AUDIO: 

POSSIBLE TOPICS: VOTETEXAS.GOV—Voter Information; REGISTER TO VOTE; APPLY FOR MAIL-IN BALLOT; Houston ISD’s new superintendent announces first cabinet appointments; New Houston ISD leader won’t need education certification, TEA says; McCarthy’s secret speaker deal takes a bizarre turn; Conservatives surprise McCarthy with floor rebellion over debt deal anger; Damage to Russian-held hydroelectric plant floods south Ukraine battlefield; Ukraine dam’s destruction could ‘forever’ change ecosystems, officials say; U.S. had intelligence of detailed Ukrainian plan to attack Nord Stream pipeline; Security News This Week: AI Is Being Used to ‘Turbocharge’ Scams; Three ‘Forever Chemicals’ Makers Settle Public Water Lawsuits; China Calling in its Loans to Poor Countries; More

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) on KPFT FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Station. You can also hear the show:

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Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/EwrSlzZC31w

1. Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter Information
   1. It’s time to snail-mail (no emails or faxes) in your application for mail-ballots, IF you qualify TEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
   2. Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com)
   3. Harris County “Vote-By-Mail’ Application for 2022
      1. Austin County Elections
      2. Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
      3. Chambers County (TX) Elections
      4. Colorado County (TX) Elections
      5. Fort Bend County takes you to the proper link
      6. GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
      7. Harris County ((HarrisVotes.com)
      8. LibertyElections (Liberty County, TX)
      9. Montgomery County (TX) Elections
      10. Walker County Elections
      11. Waller County (TX) Elections
      12. Wharton County Elections
   4. For personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information, Consider visiting Vote.ORG.   Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
   5. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
   6. HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting Centers, HARRIS COUNTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
      1. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
      2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
      3. Current utility bill
      4. Bank statement
      5. Government check
      6. Paycheck
      7. A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
      8. You may vote early by-mail if:You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
         1. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
         2. Sick or disabled;
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         4. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
         5. Make sure you are registered:
         6. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
         7. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
         8. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
         9. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
2. BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and if eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL NEW MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2023.
   1. Obtain a Voter Registration Application (HarrisVotes.com)
   2. Just be registered and apply for your mail-in ballot if you may qualify.
   3. You can track your Mail Ballot Activity from our website with direct link provided here https://www.harrisvotes.com/Tracking
3. Houston ISD’s new superintendent announces first cabinet appointments; By Briana Zamora-Nipper, Community Producer | CLICK2HOUSTON.COM | Published: June 5, 2023 at 12:26 PM
   1. The new superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, Mike Miles on Monday announced the initial members of the HISD leadership team.
   2. “The team brings together veteran HISD leaders with the expertise and vision of some of Texas’ most exceptional education talent,” the announcement read. “These appointments are effective immediately, and just the first in a series of leadership appointments that will be made in the coming weeks.” [Miles then offers a list of 10 individuals whom he has appointed.]
   3. “It is my great pleasure to announce that these outstanding education professionals have made the commitment to serve the children, families, and staff at HISD,” said Miles in a statement. “Their collective experience and expertise make this one of the most skilled education leadership teams in the nation. More important than that, they share the clear and ambitious vision to implement system-wide reform in HISD that improves student outcomes for all HISD students, eradicates the massive achievement gaps for Black and Brown students, and provides a full set of education experiences to prepare all HISD graduates for the year 2035 and beyond.”
   4. The Texas Education Agency last week named Miles, a former Dallas Independent School District superintendent, as superintendent of HISD, initiating the state’s takeover of Texas’ largest school district.
   5. Miles began working Thursday under a temporary 21-day contract until a board of managers, also newly-appointed by [Texas] Education Commissioner Mike Morath, formally approves him.
   6. Texas officials in March announced the state takeover of Houston’s schools.
   7. In a letter to the school district, Education Commissioner Mike Morath said the school board failed to improve student outcomes while violating open meetings act and procurement laws.
   8. Morath also mentioned the record of poor academic performance at Wheatley High, as well as the poor performance at several other campuses including Kashmere High School and Highland Heights Elementary School. …
   9. [Biographies of the 10 appointed individuals then follows in the story.]
   10. THIS ARTICLE FOLLOWED THE NEXT DAY IN CHRON: New Houston ISD leader won’t need education certification, TEA says; Mike Miles’ Texas certification expired in 2018 after serving three years as Dallas ISD Superintendent. By Kennedy Sessions | Chron.COM | June 6, 2023, Updated: June 6, 2023 12:42 p.m.
   11. Houston Independent School District Superintendent Mike Miles is asking the Texas Education Agency (TEA) to waive state certification requirements for himself after being appointed to lead the district this month. Miles was appointed on June 1 alongside nine members assigned to the TEA-selected board of managers, which replaced the locally-elected school board. 
