Left: John Dean testifies in 1973 (Bettmann Archive). Right: John Dean testifies in 2018. (Sarah Silbiger/CQ Roll Call)
Dear Commons Community,
John Dean, ex-White House counsel to former President Nixon, criticized the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) actions under former President Trump during an interview with CNN, calling it “Nixon on stilts and steroids.”
The comments came following a recent report from The New York Times that found that former Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr subpoenaed Apple in order to access data from more than a dozen people, including several Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, after hearing about leaks within the Trump administration.
Comparing Nixon’s scandal over the Pentagon Papers to the Trump DOJ’s actions, Dean said that “Nixon didn’t have that kind of Department of Justice.”
Dean also criticized Barr, saying it was apparent from the start that he wanted to do Trump’s bidding.
“The memo he wrote to get the job says I’m ready to execute your presidency like a unitary executive presidency should be, which means no bars hold,” Dean said during the interview with CNN anchor Erin Burnett. “We now know there are countless examples of norms he was willing to break.”
Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) Michael Horowitz announced on Friday that his office would initiate an investigation into the seizure of communication records.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D), one of the targets of the DOJ’s subpoenas, tweeted, “We need a full accounting of the Trump DOJ’s abuse of power targeting Congress and the press. An IG investigation is just the start. The full range of the misconduct must be examined, including Barr’s efforts to protect those who lied to cover up, and go after Trump’s enemies.”
A $200 million partnership between the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and IBM will create the Discovery Accelerator Institute, a collaborative space for studying uses for emerging technologies.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Grainger College of Engineering is partnering with tech giant IBM to bolster the college’s research and workforce development efforts in artificial intelligence and quantum information technology.
According to a news release from the university, the 10-year $200 million partnership will fund the future construction of a new Discovery Accelerator Institute, where university and IBM researchers will collaborate on solving global challenges with emerging technologies.
Areas of study will include AI’s potential to solve sustainable energy, new materials for CO2 capture and conversion, and cloud computing and security. Researchers will also explore ways to improve quantum information systems and quantum computing, which applies the rules of quantum mechanics to make computations much faster than most computers in use today.
Rashid Bashir, dean of the College of Engineering, said details on the new facility that will house the institute remained pending as of this week, but the partnership itself is projected to begin by fall 2021. As reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
“Bashir said the partnership will allow IBM and university researchers to work toward developing the “technology of tomorrow,” with sustainability in mind.
“We’re looking for a new way to really bridge that gap [between academia and the tech industry] in a much more intimate way and expand our collective research and educational impact,” he said. “In higher ed and industry, we need to come together to solve grand challenges to keep a sustainable planet, to provide high-quality jobs and develop a new economy.”
Jeff Welser, COO of IBM Research and vice president of exploratory science and university partnerships at IBM, said the new partnership builds upon the work of the IBM-Illinois Center for Cognitive Computing Systems Research (C3SR), launched in 2016 to advance research in artificial intelligence and cognitive computing.
“We had already been working with them in the AI space,” Welser said. “We realized we could take what we’re doing here with AI, expand it to do some of the work in the hybrid cloud space, and think about what we do with that by advancing these base technologies.
“It’s also using this as a test bed for what we call ‘discovery acceleration,’ which is using technologies to discover new materials and new science that can help with societal problems,” he continued. “In the case of this, we’re focusing on carbon capture, carbon accounting and climate change.”
As part of the initiative, Bashir said the company and faculty will team up to develop nondegree tech certification programs and professional development courses in IT-related fields. He said the goal will be to feed IT talent into the workforce, given the national shortage of tech professionals in artificial intelligence, data science and quantum computing.
“Working with IBM, they’re interested in hiring the workforce of tomorrow. Building that talent from early in the pipeline and diversifying the STEM talent pipeline is something we want to work on together,” he said, adding that the partnership also aims to diversify the IT talent pool by bringing students of color and women into emerging fields like quantum computing.
Welser said the Discovery Accelerator Institute will complement a related company initiative: the IBM Skills Academy, a training certification program that provides over 330 courses relating to artificial intelligence, cloud computing, blockchain, data science and quantum computing.
