Day 169: Nuclear Hacks

While Trump is off in Europe, our lead story today from back at home is really quite serious and disturbing.

• Hackers have infiltrated at least 12 nuclear power plants in the US. The primary suspect? Russia. Given that Russia has twice been involved in hacking attempts that shut down parts of the Ukranian electricity grid, this does not bode well.
• Trump is at the G-20 meeting in Europe, where he's found he's been sidelined on just about everything. His perspectives do not fit into the present world order.
• While there, Trump met with Putin, in a highly-anticipated meeting. They appeared to be quite chummy, but reportedly made little headway on anything. Of note was that they both agreed that the US should move on from the Russian electoral hacking scandal (which Putin once again denied any involvement with, and Trump seemed to accept). A lot of media reports suggest a competition between the two, without mentioning that there is a serious possibility of collusion between the two, a possibility that is much more concerning. Also note that the meeting had only Trump, Putin, the Russian foreign minister, and Tillerson (who conveniently received the Friend of Russia award?).
• Speaking of denying the Russian involvement, Sally Yates has publicly had a go at Trump for his equivocation also.
• Want an analysis of Trump's Poland speech? Slate has you covered. Cliff notes version: White Nationalism in a nutshell.
• The ACLU has a website cataloguing the responses from every state to the "electoral integrity commission". Basically everybody has told Kobach to piss off.
• This is an interesting read on how diplomats from other countries are now interacting with the US, given that the State Department is essentially defunct. It speaks to the comment I made yesterday about how other countries find themselves needing to play to Trump's insecurities to make any headway whatsoever.
• I'll let this headline speak for itself: Trump's leaks crackdown sends chills through national security world. People's ability to do their jobs is being impeded.
• Worse, it appears somebody is sending forged "top secret" documents to media outlets, ostensibly in order to sow confusion, give credence to the claim that mainstream media is portraying "fake news", and discredit media organizations. There's a reasonable chance that somebody in the administration is responsible. It's also likely that some of the major retractions that we've seen recently (eg, CNN) fell for such a trap. Be very wary, dear readers.
• Well fuck. ICE officers have been told that they should deport all illegal immigrants they encounter on duty. Nothing about "dangerous criminals". Just your run of the mill illegal immigrant grandmother or high school student. This is absolutely inhumane and disgusting.