   12. As the former Superintendent of Dallas ISD, Miles worked in the state for three years before resigning in 2015. His state certification lasted from 2013 to 2018. Shortly after leaving his position, Miles founded Third Future Schools, a charter school network with around 4,500 schools in Texas, Louisiana, and Colorado. Miles said he resigned from Third Future on May 31.
   13. Almost a week into holding his new position, however, Miles is missing a state certification and confirmed with ABC13 Monday that he would not seek to reactivate the accreditation, instead banking on a TEA waiver for his continued work.
   14. In a statement Tuesday, a TEA official told Chron it isn’t the first time the state has waived a superintendent certification, and Miles’s background as a former Superintendent in Dallas and other Texas Public Charter Schools speaks for itself. 
   15. “If a certification waiver is needed for the Houston ISD superintendent, it will be granted as it is for other school systems. In the case of Superintendent Miles, he has already successfully led a Texas ISD and Texas public charter schools. Certification requirements are meant to establish minimum training standards, and he has already surpassed any competencies addressed by the certification,” a TEA spokesperson said. …
   16. MIKE: So, the TEA-appointed education carpetbagger comes into town, appoints ten people (with more appointments to come, apparently), and has allowed his teaching certification to lapse for 5 years. He then asks for a TEA waiver of the certification because … “waivers”.
   17. MIKE: Also — and this may be all you need to know —Miles founded Third Future Schools, a charter school network with around 4,500 schools in Texas, Louisiana, and Colorado.
   18. MIKE: For me, there’s a lot to unpack here. Growing up in Brooklyn, everything about school was directed by the NY Board of Education. I’ve long felt that the advent of locally elected school boards made of up politically-ambitious non-professionals was bad for education, from it’s beginning around the 1970s up to the present, but watching this process in Texas in the 2020s gives me all new reasons for concern.
   19. MIKE: I believe in free public education. I’m opposed to for-profit charter schools, and I’m opposed to so-called school vouchers taking public money for private schools. I think I can safely base this opinion on the poor overall performance of for-profit colleges and technical schools.
   20. MIKE: The Texas Education Agency, or TEA, is made up of 15 elected members; one from each of 15 districts. The districts are apportioned by the State legislature, allowing even education to be gerrymandered.
   21. MIKE: Now, we have an unwelcome State takeover of HISD. The newly-installed head of HISD founded 4500 for-profit charter schools in 3 states. I don’t see this person as a believer in quality public education, nor do I believe he has free, non-profit public education’s best interests at heart.
   22. MIKE: When I think of State takeovers, the first thing that comes to mind is Michigan’s Emergency Managers, the worst example of which ended up poisoning the people of Flint with lead in their water.
   23. MIKE: Time may prove me wrong, but I believe that this State takeover of HISD and the installation of Mike Miles as its new head is a harbinger that will not end well for quality public education in HISD.
   24. ANDREW: I like to live my life by the motto “assume good faith unless given reason not to”. So with the bare-bones level of knowledge I have about Superintendent Miles, I’m willing to give him a chance. He and his team very well may want to do what they think is best for the students of HISD, and what they think is best might actually be best. We can’t know until they get a chance.
   25. ANDREW: But I believe we can safely assume that Texas Republicans in every state body involved in this decision did not and do not have the true best interests of HISD students at heart, regardless of how right or wrong the state was to take over the district. Republicans are absolutely going to put pressure on Miles and his team to score what political points they can for the Republican Party; they’ve done it so many other times with so many other appointed officials. What has yet to be seen is whether Miles and his team will cave to that pressure. For the sake of Houston’s students, I hope they do not.
   26. MIKE: It comes down to trust, doesn’t it? We just don’t trust modern Texas Republicans to act in good faith.
   27. REFERENCE: Texas Education Agency — Wikipedia
   28. REFERENCE: New HISD leadership hires New York consulting firm to transform district; HISD Superintendent Mike Miles confirmed New York City-based consulting firm Kitamba will spearhead district reforms following the state’s takeover. By Kennedy Sessions | CHRON.COM | June 5, 2023
   29. Tags: Houston ISD takeover, Houston, Local, Education
4. The following story is from last week, but is still relevant to legislative goings-on in the US House: McCarthy’s secret speaker deal takes a bizarre turn; Who could have imagined that a mysterious handshake in the long January battle for the gavel could cause debt ceiling problems now? Analysis by Aaron Blake, Staff writer | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | Updated May 30, 2023 at 9:21 p.m. EDT|Published May 30, 2023 at 6:07 p.m. EDT
   1. We knew the House was liable to get messy when Republicans took it over and Kevin McCarthy needed to cut a mysterious agreement with the right-wing House Freedom Caucus to become speaker.
   2. What we might not have fully appreciated at the time is how much that mess might result from not being able to agree on what the agreement was.
