Why U.S. Nuclear Waste Policy Got Stalled | Breaking the Cycle of Destructive Critical Infrastructure Hacks | How the U.S. Lost the Ability to Make Medical Masks, and more

Now personal protective equipment (PPE) is in plentiful supply online and in any retail drugstore. Yet, unfortunately, any notion that the country’s underlying supply chain problem has been resolved is just an illusion—one that masks a grim reality. Far from being in a better place with respect to PPE, the United States now stands on the verge of a near-complete inability to manufacture these critical supplies.
The United States still doesn’t manufacture a significant amount of PPE, and several domestic companies that responded to the call to produce PPE are now closed or on the brink of bankruptcy. With many hospitals struggling to remain financially stable, the US healthcare system has reverted to purchasing cheap and often subpar imports of medical supplies like PPE and syringes from nations with lower quality and safety standards, contributing to a significant supply-chain vulnerability and public-health risk.
Leaders across political parties have been working to address this problem. They should now build on those efforts with specific steps, including a rebate program to use money from import tariffs to support domestic PPE production, expanded efforts to enforce the PPE tariffs already in place, and broadened requirements for US government agencies to purchase masks, gloves, and face shields from domestic suppliers or in nations that fully comply with US quality assurance and competitiveness laws. If US policymakers implement innovative policies and incentives, the country can tackle these issues and safeguard national security and public health.

U.S. Expected to Propose Barring Chinese Software in Autonomous Vehicles (Reuters / VOA News)
The U.S. Commerce Department is expected to propose barring Chinese software in autonomous and connected vehicles in the coming weeks, according to sources briefed on the matter.
The Biden administration plans to issue a proposed rule that would bar Chinese software in vehicles in the United States with Level 3 automation and above, which would have the effect of also banning testing on U.S. roads of autonomous vehicles produced by Chinese companies.
The administration, in a previously unreported decision, also plans to propose barring vehicles with Chinese-developed advanced wireless communications abilities modules from U.S. roads, the sources added.
Under the proposal, automakers and suppliers would need to verify that none of their connected vehicle or advanced autonomous vehicle software was developed in a “foreign entity of concern” like China, the sources said.

Elon Musk’s X Sues Advertisers Over Alleged Boycott  (Paresh Dave and Lauren Goode, Wired)
X today filed a lawsuit against a group of major advertisers for allegedly conspiring to withhold advertising dollars from the social media platform, which, since Elon Musk’s takeover, has been seen as more amenable to hosting controversial content.
The suit, filed in federal court in Texas, says dozens of advertisers followed the recommendation of a key advertising coalition, Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), to boycott buying ads on X since Musk bought the company. The suit says this turn of events cost the company billions of dollars in revenue. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages for violation of US antitrust law.
The right-wing video site Rumble, founded more than 10 years ago as an alternative to YouTube and positioned as a platform “immune to cancel culture,” announced on Tuesday that it had filed a similar lawsuit. “GARM was a conspiracy to perpetrate an advertiser boycott of Rumble and others, and that’s illegal,” the company posted on its X account.
In November 2023, the nonprofit media watchdog Media Matters published a report that showed how pro-Nazi content on X had been appearing alongside advertising from reputable brands. As a result, entities like IBM, Disney, Lionsgate, the European Union, and, reportedly, Apple, pulled their ads from X. Later that month, speaking at the New York Times DealBook Summit, Musk told those brands “Go fuck yourself,” and aimed some of his remarks specifically at “Bob,” Disney’s chief executive, Bob Iger.
In a preview of advertisers’ potential defense to the new lawsuits, Sarah Kay Wiley, director of policy at the advertising watchdog group Check My Ads, says in an emailed statement that advertisers have a right under the First Amendment to choose with whom and what they want to associate.
“Advertisers should not have to subsidize viewpoints they don’t agree with—in fact requiring so would be un-American and unconstitutional,” Wiley writes. “Elon Musk and X executives have the right, protected by the First Amendment, to say what they want online, even when it’s inaccurate, and advertisers have the right to keep their ads away from it. It’s as simple as that.”

A New Plan to Break the Cycle of Destructive Critical Infrastructure Hacks  (Lili Hay Newman, Wired)
An endless parade of data breaches, brutally disruptive ransomware attacks, and crippling IT outages has somehow become the norm around the world. And in spite of escalating impacts to critical infrastructure and daily life, progress has been intermittent and often fleeting. Something’s gotta give—and at the BSides Las Vegas security conference this week, a longtime critical-infrastructure security researcher is launching a project to communicate with utility operators, municipalities, and regular people in creative ways about both urgency and optimism around protecting critical infrastructure now.
Dubbed UnDisruptable27, the project will start as a pilot with a $700,000 grant for the first year through Craig Newmark Philanthropies’ Cyber Civil Defense coalition. Led by Josh Corman, who was chief strategist for the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s Covid Task Force, in collaboration with the Institute for Security and Technology (IST), the project will focus on the critical interdependence of water, food, emergency medical care, and power as the backbone of human safety. Corman says that the key goal is to foster new discourse about these challenges inspired by the disaster management tenets “inform, influence, inspire.” In other words, people need to understand the risks and feel empowered that they can take action.
“We are overdependent on undependable things. No one should feel comfortable with the potential for harm here with our current state of defense,” Corman told WIRED ahead of the announcement. “Our dependence on connected tech has grown faster than our ability to secure it. People have been doing good things, but public policy takes time, and I think this year we need to cross certain thresholds on the sense of urgency.”