America Is Remaking Its Disaster-Relief System | Worries About Space Pearl Harbor | Experts Predict AI Will Lead to the Extinction of Humanity, and more

America Is Remaking Its Disaster-Relief System  (Economist)
The administration hopes to undo perverse incentives.

Bloodied Faces, Sobbing Children: Immigration Officers Smash Car Windows to Speed Up Arrests  (Nicole Foy and McKenzie Funk, Propublica)
We’ve documented nearly 50 incidents of immigration officers shattering car windows to make arrests —a tactic experts say was rarely used before Trump took office. ICE claims its officers use a “minimum amount of force.”

Why the United States Should Not Fear a Space Pearl Harbor  (Lawfare / RAND)
In the early 2000s, U.S. defense analysts sounded the alarm (PDF) about a potential “Space Pearl Harbor.” They warned that the U.S. military was becoming increasingly dependent on a small number of vulnerable satellites that would become tempting targets during a crisis or conflict. Those fears grew exponentially after China’s landmark demonstration in 2007 of a direct-ascent anti-satellite (DA-ASAT) missile that destroyed a Chinese weather satellite. Some analysts have argued in the years since that satellites are becoming a liability rather than an asset, potentially even “the American military’s Achilles heel.” Policymakers have warned that a Space Pearl Harbor risks leaving U.S. forces “deaf, dumb, blind, and impotent.”
These fears have significant implications. If the United States depends heavily on satellites that it cannot defend effectively, that raises fundamental questions about its grand strategy and ability to defend allies and partners in the Pacific. If China believes that counterspace attacks could paralyze the U.S. military, that could fuel crisis instability by incentivizing China to strike first.
Fortunately, the magnitude of the challenge remains more manageable than pessimists fear. 

A New Satanic Neo-Nazi Group Is Recruiting Children as Young as 12  (Michael Corech, Vice)
At the start of this year, residents woke up to find troubling graffiti sprayed across several locations in the Bad Herrenalb district of southwestern Germany. Alongside the names of well-known extremist networks like No Lives Matter (NLM) and 764, there was the moniker of a new group: Milikolosskrieg, a neo-Nazi organization that has emerged in the last year. The person behind the graffiti shared the press coverage it generated in a closed group on the messaging app Signal, to the applause of other members of Milikolosskrieg, which translates into English as “military war.”

“They Apologize for the Notification, Not for Platforming Nazis:” Substack Under Fire for Promoting Radical Content  (Konstancija Gasaitytė, Cybernews)
Joshua Fisher-Birch, a terrorism analyst, has been monitoring Substack’s significance for groups such as neo-Nazis to spread their propaganda, reports Ars Technica. His findings reveal that Substack has been seen as a platform on which content is less likely to be removed compared with other platforms. However, he believes the platform will continue to tolerate such content, reminding us of its failure to follow “limited community guidelines” in 2024. During that time, a white supremacist blog urged violence against Jewish people, which was reported by the Counter Extremism Project (CEP).

Gore and Violent Extremism  (Ali Fisher and Arthur Bradley, Vox Pol)
Gore-related websites enable the hosting and sharing of illegal videos, including those produced by proscribed terrorist entities. The websites are numerous, free to access, provide no user or child safety features, and have seen a growth in visitor numbers in recent years due to ongoing conflicts. Most gore-related websites offer download and social media share functionality allowing for graphic content, including 1000s showing terrorist violence, to be shared across social media.

US Space Command Is Preparing for Satellite-on-Satellite Combat  (Economist)
Toward the end of last year a pair of military satellites, one American and the other French, prepared for a delicate orbital minuet. They were about to conduct a so-called rendezvous and proximity operation (RPO)—in which one or more satellites approach another to inspect or manipulate it—near an enemy satellite. They have not said which, but it is not hard to guess. “The French have talked about Russian maneuvers [near French satellites] over the years,” says General Stephen Whiting, speaking at the headquarters of US Space Command in Colorado Springs. “And so…we demonstrated that we could both maneuver satellites near each other and near other countries’ satellites in a way that signaled our ability to operate well together.”
The exercise was so successful, he says, that there are plans to repeat it later this year. It is a milestone: the first time that America has conducted an RPO like this with a country outside the Five Eyes, a spy pact whose members co-operate closely in space, and the first time it was done as a “purpose-built” operation, rather than in response to events. It also embodies America’s new, more muscular approach to space. Space Command was re-established in 2019 during Donald Trump’s first term. In recent years it has focused on building its headquarters and developing staff. Now it is ready. “We now have a combatant command focused on war fighting” in space, says General Whiting.