   3. The first big hurdle for the debt ceiling deal McCarthy (R-Calif.) cut with President Biden over the weekend was the all-important House Rules Committee on Tuesday afternoon. This committee can make or break legislation, which is why the Freedom Caucus was keen to pry three seats from the speaker loyalists that usually inhabit it. That left McCarthy with only six such votes on a 13-member committee, shy of a majority of his allies.
   4. But as the committee was about to take up the debt ceiling deal, one of its Freedom Caucus members lodged a remarkable claim about the January agreement: that GOP votes to advance bills on the committee effectively needed to be unanimous.
   5. “A reminder that during Speaker negotiations to build the coalition, that it was explicit both that nothing would pass Rules Committee without AT LEAST 7 GOP votes — AND that the Committee would not allow reporting out rules without unanimous Republican votes,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) claimed Monday on Twitter.
   6. This is a little complicated, but Roy was basically claiming that he, fellow Freedom Caucus member Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and a third non-McCarthy loyalist on the committee, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), each had veto power. So even if something like the debt ceiling deal got a majority of GOP members or the committee as a whole, they would be able to stop it.
   7. There were real reasons to doubt this. CNN’s Manu Raju reports that senior GOP aides said the agreement did require seven GOP votes to advance a bill, but not all nine.
   8. That seven-vote threshold, in itself, would be a pretty big deal, because it would mean the committee isn’t really a majoritarian one. It cleared that threshold Tuesday, advancing the bill to the House floor. But a nine-vote threshold would mean it wouldn’t be allowed to have a vote.
   9. And as Roy’s claim was being chewed over, McCarthy allies acknowledged that they didn’t really know what McCarthy had given up.
   10. “I have not heard that before,” Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) told CNN. “If those conversations took place, the rest of the conference was unaware of them.”
   11. Stephanie I. Bice (R-Okla.) added: “I don’t know what Speaker McCarthy agreed to, but that has not been something that any of us were familiar with.”
   12. Another member who was apparently unfamiliar with what Roy was talking about: Massie, the most crucial vote on the Rules Committee when it came to getting to those required GOP seven. (Both Roy and Norman indicated they were opposed.)
   13. Just to put a fine point on that: This is one of the most consequential levers of power in the House, and not only do we not have public clarity on how it works, but some Republicans admit they, too, are in the dark. Or as Bice put it, “I don’t know what Speaker McCarthy agreed to.”
   14. That’s a remarkable state of affairs. And it traces back to a deal that was rather obviously forged with secrecy in mind — despite McCarthy’s promises of transparency.
   15. Back when it was cut, a few brave House Republicans ventured that it might be good to know what McCarthy had given away. But their leverage was holding out on the rules package vote that came shortly after McCarthy’s election as speaker, and they passed on pressing the issue in favor of moving forward as a party after an arduous few days that included 15 ballots in the vote for speaker.
   16. At the time, there were reports of a three-page “addendum” to the rules — a document that would seemingly outline something like this. McCarthy and others talked around whether such a deal actually existed. But Roy himself suggested that it was more of a handshake agreement.
   17. “There’s no official list,” Roy said. “You look somebody in the eye and shake their hands and move forward. That’s precisely what happened here.”
   18. It’s a nice idea, in theory. But then you come to a state of affairs like this, when the full faith and credit of the U.S. government is on the line, and the key players can’t agree on what the rules are.
   19. It seems, based upon all indicators, that Roy has gotten this wrong. (His office didn’t respond to a request for comment, and he didn’t press the issue in committee Tuesday.) The fact that Massie, of all people, seemed unfamiliar with such an agreement — and that Norman hasn’t raised this as an issue — would point in that direction. The question from there is whether Roy feels misled somehow, and how that might affect his relationship with McCarthy.
   20. Roy seemed to double down on his claims Tuesday morning, calling the deal a “betrayal of the power-sharing arrangement that we put in place.” He added that if the deal passed through the Rules Committee, “we’re going to have to then regroup and figure out the whole leadership arrangement again.”
   21. For now, most other Freedom Caucus members aren’t talking about removing McCarthy as speaker by using a “motion to vacate the chair,” which is part of another concession they gained in January.
   22. But it’s unlikely to be the last time McCarthy will need Roy on something big. Throw on top of that the fact that the House is basically being run with secret rules, and that’s a real recipe for some hard feelings — at the least.
   23. ANDREW: I tip my hat to Aaron Blake for writing “that’s a remarkable state of affairs” instead of something that we wouldn’t be able to broadcast without incurring an FCC violation, which is what I said when I first read this piece.
   24. MIKE: Yeah, this was a really well-written piece. I had to read all of it.
   25. ANDREW: Republicans are very clearly playing fast and loose with the rules of democracy (and even their own agreements outside of those rules), but that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who understands how the society in which we live is built upon getting one over on someone else. Unscrupulousness is simply the natural conclusion of that.
