• China May Have Used a Recent Massive iPhone Hack to Target Uighur Muslims

    A recent massive iPhone hack discovered by Google researchers may have been a campaign to target Uighur Muslims, an oppressed ethnic minority living in China, TechCrunch and Forbes report. The hack came to light last week, when researchers at Google’s cybersecurity wing Project Zero reported they had found a handful of websites which had been secretly injecting spyware into iPhones over the course of two years.

  • Calling Off Iowa’s “Digital Caucuses” Is a Wise Display of Caution

    Caution and restraint are not known as the hallmarks of the digital revolution. Especially when there’s the admirable possibility of increasing participation by going digital, the temptation to do so is strong—and rarely resisted. But a decision reportedly taken by the Democratic National Committee, however, presents a significant display of caution that deserves both attention and praise. “Showing restraint usually isn’t exciting or flashy,” Joshua Geltzer writes. “But it can be admirable. And, here, organizations like the DNC that take these steps deserve our collective applause for erring on the side of caution, especially in a world replete with cybersecurity and election interference threats.”

  • Helping Structures Better Withstand Earthquakes, Wind, and Fire

    NIST is awarding more than $6.6 million to fund research into improving disaster resilience. Eleven organizations will receive 12 grants to conduct research into how earthquakes, wind and fire affect the built environment to inform building designs, codes and standards to help those structures better withstand such hazards.

  • “Domestic Terrorism” Bills Create More Problems Than They Solve

    A mass shooting by a white supremacist in El Paso that killed 22 people has renewed calls to enlarge the government’s powers to prosecute “domestic terrorism.” Proponents of these proposals, many of whom are former law enforcement officials, make two main arguments: that a new domestic terrorism statute would allow the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to catch perpetrators before they are able to carry out an attack, and that formal charges of “domestic terrorism” would demonstrate that the government treats white supremacists with the same seriousness that it treats those associated with ISIS or other groups overseas. Neither is convincing.

  • Let’s (Not) Make a Deal: Geopolitics and Greenland

    Trump’s offer to buy Greenland may have once again demonstrated his lack of diplomatic knowledge and his tendency to offend his allies unnecessarily, but it is not a wild-eyed fluke. Instead, it reflects a steadily increasing American interest in Greenland that is spurred by fear of Chinese and Russian encroachments. At the same time, however, a quest to purchase Greenland is not the optimal way to achieve American security interests, as it is unlikely to succeed, and even if it did, it would be far more expensive than other, more sensible approaches. Instead, the United States should engage with Denmark and Greenland to find common ground on shared concerns.

  • U.S. Cracks Down on Chinese Economic Espionage

    The U.S. Justice Department is escalating prosecution of Chinese economic espionage cases, part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on China’s alleged theft of American intellectual property and other predatory practices that are at the heart of trade tensions between Washington and Beijing.

  • A College Reading List for the Post-Truth Era

    “We live in a time beset with belittlement of science, hostility toward expertise and attacks on traditional democratic institutions,” Michael T. Nietzel, president emeritus of Missouri State University, writes. “It’s a post-truth period where conspiracy theories and crackpot ideas flourish. If the facts conflict with someone’s sense of identity or political ideology, then the facts are disposable. They can be replaced with notions that feel better or reverberate on social media.” What is the best way to achieve the goal of making young students less susceptible to dangerous s stupidities and toxic conspiracy theories? Nietzel has a suggestion — although he admits it is increasingly rare as an academic expectation: serious reading. He offers seven recent books which champion reason over emotion, distinguish facts from fallacies, and enumerate the dangers of ignoring the truth.

  • Examining Whether the Terrorism Label Applies to Antifa

    Antifa is an umbrella movement comprising people of various ideologies who are united in their opposition to white supremacism, neo-Nazism and fascism. Some elements of antifa — especially anarchists, along with Marxists, Maoists, and anarcho-syndicalists, who are usually among the most visible, vocal and violent elements which take part in antifa protests – endorse, and participate in, political violence Does all of that make antifa a terrorist organization? Scott Stewart writes for Stratfor that the short answer is no — if for no other reason that antifa isn’t really a group or organization to begin with. “But even if elements that participate in the antifa movement espouse political violence to oppose white supremacists, that doesn’t make it a terrorist group — presidential threats to declare it one notwithstanding. Nevertheless, the more forceful aspects of the ideology’s direct action are likely to result in disorder on the streets and damage to property, presenting a problem for any person or business that happens to find itself in the way,” Stewart writes.

