OUR PICKSThe Enduring Legacy of 9/11 | Assessing the Cyber War Threat | Searching for Smart Aliens or Dumb Aliens?, and more

Decades Later, 9/11 Self-Professed Mastermind Awaits Trial  (AP)
Hours before dawn on March 1, 2003, the U.S. scored its most thrilling victory yet against the plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks — the capture of a disheveled Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, hauled away by intelligence agents from a hideout in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
The global manhunt for al-Qaida’s No. 3 leader had taken 18 months. But America’s attempt to bring him to justice, in a legal sense, has taken much, much longer. Critics say it has become one of the war on terror’s greatest failures.
As Sunday’s 21st anniversary of the terror attacks approaches, Mohammed and four other men accused of 9/11-related crimes still sit in a U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, their planned trials before a military tribunal endlessly postponed.

September 11: Escaping the South Tower and a Framework of Surviving an Infrastructure Disaster  (Mitchell Simmons, HSToday)
The survival bridge connects the side of danger and death to the side of safety and life, but this bridge covers a great chasm of dangers.

Two Decades Later, the Enduring Legacy of 9/11  (Hannah Hartig and Carroll Doherty, Pew Research)
Americans watched in horror as the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, left nearly 3,000 people dead in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Nearly 20 years later, they watched in sorrow as the nation’s military mission in Afghanistan – which began less than a month after 9/11 – came to a bloody and chaotic conclusion.

The September 11 Terrorist Attacks  (Katherine Huiskes, Miller Center, UVA)
The day that defined the beginning of the 21st Century for Americans

Can Serious Games Make a Difference in P/CVE?  (Daniela Pisoiu, GNet)
Video games and gamification have become key tools of extremist actors’ recruitment arsenal and have taken a central role in their modus operandi. Analyses have pointed out how terrorists employ gaming elements in staging their attacks, or how violent extremists create full-blown video games fraught with hateful narratives and include opportunities to annihilate various social and ethnic groups.
But how about using games for P/CVE purposes? Some serious games (i.e. games used for educational purposes in addition to providing entertainment) have already been developed and rolled out in prevention work, such as Flashpoints, YoungRes and DECOUNT, a German browser game developed in Austria through the framework of an EU-funded research project. The following Insight presents a deeper look into the latter’s production process and evaluation results. It reveals some important lessons learned about the preconditions, opportunities, and potential limits of serious games for P/CVE.

AcidRain Malware and Viasat Network Downtime in Ukraine: Assessing the Cyber War Threat  (Sam Cohen, Just Security)
Russia’s disruption of the Viasat network in Ukraine should be a wakeup call for policymakers.

A Growing Drinking Water Crisis Threatens American Cities and Towns  (Robin Lloyd, Scientific American)
The Jackson, Miss., disaster rings alarm bells about myriad problems lurking in water systems across the country.

Should We Be Searching for Smart Aliens or Dumb Aliens?  (Adam Frank, The Atlantic)
There are two ways to look for extraterrestrial life. We’ve been focusing on only one.