OUR PICKSCyber Threats to Transportation Increase | New Restrictions on Using Commercial Spyware | Self-Flying F-16s, and more

Trump Sings a Song of Sedition  (Tom Nichols, The Atlantic)

The January 6 jail anthem was a shocking addition to his repertoire. But our national attention span is so short that we’ve already moved on.

Cyber Threats to Transportation Increase  (Kylie Bielby, HSToday)
Hacktivists launched a ransomware attack on the Belarusian state-run train company in a bid to disrupt Russian troop movements. To achieve this, the group deployed modified ransomware to bring down the railway system and encrypted servers, databases and workstations belonging to the Belarusian railway service. Conversely, a pro-Russia hacker group known as the Cyber Army of Russia targeted the Ukrainian government’s Department of Transport Safety.

US Renewable Electricity Surpassed Coal in 2022  (AP / VOA News)
Electricity generated from renewables surpassed coal in the United States for the first time in 2022, the U.S. Energy Information Administration announced Monday.
Renewables also surpassed nuclear generation in 2022, after first doing so last year.
Growth in wind and solar significantly drove the increase in renewable energy and contributed 14% of the electricity produced domestically in 2022. Hydropower contributed 6%, and biomass and geothermal sources generated less than 1%.

U.S. to Adopt New Restrictions on Using Commercial Spyware  (AP / VOA News)
The U.S. government will stop its use of commercial spyware tools that have been used to surveil human rights activists, journalists and dissidents around the world, under an executive order issued Monday by President Joe Biden.
The order responds to growing U.S. and global concerns about programs that can capture text messages and other cellphone data. Some programs — so-called “zero-click” exploits — can infect a phone without the user clicking on a malicious link.
Governments around the world — including the U.S.— are known to collect large amounts of data for intelligence and law enforcement purposes, including communications from their own citizens. The proliferation of commercial spyware has made powerful tools newly available to smaller countries, but also created what researchers and human-rights activists warn are opportunities for abuse and repression.

Issuance of Intelligence Community Directive 712: Requirements for Certain Employment Activities by Former Intelligence Community Employees  (ODNI)
Types of service may threaten U.S. national security by providing foreign governments with access to the experience and expertise of former U.S. intelligence employees.

How Self-Flying F-16s Will Enable Future Fighter Drones  (Patrick Tucker, Defense One)
The Air Force’s Venom project aims to use test data to train an AI engine that can be widely used.