Holiday Threats | Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline | Grappling with Managed Retreat | Banning TikTok in U.S., and more

U.S. Builds New Firewall to Stop Spread of Militant Islamists  (Michael M. Phillips, Wall Street Journal)
The front lines in the war between the West and militant Islamists have shifted to Africa, from Somalia on the continent’s eastern tip to the West African Sahel, a semidesert strip south of the Sahara. In the Sahel, the U.S. and its allies are betting that Niger, the worst-off country in the world by a U.N. measure, offers the best hope of stopping the seemingly inexorable spread of al Qaeda and Islamic State. In the heart of the region, the nations of Mali and Burkina Faso are losing ground, roiled by militant attacks and military coups. In contrast, the elected civilian government in neighboring Niger is making slow headway against insurgents with the help of Western forces, U.S. and Nigerien officials said. Mali’s ruling junta has hired Kremlin-linked mercenaries to provide security, while Niger has shunned Russian intervention and welcomed U.S. and French forces. “We’ve invested a lot with the Nigeriens, and we’re seeing a payoff from that,” said Lt. Col. Chris Couch, commander of U.S. special-operations troops in West Africa. Niger, he said, is emerging as a cornerstone of regional security. The U.S. and its allies are helping Niger try to stop the advance of al Qaeda and Islamic State across West Africa. In a typical operation, U.S. Army Green Berets helped plan a recent Nigerien raid on Torodi, an al Qaeda stronghold straddling a well-used trade route between Burkina Faso and Niamey, Niger’s capital. French military helicopters delivered members of an elite, U.S.-trained Nigerien strike force to the village in the dark of night.

White-Supremacist Messages on Call of Duty, Fortnite; Hate-Crime Charges in Club Q Shooting  (Will Carless, USA Today)
New details and reporting have emerged about the motives behind the deadly shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ-friendly venue in Colorado Springs, the perpetrator of which was officially charged with hate crimes this week. Meanwhile, a study claims that exposure to white supremacist ideologies via online gaming doubled this year. And America’s most notorious neo-Nazi troll returns triumphantly to Twitter. It’s the week in extremism. The man accused of shooting up Club Q, an LGBTQ friendly bar in Colorado Springs was officially charged this week with 305 counts ranging from murder in the first degree to bias-motivated crimes. As I examined in this story last month, the attack, in which 5 people died and 17 were injured was shocking, but not surprising, to extremism experts, who have been waiting for an incident like this to happen, given the recent focus on the LGBTQ community from far-right extremist groups. The defendant’s attorneys announced in court documents that the defendant identifies as non-binary and uses they/them pronouns, which led to confusion and speculation as to the motive for the attack NBC reported this week that the FBI has questioned the suspect’s neighbors about two websites, one reportedly created by the shooter, that contained racist and antisemitic posts. The other website is the infamous hate site 8kun, formerly 8Chan, a haven for far-right extremist activity.

The Family That Invaded the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 — and Became a National Curiosity  (Robert Draper, Texas Monthly)
The Munns became a national curiosity after five of them were indicted for participating in the insurrection. But the full scope of their malignant behavior is little known—including to the federal prosecutors tasked with investigating their crimes.

THE LONG VIEW

The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline  (Kathleen Belew, The Atlantic)
On Twitter and TikTok over the past few weeks, scores of users have become alarmed about the uncomfortable coziness between the natural-food-and-body community and white-power and militant-right online spaces—the “crunchy-to-alt-right pipeline.”
Crunchy, coined as a pop-culture reference to granola, has come to refer to a wide variety of cultural practices, including avoiding additives and food dyes, declining or spacing out childhood vaccinations beyond what pediatricians recommend, and more extreme actions in pursuit of health, independence, and purity. Back-to-the-land living and alternative medicine are hallmarks of “crunch.” Much of this subculture is benign, a declaration of anti-modernism or slow living. But this largely white cultural space shares some preoccupations with right-wing organizations, which have used it for recruitment.
In the 1970s and ’80s, women in the emergent white-power movement, which gathered Ku Klux Klan members, neo-Nazis, skinheads, Christian Identity members, tax resisters, and other militant-right activists, deployed what we would now call “crunchy” issues as part of a wider articulation of cultural identity.
These bits of crunchiness included organic farming, a macrobiotic diet, neo-paganism, anti-fluoridation, and traditional midwifery. All of these are often thought of as leftist or “hippie” issues, but they appeared regularly in the robust outpouring of women’s publications in the white-power movement.
The surprise at the crunchy-to-alt-right pipeline, or at the closeness between the radical right and the radical left, reveals a problem with common ideas about left, right, and center in American politics. In general discourse, and too often in historiography, we use a measure that harkens back to World War II, with the left (aligned with the Communist U.S.S.R.) on one end, a flat line running through a political center (democracy and the United States), and the right on the other (where fascism and Nazi Germany reside). This idea of a political spectrum implies that left and right share little in common, and that they are diametrically opposed. It also positions fascism as far away from American politics, when recent history shows us quite the opposite.
Issues common to these groups accorded with ideas of purity, an interest in survivalism, and a deep distrust of the government. To be sure, the meaning of each of these issues would have been different to activists of different political persuasions, even in the same communities. Homeschooling, for instance, could be used in the white-power movement and as part of an intentional community or cult on the left. Midwifery might be powered by anti-feminism and strict gender divides on the right, or by women’s liberation and ideas of empowerment on the left. Anti-technology might be only selectively applied in a right-wing compound, such as the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord, whose residents eschewed modern conveniences but manufactured land mines and automatic weapons in their remote Ozarks compound.