   26. ANDREW: Doesn’t mean we have to like it, but I think all real solutions are outside of that unscrupulous structure. In this particular case, I don’t feel confident that Congressional rules and processes are going to solve this problem. McCarthy played with them to get where he is today, but his opponents can play with them too.
5. SPEAKING OF WHICH:
6. Conservatives surprise McCarthy with floor rebellion over debt deal anger; A band of House conservatives derailed a bill that takes aim at gas stove regulation. It could be just the beginning of moves to undercut the speaker. By Sarah Ferris, Jordain Carney and Olivia Beavers | POLITICO.COM | 06/06/2023 03:55 PM EDT, Updated: 06/06/2023 04:04 PM EDT
   1. A band of House conservatives mounted an extraordinary rebellion against their own party leaders on Tuesday, venting their angst over the recent debt limit fight with a surprise protest that derailed the chamber floor.
   2. Republican leaders spent nearly an hour working to resolve the standoff with their right flank, which disrupted the party’s plans to pass legislation protecting gas stoves from potential government bans. But ultimately, roughly a dozen conservatives — most of them members of the Trump-aligned House Freedom Caucus — voted against moving forward on a bill they support. …
   3. Those who did vote no on Tuesday offered scant further details on how they saw McCarthy violating the terms of the deal he struck with conservatives during January’s speakership race. Bishop suggested that an agreement to insist on federal spending at fiscal 2022 levels was violated by the debt deal, but it’s not clear that such a term was ever agreed upon. …
   4. MIKE: This is just another reminder that, as they say, no oral agreement is worth the paper it’s (not)written on. It seems we all have to be re-reminded of that from time to time.
7. Damage to Russian-held hydroelectric plant floods south Ukraine battlefield; By Samantha Schmidt, Isobel Koshiw, Natalia Abbakumova and Serhii Korolchuk | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | Updated June 6, 2023 at 5:45 p.m. EDT|Published June 6, 2023 at 5:07 a.m. EDT
   1. A critical dam in southern Ukraine was heavily damaged after a reported explosion early Tuesday, sending water gushing toward dozens of communities, including some occupied by Russia, and prompting officials to evacuate thousands of people at risk of catastrophic flooding.
   2. Russia seized the dam, which is part of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant, on the first day of its invasion in February 2022 because of its crucial role in supplying fresh water to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula that Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
   3. It was not clear who was responsible for the damage, which occurred as Kyiv stepped up offensive operations on the eastern front as part of what is expected to be a major counterattack over the coming weeks. Ukraine and Russia quickly traded blame for the blast.
   4. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russia of blowing up the hydroelectric power plant from inside. “The disaster at the Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant caused by Russian terrorists will not stop Ukraine and Ukrainians,” Zelensky said in his evening address, posted as a video to social media.
   5. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claimed that the damage was “a deliberate sabotage by the Ukrainian side,” in part to deprive Crimea of water. “Apparently, this sabotage is related to the fact that the Ukrainian armed forces, having started the offensive two days ago, are not achieving their goals now,” Peskov said Tuesday during his daily conference call with reporters.
   6. S. officials had not made a determination about who or what caused it, a White House spokesman said Tuesday. …
   7. MIKE: The old mystery adage holds here: Means, Motive and Opportunity.
   8. MIKE: I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess the Russians blew the dam. Strategically, all other considerations aside, the Motive makes sense. The blown dam is discharging tons of water down the Dnieper River, which will make it wider and deeper downstream. This will make any efforts by Ukraine to cross the river into Russian-held territory much more difficult. Interestingly, I’ve only heard one commentator make that connection so far.
   9. MIKE: The Ukrainians have been claiming for months that the Russian-held dam was being rigged to be blown up; it wouldn’t be the first time in history that a side blew up a strategically important asset on their own ground for sufficiently important defensive reasons.
   10. ANDREW: We should also remember that it’s always possible it was an accident, and the only blame to go around is negligence. There isn’t enough information yet, but based on what I’ve heard so far, I don’t know of anything Ukraine would gain by blowing up the dam. I find that the least likely option.
   11. ANDREW: Placing blame, though, shouldn’t be the priority right now. The priority should be helping as many people impacted by the flooding as possible. I would like to see the Russian and Ukrainian governments, and the Russian occupying forces, cooperate to allow international humanitarian aid in the region. To be ridiculously optimistic for a second, it might even lay groundwork for a successful round of negotiations, which might prevent anything like this from happening again.
   12. REFERENCE: Ukraine’s Ticking Nuclear Time Bomb; PUTIN’S MELTDOWN — The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is likely going to be right in the middle of intense fighting as Ukraine launches its counteroffensive against the Russian invaders. By Joseph Cirincione, Contributing Writer | COM | Updated Jun. 03, 2023 1:53AM ET | Published Jun. 02, 2023 8:58PM ET 
8. Ukraine dam’s destruction could ‘forever’ change ecosystems, officials say; By Michael Birnbaum and Evan Halper | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | June 6, 2023 at 6:15 p.m. EDT
   1. The destruction of a major dam and hydroelectric power plant on the front lines of the war in Ukraine may dry up the rich agricultural region of southern Ukraine, sweep pollutants into waterways and upend ecosystems that had developed around the massive reservoir whose waters are now rapidly flooding downstream, although the full impact could take months or even years to understand, officials and experts said.
