Fakery, Confusion & AI in 2024 Campaign | Russia Sought to Kill Defector in Florida | Manifestos & Lone Wolf Terrorism, and more

AI will obviously make it easier to produce disinformation—from fake images to deepfakes to fake news. That will affect people’s sense of trust as they’re scrolling on social media. AI can also allow someone to imitate your loved ones, which further erodes people’s general ability to trust what was once unquestionable. That may also affect how they think about identity.

FBI Resisted Opening Probe into Trump’s Role in Jan. 6 for More Than a Year  (Carol D. Leonnig and Aaron C. Davis, Washington Post)
A Washington Post investigation found that more than a year would pass before prosecutors and FBI agents jointly embarked on a formal probe of actions directed from the White House to try to steal the election. Even then, the FBI stopped short of identifying the former president as a focus of that investigation.
A wariness about appearing partisan, institutional caution, and clashes over how much evidence was sufficient to investigate the actions of Trump and those around him all contributed to the slow pace. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, charted a cautious course aimed at restoring public trust in the department while some prosecutors below them chafed, feeling top officials were shying away from looking at evidence of potential crimes by Trump and those close to him, The Post found.

Russia Sought to Kill Defector in Florida  (Ronen Bergman, Adam Goldman and Julian E. Barnes, New York Times)
As President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has pursued enemies abroad, his intelligence operatives now appear prepared to cross a line that they previously avoided: trying to kill a valuable informant for the U.S. government on American soil.
The clandestine operation, seeking to eliminate a C.I.A. informant in Miami who had been a high-ranking Russian intelligence official more than a decade earlier, represented a brazen expansion of Mr. Putin’s campaign of targeted assassinations. It also signaled a dangerous low point even between intelligence services that have long had a strained history.

Oath Keepers Attorney Is Found Incompetent to Stand Trial in Jan. 6 Case  (Spencer S. Hsu, Washington Post)
A federal judge on Friday found Kellye SoRelle — an attorney for the Oath Keepers and girlfriend of the right-wing group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes — mentally incompetent to stand trial as scheduled next month on charges related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta of D.C. postponed SoRelle’s trial indefinitely, finding — based on reports by defense and government medical experts — that she was suffering from a mental disease or defect rendering her unable to understand the proceedings against her or to assist properly in her defense.

How a Shady Chinese Firm’s Encryption Chips Got Inside the US Navy, NATO, and NASA  (Andy Greenberg, Wired)
Rising tensions between China and the US have made Americans—and the US government—increasingly wary of Chinese-owned technologies. But thanks to the complexity of the hardware supply chain, encryption chips sold by the subsidiary of a company specifically flagged in warnings from the US Department of Commerce for its ties to the Chinese military have found their way into the storage hardware of military and intelligence networks across the West.
In July of 2021, the Commerce Department added the China-based encryption chip manufacturer Hualan Microelectronics, also known as Sage Microelectronics, to its so-called “Entity List,” a trade restrictions list that highlights companies “acting contrary to the foreign policy interests of the United States.” The Department noted that Hualan had been added to the list for “acquiring and … attempting to acquire US-origin items in support of military modernization for [China’s] People’s Liberation Army.”
Yet nearly two years later, Hualan—and in particular its subsidiary known as Initio, a company originally headquartered in Taiwan that it acquired in 2016—still supplies encryption microcontroller chips to Western manufacturers of encrypted hard drives, including NASA, NATO, and the US and UK militaries. US government agencies from the FAA to the DEA to the US Navy have bought encrypted hard drives that use the chips, too.

What the Heck Is Going on With These U.F.O. Stories?  (Ezra Klein, New York Times)
Earlier this month, a news outlet called The Debrief published a story that included, to put it mildly, some explosive material.
The story centered on David Grusch, a decorated former combat veteran who has worked in multiple government intelligence agencies and served on the Pentagon’s Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. In the story, Grusch said he had decided to come forward as a whistle-blower, testifying under oath to Congress that there are longstanding covert programs within the U.S. government that possess crash materials of “nonhuman origin.” His claims are backed by multiple on-the-record sources from the intelligence community.

Break the Chain: Manifestos, Lone Wolf Terrorism, and the Nashville Shooting  (Manfredi Pozzoli, GNET)
In March 2023,  six people were killed in a shooting at a Nashville elementary school. Three of the victims were children. The perpetrator, who was equipped with three firearms, was killed by police officers. In addition to covering the tragedy of the attack, news reports focused on two parallel elements: an unpublished ‘manifesto’ found by authorities at the shooter’s residence after the event and the identity of the attacker. 
There were reports by the media that the shooter had left a document, possibly a manifesto,  for authorities to find. While the actual content of the document remains unknown, other journalists later referred to the document as a suicide note. This description seems to have been echoed by the shooter in a private text exchange on Instagram shortly before the attack – and as having been part of a broader collection of documents, including maps of the school and detailed plans of action. Yet, the use of the term manifesto immediately fueled comparisons of the Nashville shooter with other lone attackers, like the Buffalo and Christchurch attackers. 
On 28 April, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee announced that the manifesto written by the shooter was set to be released “very soon”, after undergoing a process of internal review. Considering the nature of the material possibly contained within the document, and the chance of it perpetrating further harm to people and groups uninvolved in the incident, this decision appears paradoxical, if not actively counterproductive for countering extremism. A court hearing on 8 June saw the parents of the shooter request that ownership of the document be transferred to the victims’ relatives – who oppose its release. Yet, with the police and courts still formally responsible for the documents, the writings’ fate remains, as of now, uncertain.
After the shooting, Tennessee authorities quickly disclosed that the shooter was a 28-year-old transgender former student of the school. The identification of the shooter as trans caused a significant backlash on both traditional and digital media, with sharp increases in transphobic rhetoric. Prominent far-right figures, including Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, linked the attack to an (unidentified) underground, far-left “trans-terrorism” and “Antifa” network. 
This Insight provides an overview of the importance of manifestos to single-actor attacks and the risks associated with the publication of any material written by the Nashville shooter. In particular, this Insight highlights the risk to the LGBTQ community in both the narratives around the attacker’s gender identity and the potential for targeted violence if the manifesto is released. 

The Threat to Law Enforcement and Critical Infrastructure from Chinese Drones  (Chuck Brooks and Paul Goldenberg, HSToday)
These can map our critical infrastructure – our roads, bridges, ports, airports, power plants, stadiums, and hospitals. Wherever a drone is flown, data is collected and stored.