Teenage Terrorist Network | Lessons for the Next Pandemic | Exemptions to Shield Surveillance Tech, and more

The United States, for example, has a list of 68 officially designated foreign terrorist organizations, along with other lists of individual terrorists and related entities. The New Zealand list, like those of other countries, makes it a criminal act to belong or provide support to listed groups, even by donating online. New Zealanders can face up to 14 years in prison for providing funding to a terrorist entity. Why were these groups designated? Countries regularly add and, less frequently, remove groups from their lists as they get more information about threats. My research with Mirna El-Masri into six countries’ terrorist lists found that Islamist groups have been the most likely to be designated in recent decades.

Inside a Teenage Terrorist Network  (Alexander Nabert, Christina Brause, Bryan Bender, and Nick Robins-Early, Politico)
When Lukas F. walks onto the site of an abandoned army barracks in the summer of 2021 as part of his training to be a terrorist, he is 16 years old, a slender boy with dark hair. The site is about 45 minutes from the center of Potsdam, a city just southwest of Berlin, Germany. Once it was used by the Wehrmacht, Germany’s regular armed forces during World War II; later by the Soviets. There are lakes close by, popular with swimmers. A roar of thunder echoes across the yard, a fireball flashes. First one bomb goes off, then a second. Lukas F. films the explosions on his mobile phone. Months before, he set up a group for young neo-Nazis from multiple countries who think they are fighting a “race war.” In their online chat, Lukas F. — a pseudonym used to protect his identity as a minor — describes these bombs as a test for the group. Lukas F. is part of a network of young people from all over the world, teenagers who exchange far-right ideas, Nazi propaganda and videos of attacks and, in the process, egg one another on to the point where some of them come to believe they must take up arms against the liberal order. There are dozens of groups like this, linked in an international network stretching from the west coast of the U.S., to Western Europe and the remotest corners of the Baltic states. The groups give themselves martial names, inspired by the propaganda of the National Socialists

Bill to Boost Domestic Semiconductor Production Passes Senate  (Edward Graham, Nextgov)
The Senate voted to pass the CHIPS Act to provide subsidies for U.S. semiconductor manufacturers and support the development of emerging technologies.

Police Are Still Abusing Investigative Exemptions to Shield Surveillance Tech, While Others Move Towards Transparency  (Eric Lipton, EFF)
How transparent are police about surveillance technology? It depends on where you look. When it comes to acceptable levels of secrecy around police tools, states have drawn their lines in very different places, resulting in some communities where it is much harder for the public to know what invasive tools are being used.

Lessons for the Next Pandemic  (Tevi Troy, National Affairs)
The Covid-19 pandemic is largely behind us, but in time, others will surely follow. To prepare for the next pandemic, we have to learn from the experience of the past two and a half years — to step back and look at what worked and what didn’t — without descending into the noisy lockdown, mask, and vaccine fights that have shaped our pandemic politics.