   2. The escape of the huge store of water from the reservoir will reshape Ukraine’s map, its habitats and its livelihood, endangering communities that depend on the water for drinking and growing crops, forcing farmers out of business, pushing towns to relocate and unsettling delicate ecological balances. Ukrainian officials warned that at least 150 tons of oil stored inside the hydroelectric power plant in the dam were washed into the waterway. Water from the reservoir also fed the cooling ponds of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, in Zaporizhzhia, although nuclear experts said there was no immediate threat. …
   3. [T]he International Atomic Energy Agency said the facility is positioned to avoid a meltdown, as it has access to alternate pools of water that can keep the reactors and fuel rods cool for at least the next couple of months. Operations at the Soviet-era plant were largely dormant before the dam failure, experts said, which helped reduce the threat. …
   4. At the submerged zoo, home to 260 animals, only the ducks and swans could be saved, according to UAnimals, Ukraine’s largest animal charity, which said it spoke with the zoo’s management. …
   5. The fast-rising water levels threaten residents from northern Kherson, where the dam is located, down to the Black Sea.
   6. The reservoir also supplies water, through canals, to occupied Crimea and to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, in Russian-controlled Enerhodar. Ukraine’s atomic-energy authorities said the plant so far has not been affected by the dam breach. …
   7. MIKE: So much tragedy in one fell swoop. So far as I’ve heard while I’m writing this, miraculously, no deaths have been reported. From a human perspective, I can’t even imagine how devastating this was to the people downriver from the dam. In addition to losing their possessions, homes, and livelihoods to the flood waters, it will take at least weeks for the waters to recede to some degree after the reservoir hits some stable level. And even then, some previously inhabited areas will remain flooded as the river finds its new limits.
   8. MIKE: At some point in the future, this dam will probably be rebuilt, but that could take years, if not decades.
9. US. had intelligence of detailed Ukrainian plan to attack Nord Stream pipeline; THE DISCORD LEAKS | The CIA learned last June, via a European spy agency, that a six-person team of Ukrainian special operations forces intended to sabotage the Russia-to-Germany natural gas project. By Shane Harris and Souad Mekhennet | WASHINGTONPOST.COM | June 6, 2023 at 10:52 a.m. EDT
   1. Three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces.
   2. Details about the plan, which have not been previously reported, were collected by a European intelligence service and shared with the CIA in June 2022. They provide some of the most specific evidence to date linking the government of Ukraine to the eventual attack in the Baltic Sea, which U.S. and Western officials have called a brazen and dangerous act of sabotage on Europe’s energy infrastructure. …
   3. The European intelligence made clear that the would-be attackers were not rogue operatives. All those involved reported directly to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer, who was put in charge so that the nation’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wouldn’t know about the operation, the intelligence report said.
   4. Keeping Zelensky out of the loop would have given the Ukrainian leader a plausible way to deny involvement in an audacious attack on civilian infrastructure that could ignite public outrage and jeopardize Western support for Ukraine — particularly in Germany, which before the war got half its natural gas from Russia and had long championed the Nord Stream project in the face of opposition from other European allies. …
   5. MIKE: In another international Whodunnit, the question has been Means, Motive and Opportunity. The strongest Motive has always been with the Ukrainians, but the questions was, did they have the Means. Now, it appears they might have had.
   6. ANDREW: War makes fools of all involved, but there are some things that are in a class of their own. This isn’t proof that Ukraine attacked the Nord Stream pipeline, but it’s pretty compelling information that makes Ukraine look like the most likely culprit.
   7. ANDREW: It’s bad enough that this plan jeopardizes Ukraine’s international support, but what’s worse for them in the context of the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam is that this plan suggests a willingness by Ukrainian forces to sabotage infrastructure that I expect Russia will use to back their claims that Ukraine blew the dam. Anything that makes Russia look more credible is bad for Ukraine (and vice versa). It should be said, though, that this doesn’t affect who actually committed either act, and we don’t know those answers for sure yet.
   8. MIKE: I’m keeping an open mind on the Nord Stream sabotage, but the Russians most likely blew that dam. The Ukrainians will want to cross the Dnieper River. Blowing the dam makes it harder, which acts as reinforcement of the Russians’ defensive lines.
