No Plea Deal for Accused Sept. 11 Plotters | Future of AI and Automation in Homeland Security | Radio Traffic Shows Failed Search for Trump Rally Shooter, and more

Being outed as a federal informant did not force Sutter into the shadows. Sutter kept publishing extremist books through his Martinet Press imprint, which helped fuel the ascent of the Order of Nine Angles (O9A), a murderous blend of Satanism and neo-fascism that is now pervasive in the global far right and has inspired violence in Russia, Great Britain, the United States, Canada, and elsewhere, a WIRED investigation found. The consequences of Sutter’s virulent extreme right propaganda continue to unfold, spawning new varieties of ultraviolent terrorism and violence in the darkest corners of the internet that now involve systemic child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and other forms of child abuse.

The New Nativism’s Surprising Origin Story  (Julian E. Zelizer, Foreign Policy)
Former U.S. President Donald Trump has unleashed his first major television spot against his new opponent in the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris. The advertisement zeroes in on what he says is her failed record as “border czar.” Drugs, crime, and terrorism are all a result. As viewers see ominous images of migrants crossing the border while Harris dances, the narrator closes by saying: “Failed. Weak. Dangerously Liberal.”
It isn’t a surprise that Trump would start with immigration as his opening salvo. And that’s not because this topic has been important to Trump since he announced his first presidential run in 2015, or because the issue is more pertinent than others in 2024. Rather, going after immigration taps into a set of ideas that has become deeply rooted in the GOP. To understand how anti-immigrant rhetoric became woven into Republican politics, it is necessary to look back to Harris’s home state of California during the 1990s—a time when nativism, law and order, and partisanship all converged as the Cold War came to an end. Rather than boasting about being tough on communists, Republicans since that period have invested much of their political capital in talking about being tough on the border.
The hardening of Republicans on this issue signaled a remarkable shift. For much of the 20th century, nativist factions within the Republican Party had been forced to compete with a formidable pro-immigration tradition. When then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan worked with Democrats in Congress in 1986 to pass sweeping bipartisan reform that imposed stricter penalties on businesses hiring undocumented immigrants, the president also granted amnesty for almost 3 million people and created an agricultural worker program for undocumented immigrants. “Our nation is a nation of immigrants,” Reagan had proclaimed. Business leaders allied to the supply-side revolution staunchly defended liberal immigration policies as something that brought tremendous benefits to the economy.
But following Reagan’s second term, the Republicans started on a different, rightward road. It began in California, and it brought them to today’s ad.

Sensitive Illinois Voter Data Exposed by Contractor’s Unsecured Databases  (Lily Hay Newman, Wired)
Databases containing sensitive voter information from multiple counties in Illinois were openly accessible on the internet, revealing 4.6 million records that included driver’s license numbers as well as full and partial Social Security Numbers and documents like death certificates. Longtime security researcher Jeremiah Fowler stumbled upon one of the databases that appeared to contain information from DeKalb County, Illinois, and subsequently discovered another 12 exposed databases. None were password protected nor required any type of authentication to access.
As criminal and state-backed hacking becomes ever more sophisticated and aggressive, threats to critical infrastructure loom. But often, the biggest vulnerabilities come not from esoteric software issues, but from gaping errors that leave the safe door open and the crown jewels exposed. After years of efforts to shore up election security across the United States, state and local awareness about cybersecurity issues has improved significantly. But as this year’s US election quickly approaches, the findings reflect the reality that there are always more oversights to catch.
“I’ve found voter databases in the past, so I kind of know if it’s a low-level marketing outreach database that someone has purchased,” Fowler tells WIRED. “But here I saw voter applications— there were actually scans of documents, and then screenshots of online applications. I saw voter rolls for active voters, absentee voters with email addresses, some of them military email addresses. And when I saw Social Security numbers and driver’s license numbers and death certificates I was like, ‘OK, those shouldn’t be there.’”

‘We Lost Sight of Him’: Radio Traffic Shows Failed Search for Trump Rally Shooter  (Shawn Boburg, Samuel Oakford and Devlin Barrett, Washington Post)
An urgent message crackled over the radio inside the white trailer, a mobile communications hub for local police helping to secure former president Donald Trump’s July 13 rally in Butler, Pa.
“Just an FYI, we had a younger white male, long hair, lurking around the AGR building,” a local countersniper said at 5:42 p.m., according to a time-stamped transcript of encrypted radio communications obtained by The Washington Post. “He was viewed with a range finder sighting the stage. … We lost sight of him.”
No one from the Secret Service, the agency primarily responsible for protecting Trump, was inside that white trailer to hear the message, according to two law enforcement officials. Instead, the federal agency had its own mobile command post with Pennsylvania State Police almost 300 yards away — and had no direct, open communication line to the local police hub. The local commander inside the trailer had to pick up his cellphone and dial a state trooper to relay the message, the two officials said.
The lack of a direct communication link would later hamper the ability of the Secret Service to quickly grasp the threat posed by would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks as local police searched for him over the next 29 minutes, resulting in the federal agency’s gravest security lapse in decades, a Post examination found. At 6:11 p.m., Crooks opened fire from a rooftop, unleashing eight bullets that left the former president wounded, one rallygoer dead and two others critically injured.

A Prerequisite for the Future of AI and Automation in Homeland Security  (Michael J. Keegan and Ignacio F. Cruz, HSToday)
Artificial Intelligence (AI) literacy is rapidly becoming a critical competency in government operations, particularly in homeland security. In Chapter 7 of the IBM Center for The Business of Government book, Transforming the Business of Government: Insights on Resilience, Innovation, and Performance, contributor Ignacio Cruz emphasizes the necessity of AI literacy for effectively harnessing AI and automation technologies within government agencies. This column summarizes the chapter’s key elements, focusing on their implications and applications for homeland security, including enhancing operational efficiency, ethical deployment, and interagency collaboration.
Given the extensive role of homeland security agencies — DHS and partners at all levels of government — in border protection, disaster response, and cybersecurity, enhancing AI literacy among this homeland security workforce can significantly improve the effectiveness and ethical deployment of AI and automation technologies. For example, AI can help to analyze real-time data during natural disasters, to provide actionable insights for resource allocation and emergency response. AI literacy equips DHS and other officials with the skills to interpret AI-generated data and deploy resources more effectively. For example, AI models can help to predict the impact of natural disasters and guide preemptive measures; understanding these models allows agencies to enhance their preparedness and minimize the impact of such events. AI literacy goals regarding protection of the nation should promote a workforce that understands these technologies’ capabilities, limitations, and ethical considerations, and who can effectively use and understand AI-driven cybersecurity tools.