Potential Election-Season Violence | Race for Techno-Security | Smuggling of Girls to ISIS, and more

A Return to the Classification Status of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Documents (Katie Kedian, Lawfare)
The classification status of the documents remains legally relevant, and, in light of new information, any arguments regarding their declassification have been significantly diminished.

Terrorism Might Be the Least of Our Problems a Year After America’s Withdrawal from Afghanistan  (Douglas London, Just Security)
There was no perfect solution in Afghanistan. Looking back a year after America’s withdrawal, American military action in the country appears much like this generation’s Vietnam. In this age of multidimensional battlefields and hybrid warfare, American planners were slow to realize that outright military victory would be difficult to secure. And when they came to that conclusion, as reflected in the 2017 South Asia Strategy which sought to redefine the conflict and influence conditions on the ground rather than secure such a victory by force, it was too little, too late.
President Joe Biden’s departure from Afghanistan will be judged by various metrics. For some, the gauge will be human rights, political freedoms, and the plight of Afghan women. For others, it’s the belief that 20 years of blood and treasure—amounting to roughly 2,500 American deaths, 20,000 wounded, and $2.3 trillion dollars—was spent in vain. And that is to say nothing of the hundreds of thousands of Afghans killed, wounded, orphaned, and displaced.

How Much Did the West Know About Smuggling of Girls to ISIS? — Analysis  (Seth J. Frantzman, Jerusalem Post)
A new report has emerged that asserts teenage girls were aided in their path to join ISIS by a man who was also providing information to Canadian “intelligence.” The BBC report says that “Shamima Begum, who fled the UK and joined the Islamic State group, was smuggled into Syria by an intelligence agent for Canada.” The story is bigger than Begum, even though she has become a symbol of the overall conflict with ISIS and its aftermath.  What the BBC says is that “Ms. Begum was 15 when she and two other east London schoolgirls - Kadiza Sultana, 16, and 15-year-old Amira Abase - traveled to Syria to join the terrorist group IS in 2015,” and that they met a man in Istanbul who helped facilitate their trip illegally across the border to Syria. These allegations could now be central to a case challenging the fact that the UK stripped Begum of citizenship. Begum has become a kind of symbolic cause because her story was well known at the time she ended up in Syria; and then later when the war on ISIS ended and she ended up in a displaced persons camp. This is part of the media spotlight that tends to try to humanize those who went to join ISIS, rather than the victims of ISIS genocide and crimes. Media who cover this issue will even pose the women who joined ISIS with “western clothes” to show they are “like us.

Red China ‘Backs the Blue’  (Klon Kitchen, The Dispatch)
How the drone company DJI uses local cops in a political influence campaign against Congress.

Oath Keepers’ Lawyer Arrested in Connection with January 6  (Associated Press / VOA News)
A lawyer for the far-right Oath Keepers extremist group has been charged with conspiracy in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol, authorities said Thursday.
Kellye SoRelle — general counsel for the anti-government group — was arrested in Texas on charges including conspiracy to obstruct the certification of President Joe Biden’s electoral college victory, the Justice Department said.