A World-Changing Race to Develop a Quantum Computer  (Stephen Witt. New Yorker)
Such a device could help address climate change and food scarcity, or break the Internet. Will the U.S. or China get there first?

Why Scientists Can’t Give Up the Hunt for Alien Life (Ethan Siegel, Big Think)
There will always be “wolf-criers” whose claims wither under scrutiny. But aliens are certainly out there, if science dares to find them.

Water Wells Go Dry as California Feels Warming Impacts  (Anne C. Mulkern, Scientific American)
Officials say climate change is driving an increase in dry wells in drought-stricken California

Feds Grappling with Managed Retreat  (Tom Burroughs, Issues)
Even as the US government is increasing efforts to help communities and people relocate when threatened by rising sea levels linked to climate change, many of the programs “are riddled with inconsistencies and bureaucracy, often impeding intended outcomes,” according to a POLITICO analysis. In Issues, Kavitha Chintam and her colleagues offer a similar critique, noting in particular that federal programs provide little support for the economically and politically disenfranchised populations bearing the brunt of climate risk. More equitable polices that anticipate and facilitate managed retreat are needed, the authors write, to avoid unacceptable levels of economic and social inequality.

MORE PICKS

Hacker Claims Breach of FBI’s Critical-Infrastructure Forum  (Associated Press / VOA News)
A hacker who reportedly posed as the chief executive of a financial institution claims to have obtained access to the more than 80,000-member database of InfraGard, an FBI-run outreach program that shares sensitive information on national security and cybersecurity threats with public officials and private sector individuals who run U.S. critical infrastructure.
The hacker posted samples purportedly from the database to an online forum popular with cybercriminals last weekend and said the asking price for the entire database was $50,000.
The hacker made the disclosures to independent cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs, who broke the story. The hacker called the vetting process surprisingly lax.

Are Electric Substation Attacks the New Normal? Keys to Better Infrastructure Protection (James Madia, HSToday)
The North Carolina attacks will certainly stimulate new conversations in the industry regarding risk, cost, and appropriate security measures.

US Soil Could Be Eroding Up to 1,000 Times Faster Than It Should  (Carly Cassella, Science Alert)
In the Midwest, one of the world’s most productive farming regions, researchers have calculated that current soil erosion is up to a thousand times greater than before modern agriculture’s rise.
That’s much, much more soil loss than what should be allowed following what the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) says is sustainable in its soil management guidelines.

Prosecuting the Fake Electors: Wisconsin Case Study and Template for Other States  (Gretchen Knaut and Shan Wu, Just Security)
Following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, former President Donald Trump and some of his close associates seized upon an array of fringe legal theories in their efforts to overturn Joe  Biden’s victory. On the basis of one such theory, they assembled slates of Trump “presidential electors” in swing states that Biden had won. They attempted to submit these “alternate slates” to the joint session of Congress on January 6th in the hopes of flipping or casting doubt on enough Electoral College votes to secure a Trump presidential victory. The scheme targeted seven swing states, of which reportedly only one has an active criminal investigation by state or local authorities as of the time of writing. That is a gaping absence, especially given the incriminating evidence produced by the January 6th Committee, and the Justice Department’s decision to launch its own criminal investigation of the scheme. In response to this gap, we have separately produced a report that selects one of the remaining six states, Wisconsin, as a case study for pursuing criminal investigations and potential prosecutions at the state level.

Lawmakers Intro Bill to Ban TikTok in U.S.  (Frank Konkel, Nextgov)
TikTok poses a national security threat, according to lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle.

US Teases ‘Major’ Science News Amid Fusion Energy Reports  (Agence France-Presse / VOA News)
The U.S. Department of Energy said Sunday it would announce a “major scientific breakthrough” this week, after media reported a federal laboratory had recently achieved a major milestone in nuclear fusion research.
The Financial Times reported Sunday that scientists in the California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) had achieved a “net energy gain” from an experimental fusion reactor.
That would represent the first time that researchers have successfully produced more energy in a fusion reaction — the same type that powers the Sun — than was consumed during the process, a potentially major step in the pursuit of zero-carbon power.

Mass Migrant Crossing Floods Texas Border Facilities  (John De Frank, J. David Goodman, Eileen Sullivan and Natalie Kitroeff, New York Times)
The arrival of up to 1,000 migrants, the latest big group to have crossed the border, was one of the largest single crossings in recent years in West Texas, which has seen a surge in migration.
The region around El Paso has seen a sharp increase in the number of people attempting to cross from Mexico in recent months, with 53,000 encounters recorded by border agents there in October, the most recent month for which data is available. That is more than on any other section of the U.S.-Mexico border. Federal agents have recorded a record number of encounters along the entire southern border, nearly 2.4 million in a yearlong period.

U.S. Plans for a Hypothetical War Limit Aid to a Real One  (Jack Detsch, Foreign Policy)
The U.S. Defense Department is under pressure from Congress to revise munitions requirements for a hypothetical fight between NATO and Russia to allow more arms to flow to Ukraine, according to three people familiar with the debate.
U.S. military and defense officials have repeatedly told lawmakers and aides in recent briefings that munition thresholds mandated by Pentagon war plans—such as for a possible U.S. and NATO fight with Russia that could include a military scenario in the sparsely populated Suwalki Gap near Moscow’s border with the Baltics—are preventing the United States from sending more munitions to Ukraine.

‘Firmageddon’: Researchers Find 1.1 Million Acres of Dead Trees in Oregon (Evan Bush, NBC News)
Oregon’s dead firs are a visceral example of how drought is reshaping landscapes in Western states that have been experiencing extreme heat conditions.