Our PicksU.S. Is Behind on Information Warfare | Frequent Wildfires | Defining ‘Terrorism’, and more

Joint Chiefs’ Information Officer: U.S. Is Behind on Information Warfare. AI Can Help  (Patrick Tucker, Defense One)
Concerns mount about how quickly the Pentagon can respond to global influence campaigns.

Israeli Spyware Firm NSO Group Could Soon Be Spilling Its Secrets  (Shannon Vavra, Daily Beast)
A judge is letting the case against the Israeli spyware firm NSO Group move to discovery, which could reveal the inner workings of the secretive surveillance group.

The Man Behind the Man Behind January 6  ((Jonathan D. Karl, The Atlantic)
The story of Johnny McEntee—the “deputy president” who made the disastrous last days of the Trump administration possible. 

Defining ‘Terrorism’ Is the First Step to Defeating It  (Diana Dascalu and Ben Wilkinson, National Interest)
The precise definition of terrorism has always been difficult to establish. New and proliferating threats, including domestic terrorism, make it even more difficult.

Study: Frequent Wildfires Associated With Human-Caused Climate Change  (Ethen Kim Lieser, National Interest)
The dramatic increase in destruction from wildfires was easily seen in the data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

NSO Group Loses Immunity Claim at the Ninth Circuit  (William S. Dodge, Just Security)
In 2019, the messaging platform WhatsApp sued NSO Group, alleging that the Israeli company sent spyware through WhatsApp’s servers to approximately 1,400 mobile devises in violation of state and federal law. NSO argued that it was immune from suit because it was working on behalf of undisclosed foreign governments. Yesterday, the Ninth Circuit rejected that argument. (Disclosure: I submitted an amicus brief in support of WhatsApp, along with Sarah Cleveland and Chimène Keitner).

Timeline: Rep. Mo Brooks, January 6, and the Effort to Overturn an Election  (Justin Hendrix, Justin Cole, Margaret Shields and Nicholas Tonckens, Just Security)
Congressman Mo Brooks (R-AL), a candidate in the Republican primary for the 2022 Senate race, engaged in a systematic effort to cast doubt on the integrity of the 2020 U.S. presidential election and to make the case that its result should be overturned by state legislatures and Congress. Using incendiary language, he encouraged President Trump’s supporters — in remarks at the Rally immediately preceding the insurrection on January 6th — to march to the U.S. Capitol.
Ever since, Rep. Brooks has continued to promote the “Big Lie” even after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned that the spread of this conspiracy theory continues to propel domestic violent extremists.

The Law of Individual Disqualification in a Democracy  (Aziz Huq, Tom Ginsburg, David Landau, Lawfare)
In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attempted insurrection, a largely unasked question concerns whether consequences should be imposed on any of the elected actors responsible. In particular, having worked against democracy, should they be allowed to continue to participate in democratic life? Or should they be disqualified from holding office in the future?
The disqualification of individuals for their anti-democratic actions presents a specific iteration of a pervasive problem of democratic design: the tension between democratic self-realization and democratic self-destruction. On the one hand, democratic institutions have a reasonable claim to set the terms of political participation. The forms of elections, the rules for candidate and voter qualification, and ballot access rules are commonly matters for democratic decision. On the other hand, there is a risk that the power to set rules for the democratic game will be used to fence out disfavored groups, to entrench incumbents beyond electoral challenge or to create the image of democratic competition without its substance. Democratic mechanisms—including rules for disqualification—must be designed to advance the goal of self-government without facilitating malign entrenchment. Unbounded, the power to exclude specific individuals can imperil democracy. But its absence also means lost opportunities to deepen democracy and even to defend its basic existence.