Leak raises fresh questions about Pentagon’s internal security

Leak raises fresh questions about Pentagon’s internal security

The Washington Post reports: The leak of hundreds of classified intelligence documents about the war in Ukraine and U.S. spying on allies has left many officials asking: How did this happen again? Jack Teixeira, a 21-year-old, low-level National Guard member assigned to an intelligence support squadron in Massachusetts, allegedly removed hundreds of classified documents from his office on base and brought them home. He then shared them with his friends in an online community united by their love of guns…

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India’s descent into authoritarianism shouldn’t be ignored by its democratic allies

India’s descent into authoritarianism shouldn’t be ignored by its democratic allies

Howard W. French writes: When a judge in India’s Gujarat state sentenced the country’s most prominent opposition leader, Rahul Gandhi, to two years in prison last month for a remark personally offensive to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, he was doing more than sanctioning speech in a narrowly censorious way. If it is upheld, his ruling, seemingly by design, would remove Modi’s rival from the parliament and dramatically marginalize his place in India’s politics. In most democracies, speech in general,…

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As world warms, droughts come on faster, study finds

As world warms, droughts come on faster, study finds

The New York Times reports: Flash droughts, the kind that arrive quickly and can lay waste to crops in a matter of weeks, are becoming more common and faster to develop around the world, and human-caused climate change is a major reason, a new scientific study has found. As global warming continues, more abrupt dry spells could have grave consequences for people in humid regions whose livelihoods depend on rain-fed agriculture. The study found that flash droughts occurred more often…

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Russia’s commando units gutted by Ukraine war, U.S. leak shows

Russia’s commando units gutted by Ukraine war, U.S. leak shows

The Washington Post reports: The war in Ukraine has gutted Russia’s clandestine spetsnaz forces, and it will take Moscow years to rebuild them, according to classified U.S. assessments obtained by The Washington Post. The finding, which has not been previously reported, is among a cache of sensitive materials leaked online through the messaging platform Discord. U.S. officials attributed their assessments to Russian commanders’ overreliance on the specialized units, which have been put to use as part of front-line infantry formations….

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Ukraine says U.S. intelligence leaks won’t impact its planned offensive

Ukraine says U.S. intelligence leaks won’t impact its planned offensive

The Wall Street Journal reports: A senior Ukrainian official played down the seriousness of the online leak of classified U.S. intelligence documents, saying they would have no impact on a critical Ukrainian offensive planned for the coming weeks. The leaked files “have no operational significance,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a Ukrainian presidential adviser, said in an interview. “They have no impact on the front line or the planning of the General Staff.” The documents published so far don’t contain any major intelligence…

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Why Jack Teixeira had access to so much classified information

Why Jack Teixeira had access to so much classified information

Fred Kaplan writes: One of the odd mysteries in the case of Jack Teixeira—the 21-year-old airman arrested on Thursday for pilfering and leaking hundreds of highly classified documents to pals online—turns out not to be so odd after all. The puzzle, as I noted in a column on Thursday, is why the Massachusetts Air National Guard, which is where Teixeira worked, would have access to such material in the first place. The answer is that Otis Air Base, the Cape…

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Israel’s one-state reality

Israel’s one-state reality

Michael Barnett, Nathan Brown, Marc Lynch, and Shibley Telhami write: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power in Israel with a narrow, extreme right-wing coalition has shattered even the illusion of a two-state solution. Members of his new government have not been shy about stating their views on what Israel is and what it should be in all the territories it controls: a Greater Israel defined not just as a Jewish state but one in which the law enshrines Jewish…

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How Tennessee illustrates the three rules of MAGA

How Tennessee illustrates the three rules of MAGA

David French writes: While Trumpism is a complex phenomenon, there are three ideas or principles that are consistently present: First, that before Trump the G.O.P. was a political doormat, helplessly walked over by Democrats time and again. Second, that we live in a state of cultural emergency where the right has lost everywhere and must turn to politics to reverse this cultural momentum. And third, that in this state of emergency, all conservatives must rally together. There can be no…

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A rural Texas county just blinked on library closures. Pressure worked

A rural Texas county just blinked on library closures. Pressure worked

Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent write: It isn’t every day that the ruminations of local bureaucrats in a small rural Texas county become national news. But when commissioners in Llano County — population 21,000 — voted Thursday to keep its three-branch library system open, the moment was closely monitored by the biggest news organizations in the country. That’s because Llano County has become a national symbol of local right-wing censorship efforts after officials threatened to close its libraries entirely rather than allow offending materials to remain on shelves….

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The hacking of ChatGPT is just getting started

The hacking of ChatGPT is just getting started

Wired reports: It took Alex Polyakov just a couple of hours to break GPT-4. When OpenAI released the latest version of its text-generating chatbot in March, Polyakov sat down in front of his keyboard and started entering prompts designed to bypass OpenAI’s safety systems. Soon, the CEO of security firm Adversa AI had GPT-4 spouting homophobic statements, creating phishing emails, and supporting violence. Polyakov is one of a small number of security researchers, technologists, and computer scientists developing jailbreaks and prompt injection…

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New leaked documents show broad infighting among Russian officials

New leaked documents show broad infighting among Russian officials

The New York Times reports: The depth of the infighting inside the Russian government appears broader and deeper than previously understood, judging from a newly discovered cache of classified intelligence documents that has been leaked online. The additional documents, which did not surface in a 53-page set that came to wide public attention online last week, paint a picture of the Russian government feuding over the count of the dead and wounded in the Ukraine war, with the domestic intelligence…

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Russia says China agreed to secretly provide weapons, leaked documents show

Russia says China agreed to secretly provide weapons, leaked documents show

The Washington Post reports: China approved “provision of lethal aid” to Russia in its war in Ukraine earlier this year and planned to disguise military equipment as civilian items, according to a U.S. intercept of Russian intelligence revealed in leaked secret documents. The intercept, apparently obtained through U.S. eavesdropping on Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), was included in a top-secret summary, dated Feb. 23, of recent Ukraine- and Russia-related “products” compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence….

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FBI makes probable cause arrest of Jack Teixeira in connection with classified documents leak

FBI makes probable cause arrest of Jack Teixeira in connection with classified documents leak

ABC News reports: The FBI on Thursday made a probable cause arrest in North Dighton, Massachusetts, in connection with the leaked documents probe. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Jack Teixeira was taken into custody in relation to the investigation into “alleged authorized removal, retention and transmission of classified national defense information.” Teixeira, 21, is a member of the Massachusetts Air Force National Guard. “FBI agents took Teixeira into custody earlier this afternoon without incident,” the attorney general said. “He will…

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Tennessee’s legislature is broken and it’s not alone

Tennessee’s legislature is broken and it’s not alone

The New York Times reports: There are 99 legislators in the Tennessee House of Representatives, the body that voted on Thursday to expel two of its Democratic members for leading an anti-gun protest in the chamber. Sixty of them had no opponent in last November’s election. Of the remaining House races, almost none were competitive. Not a single seat flipped from one party to the other. “We’re just not in a normal political system,” said Kent Syler, a political science…

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