A Cyber Threat to U.S. Drinking Water | Overly Broad Terrorist Watchlist Poses National Security Risks | How Terrorists Exploit Humanitarian Organizations, and more

So the IRGC is exploiting the very weaknesses that the states and the water system groups argued a few months ago need not be considered when assessing the equipment and operations of water systems.

‘The Opposite of Politics’: A Conservative Legal Scholar Says Kicking Trump Off the Ballot Is ‘Unassailable’  (Ian Ward, Politico)
On Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that former President Donald Trump is barred from reclaiming the presidency under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment , which prohibits people who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from holding political office. That argument has gained traction in some legal circles in recent months thanks in part to the work of J. Michael Luttig, a prominent conservative legal scholar and former judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, who, together with the liberal law professor Laurence Tribe, promoted the idea that the 14th Amendment disqualifies Trump from seeking a second term.
This isn’t the first time Luttig has played a central role in arguments about Trump’s eligibility for office. After the Jan. 6 riots at the Capitol, Luttig published an op-ed in The Washington Post arguing that the Constitution prohibits Congress from impeaching a president once he or she has left office. Luttig’s op-ed found an eager audience on Capitol Hill , where several Republicans cited his legal argument as a reason for opposing Trump’s impeachment.
“Professor Laurence Tribe, who is the preeminent constitutional scholar in the nation, and I have been thinking about the 14th Amendment disqualification clause together for three years — essentially since January 6, 2021. Professor Tribe has been studying and writing about Section 3 of the 14th Amendment for his entire career as a constitutional law professor.” Luttig says.
“In fact, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is self-executing, which means that congressional action is not required. Nor is it required that the former president be convicted of the criminal offense of an insurrection or rebellion against the United States under Title 18 USC 2383.”

Chinese Chip Import Concerns Prompt US to Review Semiconductor Supply Chain  (Reuters / VOA News)
The U.S. Department of Commerce said Thursday that it would launch a survey of the U.S. semiconductor supply chain and national defense industrial base to address national security concerns from Chinese-sourced chips.
The survey aims to identify how U.S. companies are sourcing so-called legacy chips — current-generation and mature-node semiconductors — as the department moves to award nearly $40 billion in subsidies for semiconductor chip manufacturing.

Chinese Still Largest Group of Foreign Students in US  (Aline Barros, VOA News)
Students from China retained their position in 2023 as the largest group of international students in the United States. Despite a slight dip, they are still the leading country of origin for foreign students pursuing an education in the U.S.
The State Department granted more than 600,000 international student visas in fiscal 2023, which ended in September, the highest issuance since fiscal 2017. Among these, 289,526 visas were awarded to Chinese students, a decrease of 560 students compared to the previous year, according to State Department data.
In a November call with reporters about the agency’s 2023 visa operations, Julie Stufft, deputy assistant secretary for visa services in the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, said in fiscal 2024, they will be focusing on shortening wait times.
“We’ve driven down wait times in all categories worldwide, except for one, and that category is first-time visitors,” she said wait times for the 20-plus different types of visa categories, including students, are almost non-existent.
As of December 4, the current wait times for student visa applicants from China vary at U.S. consulates across China from three to eight days.

Overly Broad Terrorist Watchlist Poses National Security Risks, Senate Report Says  (Caitlin Yilek, CBS News)
A growing terrorist watchlist and numerous screening processes implemented after the 9/11 attacks to identify travelers who could be a threat are uncoordinated and too broad, a dynamic that pose risk to national security, according to a new Senate report.  The 43-page report, released Tuesday by Democrats on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said the watchlist and nearly two dozen screening processes can “spread limited national security resources out broadly rather than effectively target changing threats.” The procedures lack oversight, and Americans have “insufficient” options if they are subject to wrongful screenings. “A watchlist that is not properly maintained, coupled with unnecessarily duplicative screening practices that are not frequently assessed for their effectiveness is a risk to our national security. It may not reflect the latest threats, it could overextend limited security resources that should be focused on the best ways to protect Americans, and it breaks the trust with innocent Americans who get caught up in this net with no way out,” the report said. “As the size of the watchlist and screening enterprise grows, so does the chance of misidentification, the need for additional resources, and the risk that existing limited resources may be spent on low risks, overlooking real threats,” it added.