“We have courses that help train professors in specific areas of these skills, and they can use those materials in their coursework and create their own accredited courses,” he said. “We’ve realized there really is a need for having these kinds of courses that don’t necessarily go into a full university [degree] but could be more certifications for students – people who want to learn about an area and get a certain level of certification.”
In addition to research and course development efforts, Bashir noted that the institute will give students close access to one of the world’s largest tech employers.
“We believe we can work together to prepare more talent through our educational pipeline, which IBM can have firsthand access to,” he said. “If they are working together with us, then they get to know those students.”
The Illinois initiative comes two months after the tech company announced a partnership with Cleveland Clinic to study hybrid cloud, AI and quantum computing technologies to accelerate advancements in health care and life sciences. As part of that partnership, IBM plans to install its first private-sector, on-premises quantum computing system in the U.S.”
These types of university-corporate research investments will shape the future of AI and quantum technologies.
Darnella Frazier, the teenager whose cellphone video of George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis prompted outrage across the world, was awarded an honorary Pulitzer Prize yesterday for “courageously recording” the murder.
The Pulitzer Prize board announced (see video below) it was awarding Frazier a special citation for the video she shot on May 25, 2020, which showed four now-former Minneapolis police officers restrain Floyd outside the Cup Foods convenience store. One of the officers, Derek Chauvin, was convicted of murder charges in April for kneeling on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes despite Floyd’s protests that he couldn’t breathe.
The other three officers involved — J. Alexander Kueng, Thomas Lane and Tou Thao — face charges of aiding and abetting a murder and are expected to stand trial next year. All four also face federal civil rights charges.
Frazier, who was a teenager at the time of the incident, testified during Chauvin’s trial, telling the court that she was haunted by the scene after Floyd’s death.
“It’s been nights I stayed up apologizing to George Floyd for not doing more and not physically interacting and not saving his life,” she said. “But it’s like, it’s not what I should have done, it’s what [Chauvin] should have done.”
The Pulitzer board said Frazier’s video “spurred protests against police brutality around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalists’ quest for truth and justice.”
The Minneapolis Star-Tribune also won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the aftermath of Floyd’s death.
Ms. Frazier is most deserving of this honor!
Tony
The citation announcement for Darnella Frazier starts at the 18:20 mark.
The New York Times and other media are reporting today that the U.S. Justice Department under former President Donald Trump and Attorney General William Barr seized data from the accounts of at least two members of the House Intelligence Committee in 2018 as part of an aggressive crackdown on leaks related to the Russia investigation and other national security matters.
Prosecutors from Trump’s Justice Department subpoenaed Apple for the data to discuss the secret seizures first reported by The New York Times.
The records of at least twelve people connected to the intelligence panel were eventually shared, including Chairman Adam Schiff, who was then the top Democrat on the committee. California Rep. Eric Swalwell was the second member, according to spokeswoman Natalie Edelstein. The records of aides, former aides and family members were also seized, including one who was a minor, according to the committee official.
Apple informed the committee last month that their records had been shared but did not give extensive detail. The committee is aware, though, that metadata from the accounts was turned over, the official said. The records do not contain any other content from the devices, like photos, messages or emails, one of the other people said. The third person said that Apple complied with the subpoena, providing the information to the Justice Department, and did not immediately notify the members of Congress or the committee about the disclosure.
While the Justice Department routinely conducts investigations of leaked information, including classified intelligence, opening such an investigation into members of Congress is extraordinarily rare.
The Trump administration’s attempt to secretly gain access to data of individual members of Congress and others connected to the panel came as the president was fuming publicly and privately over investigations — in Congress and by then-special counsel Robert Mueller — into his campaign’s ties to Russia. Trump called the probes a “witch hunt,” regularly criticized Schiff and other Democrats on Twitter and repeatedly dismissed as “fake news” leaks he found personally harmful to his agenda. As the investigations swirled around him, he demanded loyalty from a Justice Department he often regarded as his personal law firm.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement that “these actions appear to be yet another egregious assault on our democracy” waged by the former president.