  • Hackers Could Have Breached U.S. Bioterrorism Defenses for Years, Records Show. We’ll Never Know Whether They Did

    The Department of Homeland Security stored sensitive data from the nation’s bioterrorism defense program on an insecure website where it was vulnerable to attacks by hackers for over a decade, according to government documents reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. The data included the locations of at least some BioWatch air samplers, which are installed at subway stations and other public locations in more than 30 U.S. cities and are designed to detect anthrax or other airborne biological weapons, Homeland Security officials confirmed. It also included the results of tests for possible pathogens, a list of biological agents that could be detected and response plans that would be put in place in the event of an attack.

  • U.S. School Spends $48 Million on Curved Corridors and Hiding Places to Foil Mass Shooters

    A school in the United States has spent $48 million redesigning its buildings with curved corridors, hiding places, and cement barriers in a bid to thwart mass shooters. The project at Fruitport High School in Michigan is aimed at reducing casualties in the event of an attack by hampering the sight lines available to a gunman in corridors. Cement barriers are being installed in hallways for pupils and teachers to take cover. Classroom windows looking on to hallways are being covered with impact-resistant film. Each classroom will also have a corner, called a “shadow zone,” that is not visible from the hallway.

  • Why a Domestic Terrorism Law Is a Terrible Idea

    There is a big push for the federal criminalization of domestic terrorism. Andrew C. McCarthy writes that the impulse, of course, is understandable but the push is attempting to address a non-problem because “There are no meaningful impediments to federal investigation and prosecution of domestic terrorism.” He adds: “We should never have to wait for foreign powers to attack before taking action to thwart them. With our own citizens, however, the line we draw is the planned or actual use of force. Until that threshold is crossed, anti-government agitation is protected, regardless of how obnoxious it may be.”

  • China’s Spies Are on the Offensive

    Espionage and counterespionage have been essential tools of statecraft for centuries, of course, and U.S. and Chinese intelligence agencies have been battling one another for decades. But what recent cases suggest is that the intelligence war is escalating—that China has increased both the scope and the sophistication of its efforts to steal secrets from the U.S.

  • Facebook, Google, Twitter and the “Digital Disinformation Mess”

    The preliminary results of Facebook’s long-awaited “bias” audit are out. The key takeaway? Everyone is still unhappy. The report is little more than a formalized catalog of six categories of grievances aired in Republican-led congressional hearings over the past two years. It doesn’t include any real quantitative assessment of bias. There are no statistics assessing the millions of moderation decisions that Facebook and Instagram make each day. The results are all the more remarkable because the audit was an exhaustive affair, the fruit of about a year of research led by former Republican Sen. Jon Kyl, encompassing interviews with scores of conservative lawmakers and organizations. “Despite the time and energy invested, the conspicuous absence of evidence within the audit suggests what many media researchers already knew: Allegations of political bias are political theater,” Renee DiResta wites.

  • How a “Political Astroturfing” App Coordinates Pro-Israel Influence Operations

    The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has long been a global battle, fought by hundreds of proxies in dozens of national capitals by way of political, economic, and cultural pressure. As the internet has evolved, so have the tools used to wage this information struggle. The latest innovation — a pro-Israel smartphone app that seeds and amplifies pro-Israel messages across social media — saw its first major test in May 2019. It offered a glimpse of the novel methods by which future influence campaigns will be conducted and information wars won.

  • We Need to Ban More Emerging Technologies

    With more and more innovation, there is less and less time to reflect on the consequences. To tame this onrushing tide, society needs dams and dikes. Just as has begun to happen with facial recognition, it’s time to consider legal bans and moratoriums on other emerging technologies. These need not be permanent or absolute, but innovation is not an unmitigated good. The more powerful a technology is, the more care it requires to safely operate.