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Russian Hackers Deny an Iowa Grain Cooperative Counts as “Critical”  (Joseph Marks, Washington Post)
Agriculture is one of 16 sectors the Department of Homeland Security has officially listed as critical. Others include health care, financial services and energy. But Blackmatter, the Russian criminal hacking gang that hacked New Cooperative in Fort Dodge, Iowa, has even appeared to mock the cooperative’s claim it counted as critical infrastructure in an online chat, warning “everyone will incur losses.”

U.S. Is Unfairly Targeting Chinese Scientists over Industrial Spying Says Report (Eileen Gio, MIT Technology Review)
A new study concludes that scientists of Asian descent are charged at higher rates of crimes under the Economic Espionage Act—and also acquitted at higher rates. The study provides data to back up claims by civil rights advocates that efforts to crack down on Chinese efforts to steal American know-how is resulting in a backlash against scientists of Asian descent.

Apple Is Testing Whether Its Devices Can Detect Autism and Depression  (Hirsh Chitkara, Protocol)
Apple appears to be expanding its efforts to diagnose health conditions among its users. The company is carrying out studies to examine whether its devices might be used to diagnose a variety of conditions ranging from autism, to depression, to cognitive impairment. The initiative raises the possibility that such conditions might be diagnosed at an earlier stage but also raises pressing privacy and security concerns about the data collected by the company.

How the Mafia Is Pivoting to Cybercrime  (Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, Vice)
Investigators from Spanish and Italian police explain how organized crime is going online and expanding into cybercrime.

Trump Campaign Debunked Dominion Conspiracy Theories, Internal Memo Shows, Days Before Backers Kept Spreading Them  (Elise Viebeck, Washington Post)
Less than two weeks after the 2020 presidential election, the Trump campaign asked its researchers to look into conspiracy theories about rigged electronic voting machines. The researchers soon returned with an answer: a 14-page memo that refuted various claims, including that Dominion Voting Systems worked with election software maker Smartmatic and Venezuela to defeat President Donald Trump, according to records that emerged in a lawsuit this week.
Nonetheless, days after that memo was circulated, pro-Trump lawyers Rudolph W. Giuliani and Sidney Powell held a news conference in Washington to publicize the same conspiracy theory about Dominion, Smartmatic and Venezuela.

Florida’s Mysterious Covid-19 Surge  (German Lopez, Vox)
We still don’t have all the answers for why Covid-19 cases rise and fall, but there are some explanations.

U.S. Lawmakers Move Urgently to Recognize Survivors of the First Atomic Bomb Test  (Lesley M. M. Blume, National Geographic)
The 1945 Trinity test produced heat 10,000 times greater than the surface of the sun and spread fallout across the country.

Homeland Security Auditor Dings Department for Targeting Migrant-Caravan Organizers  (Stephen Dinan, Washington Times)
Homeland Security officials during the Trump administration put lookouts on some Americans because of their suspected involvement in the migrant caravans, and even asked Mexico to turn them back at the border if they tried to enter that country, an inspector general said Thursday.
Customs and Border Protection officials had “legitimate reasons” for putting lookouts on 14 individuals, the audit found, but they had “no genuine basis” to ask Mexico to deny entry to them.
There may have been even more cases, but the investigators said they were stymied because CBP officials “were not forthcoming.” The audit did find in those cases that CBP shared sensitive information about the U.S. citizens with Mexican authorities.

Biden Pushes Deterrent Border Policy After Promising ‘Humane’ Approach  (Michael D. Shear, Natalie Kitroeff, Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Eileen Sullivan, New York Times)
The deportation of Haitian migrants is a stark example of how President Biden has deployed some of the most aggressive approaches to immigration put in place by former President Donald J. Trump.

Biden Cybersecurity Leaders Back Incident Reporting Legislation as “Absolutely Critical”  (Justin Doubleday, Federal News Network)
Senior Biden administration officials are backing congressional efforts to enact new cyber incident reporting requirements for critical infrastructure operators and other companies, as well as other efforts to further entrench the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the center of the civilian executive branch’s digital security apparatus.