OUR PICKSCould AI Tilt the Outcome of Elections? | Securing America’s Digital Infrastructure | Radioactive Wasps in South Carolina, and more

Not With a Bang, but With a Truth Social Post  (Tom Nichols, The Atlantic)
The president is rattling a nuclear saber as a distraction.
Donald Trump, beset by a week of bad news, has decided to rattle the most dangerous saber of all. In a post today on his Truth Social site, the president claimed that in response to recent remarks by former Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, he has “ordered two Nuclear Submarines to be positioned in the appropriate regions.”
Medvedev is a man with little actual power in Russia, but he has become Russia’s top internet troll, regularly threatening America and its allies. No one takes him seriously, even in his own country.
The problem is not that Trump is going to spark a nuclear crisis with a post about two submarines—at least not this time. The much more worrisome issue is that the president of the United States thinks it is acceptable to use ballistic-missile submarines like toys, objects to be waved around when he wants to distract the public or deflect from bad news, or merely because some Russian official has annoyed him.
Trump’s nuclear threats are reckless. (I would call them “silly,” but that is too small a word when the commander in chief even alludes to nuclear arms.)
Nuclear-missile submarines are not toys. No one understood this better than Trump’s predecessors, the 11 presidents who have been the only other people in American history with the authority to order the use of nuclear weapons. They treated any declarations about nuclear weapons with utter gravity and sobriety. They avoided even mentioning such things unless they were articulating a carefully planned policy and communicating it to allies and enemies alike. 
Trump, however, has now discarded all of these red lines. He has initiated a new era in which the chief executive can use threats regarding the most powerful weapons on Earth to salve his ego and improve his political fortunes. Once upon a time, America was governed by serious people. No longer.

Could AI Tilt the Outcome of Elections?  (Economist)
New research shows it is being used for good and ill.

The Next Battlefield: Securing America’s Digital Infrastructure  (Mira Ricardel, National Interest)
By combining their expertise, resources, and global reach, HPE and Juniper Networks can help challenge Huawei head-on with more advanced and secure capabilities.

It’s Time for the Semiconductor Industry to Step Up  (Andrew Kidd, Bruce Schneier, and Celine Lee, National Interest)
Semiconductor firms have a lot to learn from America’s banks; investing in compliance is the price of entry in a critical industry.

Radioactive Wasp Nests Found Near Nuclear Storage Site in South Carolina  (Andrew Jeong, Washington Post)
One of the nests found near the Savannah River Site had a radiation level 10 times what is allowed by federal regulations, according to a federal report.