sabrina Shroff said during the Manhattan Federal Court hearing that she expected to discuss a “disposition” of the case before it goes to trial — meaning the soldier could soon plead guilty.

UCLA Student Charged in Capitol Riot Took Inspiration from Online Extremist  (Tom Dreisbach, NPR)
For nearly a year, UCLA students said, they raised the alarm about one of their classmates. On Twitter, classmate Christian Secor attacked women and minorities, they said, and embraced the ideology of a far-right extremist. On campus, he pushed a student Republicans group toward extreme positions against all immigration. And on the video streaming site DLive, Secor took on the handle “Scuffed Elliot Rodger” — an apparent reference to the misogynist gunman who killed six people in Isla Vista, Calif., in 2014. Students of color and Jewish students said they felt targeted by Secor’s rhetoric, and given his self-proclaimed “love” of guns, they worried about their own safety. Multiple students told NPR they took their concerns to the UCLA administration but said the school took no action. So when they recognized their 22-year-old classmate in footage from the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, they weren’t exactly surprised. “I was a little shocked,” said Grayson Peters, a Jewish UCLA student, though “not because I thought it would be out of character.” The Department of Justice alleges that Secor stormed the chamber of the U.S. Senate and sat in the chair occupied just hours earlier by former Vice President Mike Pence.

We Shouldn’t Forget the Horrific Crimes of ISIS Returnees  (Liam Duffy, The Spectator)
Summer 2015. A five-year-old girl is chained up and left outside in the desert sun in Fallujah, Iraq – a punishment for wetting the bed while feeling unwell. The little girl slowly died of thirst in temperatures exceeding 50 degrees Celsius. Condemned to the same inhumane punishment was the girl’s mother, made to endure the additional and unimaginable horror of helplessly watching the life drain from her daughter’s tiny body. The mother and child were members of Iraq’s Yazidi religious minority. Their captors, members of Islamic State (IS), are said to be German and Iraqi … Many of the international recruits to IS joined after this dividing line, and after the genocide and sexual enslavement of Yazidis was well publicized – mostly by the group’s own grisly propaganda, loudly trumpeting the restoration of a glorious ancient institution. Troubled by the lack of accountability and debate on their crimes, I wanted to build a more complete picture of the role of Westerners in the genocide. The findings, published by the Counter Extremism Project, are uncomfortable, and point to much more widespread involvement than either debate or court cases indicate.

Police Shrugged Off the Proud Boys, Until They Attacked the Capitol  (David D. Kirkpatrick and Alan Feuer, New York Times)
Two Proud Boys accused of leading a mob to Congress followed a bloody path to get there. Law enforcement did little to stop them.

U.S. Far-Right Extremists Making Millions Via Social Media and Cryptocurrency  (Peter Stones, Guardian)
Experts describe as ‘terrifying’ revelation that extremists, including some involved in Capitol attack, took in $1.5m in past year.

Riot Suspects Bear-Sprayed Capitol Cop Brian Sicknick in the Face Before He Died: Prosecutors  (Pilar Melendez, William Bredderman, and Jose Pagliery. Daily Beast)
Authorities allege Julian Khater and George Tanios are seen in videos discharging a canister of bear spray into the face of Brian Sicknick and two other officers.

More picks

Iran Probably Already Has the Bomb. Here’s What to Do about It  (R. James Woolsey, William R. Graham, Henry F. Cooper, Fritz Ermarth, and Peter Vincent Fry, National Review)
We can start by figuring out how to defend ourselves.

Why This Wave of Anti-Asian Racism Feels Different  (Morgan Ome, The Atlantic)
The author Cathy Park Hong sees the recent upsurge in violence as a turning point for Asian Americans.

Veselnitskaya’s Trump Tower Coverup Linked to Secret Russian Chemical Weapons Program  (Nico Hines, Daily Beast)
Documents obtained by The Daily Beast link the $230 million fraud discussed at the Trump Tower meeting in 2016 to Russia’s black-market weapons of mass destruction program.

A Striking Rebuke to Trump Team’s Claims about China’s Election Interference  (Aaron Blake, Washington Post)
The big new headline in a report from the U.S. intelligence community is that it has concluded that Russia spread misinformation during the 2020 election through prominent individuals, including those close to former president Donald Trump. While not named, the report appears to refer to Rudolph W. Giuliani’s exploits in Ukraine. It wouldn’t be the first time Giuliani has been cast as a conduit for Russian misinformation, though it appears to add confirmation.
But the report also casts the Trump team in a particularly dim light when it comes to another country: China.
Before the election, Trump and his allies repeatedly claimed China’s efforts to allegedly help President Biden were comparable to Russia’s efforts to help Trump. Some even claimed China was the worst offender.
But even as they were making these claims, there was almost always anonymous pushback from the intelligence community. And now that pushback is on the record. The report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence concludes that, in fact, “China Did Not Attempt to Influence Presidential Election Outcome.”

