TikTok’s Security Threats Go Beyond the Scope of House Legislation | The ‘Emergency Powers’ Risk of a Second Trump Presidency | Terrorist Threat to US Has Reached ‘Whole Other Level,’ FBI’s Wray Warns, and more

In an ironic twist, the swelling appetite for more electricity, driven not only by electric cars but also by battery and solar factories and other aspects of the clean-energy transition, could also jeopardize the country’s plans to fight climate change.

TikTok’s Security Threats Go Beyond the Scope of House Legislation  (David E. Sanger, New York Times)
In a capital where Republicans and Democrats agree on virtually nothing, it was notable when the House overwhelmingly declared on Wednesday that TikTok poses such a grave risk to national security that it must be forced to sell its U.S. operations to a non-Chinese owner.
But that glosses over the deeper TikTok security problem, which the legislation does not fully address. In the four years this battle has gone on, it has become clear that the security threat posed by TikTok has far less to do with who owns it than it does with who writes the code and algorithms that make TikTok tick.
Those algorithms, which guide how TikTok watches its users and feeds them more of what they want, are the magic sauce of an app that 170 million Americans now have on their phones. That’s half the country.
But TikTok doesn’t own those algorithms; they are developed by engineers who work for its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, which assembles the code in great secrecy in its software labs, in Beijing, Singapore and Mountain View, Calif. But China has issued regulations that appear designed to require government review before any of ByteDance’s algorithms could be licensed to outsiders. Few expect those licenses to be issued — meaning that selling TikTok to an American owner without the underlying code might be like selling a Ferrari without its famed engine.

The ‘Emergency Powers’ Risk of a Second Trump Presidency  (Thor Benson, Wired)
Donald Trump appears to dream of being an American authoritarian should he return to office. The former US president, who on Tuesday secured enough delegates to win the 2024 Republican nomination, plans to deport millions of undocumented immigrants and house scores of them in large camps. He wants to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy the military in cities across the nation to quell civil unrest. He wants to prosecute his political opponents. There’s an organized and well-funded effort to replace career civil servants in the federal government with Trump loyalists who will do his bidding and help him consolidate power.
What’s also concerning to legal experts, though, are the special powers that would be available to him that have been available to all recent presidents but have not typically been used. Should Trump decide to go full authoritarian, he could utilize what are called “emergency powers” to shut down the internet in certain areas, censor the internet, freeze people’s bank accounts, restrict transportation, and more.
Utilizing laws like the National Emergencies Act, the Communications Act of 1934, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), he would be able to wield power in ways this country has never seen. Furthermore, America’s vast surveillance state, which has regularly been abused, could theoretically be abused even further to surveil his perceived political enemies.

US Lawmaker Cited NYC Protests in a Defense of Warrantless Spying  (Dell Camron, Wired)
At a private meeting about the reauthorization of a major United States surveillance program late last year, the Republican chairman of the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) presented an image of Americans protesting the war in Gaza while implying possible ties between the protesters and Hamas, an allegation that was used to illustrate why surveillance reforms may prove detrimental to national security, WIRED has learned. Sources who attended the meeting say it alarmed Republicans who are pursuing new limits on the US government’s power to warrantlessly access the communications of US citizens.
In December, as many as 200 Republican staffers gathered behind closed doors to hear a presentation by House Intelligence chair Mike Turner, one of several such meetings that day aimed at shoring up support for a US surveillance program known as Section 702.
House lawmakers were expected to cast votes the following day to determine which of two rival bills would become law. While both aimed to reauthorize the 702 program, they shared little else in common. The first bill was backed by Turner and Jim Himes—HPSCI’s leading Democrat—and had the support of the US intelligence community. The second, a bill chock full of privacy reforms, had been introduced by the House Judiciary Committee and was opposed by the Biden White House.