10. Security News This Week: AI Is Being Used to ‘Turbocharge’ Scams; Plus: Amazon’s Ring was ordered to delete algorithms, North Korea’s failed spy satellite, and a rogue drone “attack” isn’t what it seems. By Matt Burgess is a senior writer | WIRED.COM | Jun 3, 2023 — 9:00 AM
    1. Lina Khan, the chair of the US Federal Trade Commission, warned this week that the agency is seeing criminals using artificial intelligence tools to “turbocharge” fraud and scams. The comments, which were made in New York and first reported by Bloomberg, cited examples of voice-cloning technology where AI was being used to trick people into thinking they were hearing a family member’s voice.
    2. Recent machine-learning advances have made it possible for people’s voices to be imitated with only a few short clips of training data—although experts say AI-generated voice clips can vary widely in quality. In recent months, however, there has been a reported rise in the number of scam attempts apparently involving generated audio clips. Khan said that officials and lawmakers “need to be vigilant early” and that while new laws governing AI are being considered, existing laws still apply to many cases.
    3. OpenAI Ramps Up Cybersecurity Research — As companies around the world race to build generative AI systems into their products, the cybersecurity industry is getting in on the action. This week OpenAI, the creator of text- and image-generating systems ChatGPT and Dall-E, opened a new program to work out how AI can best be used by cybersecurity professionals. The project is offering grants to those developing new systems.
    4. OpenAI has proposed a number of potential projects, ranging from using machine learning to detect social engineering efforts and producing threat intelligence to inspecting source code for vulnerabilities and developing honeypots to trap hackers. While recent AI developments have been faster than many experts predicted, AI has been used in the cybersecurity industry for several years—although many claims don’t necessarily live up to the hype.
    5. An AI Drone Simulation Didn’t “Kill” Its Operator — The US Air Force is moving quickly on testing artificial intelligence in flying machines—in January, it tested a tactical aircraft being flown by AI. However, this week, a new claim started circulating: that during a simulated test, a drone controlled by AI started to “attack” and “killed” a human operator overseeing it, because they were stopping it from accomplishing its objectives.
    6. “The system started realizing that while they did identify the threat, at times the human operator would tell it not to kill that threat, but it got its points by killing that threat,” said [Colonel] Tucker Hamilton, according to a summary of an event at the Royal Aeronautical Society, in London. Hamilton continued to say that when the system was trained to not kill the operator, it started to target the communications tower the operator was using to communicate with the drone, stopping its messages from being sent.
    7. However, the US Air Force says the simulation never took place. Spokesperson Ann Stefanek said the comments were “taken out of context and were meant to be anecdotal.” Hamilton has also clarified that he “misspoke” and he was talking about a “thought experiment.”
    8. Despite this, the described scenario highlights the unintended ways that automated systems could bend rules imposed on them to achieve the goals they have been set to achieve. Called specification gaming by researchers, other instances have seen a simulated version of Tetris pause the game to avoid losing, and an AI game character killed itself on level one to avoid dying on the next level.
    9. ANDREW: This collection of stories highlights the balance that must be struck in commentary around generative systems (which, for the record, are certainly artificial, but not actually intelligent).
    10. ANDREW: The advancement of technology is not an inherent threat or evil. These systems can be helpful; cybersecurity is the example given. But depending on how people want to use them– especially people who don’t actually understand what generative systems are– these systems can play a part in harming people. We shouldn’t panic over this (that rarely helps), and we shouldn’t try to stop the advancement of the technology (because honestly, I don’t think that’s even possible at this point), but we should use whatever legal and social methods we have to stop these generative systems from being knowingly used for harmful or misrepresented purposes, or being given power that only accountable humans should have.
    11. ANDREW: We should also remember that without human input, these things can’t generate their way out of a paper bag. Honestly, most of them can’t do that even WITH human input right now– stories like this one about scamming are notable because they’re exceptions to the vast majority of unproductive uses of this technology, and stories like Colonel Hamilton’s worst case scenario are actually fiction. We can’t stop the future, but if we stay calm and put our energy in the right places, we can make sure we’ll be around to see it.
    12. MIKE: There’s a saying: “Behind every computer error is a human error.” Another saying is, “Garbage in, garbage out.”
    13. MIKE: As I’ve said a few times since we started covering this topic: Artificial Intelligence doesn’t have to actually be intelligent to be dangerous. It can be stupid and still be really dangerous. I’m actually not sure what’s worse: Artificial Intelligence or Artificial Stupidity
    14. MIKE: There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle, though. For better or worse, humans are going to have to learn to live with this and future iterations of AI and, with luck, humans will learn to intelligently manage it.
11. Three ‘Forever Chemicals’ Makers Settle Public Water Lawsuits; By Ben Casselman, Ivan Penn and Matthew Goldstein | NYTIMES.COM | June 2, 2023
    1. Three major chemical companies … — Chemours, DuPont and Corteva — said they had reached an agreement in principle to set up a $1.19 billion fund to help remove toxic perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, from public drinking water systems. PFAS have been linked to liver damage, weakened immune systems and several forms of cancer, among other harms, and are referred to as forever chemicals because they linger in the human body and the environment.