“The news about the politicization of the Trump Administration Justice Department is harrowing,” she said.
Schiff confirmed in a statement last night that the Justice Department had informed the committee in May that the investigation was closed. Still, he said, “I believe more answers are needed, which is why I believe the Inspector General should investigate this and other cases that suggest the weaponization of law enforcement by a corrupt president.”
The Justice Department told the intelligence panel then that the matter had not transferred to any other entity or investigative body, the committee official said, and the department confirmed that to the committee again on Thursday.
The panel has continued to seek additional information, but the Justice Department has not been forthcoming in a timely manner, including on questions such as whether the investigation was properly predicated and whether it only targeted Democrats, the committee official said.
Another Democrat on the intelligence panel, Illinois Rep. Mike Quigley, said he did not find it even “remotely surprising” that Trump went after committee members’ records during the Russia probe.
“From my first days as part of the Russia investigation, I expected that eventually, someone would attempt this – I just wasn’t sure if it would be a hostile government or my own,” Quigley said.
The news follows revelations that the Justice Department had secretly seized phone records belonging to reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN as part of criminal leak investigations. Following an outcry from press freedom organizations, the Justice Department announced last week that it would cease the practice of going after journalists’ sourcing information.
What a sleazy operation William Barr ran as Trump’s Attorney General.
I have just finished reading A Thousand Brains: A New Theory of Intelligenceby Jeff Hawkins, an author and neuroscientist who founded Numenta, a company that conducts research in the field of brain science. The book is divided into three parts:
A new understanding of the brain
Machine intelligence
Human intelligence.
Part I was most informative and focuses on a new theory of intelligence called The Thousand Brains Theory wherein Hawkins proposes that the brain uses maplike structures called reference frames to build models of the world. He takes a deep but lucid dive into the old brain v. new brain, neocortex, columns, neurons, axons, dendrites, and synapses. A basic element of his theory is that reference frames work simultaneously and reach a consensus of what is being perceived through the senses. The theory gets a little fuzzy when dealing with higher-order brain functions such as mathematics and language. Hawkins admits that his theory is speculative at this time and not proven.
Part II examines the state of machine learning as used in artificial intelligence (AI). He questions whether AI can ever be considered “intelligent” without knowing more precisely how the brain works.
Part III considers the human condition and where it might be heading given issues related to evolution, genes, and our limited understanding of intelligence.
While all three parts are interesting, I found Part I to be an education on brain function.
Below is a brief review of this book that appeared in The New York Times.
Try it if you have any interest in this subject matter especially if you have little training in it.
Tony
————————————————————————————-
The New York Times
A Review of A Thousand Brains by Jeff Hawkins
By Tali Sharot
April 16, 2021
A Thousand Brains takes the reader on a journey from the evolution of our brain to the extinction of our species. Along the way Hawkins beautifully describes neuroanatomy and landmark discoveries in neuroscience, including the existence of cells that signal our location in space and populations of neurons that process information by “voting” to reach a group decision. The book is framed around Hawkins’s theory of intelligence, according to which columns in the neocortex encode thousands of “reference frames.” However, the theory has yet to be empirically tested, and he does not spend much time detailing it or how it could account for high-level functions such as language and thought.
Hawkins, the inventor of the PalmPilot and a neuroscience researcher, aims to crack human intelligence in order to develop artificial intelligence. The problem with current A.I. systems, he explains, is that they can solve only a limited set of predefined problems. They do not possess general intelligence as humans do. According to Hawkins this is because they are unable to represent knowledge. Part of Hawkins’s motivation for developing “true” A.I. is to prepare for human extinction.
Although not predicting when or how we will meet this fate, Hawkins advises readers to craft an “estate plan for humanity” now. Homo sapiens may try to dodge extinction by habitation of other planets, but Hawkins is not optimistic. Instead, he suggests, we would be wise to use machines to preserve human knowledge for the benefit of other beings, even if we are unable to sustain mankind. With this and other ideas Hawkins keeps the reader constantly engaged.
