So, nuclear classification issues. For the @NNSAHruby equities - National Nuclear Security Administration, part of the @ENERGY department, @CherylRofer has a great explainer. As @wellerstein and others have explained exhaustively, a lot of information about nuclear weapons is.

https://twitter.com/marcambinder/status/1557966157801345024

Born classified. That is, by statute, not by executive order, it is protected national defense information. NNSA and DOE declassify various bits ... like, "the yield from this test was x" or "ablative laser refraction is used to help develop more precisely implosion technologies.

Thread: this isn't a pattern from the noise. During the last few months, the Biden administration has aggressively ramped up its cyber defense and cyber offense efforts, throwing attack groups for a loop. (1) There was a still-secret national security decision directive ordering a whole-of-government offensive counter cyber intrusion campaign. # (2) Acknowledged offensive Cybercom operations targeting major ransomware firms (reuters.com/technology/exc…)

If voters "just knew the truth" is seductive and reductive and gives the media omnipotence (also, weirdly, does the same for the anti-media (the GOP machine)..while giving voters zero agency and treating them like dolts.

https://twitter.com/dennisyedwab/status/1455744454166519809

The right wing anti-media machine exists. It's powerful. It's asymmetrically powerful. It hurts Dems sometimes. Grieving about it makes a lot of consultants rich. The account that it's *dispositive* fails to plausibly explain so many counter-examples and is unpersuasive.

Others are thinking: If Dems in Congress had passed really the popular stuff that helps eveything, and could point to it, rather than having to rely on/mess up their anti-Trump /cultural messaging - and Dems mess this up regardless of what side you're on ....

https://twitter.com/blakehounshell/status/1455705503464673282

Of course there is no single reductive answer as to why... but only the absolute fact that Dems lost to a candidate they had every reason to think they could beat...

The #AspenInfoCommission on the infodemic will be extraordinarily valuable and the commissioners are first-rate. I wish I was had been selected, but seeing the caliber of the scholars and thinkers who were, I don’t feel put out. I feel obliged to help, where I can. My focus continues to be on pragmatic intervention: what the ordinary person can do to model good information processing habits, mindful social communication, and effective claim reviews and fact-checking. For a subset: information operations, response matrices, org dynamics.

A Threat About the Nuclear Transfer of Power: When President Trump departs Joint Base Andrews at 8:00 am on 1/20, he will be accompanied by a military aide and an emergency actions team, never more than 2 doors or 2 minutes away... for the last time. Simultaneously, as Joe Biden and Kamala Harris begin their day and prepare to depart for the U.S. Capitol, two teams of military aides -- with two other satchels -- will shadow them.

A Friday debunking. Special operations forces (SOF), and especially the classified standing joint task forces of the Joint Special Operations Command - do NOT / NOT play a role in NSSEs, nor do they have a mission set that involves protecting the national capital region. Before the FBI and DOE and HHS/FEMA and Northcom developed their own specialized counter-WMD units, JSOC did have an EOD mission. And for certain specialized foreign counter-terrorism incidents on domestic soil, and for hostage situations where the FBI HRT needs help...

A list of questions about the 1/6 siege: a thread. About motives, planning, and operations. Did members of Congress or their staff unwittingly take participants in the riot on private tours before the rally? If so, and after the tours, did any of them have reason to think that these tours would be used in service of a seditious act?

LA needs to crash the 284636 tiered CA system; ask for more vaccine based on imminent collapse of the system; open 24/7 vaccination centers in every zip code, (2 per underserved zips), mobilize contract health workers and start jabbing. This can be done. It’s not being done.

https://twitter.com/CBSLA/status/1348879282152550400

We are numb to the deaths. We are numb to the press conferences with the same faces urging us to do more. We are masked. We are shut down as much as we can be. Stop yelling at us. Start breaking rules. The quicker we do this, the quicker we save our medical system. And lives.

Here are the actual physical and temporal limiting factors on presidential nuclear launch authority. 1/ 1. POTUS needs to contact the NMCC or an alternate command post. This requires a phone number. These number are on speed-dial on the phones carried by the military aide and emergency action team from WHMO.

