Biggest Kink in America’s Supply Chain | DHS Reveals Next Research Interests | Facebook Made Exceptions to Its Taliban Ban, and more

Where a link to a domestic abuse-related incident was identified, an Islamist ideology was recorded in 28% of referrals, while extreme right-wing ideologies accounted for 18%. The U.K. is reviewing currently reviewing the Prevent program. The suspect in the deadly stabbing of Conservative MP David Amess last month had reportedly been referred to Prevent several years ago — as had at least two others in the past few years who went on to commit violent or deadly acts.

Iranian Arrested in Kenya for Planning Terror Attacks Against Israeli Targets – Report  (Jerusalem Post)
An Iranian man, Mohammed Saeid Golabi, has been arrested in Kenya on suspicion of planning terror attacks against local and Israeli interests, according to an exclusive report in the daily Kenyan newspaper The Star. Kenyan police had monitored the activities of Golabi and his local associates, and were convinced of his links to terror activities, multiple Kenyan police sources told The Star. “We have profiled him and his contacts over time,” said a senior officer at Kenya’s anti-terrorism police unit. “We have enough reason to believe that he has been working with those terror groups.” Golabi visited the region frequently, and is suspected of working with a group of Kenyans to gather intelligence against establishments both private and state-owned, with the aim of attacking them, the report said. The Iranian government did not respond to Kenya’s inquiries. The announcement came during a period of heightened security in the east African country, after three terror convicts escaped recently from a maximum-security prison, the report said. The three were later captured as they tried to make their way to Somalia to join the terror group al-Shabaab that has links to al-Qaeda.

Far-Right Groups Like The Base Will Radicalize Australians Until We Confront Their Beliefs  (Jason Wilson, Guardian)
As one of the reporters who worked to uncover the operations of white power accelerationist group, The Base, I view the Australian federal government’s listing of them as a proscribed terror group this week as a belated but important recognition of the danger presented by white supremacist organizations. But the national security state is a blunt instrument, and the apparatus of anti-terrorism is no substitute for making anti-racism principles central to a more inclusive democracy. At its height, The Base was a transnational network of white nationalists who were seeking to collectively plan and prepare for what they saw as the inevitable collapse of liberal democracies they saw as decadent and corrupted by the values of feminism and multiculturalism. In the Guardian US, I was the first reporter to identify Rinaldo Nazzaro, an American former US intelligence contractor now based in Russia, as the group’s founder and leader. Previously he had only been known by the aliases Norman Spear and Roman Wolf. An infiltrator gave me unprecedented access to the group’s internal communications.

Facebook Made Niche Exceptions to Its Taliban Ban, Internal Documents Show (Isobel Asher Hamilton, Business Insider)
Facebook has made occasional exceptions to its ban on Taliban content since the group seized power in Afghanistan in August, internal documents reviewed by The Intercept reveal. The Taliban, which announced they had formed an interim government in Afghanistan in early September, are on Facebook’s list of “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations,” and a company spokesperson told Insider in August: “we remove accounts maintained by or on behalf of the Taliban and prohibit praise, support, and representation of them.” The Intercept viewed internal Facebook memos that mentioned times when the company allowed branches of Afghanistan’s government to post. One memo from the end of September detailed an exception for the Ministry of the Interior so that it could post about traffic regulations. “We assess the public value of this content to outweigh the potential harm,” the memo said, per The Intercept. In another memo from the same time period, Facebook allowed the Ministry of Health to publish two posts containing information about COVID-19. Facebook also appears to have created time-limited exceptions. One internal memo viewed by The Intercept said that for 12 days in August, government figures could acknowledge the Taliban as the “official gov of Afghanistan” without risking suspension from Facebook.

College Classmates Raised Concerns about Poway Synagogue Shooter Before 2019 Attack  (Teri Figueroa, San Diego Union Tribune)
Not long before a 19-year-old North County nursing student opened fire in a Poway synagogue, a hate crime that killed a congregant and wounded three others, he espoused ideology that alarmed his classmates.
John T. Earnest shared White supremist material with at least two of his Cal State San Marcos classmates, according to a newly obtained court filing. He studied Hitler. He had a copy of the manifesto of the man who shot up two New Zealand mosques in March 2019 — and he liked it.
Two fellow nursing students took their concerns about Earnest to a professor, who reported it up the chain at the university. An investigation followed, and university police were part of the team.
But, according to the court filing, because Earnest had made no threats or displayed any acts of violence, he was not arrested or pulled from school.

DHS Reveals Next Research Interests  (Alexandra Kelley, Defense One)
The Department of Homeland Security wants industry comment on AI, biohazard tracking, and more.

On Ransomware, Cyber Command Should Take a Backseat  (Gavin Wilde, Just Security)
Over the past month, the Biden Administration has achieved some needed momentum in the fight against ransomware. As attention to ransomware grows, however, policymakers must avoid the temptation to overmilitarize the U.S. response. Investment in anti-ransomware operations at the Department of Defense’s Cyber Command should be balanced with investment that develops the capabilities of other federal law enforcement agencies, which have already carried out vital anti-ransomware activities.

Recent Additions to Entity List Part of Broader U.S. Effort Targeting Spyware  (Charles Capito, Brandon L. Van Grack, and Logan Wren, Lawfare)
On Nov. 4, the Commerce Department added four companies to the Entity List after concluding that their cyber activities were harmful to the national security of the United States. The action reflects the U.S. government’s accelerated efforts to target companies and individuals that provide offensive cyber services or exploits to certain foreign governments and foreign companies for uses that violate human rights. The listings also demonstrate the U.S. government’s willingness to adapt existing national security tools to address new priorities and highlight a key trend in the Biden administration—treating intelligence collection operations as a potential national security threat.

The Uncomfortable Reality of the U.S. Army’s Role in a War over Taiwan  (Jacquelyn Schneider, War on the Rocks)
While it was once taboo for U.S. officials to publicly discuss defending Taiwan, the conversation now unfolds openly and pointedly. The contentious U.S.-Chinese relationship has become the centerpiece of U.S. military strategyplanning, and spending, with some calling for an even more overt focus on Taiwan. How exactly the U.S. military might defend Taiwan is still largely conjecture, but public discussions foreshadow a high-tech concept of warfare dominated by the Navy and Air Force, possibly with help from the Marine Corps. But is there a place for the Army too? Should there be? If so, what?
These are uncomfortable questions because there is a good chance that the role U.S. decisionmakers will ask the Army to play in this conflict is not what has been presented so far: lobbing missiles or “advising” Taiwanese military units. Instead, troops may find themselves either defending the island from a Chinese invasion or even helping retake Taiwan after China (due to proximity and first-mover advantages) wins the initial high-tech struggle. Both of these roles are massive shifts for an insurgency-honed force, as well as expensive, bloody, and politically fraught — not to mention that they would represent a significant escalation in a crisis between two nuclear-armed states.