    2. Bloomberg News also reported on Friday that 3M had reached a tentative deal worth “at least $10 billion” with U.S. cities and towns to resolve related PFAS claims. …
    3. Hundreds of communities across the country have sued Chemours, 3M and other companies, claiming that their products — which are used in firefighting foams, nonstick coatings and a wide variety of other products — contaminated their soil and water. They have sought billions of dollars in damages to deal with the health impacts and the cost of cleaning up and monitoring polluted sites. …
    4. The announced settlement is “an incredibly important next step in what has been decades of work to try to make sure that the costs of this massive PFAS ‘forever chemical’ contamination are not borne by the victims but are borne by the companies who caused the problem,” said Rob Bilott, an environmental lawyer advising plaintiffs in the cases.
    5. Environmental groups were cautious, however. …
    6. The preliminary settlement with Chemours, DuPont and Corteva … may not be the end of the costs for those companies, either. The deal, which requires approval by a judge, would resolve lawsuits involving water systems that already had detectable levels of PFAS contamination, as well as those required to monitor for contamination by the Environmental Protection Agency.
    7. But it excludes some other water systems, and it would not resolve lawsuits resulting from claims of environmental damage or personal injury from individuals already sickened by the chemicals. And state attorneys general have filed new suits, some as recently as this week, over the matter.
    8. The liability of 3M could be even greater. In an online presentation in March, CreditSights, a financial research company, estimated that PFAS litigation could ultimately cost 3M more than $140 billion, though it said a lower figure was more likely. The company has said that by the end of 2025 it plans to exit all PFAS manufacturing and will work to end the use of PFAS in its products.
    9. Shares of 3M rose sharply on Friday after the Bloomberg report, as did shares of Chemours, DuPont and Corteva.
    10. The synthetic chemicals are so ubiquitous that nearly all Americans, including newborns, carry PFAS in their bloodstream. As many as 200 million Americans are exposed to PFAS in their tap water, according to a peer-reviewed 2020 study.
    11. PFAS cleanup efforts took on more urgency last year when the E.P.A. determined that levels of the chemicals “much lower than previously understood” could cause harm and that almost no level of exposure was safe. It advised that drinking water contain no more than 0.004 parts per trillion of perfluorooctanoic acid and 0.02 parts per trillion of perfluorooctanesulfonic acid.
    12. Previously, the agency had advised that drinking water contain no more than 70 parts per trillion of the chemicals. The E.P.A. said the government would for the first time require near-zero levels of the substances.
    13. Some industry groups criticized the proposed regulation and said the Biden administration had created an impossible standard that would cost manufacturers and municipal water agencies billions of dollars. Industries would have to stop discharging the chemicals into waterways, and water utilities would have to test for the PFAS chemicals and remove them. Communities with limited resources will be hardest hit by the new rule, they warned.
    14. The E.P.A. estimated that compliance would cost water utilities $772 million annually. But many public utilities say they expect the costs to be much higher. …
    15. ANDREW: Added together, Chemours, DuPont, and Corteva reported a net profit of about $2.8 billion dollars in 2022. This fund is a decent chunk of that, but these companies would still be profitable if they saw the same numbers this year as they did last year.
    16. ANDREW: Considering the scope of this issue, I think it would be entirely appropriate for the costs of cleaning up and paying fines and settlements to make all of the companies responsible for this mess unprofitable this year. Some kind of direct government oversight of all four of these companies to ensure they’re following the law would be helpful, too. There need to be real consequences for businesses that cause harm on this scale, otherwise we’ll have another situation like this in a few years’ time.
    17. MIKE: As the article points out in part, “The preliminary settlement with Chemours, DuPont and Corteva … may not be the end of the costs for those companies … .”
    18. MIKE: As I said in a previous show, I suspect that the spin-off of Chemours was done in an effort to insulate DuPont from some of the liability from these chemicals, since this is a common practice among large companies. A gratifying point here is that even though DuPont spun off Chemours (apparently pronounced “kem-ORZ”) in 2015, but is still being held partly liable.
    19. MIKE: And as a totally tangential aside: Who decides how this stuff is supposed to be pronounced??
12. China Calling in its Loans to Poor Countries; Debt-trap diplomacy has finally come home to roost. By James Joyner | OUTSIDETHEBELTWAY.COM | Saturday, May 20, 2023 · [Originally A fascinating report from Fortune‘s Bernard Condon and AP writers Munir Ahmed and Noel Sichalwe (“‘In a lot of the world, the clock has hit midnight’: China is calling in loans to dozens of countries from Pakistan to Kenya“)]
    1. A dozen poor countries are facing economic instability and even collapse under the weight of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign loans, much of them from the world’s biggest and most unforgiving government lender, China.
