Why Biden’s China Reset Is a Bad Idea | Machine Learning & Nuclear Retaliation | Latin America & Continental Cooperation, and more

South American Presidents Come to Lula’s Party, but Check His Leadership  (Catherine Osborn, Foreign Policy)
On Tuesday in Brasília, South American heads of state met for the first time since 2014 to discuss their visions for continent-wide cooperation.
The idea that the continent should meet and cooperate as a group—separate from forums of Latin American or American nations, the latter of which include the United States and Canada—is over 30 years old; former Brazilian presidents encouraged the idea in the 1990s, around the time that North American countries were negotiating their free trade deal, the North American Free Trade Agreement.
While South American engagement did not yield a continent-wide free trade bloc, in 1991, four countries created what became the customs union Mercosur, and in 2008, 12 countries created an organization called the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), which undertook activities such as planning cross-border infrastructure projects and conducting joint disease surveillance. A spirit of South American integration also paved the way for a deal expanding permissions to live and work across the continent.

North Korea Using Social Engineering to Enable Hacking of Think Tanks, Academia, and Media  (IC3)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the U.S. Department of State, and the National Security Agency (NSA), together with the Republic of Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), National Police Agency (NPA), and Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), are jointly issuing this advisory to highlight the use of social engineering by Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK a.k.a. North Korea) state-sponsored cyber actors to enable computer network exploitation (CNE) globally against individuals employed by research centers and think tanks, academic institutions, and news media organizations. These North Korean cyber actors are known to conduct spearphishing campaigns posing as real journalists, academics, or other individuals with credible links to North Korean policy circles. The DPRK employs social engineering to collect intelligence on geopolitical events, foreign policy strategies, and diplomatic efforts affecting its interests by gaining illicit access to the private documents, research, and communications of their targets.

Germany to Probe Report of Chinese Pilot Training (DW)
Several former German air force officers have been training Chinese pilots for years via companies in the Seychelles, German media reported. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius promised a full investigation.

Prove It Before You Use It: Nuclear Retaliation Under Uncertainty  (Jonathan Falcone et al., War on the Rocks)
It is 2028, and the United States Space Force’s early warning radar modernization is complete. Technical Sergeant Jack Nichols works at Buckley Space Force Base operating systems that detect and assess ballistic missile threats against the United States and Canada. Since arriving at the Colorado base, Nichols has experienced his share of false alarms. However, these are no ordinary false alarms; the system Nichols watches  provides early warning that the United States is under ballistic missile attack. While these existential alerts would distress most, he maintains an “old school” validation protocol: He evaluates the warning against his sensor’s input settings and raw data output, resolving any concerns.
But today, the warning that flashed across his screen was different. Recent modernization efforts introduced next-generation sensors and machine learning–powered tools to manage the increased flow of information. These purported improvements made the raw data inaccessible to Tech Sgt. Nichols. The system had identified an incoming missile, but he couldn’t help but wonder: What if this was a mistake? What if the system had been hacked or had malfunctioned? And, just as unsettling, what if the newly implemented algorithm had made a decision based on flawed or biased data? 
To some extent, his concerns do not matter. His training dictates that he has less than two minutes to evaluate and report the warning. This expediency ensures the president maintains the option to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike before an adversary’s weapon — if a first-strike weapon is, in fact, inbound — strikes the American homeland. Nichols understood that the president’s decision to retaliate requires balancing the inherent limitations of early warning accuracy with the concern that presidential control may be lost if the warning turns out to be true. But, he wondered, could the pressure from this uncertainty be alleviated if the president could issue a delayed order?