America Is Petroleum-Independent, for Now  (Nicholas Ebersrtadt, Derek Scissors, and Evan Abramsky, National Review)
Rising domestic supply and great efficiency gains have made the U.S. a net energy exporter.

Senate Panel Delves into SolarWinds Hack  (Karoun Demirjian, Washington Post)
Another Senate committee on Thursday is jumping into the investigative fray surrounding the hacking of SolarWinds, a software company providing services for government agencies, which the United States believes was targeted by Russia.
A month ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee grilled the CEO of SolarWinds alongside the chief executives of three other government contractors, while raising the alarm about the inherent vulnerabilities of companies entrusted with sensitive government systems and information. This time, it’s the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s turn to query federal agencies in charge of monitoring and guarding against hacking and other cyber threats.

What the Biden Administration Gets Right and Wrong on ICT in the New Supply Chain Executive Order  (Robert Morgus and John Costello, Lawfare)
On Feb. 24, President Biden signed an executive order titled “America’s Supply Chains,” outlining a process for the United States to identify and mitigate the risks and challenges it faces in a series of critical supply chains, including that of information and communications technology (ICT). The Cyberspace Solarium Commission, on which we are staff, was asked by Congress in late 2020 to undergo a similar process and propose a strategy and recommendations to secure America’s ICT supply chains. While the Biden administration’s order is a step in the right direction and largely conforms to the approach proposed by the commission, it misses discussions of several key issues raised in the commission’s white paper on the topic. The order differs primarily in scope: While the commission focused explicitly on information and communications technology, the Biden order outlines four different supply chains of interest, including ICT but also batteries, rare earth elements and critical materials, and pharmaceuticals.

Time for Answers About Those Intelligence Reports DHS Filed About Me  (Benjamin Wittes, Lawfare)
It was about six months ago that I awoke one morning to a text from Shane Harris of the Washington Post telling me to call him urgently. 
When I called him, Harris informed me that I had been the subject of at least two open-source intelligence reportsby the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), both reporting on tweets of mine related to leaked I&A documents concerning surveillance of protesters. (For those who need a refresher on the incident, I described it in detail here.)
I said at the time that I would consult with my lawyersabout how to proceed, and I have spent a good deal of time thinking about it in retrospect. Last week, I filed suit. The suit does not seek damages. I’m not looking for a judgment that what DHS did was illegal. 
Rather, the suit seeks only documents under my old friend, the Freedom of Information Act

Anti-Asian Attacks Rise along with Online Vitriol  (Drew Harwell, Craig Timberg, Razzan Nakhlawi and Andrew Ba Tran, Washington Post)
The fatal shootings of six Asian women in Georgia on Tuesday have turned a spotlight on a disturbing trend of the past year: Crimes against people of Asian descent have risen sharply in the United States, along with online slurs blaming them for the coronavirus pandemic. Authorities say they are not certain, at this point, that the alleged shooter, Robert Aaron Long, 21, was motivated by racial animus. But the broader trend of hateful words and deeds against Asians and Asian Americans is clear, researchers say, and appears to have spiked since the November presidential election and the contentious months that followed. Terms including “China,” “Wuhan” and “flu” surged on far-right forums on Telegram, 8kun and TheDonald.win as former president Donald Trump pushed baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud, according to data tracked by the Network Contagion Research Institute, which monitors misinformation and online extremism. The terms were used on those platforms 44 percent more in January than in the average month last year. While the exact relationship between these terms and allegations of election fraud is not clear, the researchers theorize that rising political polarization fueled harsh talk online, as did xenophobia and the quest for scapegoats, including people of Asian descent.

Senate Democrats Call on DHS for Details on Response to Portland Protests  (Jordan Williams, The Hill)
Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee are calling on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to release details on the agency’s response to last summer’s anti-racism protests in Portland, Ore.
The lawmakers, led by committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.), sent a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Tuesday regarding an internal report from January on the way the agency’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis handled last summer’s protests.

For U.S. Cyber Defense, Helpful Hackers Are Only Half the Battle  (Katie Moussouris, The Hill)
With so much attention focused on the SolarWinds attack, and now the Microsoft Exchange attacks, an important government cyber security initiative is progressing without the appropriate resources it needs to ensure it does not do more harm to our nation’s security than good. This new requirement from the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency mandated all civilian agencies to launch a vulnerability disclosure program by March 1.

In plain English, this requirement means the agencies are asking the public to help find vulnerabilities in government internet-connected systems and applications. It is the digital equivalent of when you see something, say something.

New Global Model Needed to Dismantle Ransomware Gangs, Experts Warn  (Shannon Vavra, Cyberscoop)
Ransomware gangs are making a killing — they’re encrypting data at schools and hospitals around the world at an alarming rate, and they’re raking in hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth doing it, by some counts.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.

