The Menace of Nuclear Annihilation | America’s Infectious-Disease Barometer Is Off | The Push to Ban TikTok Spurred a New Washington Influence Machine, and more

How the Push to Ban TikTok Spurred a New Washington Influence Machine  (Elizabeth Dwoskin, Drew Harwell and Cat Zakrzewski, Washington Post)
Two years ago, Jacob Helberg, a little-known tech industry adviser, convened a dinner between lawmakers and a small group of Silicon Valley insiders on Washington’s Embassy Row. Funded in part by billionaire investor Peter Thiel’s venture firm, the group was not distinctive for its wealth or clout — the people involved had plenty of both — but for its members’ eagerness to eschew the industry’s long-held ideals of boundaryless technology for an alternative vision rooted in American nationalism and an anti-China might.
Today, that informal supper club has turned into one of the most powerful lobbying forces for the technology industry in Washington, helping draft and promote one of the country’s only pieces of tech legislation in decades: a law signed by President Biden calling for the forced sale or ban of TikTok, the video app owned by the Chinese-based company ByteDance and used by some 170 million in the United States.
Fresh off that win, the group’s leader, Helberg, is aiming to expand its mission. With associates, he is prepping an executive order geared for a possible future Trump presidency that would dismantle the Biden administration’s rules on artificial intelligence, according to people familiar with its dealings who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. Instead, they will push government to pour money into AI grants and contracts that could benefit many in the group.
They aim to undercut China’s status as a U.S. trading partner and are designing legislation that would shift the artificial intelligence supply chain, including costly semiconductor chips, to domestic manufacturers.

America’s Infectious-Disease Barometer Is Off  (Katherine J. Wu, The Atlantic)
The ongoing outbreak of H5N1 avian flu virus looks a lot like a public-health problem that the United States should be well prepared for.
Although this version of flu is relatively new to the world, scientists have been tracking H5N1 for almost 30 years. Researchers know the basics of how flu spreads and who tends to be most at risk. They have experience with other flus that have jumped into us from animals. The U.S. also has antivirals and vaccines that should have at least some efficacy against this pathogen. And scientists have had the advantage of watching this particular variant of the virus spread and evolve in an assortment of animals—including, most recently, dairy cattle in the United States—without it transmitting in earnest among us. “It’s almost like having the opportunity to catch COVID-19 in the fall of 2019,” Nahid Bhadelia, the founding director of Boston University Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases, told me.
Yet the U.S. is struggling to mount an appropriate response. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the nation’s alertness to infectious disease remains high. But both federal action and public attention are focusing on the wrong aspects of avian flu and other pressing infectious dangers, including outbreaks of measles within U.S. borders and epidemics of mosquito-borne pathogens abroad. To be fair, the United States (much like the rest of the world) was not terribly good at gauging such threats before COVID, but now “we have had our reactions thrown completely out of whack,” Bill Hanage, an infectious-disease epidemiologist and a co-director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard’s School of Public Health, told me. Despite all that COVID put us through—perhaps because of it—our infectious-disease barometer is broken.

Donald Trump Vows to Prosecute Biden ‘for All His Crimes’  (Alistair Dawber, The Times)
Donald Trump has threatened to prosecute President Biden “for all his crimes” if he wins a second term and deploy the military to deport more than 11 million illegal migrants.
The former president vowed to appoint a “real special prosecutor” to investigate Biden, linking legal action to how the Supreme Court rules on Trump’s liability for acts committed in office. He also suggested he would sack US attorneys who refused to prosecute someone.
“If they said that a president doesn’t get immunity, then Biden, I am sure, will be prosecuted for all of his crimes,” Trump, 77, told Time magazine.
The former president suggested that he may pursue district attorneys in New York and Georgia, who have levelled dozens of criminal charges against him.
“I don’t want to do that,” he said, discussing Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis, but added: “We’re going to look at a lot of things. What they’ve done is a terrible thing.”

Bill Would Alert Immigration When Non-citizen Tries to Buy Guns  (Alan Wooten, Center Square)
Nearly 15 million people living in or entering the country illegally are on an FBI list prohibiting purchase of firearms.
However, the National Instant Criminal Background Check system isn’t required to let immigration authorities know if one of those 14.8 million is an applicant and in America. Legislation is proposed to change it.
“It is already against the law for an illegal immigrant to purchase a firearm, and this legislation would notify the appropriate authorities when an illegal immigrant tries to break the law,” said U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., who co-sponsored the bill.

Without Indonesia’s Nickel, EVs Have No Future in America  (Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Foreign Policy)
Without Indonesian nickel, the United States’ electric vehicle market will flounder. My nation sits on the world’s largest reserves of the metal that is central to EV batteries. In 2023, Indonesia exported over half the world’s nickel products. In the coming years, this share is projected to grow.
Yet some members of the U.S. Congress, working together with Indonesia’s foreign competitors, have resolved to stymie the import of refined nickel from my country. So far, they are succeeding. But when taken together with measures passed in March compelling companies to shift away from selling gas-powered vehicles, it is ultimately U.S. auto workers who will lose out.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) has fundamentally altered the playing field. U.S. manufacturers cannot access its subsidies unless inputs come from a country with which the United States has a free trade agreement—which Indonesia does not.
To ensure the necessary supply of nickel to U.S. automakers, last year the government in which I serve proposed a limited trade deal covering critical minerals. So far, nothing has yet been agreed after a concerted campaign to derail it by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators and firms in nickel-producing nations such as Australia.
The senators’ objections tend to focus on environmental concerns. Many Indonesian smelters are powered by coal. For some, that means any battery containing its refined nickel is discredited, despite the net carbon benefit of taking combustion engines off the road. Such climate purity breeds inertia and is ultimately self-defeating. Environmental trade-offs are as critical to the green transition as nickel is to the batteries that will power it.
For the United States to see a significant reduction in emissions, more EV-powered rubber must hit the road. The transport sector is the country’s largest emitter, while less than 1 percent of U.S. vehicles are electric. Their widespread adoption will be contingent on affordability. Cheaper inputs mean cheaper batteries. Free from artificial trade barriers, refined nickel from Indonesia is competitive because coal is abundant in the country.
That may not be ideal. But renewables have yet to offer a cost-effective option to power smelters in Indonesia. Rather than waiting for technology to advance, we must use the resources at our disposal to refine the critical metal today.
Indonesian nickel will become greener. Yet, for this to happen, economic development is crucial. Only with export receipts or foreign direct investment can we begin to reconfigure the energy system. For instance, Harita Nickel, Indonesia’s largest nickel producer, can only introduce renewables at its facilities on the shoulders of its economic success.

New York Woman Gets 18 Years for Funding Terrorism with Cryptocurrency  (Hurubie Meko and Maia Coleman, New York Times)
A New York woman was sentenced to 18 years in prison on Tuesday for funding terrorism by using cryptocurrency to send financial support to groups operating in Syria. After Judge Althea Drysdale imposed the sentence, the woman, Victoria Jacobs, 44, yelled that the trial had been “a sham” and “Islamophobic” as officers led her from the courtroom. Dressed in a tan sweatshirt and khaki pants, Ms. Jacobs had appeared irritated as soon as she sat down at the defense table and had asked that her handcuffs be removed. In February, a Manhattan jury convicted Ms. Jacobs of three felony counts of providing support for an act of terrorism after a trial that lasted about two weeks. The jury also found her guilty of conspiracy, money laundering and criminal possession of a weapon. The Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, had said that the case was the first time terrorism funding had been prosecuted in New York State Supreme Court.