Congress Set to Extinguish Pentagon’s Anti-Domestic Extremism Working Group Created After Jan. 6  (Rebecca Kheel, Military.com)
A Pentagon working group established to provide recommendations for rooting out extremism in the ranks is set to be defunded under the sweeping defense policy bill Congress is expected to pass this week. The compromise National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, which was released last week after months of negotiations between House and Senate Democrats and Republicans, would bar any funding from going to the Defense Department’s Countering Extremist Activity Working Group.

Two Canadians Who Police Link to Neo-Nazis Face Terrorism Charges  (Ian Austen and Vjosa Isai, New York Times / Seattle Times)
Active Club portrays itself as consisting of combat sports groups. Alexander Ritzmann, a senior adviser at the Counter Extremism Project in Berlin, said in a research paper that the Active Club’s real purpose is to create a “standby militia” that can be activated to create violence on behalf of neo-Nazi causes. Active Club groups try to minimize police scrutiny by telling members to “present a friendly face to the public” and to “avoid threatening behavior or displaying obvious Nazi symbols,” a move it hopes will also help broaden its public appeal, Ritzmann wrote in his report, published in September. As of last month, there were 10 Active Club chapters across Canada, Peter Collins, a forensic psychiatrist with the Ontario Provincial Police and a professor at the University of Toronto, wrote in a recent edition of a law enforcement magazine. Canada has seen a “significant increase” in the number of terrorism charges for people linked to far-right groups such as the Atomwaffen Division, said Michael Nesbitt, a law professor at the University of Calgary who studies extremism. There have been seven terrorism arrests in the country this year, including three linked to right-wing extremism, according to his data, while only six cases since 2000 have been associated with right-wing extremism.

Aiding Terror: How Terrorists Exploit Humanitarian Organizations  (Ari Heistein and Nathaniel Rabkin, Quillete)
“We built the tunnels to protect ourselves from airplanes … the refugees, the UN is responsible for protecting them.” The now infamous statement by Musa Abu Marzuk of Hamas, in a television interview of October 2023, illustrates a severe problem that has developed in the interplay between humanitarian aid and militant groups in the Middle East. In even the best cases, the aid allows these groups to evade responsibility for civil affairs while pursuing their agenda of mayhem—but in fact, the terrorist groups often go much farther than this, and actually rely on aid streams to fund and equip the gunmen that commit their atrocities. Humanitarian aid has become a lifeline for these groups, enabling their deadly attacks.
Over the fifteen years during which it has controlled the Gaza Strip, Hamas has honed exploitation of aid into a science. The group does not generally expropriate aid items directly, but rather uses its control of the government apparatus in Gaza to ensure that donor funds are siphoned off, either directly to Hamas or to entities it controls. For example, the strip’s private security companies are all licensed by the Hamas Ministry of Interior, and their staff must be approved and trained by the ministry. UN and other aid group facilities therefore end up paying Hamas to guard them. Hamas also imposes high taxes on goods in the strip, including food staples, meaning that a substantial portion of the salaries paid to local aid agency employees winds up in Hamas’s coffers. Given the enormous role played by UN and other international groups in Gaza, taxes paid by their employees likely account for a substantial fraction of Hamas’s revenues. 
Notably, despite its tight control of many aspects of life in the Gaza Strip, Hamas has resisted imposing any formal licensing or inspection regime on building contractors. This arrangement facilitates a multiplicity of unregulated contractors, who are well placed to help divert building supplies for the construction of tunnels or other military projects, without leaving much in the way of a paper trail.