Hackers Turn Conti Ransomware Against Russia | New Social Cyber Contract | Online Indicators of Extremism, and more

Jan. 6 White House Logs Given to House Show 7-Hour Gap in Trump Calls  (Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Washington Post)
The House select committee is now investigating whether it has the full record and whether Trump communicated that day through backchannels, phones of aides or personal disposable phones, according to people familiar with the probe.

New Focus on How a Trump Tweet Incited Far-Right Groups Ahead of Jan. 6  (Alan Feuer, Michael S. Schmidt and Luke Broadwater, New York Times)
Federal prosecutors and congressional investigators are documenting how the former president’s “Be there, will be wild!” post became a catalyst for militants before the Capitol assault.

Federal Judge Finds Trump Most Likely Committed Crimes Over 2020 Election  (Luke Broadwater, Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman, New York Times)
“The illegality of the plan was obvious,” the judge wrote in a civil case. Separately, the Jan. 6 panel voted to recommend contempt of Congress charges for two former Trump aides.

Examining Online Indicators of Extremism Among Violent and Non-Violent Right-Wing Extremists  (Ryan Scrivens, GNET)
Although there is an ongoing need for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to identify and assess the online activities of violent extremists prior to their engagement in violence offline, little is empirically known about their online posting patterns generally or differences in their online patterns compared to non-violent extremists who share similar ideological beliefs particularly. Even less is empirically known about how their online patterns compare to those who post in extremist spaces in general. This study addresses this gap through a content analysis of postings from a unique sample of violent and non-violent right-wing extremists (RWEs) as well as from a sample of postings within a sub-forum of the largest white supremacy web-forum, Stormfront. Here the existence of extremist ideologies, personal grievances, and violent extremist mobilization efforts were quantified within each of the three sample groups (n = 3,000). Several conclusions can be drawn from this study.

Directed Hate: The Three Stages in Adopting White Supremacist Ideologies  (Anne Speckhard, Molly Ellenberg, and T.M. Garret, HSToday)
Recruits report a need for belonging and significance as well as the desire to fight for what they see as a noble cause.

Ukraine War

Russian Misinformation Seeks to Confound, Not Convince  (David Robert Grimes, Scientific American)
Rather than take a side, these campaigns create decision paralysis that leads to inaction

A Brutal Russian Playbook Reapplied in Ukraine  (Carlotta Gall, New York Times)
The besieging of cities, the deliberate targeting of civilians — they are the tactics Russia used before, in Grozny. I saw it firsthand.

Do Russian Oligarchs Have a Secret Weapon in London’s Libel Lawyers?  (David Segal, New York Times)
How a group of attorneys worked to keep negative stories about President Vladimir Putin’s allies out of the British media for decades.

The War Is Reshaping How Europe Spends  (Patricia Cohen, New York Times)
Romania is buying iodine pills. Ireland enacted special incentives for its farmers to till essential crops. And military spending is rising across the continent.

Russia Has Killed Civilians in Ukraine. Kyiv’s Defense Tactics Add to the Danger.  (Sudarsan Raghavan, Washington Post)
Increasingly, Ukrainians are confronting an uncomfortable truth: The military’s understandable impulse to defend against Russian attacks could be putting civilians in the crosshairs. Virtually every neighborhood in most cities has become militarized, some more than others, making them potential targets for Russian forces trying to take out Ukrainian defenses.

How Ukraine Unplugged from Russia and Joined Europe’s Power Grid with Unprecedented Speed  (Anna Blaustein, Scientific American)
Engineers achieved “a year’s work in two weeks” to safely do so