Our picksDHS in an Evolved Threat Landscape | The Myth of Moderate Jihadists | Who’s Behind Proud Boys

Published 22 September 2021

·  Wuhan Scientists Planned to Release Coronavirus Particles into Cave Bats, Leaked Papers Reveal

·  Huge Hack Reveals Embarrassing Details of Who’s Behind Proud Boys and Other Far-Right Websites

·  The Scientist and the A.I.-Assisted, Remote-Control Killing Machine

·  Could Somalia Be the Next Afghanistan?

·  How America Wasted Its Unipolar Moment

·  The Myth of Moderate Jihadists

·  Charting a Strategic Path Forward for DHS in an Evolved Threat Landscape

·  Islamic Terrorists or Chinese Dissidents? U.S. Grapples with Uyghur Dilemma

·  Pharma Companies Defend Dismissal of Terror Case at D.C. Circuit Hearing

Wuhan Scientists Planned to Release Coronavirus Particles into Cave Bats, Leaked Papers Reveal  (Sarah Knapton, The Telegraph)
Documents reveal researchers applied for $14m to fund controversial project in 2018.

Huge Hack Reveals Embarrassing Details of Who’s Behind Proud Boys and Other Far-Right Websites  (Drew Harwell, Craig Timberg, and Hannah Allam, Washington Post)
Epik long has been the favorite Internet company of the far-right, providing domain services to QAnon theorists, Proud Boys and other instigators of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — allowing them to broadcast hateful messages from behind a veil of anonymity. But that veil abruptly vanished last week when a huge breach by the hacker group Anonymous dumped into public view more than 150 gigabytes of previously private data — including user names, passwords and other identifying information of Epik’s customers. Extremism researchers and political opponents have treated the leak as a Rosetta Stone to the far-right, helping them to decode who has been doing what with whom over several years. Initial revelations have spilled out steadily across Twitter since news of the hack broke last week, often under the hashtag #epikfail, but those studying the material say they will need months and perhaps years to dig through all of it. “It’s massive. It may be the biggest domain-style leak I’ve seen and, as an extremism researcher, it’s certainly the most interesting,” said Megan Squire, a computer science professor at Elon University who studies right-wing extremism. “It’s an embarrassment of riches — stress on the embarrassment.

The Scientist and the A.I.-Assisted, Remote-Control Killing Machine  (Ronen Bergman and Farnaz Fassihi, New York Times)
Israeli agents had wanted to kill Iran’s top nuclear scientist for years. Then they came up with a way to do it with no operatives present.

Could Somalia Be the Next Afghanistan?  (Omar S. Mahmood and Abdijakim Ainte, Foreign Policy)
A similar rapid collapse of state institutions awaits if Somali elites and Western governments don’t alter their approach.

How America Wasted Its Unipolar Moment  (Economist)
The war on terror improved neither the nation’s standing nor the nation itself.

The Myth of Moderate Jihadists  (Lorenzo Vidino, Foreign Policy)
The unspoken pact between Washington and anti-Islamic State jihadi groups is a short-sighted move that will reward extremists.