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California hospitals to pay billions for seismic safety upgrades
California hospitals would need to make substantial investments—between $34 billion and $143 billion statewide—to meet 2030 state seismic safety standards, according to a new report.
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Austria investigates ties between NZ terrorist and Austrian populist, far-right movement
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said on Wednesday that the Austrian security services were investigating possible connections between Brenton Tarrant, the Christchurch terrorist, and the Austrian Identitarian Movement, a far-right, racist, anti-immigration party on the fringes of Austrian politics.
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Why the next terror manifesto could be even harder to track
Just before his shooting spree at two Christchurch, New Zealand mosques, the alleged mass murderer posted a hate-filled manifesto on several file-sharing sites. Soon, the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence on platforms and decentralized tools like IPFS will mean that the online hate landscape will change. Combating online extremism in the future may be less about “meme wars” and user-banning, or “de-platforming,” and could instead look like the attack-and-defend, cat-and-mouse technical one-upsmanship that has defined the cybersecurity industry since the 1980s. No matter what technical challenges come up, one fact never changes: The world will always need more good, smart people working to counter hate than there are promoting it.
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Recaptured Italian former militant Battisti admits 1970s murders
Former communist militant Cesare Battisti has admitted four murders carried out in the 1970s, during Italy’s so-called “Years of Lead,” weeks after being jailed in Italy for the killings that were part of a failed bid to spark a far-left revolution.
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Drones pose significant cyber, privacy challenges
Growing drone use in populated areas poses significant risks that, without additional safeguards, could result in attacks by malicious entities and exploited for use in cyberattacks, terrorism, crime and invasion of privacy.
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Second edition of Nuclear Nonproliferation Textbook
Brookhaven Lab has updated and published the second edition of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Textbook, originally published in 2013. The new release describes important changes that have since been implemented in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) safeguards system for the peaceful use of nuclear energy and documents the IAEA’s verification role in Iran that began in 2015.
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More mass shooting in states with permissive gun laws
States with more permissive gun laws and greater gun ownership have higher rates of mass shootings, and a growing divide is emerging between states with restrictive versus permissive gun laws. According to a new study, researchers found that in most years permissive states had higher mass shooting rates compared to restrictive states.
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AG: Muller did not find that Trump’s campaign “conspired with the Russian government” 2016 election interference effort
On Saturday afternoon, Attorney General William Barr sent Congress his “principal conclusions” of the Mueller report. Barr quotes the Mueller report to say that “[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” The Mueller report does not take a position on whether or not Trump engaged in obstruction of justice. Barr writes: “The Special Counsel… did not draw a conclusion — one way or the other — as to whether the examined conduct constituted obstruction.” The AG quotes the report to say that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
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Dunford: Google’s work with China “challenges” U.S. military advantage
The top U.S. military officer has called out U.S. technology giant Google for its artificial intelligence venture in China, saying it “creates a challenge” in maintaining a U.S. military advantage over the Chinese.
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Assessing the risk of violence by extremists
A new directory has been assembled from frameworks that have been developed in recent years to assess aspects of extremist violence, a term used to encompass terrorist violence that is framed by ideology and targeted violence that is framed by idiosyncratic beliefs. A new CREST report published today provides detail on several frameworks that are used to assess risks of extremist violence.
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Social media create a spectacle society that makes it easier for terrorists to achieve notoriety
The shocking mass-shooting in Christchurch last Friday is notable for using livestreaming video technology to broadcast horrific first-person footage of the shooting on social media. The use of social media technology and livestreaming marks the attack as different from many other terrorist incidents. It is a form of violent “performance crime.” That is, the video streaming is a central component of the violence itself, it’s not somehow incidental to the crime, or a disgusting trophy for the perpetrator to re-watch later. In an era of social media, which is driven in large part by spectacle, we all have a role to play in ensuring that terrorists aren’t rewarded for their crimes with our clicks.
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Exploring how propaganda is used to recruit terrorists
How do terrorists use propaganda to entice people to join their ranks? Which personality types are the most influenced by it and what types of messaging are most effective in countering these recruitment campaigns? A DOD-funded research hopes to stem recruitment of individuals to terrorist cells – particularly young people age 18 to 26, the most targeted demographic.
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Biotechnology advances offer opportunities for actors with malicious intent
Over the past decade, the biotechnology economy has experienced remarkable growth, resulting in the rapid expansion of biological knowledge and application. These advances create openings for actors with malicious intent to harness readily available tools and techniques to create biological threats or bioweapons.
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Former East German agents questioned in Lockerbie bombing probe
Hundreds were killed when Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over the Scottish village of Lockerbie in December 1988. Libya later took responsibility and paid compensation to the victims’ families — and one of its secret agents spent eleven years in jail for the attack. Scottish and German investigators, acting on newly revealed information, are now looking onto the possibility that agents of STASI — East Germany’s secret police — were involved.
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Bosnian massacre survivors hail UN court ruling on Karadzic sentence
Relatives of victims of the Srebrenica massacre have hailed a UN court decision that ordered Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic to serve the rest of his life in prison on genocide and war crimes charges. Karadzic was found guilty for his role in the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces. It was the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
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More headlines
The long view
Kinetic Operations Bring Authoritarian Violence to Democratic Streets
Foreign interference in democracies has a multifaceted toolkit. In addition to information manipulation, the tactical tools authoritarian actors use to undermine democracy include cyber operations, economic coercion, malign finance, and civil society subversion.
Patriots’ Day: How Far-Right Groups Hijack History and Patriotic Symbols to Advance Their Cause, According to an Expert on Extremism
Extremist groups have attempted to change the meaning of freedom and liberty embedded in Patriots’ Day — a commemoration of the battles of Lexington and Concord – to serve their far-right rhetoric, recruitment, and radicalization. Understanding how patriotic symbols can be exploited offers important insights into how historical narratives may be manipulated, potentially leading to harmful consequences in American society.
Trump Aims to Shut Down State Climate Policies
President Donald Trump has launched an all-out legal attack on states’ authority to set climate change policy. Climate-focused state leaders say his administration has no legal basis to unravel their efforts.
Vaccine Integrity Project Says New FDA Rules on COVID-19 Vaccines Show Lack of Consensus, Clarity
Sidestepping both the FDA’s own Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee and the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), two Trump-appointed FDA leaders penned an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine to announce new, more restrictive, COVID-19 vaccine recommendations. Critics say that not seeking broad input into the new policy, which would help FDA to understand its implications, feasibility, and the potential for unintended consequences, amounts to policy by proclamation.
Twenty-One Things That Are True in Los Angeles
To understand the dangers inherent in deploying the California National Guard – over the strenuous objections of the California governor – and active-duty Marines to deal with anti-ICE protesters, we should remind ourselves of a few elementary truths, writes Benjamin Wittes. Among these truths: “Not all lawful exercises of authority are wise, prudent, or smart”; “Not all crimes require a federal response”; “Avoiding tragic and unnecessary confrontations is generally desirable”; and “It is thus unwise, imprudent, and stupid to take actions for performative reasons that one might reasonably anticipate would increase the risks of such confrontations.”
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak write, noting that “lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise.” Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system. In the prosecution’s case against Luigi Mangione, they charge, “That discretion was abused.”