OUR PICKSThe Era of AI-Generated Ransomware Has Arrived | Trump Is Building His Own Paramilitary Force | How Much Danger Is America’s Central Bank In?, and more

The Era of AI-Generated Ransomware Has Arrived  (Lily Hay Newman and Matt urges, Wired)
Cybercriminals are increasingly using generative AI tools to fuel their attacks, with new research finding instances of AI being used to develop ransomware.

How Much Danger Is America’s Central Bank In?  (Economist)
Whether Lisa Cook stays or goes, important norms have been broken.

The Natural End Point of Trump’s Falsehoods  (David A. Graham, The Atlantic)
Someday, the president may need the American people to believe something he says—and they won’t.

America’s Next Top Racist  (Ali Breland, The Atlantic)
No matter how far Nick Fuentes pushes his bigotry, his influence continues to rise.

Trump Is Building His Own Paramilitary Force (Ezra Klein, New York Times)
I can see the picture of a president doing what he was elected to do. Donald Trump ran unquestionably on mass deportations. He ran on reversing a historic surge of migration into this country. He won on that platform.
I see the evisceration of due process. I see detention centers being built where it is extraordinarily hard for lawyers and families to reach the people inside. I see men in masks refusing to identify themselves and pulling people into vans. I see armed U.S. troops in camo, some on horseback, riding through MacArthur Park in Los Angeles like they’re an occupying army. I see Trump sending in armed forces to take over the American capital.
What is going to happen when, predictably, a protester throws a rock at an agent? Or a Marine hears a car backfiring and thinks it’s a gunshot?
In an instant, this could all explode. You could have American troops firing on American civilians in an American city in a country-defining crisis. What happens then?
Because that’s the other picture I see —the one that keeps coming into clear focus. Not Trump cleaning up crisis or disorder but Trump creating crisis and disorder so he can build what he has wanted to build: an authoritarian state, a military or a paramilitary that answers only to him —that puts him in total control.