The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center is reporting that total college enrollments declined 3.5 percent or 603,000 students in Spring 2021 compared to one year ago. The 3.5-percent figure is the largest year-over-year decline since the Research Center began publishing enrollment data a decade ago.
Overall spring enrollment fell to 16.9 million from 17.5 million, marking a one-year decline of 3.5 percent or 603,000 students, seven times worse than the decline a year earlier. Undergraduate students accounted for all of the decline, with a 4.9 percent drop or 727,000 students. In contrast, graduate enrollment jumped by 4.6 percent, adding more than 124,000 students.
While every institution sector saw undergraduate enrollment dip this spring, community colleges remain hardest hit (-9.5% or 476,000 fewer students). Over 65 percent of the total undergraduate enrollment losses occurred in the community college sector.
Among all age groups, traditional college-age students declined the most (-5%, age 18-24), largely attributable to their steep losses at community colleges (-13.2%). Adult students (25 or older), on the other hand, show a 2 to 3 percent gain at public four-year and private nonprofit four-year colleges.
Enrollment among male students continued to fall more steeply than female students (400,000 fewer male students and 203,000 fewer female students compared with last spring).
In looking at the data, while much of the decline is due to the pandemic, they also reflect a decrease in the number of high school graduates.
The editorial board of The Boston Globe made the case for the criminal prosecution of Donald Trump in a comprehensive interactive graphic that looked at “future-proofing” the presidency from “the next American tyrant.”
There “is only one way left to restore deterrence and convey to future presidents that the rule of law applies to them,” the newspaper’s board wrote in the piece published this week. “The Justice Department must abandon two centuries of tradition by indicting and prosecuting Donald Trump for his conduct in office.”
It was “not a recommendation made lightly,” acknowledged the board, because “the longstanding reluctance to prosecute former leaders is based on legitimate concerns about the justice system being used to settle political scores.”
“But filing charges against former leaders is not a radical step, either,” it added, noting how other democracies “routinely manage to prosecute crooked former leaders without starting down a slippery slope to authoritarianism.”
Prosecutors would have “plenty of potential crimes from which to choose” when it came to twice-impeached Trump’s time in office, said the board, noting his “repeated attempts to obstruct justice,” his “efforts to overturn the Georgia election results” and his” infamous incitement” of the deadly U.S. Capitol riot.
“Allowing him to go unpunished would set a far more dangerous precedent than having Trump stand trial,” the board concluded. “To reform the presidency so that the last four years are never repeated, the country must go beyond passing laws: It must make clear through its actions that no person, not even the president, is above them.”
The New York Times and Reuters are reporting that the Biden administration plans to donate 500 million Pfizer coronavirus vaccine doses to nearly 100 countries over the next two years, The United States is likely to distribute 200 million shots this year and another 300 million in the first half of next year, they said. It will donate them to 92 lower-income countries and the African Union.
The donations will go through the COVAX vaccine program that distributes COVID-19 shots to low- and middle-income countries and is backed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI).
U.S. President Joe Biden is to announce the deal today at the Group of Seven meeting of the world’s wealthiest countries in Britain.
The deal was negotiated over the past four weeks by White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients and the coronavirus task force team.
The White House has been under mounting pressure to boost donations of COVID-19 shots to other countries.
The United States has given at least one shot to around 64% of its adult population and has begun vaccinating adolescents, while other countries like Brazil and India are struggling to get desperately needed doses.
“This action sends an incredibly powerful message about America’s commitment to helping the world fight this pandemic,” said Tom Hart, acting chief executive of The ONE Campaign, a nonprofit working to end extreme poverty and preventable disease by 2030.
The Biden administration had said it would share 80 million vaccine doses worldwide by the end of June. The White House earlier this year pledged $4 billion to COVAX and urged other countries to boost donations as well.
Pfizer has said it expects to produce as many as 3 billion COVID-19 shots in 2021 and upwards of 4 billion next year.
The New York Times reported that the United States will buy the doses at a “not-for-profit” price, citing people familiar with the deal. They also reported that Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla will accompany Biden during the announcement.
