OUR PICKS LAST WEEKDeepfakes and the Erosion of Trust in Homeland Security | Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance Demands Broader Data Protections | Everything Is a “False Flag” Now | In the 1950s, America Built the Greatest Doomsday Weapon Ever, and more
THREATS & RESPONSES
· The U.S. Cannot Prevent Every AI Biothreat—But It Can Outpace Them
· Partners or Provocateurs? Private-Sector Involvement in Offensive Cyber Operations
· Why Armies Are Using Laser Weapons to Zap Things Out of the Sky
· Two Days Inside the Movement to “Reindustrialize,” and Rearm, America
· Army Special Operations Warns Retired Members of Terror Threat
· A Swarm at Sea: Supplying Troops with On-Demand Autonomous Watercraft
· How Appropriations Are Transforming the Defense Department’s Domestic Operations
THE LONG VIEW
· Everything Is a “False Flag” Now
· Deepfakes and the Erosion of Trust in Homeland Security
· America Throws Big Money at a Small Rare-Earths Mine
· Rethinking the Global AI Race
· In the 1950s, America Built the Greatest Doomsday Weapon Ever
MORE PICKS
· US Alters Tech Policy, Puts Chips on the Table
· “Under the Microscope”: Activists Opposing a Nevada Lithium Mine Were Surveilled for Years, Records Show
· How the Supreme Court’s ‘Rule for the Ages’ Could Impact Trump’s Obama Witch Hunt
· Republicans Pushed the Laken Riley Act to Prioritize Deporting Criminals —but DHS Isn’t Doing That
· Underground with America’s Nuclear-Missile Crews
· Ubiquitous Technical Surveillance Demands Broader Data Protections
· The Technological Transformation of Emergency Management: Part I
· “You Could Throw Out the Results of All These Papers”
· How Trump Killed Cancer Research
· RFK Jr. Wants to Change a Program That Stopped Vaccine Makers from Leaving the U.S. Market. They Could Flee Again.
· E.P.A. Says It Will Eliminate Its Scientific Research Arm
· Every Day Is a Good Day to Repeal the Jones Act
THREATS & RESPONSES
The U.S. Cannot Prevent Every AI Biothreat—But It Can Outpace Them (Tal Feldman and Jonathan Feldman, Lawfare)
Just like LLMs generate text, PLMs generate proteins—but there is no playbook to manage the risks.
Partners or Provocateurs? Private-Sector Involvement in Offensive Cyber Operations (Sezaneh Seymour and Brandon Wales, Lawfare)
A structured framework to evaluate the risks and benefits of authorizing private companies to “hack back.”
Why Armies Are Using Laser Weapons to Zap Things Out of the Sky (Economist)
They’re good drone-killers.
Two Days Inside the Movement to “Reindustrialize,” and Rearm, America (Farah Stockman, New York Times)
Investors from Silicon Valley and senior officials in the Trump administration descended on a convention hall in downtown Detroit last week for a conference committed to spurring a “techno-industrial renaissance” in the United States.
Army Special Operations Warns Retired Members of Terror Threat (Eric Schmitt and Julian E. Barnes, New York Times)
The alert, issued to retired service members who served in Iraq or Syria and live in Florida, did not specify what kind of threat or which terrorist group was involved.
A Swarm at Sea: Supplying Troops with On-Demand Autonomous Watercraft (Kanna Rajan and Karlyn D. Stanley, The Hill)
In any drawn-out military confrontation, the U.S. must support its ground forces with food, fuel, ammunition and weapons. In a conflict with China over Taiwan, however, that material will be coming from as far away as the Philippines and Japan.
That means relying on the large, mostly unarmed, civilian-crewed ships, such as those operated by the Military Sealift Command, which are highly visible and vulnerable to attack. Military Sealift Command ships could be overwhelmed by the numerically superior and militarized Chinese “fishing fleet”
A less vulnerable and more scalable method would be to use low-cost, rapidly built, small autonomous surface vessels to deliver supplies.
How Appropriations Are Transforming the Defense Department’s Domestic Operations (Chris Mirasola, Lawfare)
Congress and the Trump administration are using appropriations law to entrench the Defense Department’s roles in migrant detention and immigration enforcement.
THE LONG VIEW
Everything Is a “False Flag” Now (David Gilbert, Wired)
Conspiracy theories about so-called false-flag attacks have been around for decades. But as trust in media and public institutions craters, every single major news event is now being labeled as fake.