FBI Warns That Deepfakes Will Be Used Increasingly in Foreign Influence Operations  (Tia Sewell, Lawfare)
On Mar. 10, the FBI’s Cyber Division released a Private Industry Notification (PIN) warning that “Malicious actors almost certainly will leverage synthetic content for cyber and foreign influence operations in the next 12-18 months.” The PIN explains that manipulated images or video—often referred to as “deepfakes”—can be investigated by the FBI when the synthetic content is malicious and “attributed to foreign actors or is otherwise associated with criminal activities.” The report specifically highlights content generated with artificial intelligence or machine learning techniques. It alleges that Russian, Chinese and Chinese-language actors have already used these emerging technologies to create real-looking profile images of nonexistent people in an effort to make their messages appear more authentic to online users. As technology continues to advance, the PIN asserts, the public is increasingly likely to encounter fraudulent, synthesized content online.

In a Year of Racial and Political Turmoil, This Black Gun Group Is Booming  (Lakeidra Chavis and Agya K. Aning, The Trace)
The National African American Gun Association was founded as a refuge from the discrimination and fear that often come with being Black and armed in America. Thousands of new members have joined its ranks in 2020.

Computing Advances, AI Make Waves for Flood Software at DHS  (Kate Macri, Government CIO)
The Coastal Resilience Center uses modeling software to predict and evaluate hurricane landfalls and flooding hazards.

Spectrum: The Pathway of the 21st Century  (Tom Wheeler, Brookings)
The FCC failed to establish a national spectrum policy under Ajit Pai’s leadership, putting the United States behind in the fifth generation (5G) wireless technology race. Biden’s FCC can make up lost ground and guide the nation into the spectrum-based future of communications.

Why Pirates Attack: Geospatial Evidence  (Raj M. Desai and George E. Shambaugh, Brookings)
Between the 1990s and 2010, piracy in the western Indian Ocean became far more organized, sophisticated, and lethal. A new analysis using the geographic locations of actual pirate incidents highlights the key factors at play.

Researchers Find New Way to Locate Untapped Rare Earths Deposits Worldwide  (Valentina Ruiz Leotaud, Mining.com)
Geologists and materials scientists at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg discovered a new way of finding previously unknown deposits of rare earths, or rare earth metals, worldwide.
In a paper published in the journal Geology, the researchers explain that contrary to what their name might suggest, sources of rare earth elements or rare earth metals are distributed fairly equally all over the world. However, there are only very few sources that are economically viable and they propose using a new indicator to identify such deposits.

Shoring Up the Metals Supply Chain  (Thomas M. Kostigen, Defense One)
The Biden administration is bent on increasing critical metals supplies, but it’s overlooking an obvious source: the ocean.

Officials: A Dam in Oregon Could Fail in a Large Earthquake  (Andrew Selsky, AP)
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has determined that a large earthquake—which is expected to occur again in the Pacific Northwest sooner or later—could cause the spillway gates of a dam in Oregon to buckle, resulting “in a potentially catastrophic flood.”
The Corps announced late Monday it will try to minimize the danger by reducing the maximum height of the lake by five feet starting in April. Hundreds of thousands of people, including those in the state capital, live downstream from the Detroit Dam, whose construction in the 1950s created the narrow, nine-mile long Detroit Lake.

America’s Coronavirus Catastrophe Began with Data  (Robinson Meyer and Alexis C. Madrigal, The Atlantic)
The pivotal failure of the coronavirus crisis has never been addressed.

5 Strategies to Prepare Now for the Next Pandemic  (Tiffany A. Radcliff and Angela Clendenin, The Conversation)
While the world is still reeling from the COVID-19 pandemic, public health and emergency management experts are already preparing for the next one. After all, biologists are certain another dangerous new pathogen will emerge sooner or later.

White House Weighs New Cybersecurity Approach after Failure to Detect Hacks  (David E. Sanger, Julian E. Barnes and Nicole Perlroth, New York Times)
The intelligence agencies missed massive intrusions by Russia and China, forcing the administration and Congress to look for solutions, including closer partnership with private industry.

A Border Community, ICE at Odds over Release of Detainees with Covid  (Jon Gerberg and Maria Sacchetti, Washington Post)
In a border area that has suffered from ongoing covid-19 outbreaks, advocates for immigrants and ICE are at odds over the agency’s treatment of infected detainees. Advocates and county officials say they had no idea ICE was dropping detainees with covid off at the bus stop, while ICE says it is the agency’s protocol to notify local authorities ahead of time.

Killer Tulips Hiding in Plain Sight  (Maryn McKenna, The Atlantic)
Thanks to the compounds used to protect precious flowers, antifungal resistance is here—and it could be just as dangerous to humans as antibiotic resistance.

How Norway Is Folding Civilians into National Defense  (Elizabeth Braw, Defense One)
Not even the U.S. military can be everywhere, so whole-of-society defense is gaining in importance.

Buffalo Public Schools Cancels Classes after Cyberattack  (Shannon Vavra, Cyberscoop)
DHS has been warning of a heightened ransomware threat against K-12 Schools.