The agreement is in addition to the 300 million shots the United States has already purchased from Pfizer and brings the total number of Pfizer/BioNTech shots purchased by the United States to 800 million.
It is good to see President Biden and the United States leading the world on this!
Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco Announces Recovery of Ransom Paid to Cyber Criminals!
Dear Commons Community,
The U.S. Department of Justice announced that it recovered $2.3 in cryptocurrency paid in ransom to cyber criminals whose attack prompted the shutdown of the country’s largest fuel pipeline and gas shortages across the southeastern U.S. last month. As reported by CBS News.
“On May 8, Colonial Pipeline paid a ransom worth roughly $4.3 million in bitcoin to the Russia-based hacking group known as DarkSide, which had used malicious software to hold the company hostage. Colonial Pipeline CEO Joseph Blount told The Wall Street Journal that the company paid the pricey ransom because the company feared a prolonged shutdown and did not know how long it would take to restore operations.
The ransom allowed Colonial to restore fuel transport through its pipeline, which stretches from Texas to the Northeast and delivers 45% of all fuel consumed on the East Coast.
Justice Department officials said the FBI was able to track and recover 63.7 bitcoins, currently valued at about $2.3 million. The operation marks a rare ransom recovery for the critical infrastructure company that fell victim to the devastating cyberattack, as the “ransomware-as-a-service” business model booms. It marks the first recovery by the department’s new Ransomware Task Force.
“Earlier today, the Department of Justice has found and recaptured the majority of the ransom Colonial paid to the DarkSide network,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said during a press conference Monday. “Using technology to hold businesses, and even whole cities, hostage for profit is decidedly a 21st-century challenge, but the old adage ‘follow the money’ still applies.”
Justice Department officials said investigators tracked the bitcoins on the cryptocurrency’s public ledger and identified the virtual currency account known as a “wallet” used by DarkSide to collect payment. The FBI obtained the wallet’s private “key,” enabling agents to seize the funds under a court order by a federal judge in the Northern District of California.
“Today, the FBI successfully seized criminal proceeds from a Bitcoin wallet that DarkSide ransomware actors used to collect a cyber ransom payment from a victim,” FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said. “Since last year, we’ve been pursuing an investigation into DarkSide, a Russia based cybercrime group. The DarkSide ransomware variant is one of more than 100 ransomware variants that the FBI is currently investigating.”
Last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray likened the threat of ransomware to the September 11 terrorist attacks. The Justice Department also issued a memo to federal prosecutors elevating ransomware probes to the same priority level as terrorism investigations.
During the Colonial attack, the hackers threatened to publicly release company data, prompting the company to shut down operations. The stoppage led to fuel shortages in more than a dozen states, sending gas prices soaring and threatening to halt airline travel.
“When Colonial was attacked on May 7, we quietly and quickly contacted the local FBI field offices in Atlanta and San Francisco, and prosecutors in Northern California and Washington D.C. to share with them what we knew at that time,” Blount, the CEO, said in a statement following Monday’s announcement. “The Department of Justice and FBI were instrumental in helping us to understand the threat actor and their tactics. Their efforts to hold these criminals accountable and bring them to justice are commendable.”
Blount is expected to appear before lawmakers on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and Wednesday at his first public hearing since the attack.
Last week, Russian-associated cyber criminals known as “Revil” employed ransomware in an extortion scheme against JBS, the world’s largest meat processor. The attack forced the Brazil-based company to cease cattle-slaughtering operations at 13 of its meat processing plants in the U.S., threatening the U.S. food supply.
The recent onslaught in cyber extortion schemes has prompted emergency White House meetings as U.S. corporations rethink protection against cyberthreats.
“The move by the Department of Justice to recover ransom payments from the operators who disrupted U.S. critical infrastructure is a welcome development,”John Hultquist, vice president of analysis at Mandiant Threat Intelligence, said in a statement to CBS News.