    2. An Associated Press analysis of a dozen countries most indebted to China — including Pakistan, Kenya, Zambia, Laos and Mongolia — found paying back that debt is consuming an ever-greater amount of the tax revenue needed to keep schools open, provide electricity and pay for food and fuel. And it’s draining foreign currency reserves these countries use to pay interest on those loans, leaving some with just months before that money is gone.
    3. Behind the scenes is China’s reluctance to forgive debt and its extreme secrecy about how much money it has loaned and on what terms, which has kept other major lenders from stepping in to help. On top of that is the recent discovery that borrowers have been required to put cash in hidden escrow accounts that push China to the front of the line of creditors to be paid.
    4. Which answers the obvious question: Why aren’t these countries simply telling China to go screw themselves? …
    5. In Pakistan, millions of textile workers have been laid off because the country has too much foreign debt and can’t afford to keep the electricity on and machines running.
    6. In Kenya, the government has held back paychecks to thousands of civil service workers to save cash to pay foreign loans. The president’s chief economic adviser tweeted last month, “Salaries or default? Take your pick.”
    7. Since Sri Lanka defaulted a year ago,a half-million industrial jobs have vanished, inflation has pierced 50% and more than half the population in many parts of the country has fallen into poverty.
    8. Experts predict that unless China begins to soften its stance on its loans to poor countries, there could be a wave of more defaults and political upheavals. …
    9. MIKE: The story goes into more detail. It’s interesting.
    10. MIKE: I’ve talked on this show in the past about China being a neo-imperialist nation, and how it’s mercantilist lending policies would come home to roost for many poor countries. Well, the eagle is landing.
    11. MIKE: Regular listeners to this program will know how much I dislike conflating sovereign finances with personal or business finances, but I have a short personal story here to make an example.
    12. MIKE: After my divorce, my personal ongoing expenses were not being matched by income, so my credit cards were carrying balances. I realized that I had hit the end of the line when I could no longer make my monthly minimum payments.
    13. MIKE: It’s easy to blame the borrowers, and often rightfully so, but loans aren’t necessarily bad things, as long as people and countries don’t make them to pay for ongoing expenses. Loans can be good things if they help to create more wealth — jobs, trade, and improvements in health and living standards that themselves add to personal and national wealth.
    14. MIKE: I can’t speak to specifics, but many of the loans I’ve read about over the years were for infrastructure that was hoped to generate national wealth to pay for the loans, but were poorly planned. Pakistan took out a Chinese loan to build a major port complex to compete with India. Even at the time, analysts were saying that the port was somewhat redundant to the region and would probably go into default. I suspect that’s one of the loans going belly-up.
    15. MIKE: Lenders can be predatory. It’s ultimately up to the borrower to make the choice, but a reputable lender will decline a loan if the borrower doesn’t seem able to repay it. A predatory lender will figure that between down-payment, interest paid, and collateral assigned, they’ll make money either way. This is what the Chinese have been doing for years as a matter of national policy. They’ll end up owning many of these defaulted assets around the world.
    16. ANDREW: I want to call attention to some later excerpts from the original article that we didn’t read on the air, which I’ll summarize for time. The first is that there are other factors having major impacts on the economies of the nations that have taken Belt and Road loans, namely the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate hike which we’ve argued against before on the show, and the trade disruption and price increases resulting from the war in Ukraine.
    17. ANDREW: The second excerpt mentions that China is calling for Western national and supranational lenders to agree to forgive loans to these nations at the same time as China would, and that China has extended deadlines, forgiven some loans, given emergency loans, and helped suspend interest payments during COVID in efforts to accommodate borrowers.
    18. ANDREW: The blogger also points out that borrowers often can’t get loans from Western lenders without also contending with austerity measures that impede their economic growth and speed of paying back. I would add that these measures also harm the people of these nations.
    19. ANDREW: – Borrowers are in position where they can’t get loans from west without austerity which makes problems worse and i would add is bad for national populations
    20. ANDREW: – Experts find Belt & Road Initiative loans too uncoordinated to be considered debt trap diplomacy
    21. ANDREW: – Western lenders using same tactics
    22. ANDREW: – Same tactics does not excuse China using those tactics
    23. ANDREW: – China has power to forgive more loans. but much like IMF doesn’t want to lend money that will go to paying China, China doesn’t want to leave borrowers with no more loans to take from China but still have loans from west because China money would go to west
    24. ANDREW: – Corruption in borrower nations ultimately traceable to colonialism is not good, and China should have had safeguards against corruption even if they weren’t the same as western loans
    25. ANDREW: – I think solution is in fact for China and western lenders to coordinate in loan forgiveness and perhaps mutually agree to and enforce a ban on new loans for a period of time so borrower economies can get a chance to stabilize
    26. ANDREW: – I think the story and the blogger have a west bias though story is more balanced. I’m interested in thoughts from commentators who criticize western foreign policy but don’t automatically side with China. Adam Johnson (@adamjohnsonCHI) for example.

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