* Biden will choose either Michelle Flournoy, Jeh Johnson or Tammy Duckworth for SECDEF. He takes the civ-mil distinction seriously.
* former ADDO Justin Jackson is being considered for DCIA, along with Donilon, Jeh Johnson and some others. Jackson is on the CIA landing team Note that, for each position here, 5-7 people are being vetted; some candidates are vetted as fallback choices. The nat sec team faces huge challenges. Biden wants them to work well together and to support his vision. Lots of conversations taking place. Process takes time.

The sad truth here is that LA has been locked down to the point where there are no more plausible interventions and closures in the government’s toolkit. So health authorities are improvising and then getting their backs up when citizens dare question them.

https://twitter.com/nikroybal/status/1331713880041562112

And closing down OUTDOOR dining might well drive people to have more private parties and dinners inside, which does facilitate transmission. So, LA closed down outdoor dining for three weeks. They mean well. But this is the “last mile” enforcement problem.

President’s pollster willfully amplifying completely BS claim here. Percentages are of RV, not VAP and are not out of line with history. Also, the source for the claim of turnout exceeding 100 percent has retracted its data. This adult human knows better. Receipts to follow. This is the source for the claim that Powerline amplified. It has corrected its data. worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings…

1) Denying agency to Cuban American voters in Miami-Dade and assuming they were the victims of disinformation OR that Dem consultants didn’t spend enough money “reaching out” is a fundamental misreading of why people vote. 2) some (but not all) consultants who spend money on ads (which generally don’t work) targeted at “Latinx” voters as a group are grifters. Cuban American voters do not consider themselves as Latinx. They are Americans with Cuban heritage, South Floridians, with diverse concerns.

The continuity of government programs don’t say much about *successor incapacitation* , much as security protocols can’t do a heck of a lot with “everyone including the PPD, has to quarantine” while protecting a president who might be sick with a contagious, deadly virus. In emergencies, WHMO and the White House staff have places to go, people to protect those places, and decent, secure communication networks. This is uncharted territory.

I used to think that the @JoeBiden campaign had no counter disinformation strategy. Now I think that the President’s disinformation avalanche has had the effect of rebutting and limiting itself, to some degree, because it has maxed out its plausible audience. However .... It has still has an enormous unhealthy effect on the public health and voting integrity. The result of disinformation campaigns is usually paralysis and confusion, layered in with fear and aversion to norms. People who aren’t in the President’s audience have also suffered.

Is there any purpose in having any rules when we know the President won’t or can’t abide by them? What’s the format for a debate using the frame of a national emergency? Chaos came from one direction. And there’s nothing a moderator can do. Will the debate commission make the first move to allow the producer to shut off mics? Will the other debates be canceled?

(1) How should TV news cover a president who makes existential threats to democracy as a habit without paralyzing the agency of voters and without giving in to the obvious gaslighting? A few thoughts. (2). First, lead with the reality. Election night might be over quickly or it might take a while. Taking a while doesn’t mean things are bad. They mean local officials are working stuff out. Repeat this idea.

1. The United States DOES NOT HAVE a national counter-disinformation strategy. I say again, for the people in the back: the United States does NOT have a whole-of-government, whole of society, whole-of-anything strategy to address the grave threats posed by disinfo. 2. This is odd. It is infuriating. It is not surprising. The current president's national security strategy identifies fighting misinformation as a priority, although it treats MI as though it's an attack vector, rather than an emergent global condition hsdl.org/?abstract&did=…

Maybe I shouldn’t be thinking this way, because, you know, he’s Bob Woodward and I’m not, and go team journalism, rah, but: how many lives could have been .. well... if Trump supporters in March heard audio of him and Woodward — like the father of DNC speaker Kristin Urquiza. Trump was the key vector of harmful misinformation. ... We KNOW that his supporters BELIEVE HIM and altered their behavior because they thought COVID would be less harmful then the flu ... cause that’s what Trump said.

NEW, Re: @Facebook and Covid: today, I hit “share” to spread a Covid-related story; I’m shown info about the original poster, the 1st time the link was shared, and also given the chance to cancel my engagement. @Facebook forces me to mindfully pause b/f sharing. This is good. Now, do voting. Everything related to voting. Make people stop before sharing. This is how platforms can begin to make a different at scale.