“It has become clear that we need to use several tools to stem the tide of this serious problem, and even law enforcement agencies need to broaden their approach beyond building cases against criminals who may be beyond the grasp of the law,” Hultquist added. “In addition to the immediate benefits of this approach, a stronger focus on disruption may disincentivize this behavior, which is growing in a vicious cycle.”
Last month, the Biden administration said pipeline companies must report cyber incidents to federal authorities. The directive required pipeline owners and operators to designate “a 24/7, always available cybersecurity coordinator” to coordinate with both the Transportation Security Administration and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the event of a cyber incident, but fell short of addressing other critical infrastructure sectors.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in an interview Sunday that she supports a law banning companies from paying ransom to hackers in cyberspace. Lawmakers have expressed a willingness to consider the measure. But according to Chris Painter, a co-chair of the Ransomware Task Force, such a prohibition on the payment of ransom demands would likely need to be phased in. “
This was a pretty cool operation on the part of the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI.
Former Governor Terry McAuliffe, won the Democratic primary in Virginia yesterday, and will face Republican Glenn Youngkin in November. This will be the second chance McAuliffe will have to lead the state. McAuliffe’s victory is seen by some Democratic leaders as the best chance of maintaining the party’s control in Richmond and a disappointment to progressives and some Black Virginians eager for new blood. Youngkin, a former private equity executive, is a Trump loyalist. As reported by various news media.
“McAuliffe’s victory was fueled by name recognition and the other candidates never consolidating,” said Ben Tribbett, a Democratic political consultant in northern Virginia.
McAuliffe defeated four fellow Democrats to win the nomination: state Sen. Jennifer McClellan, former Del. Jennifer Carroll Foy, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and state Del. Lee Carter.
With the chance to lead the state alongside a Democratic legislature, McAuliffe ran on boosting teacher pay, enabling universal access to early childhood education, speeding up implementation of the $15 minimum wage, adopting universal broadband internet coverage, and closing racial economic disparities.
Toward the end of his lopsided primary, McAuliffe began previewing his message against Youngkin, a business-friendly Republican from the upscale northern Virginia suburbs who has nonetheless secured the endorsement of former President Donald Trump.
“Let me be clear: Glenn Youngkin is not a reasonable Republican,” McAuliffe said in the final televised debate of the Democratic primary. “He is an extreme, right-wing Republican. He is a loyalist to Donald Trump.”
Unlike Trump, Youngkin acknowledges that President Joe Biden won the election, though he has rolled out an “election integrity” plan designed to appeal to the Republican base’s evidence-free fears of voter fraud.
Pivoting to the general election, Youngkin is emphasizing proposals to reduce the state’s regulations and taxes, which are middle-of-the-road by national standards.
“We’re going to open up free enterprise,” Youngkin said in a CNBC interview in May. “We’re going to, in fact, invest in creating a business climate in Virginia where companies want to be here.”
McAuliffe, a businessman, Clinton family acolyte and fundraiser-turned-Democratic National Committee chairman, governed Virginia from 2014 to January 2018. He enjoyed solid approval ratings as governor, winning praise from liberals for restoring the voting rights of 173,000 former felons and vetoing legislation that would have curbed women’s reproductive rights.
Much of McAuliffe’s proactive liberal policy agenda, however, failed due to Republican control of the state legislature.
With a Democratic legislature, he can double what he did before. Virginia state Senate President Louise Lucas (D)
The chance to govern with the support of a Democratic legislature ― Democratic control of the state House is likely and assured in the state Senate ― was a key part of McAuliffe’s case for running.
“Terry has demonstrated what he can do,” state Senate President Louise Lucas (D), a McAuliffe campaign co-chair, told HuffPost. “With a Democratic legislature, he can double what he did before.”
Since the Virginia state Constitution bars governors from serving consecutive terms, this race was McAuliffe’s first chance at a second stint in office. If successful against Youngkin in November, McAuliffe will be the first Virginia governor to serve non-consecutive terms since Mills Godwin. Godwin ran the state as a Democrat from 1966 to 1970, and then as a Republican from 1974 to 1978.
We wish McAuliffe well. He was a good governor in 2014-2018 and should be good again for Virginia in 2022.
Tony
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