Our picks this weekCybersecurity Ignorance Is Dangerous | China’s Growing Nuclear Threat | Future of Appalachian Rare Earth Elements, and more

Published 8 May 2021

Extremism & terrorism

·  Feeding Hate with Video: A Former Alt-Right YouTuber Explains His Methods

·  When the Right Wing Rallies

·  COVID Conspiracies Are Supercharging Germany’s Far-Right

·  No, Russia and China Didn’t ‘Weaponize’ QAnon. It’s a Homegrown Nightmare.

·  ISIS Used Chemical and Biological Weapons against Iraqis

·  Vehicle Ramming Attacks Global Domestic Terrorists Learn from Hamas

·  Former Leader of Neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Group Sentenced for Swatting

·  Minnesota Man Is Second Boogaloo Member to Plead to Federal Terror Charges

·  Antifa Arsonist Gets Four Years in Prison for Burning Minneapolis Police Station

·  Biden Team May Partner with Private Firms to Monitor Extremist Chatter Online

·  From Memes to Race War: How Extremists Use Popular Culture to Lure Recruits

·  British Government Bans Atomwaffen Division as Criminal Terrorist Organization

·  Met Dismisses Police Officer Who Belonged to Banned Neo-Nazi Terror Group

·  Biden Administration Releases Trump-Era Deadly Force Rules for Terrorist Suspects Abroad

·  Far-Right Terror Suspects Arrested in Yorkshire, Wiltshire and Wales

· Canadian Chapter of the Proud Boys, Designated a Terrorist Group by The Government, Says It Has ‘Dissolved’

·  No ‘Boogeyman’: Why the Bin Laden Raid Might be the Last Unifying Moment for U.S. Foreign Policy

·  Ten Years after Bin Laden, We Still Need Better Intelligence Sharing

More picks

·  How China Turned a Prize-Winning iPhone Hack against the Uyghurs

·  A Health-Data Ecosystem to Protect against Public-Health Threats

·  Hello, This Is Leonid Volkov

·  NY AG Finds Nearly 82% of Net Neutrality Comments to the FCC Were Fake

·  Intrusion Truth Details Work of Suspected Chinese Hackers Who Are Under Indictment in U.S.

·  Machine-Learning Project Takes Aim at Disinformation

•  U.S. Cyber Command Gives-Up on Terror Organizations Like Islamic State & Shifts Focus on China

·  DHS to Suspend New Fingerprint Requirement for Spouses of H-1B Visa Holders

·  CISA: Patch Issued for Critical Pulse Secure VPN Flaw Under Active Attack

·  143 US Lawmakers Support Doubling Religious Institution Security Grants

·  Cyberspace Solarium Commissioners Concerned Over Security of Nation’s Water Supply

·  The Real Obstacle to a New Normal? Anti-Vaxxer Parents.

·  Biden Administration Likely Retaining Trump Doctrine on Cybersecurity in Space

·  Cybersecurity Ignorance Is Dangerous

·  Germany’s Anti-Vaccination History Is Riddled with Anti-Semitism

·  Homeland Security to Repair Damage Created by Border Wall

·  An Ambitious Plan to Tackle Ransomware Faces Long Odds

·  Biden Has the Power to Defuse Central American Migrant Crisis

·  Five U.S. Agencies May Have Been Hacked Through Ivanti Flaws

·  County Judge to Mobilize Crews, Won’t Wait for Feds to Fix Levees Breached for Border Wall, Source Says

·  AI Helps Identify Data Gaps, Improve Interoperability at DHS

·  No Ransomware Silver Bullet, Crooks out of Reach

Our picks: China watch

·  Countering China’s Global Great Game

·  The World Might Want China’s Rules

·  The China Model: Why Is the West Imitating Beijing?

·  Australia Draws a Line on China

·  Chinese State-Backed Hacker Allegedly Targeted Russian Nuclear Submarine Designer

·  China’s Growing Nuclear Threat

·  How the US and EU Can Counter Digital Threats Together

·  Britain Set to Stockpile Metals for Electric Cars to Beat Chinese Threat

·  The Revenge of History

·  China Features Heavily in the Army’s Next Big Emerging Tech Experiment

·  The Future of Sino-U.S. Proxy War

Our picks: Rare Earth elements (RREs)

·  Chinese Stranglehold on Rare Earths Forces U.K. into Secret Talks with Allies

·  Rare Earth Separation Planned in England

·  We Can End China’s Rare-Mineral Monopoly

·  Is There a Shortage of Lithium-Ion Batteries?

·  The New Gold Rush: How Britain’s Mines Will Be Central to Ending Our Reliance on China

·  Pensana Rare Earths to Establish Sustainable Supply of Critical Rare Earths

·  U.S. Faces Uphill Climb to Rival China’s Rare-Earth Magnet Industry

·  The Future of Appalachian Coal and Rare Earth Elements

Extremism & terrorism

Feeding Hate with Video: A Former Alt-Right YouTuber Explains His Methods  (Cade Metz, New York Times)
Focus on conflict. Feed the algorithm. Make sure whatever you produce reinforces a narrative. Don’t worry if it is true.

When the Right Wing Rallies  (Sarah Slobin and Sam Hart, Reuters)
Reuters examined data from the U.S. Crisis Monitor on  political protests across the United States to provide a look at the spread of right-wing demonstrations in 2020. Our visualization shows how the incendiary concept of a stolen election brought together a disparate collection of anti-government militias, conspiracy theorists, white nationalist and ordinary Americans, and how those protests continue into 2021.

COVID Conspiracies Are Supercharging Germany’s Far-Right  (Tim Hume, Tim Hume, and Tom Bennett. Vice)
The stable economic powerhouse at the heart of the European Union is also home to the continent’s biggest, and wildest, anti-lockdown movement.

No, Russia and China Didn’t ‘Weaponize’ QAnon. It’s a Homegrown Nightmare.  (David Gilbert, Vice)
A new report about QAnon makes a bombshell claim that data scientists say doesn’t hold up.

ISIS Used Chemical and Biological Weapons against Iraqis  (Mina Aldroubi, The National)
Findings of UN report may present ‘unprecedented moment for accountability’ for the terror group

Vehicle Ramming Attacks Global Domestic Terrorists Learn from Hamas  (Kathryn B. Creedy, Transport Security International)
For most Americans, the first they heard of using a vehicle to attack and kill people was in Charlottesville, VA, in 2017 when a man drove his car into anti-white-supremacist protestors, killing Heather Heyer and wounding dozens of others. But Charlottesville was just the tail end of a movement that has killed people across the globe. For Europeans and those in the Middle East, vehicle ramming attacks (VRAs) is a familiar tactic. In fact, according to the Global Terrorism Database, vehicle borne attacks date to the 1970s but accelerated after Hamas’s 2014 attacks against Israeli targets. It was quickly picked up by Al-Queda and Isis as a low-cost, high-profile method to terrorize civilians. It was then exported into Europe and now it is a key tactic used by domestic terrorists around the world. (Cont.)