OUR PICKSAmerica Is Not Ready for Omicron | Iranian Ransomware Is Coming for the U.S. | Government – Bioeconomy Partnership, and more
· U.S. Ends Talks over Payments for Separated Migrant Families
· America Is Not Ready for Omicron
· New Data Suggests a Connection Between Pandemic Gun Sales and Increased Violence
· Climate Change Has Destabilized the Earth’s Poles, Putting the Rest of the Planet in Peril
· Unprecedented Midwest Wind Storm Caps 2021’s Siege of Extreme Weather
· Building Apollo’s Arsenal: Acquiring COVID-19’s Lessons Learned for Government – Bioeconomy Partnership
· Iranian Ransomware Is Coming for the United States
· Video Games, Extremism and Terrorism: A Literature Survey
· Over 80 of Those Charged in the January 6 Investigation Have Ties to the Military
· Extremist Anti-Vaxxers with Crossbows Plotted to Assassinate a German Governor Who Supported Mandates, Authorities Say
· Far-Right Using COVID-19 Theories to Grow Reach, Study Shows
U.S. Ends Talks over Payments for Separated Migrant Families (Camilo Montoya-Galvez, CBS News)
Republican lawmakers had expressed outrage over reports that some families could have received hundreds of thousands of dollars as part of a potential settlement.
America Is Not Ready for Omicron (Ed Yong, The Atlantic)
The new variant poses a far graver threat at the collective level than the individual one—the kind of test that the U.S. had repeatedly failed.
New Data Suggests a Connection Between Pandemic Gun Sales and Increased Violence (Champe Barton, The Trace)
“Time-to-crime” figures published by the ATF show that guns sold in 2020 were more likely to wind up at crime scenes within a year than in any previous period.
Climate Change Has Destabilized the Earth’s Poles, Putting the Rest of the Planet in Peril (Sarah Kaplan, Washington Post)
New research shows how rising temperatures have irreversibly altered both the Arctic and Antarctic. Ripple effects will be felt around the globe.
Unprecedented Midwest Wind Storm Caps 2021’s Siege of Extreme Weather (Jason Samenow and Jeff Halverson, Washington Post)
Like many extreme weather events this year, its wrath was fueled by exceptionally warm temperatures.
Building Apollo’s Arsenal: Acquiring COVID-19’s Lessons Learned for Government – Bioeconomy Partnership (Rose Butchart, CSIS)
A new brief concludes the CSIS Defense-Industrial Initiative Group’s series on enhancing future biosecurity, examining three cross-national case studies and aspects of the US response, to provide lessons learned from the overall project.
Iranian Ransomware Is Coming for the United States (Jennifer Shore, Foreign Policy)
After a year of attacks on Israel, Iran’s hackers have another target.
Video Games, Extremism and Terrorism: A Literature Survey (Sam Andrews and Joshua Skoczylis, GNET)
Video games are extremely popular, with a market worth over $175 billion per year and at least 3 billion players worldwide. High-speed Internet has also made multiplayer gaming a social activity, facilitating the growth of a gamer subculture and identity, supplemented by online forums and offline meetups, leading to a growing community around this hobby.
Today speculation is rife that many of these video gaming communities are vulnerable to extremist and terrorist groups. Researchers and practitioners are concerned that video gaming forums and games are used as recruitment tools, and that extremist and terrorist groups are producing their own video games, serving as effective propaganda to an overwhelmingly young audience.
