OUR PICKSPlan to Set U.S. Special Forces on Mexican Drug Cartels Won’t Work | The Great Pokémon Go Spy Panic | On Climate, Paying Now Is Cheaper than Paying Later, and more

The Plan to Set U.S. Special Forces on Mexican Drug Cartels — and Why Experts Say It Won’t Work  (Joe Barnes, The Telegraph)
Donald Trump has pledged to confront gangs head on, but they are so well-armed they could prove a match for anything.

The Best Black Friday Deals for MAGA, Conspiracists, and Extremists  (David Gilbert, Wired)
Donald Trump’s most extreme supporters may slam big business, the elites, and corporate greed, but they’re not too shy to push their own Black Friday deal

US to Introduce New Restrictions on China’s Access to Cutting-Edge Chips  (Will Knight and Louise Matsakis, Wired)
The new limits, which are expected to be announced Monday, are intended to slow China’s ability to build large and powerful AI models.

Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard Are Coming for the Spooks  (Economist)
The president-elect’s intelligence picks suggest a radical agenda. Gabbard’s Russophile tendencies are particularly jarring. Some in the intelligence world believe that European agencies might start holding back human-intelligence reports or “sanitizing” them of information that would previously have been shared.

The Great Pokémon Go Spy Panic  (Zach Dorfman, Foreign Policy)
How a global hit sparked digital paranoia inside U.S. intelligence.

On Climate, Paying Now Is Cheaper than Paying Later  (Tim Hirschel-Burns, Foreign Policy)
COP29’s new goal poses a challenge to wealthy countries and international financial institutions.

What Trump Doesn’t Understand About the Military  (Kori Schake, The Atlantic)
Politicizing the U.S. armed forces won’t just hurt democracy. It will make the military weaker.