OUR PICKSFixing America’s Biodefense Strategy | Novichok Terrorism | Explaining UFOs, and more
··Many Military U.F.O. Reports Are Just Foreign Spying or Airborne Trash
Ordinary explanations for seemingly extraordinary phenomena
··Inside the Secretive Effort by Trump Allies to Access Voting Machines
Bogus claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election undermine trust in elections
··TikTok’s Link to China Sparks Privacy Fears and Exposes U.S. Inaction
TikTok exposed America’s failure to safeguard the web
··Virus Experiments Like Boston University’s COVID “Chimera” Aare Going to Happen. How Should We Regulate Them?
Justified ambivalence about scientists’ experimentation
··Lab Manipulations of Covid Virus Fall Under Murky Government Rules
Criticism of tinkering with the Covid virus
··To Fix America’s Biodefense Strategy, Think Smaller
Small is beautiful
··Preventing and Preparing for Pandemics with Zoonotic Origins
Every viral pandemic since 1900 has been the result of spillover from animals to humans
··Novichok Terrorism: Prospect or Fever Dream
Could terrorists or other violent non-state actors obtain and use novichoks?
··Controlling Novichok Nerve Agents after the Skripal and Navalny Incidents
These once obscure agents have become notorious as a Kremlin’s assassination tool
··The Time for Geoengineering Is Now
Drastic climate change calls for drastic measures
Many Military U.F.O. Reports Are Just Foreign Spying or Airborne Trash (Julian E. Barnes, New York Times)
Forget space aliens or hypersonic technology; classified assessments show that many episodes have ordinary explanations.
Inside the Secretive Effort by Trump Allies to Access Voting Machines (Emma Brown and Jon Swaine, Washington Post)
Rural Coffee County, Ga., became an early target in the multistate search for purported evidence of fraud after the 2020 election.
The actions of Trump supporters in the county offers an example of a multistate effort by prominent Trump allies to gain access to voting machines in search of purported evidence that the election was rigged.
In two instances, courts or state lawmakers granted Trump supporters access to the machines, which are considered by the federal government to be “critical infrastructure” vital to national security and are usually closely guarded. But in at least seven other counties in four states, including Coffee, local officials acting without a court order or subpoena allegedly gave outsiders access to the machines or their data, a Washington Post examination found.
Data copied from these machines has been misrepresented as empirical evidence for the false claims of fraud that have warped American political discourse and spurred violence, notably the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Those claims have also undermined trust in election results, including in the upcoming midterm contests, which some candidates have already suggested they may not accept.
Claims of widespread election fraud have been rejected over and over by local, state and federal officials as well as by computer science experts and numerous judges, including those appointed by Trump. They have nevertheless become an article of faith — or at least a professed belief — for many Republican voters, activists and politicians.
Experts say the events in Coffee County are a potent example of the rising threat posed by insiders who undermine election security in the name of protecting it. While elections officials say security protocols would make it difficult for bad actors to manipulate votes, some experts say the data — circulated beyond a limited number of authorized officials — could give hackers a powerful tool to simulate voting machines and probe for weaknesses.
