Passthrough AR (using cameras to capture the room around you for realtime display on the screen) needs a minimum of ~200-250hz, and *really* 400-1000hz if it extends into your peripheral vision. Otherwise, the 'slosh' will have you puking in no time.Motion sickness is a problem, but SLOSH-induced VR sickness is ENORMOUSLY worse, and not something you EVER really adapt to (besides learning to turn your head slowly & close your eyes before turning your head quickly to hide it from yourself).Jitter (synthetic images not anchored properly) in foveal vision is annoying, but is stressful & sickness-inducing in peripheral vision. Blame evolutionary survival mechanisms that depend upon noticing 'danger' out of the corner of your eye.One stopgap idea I had: do 'bluescreen' passthrough AR. Render synthetic video to an alpha-blended framebuffer at ~100hz. Capture stereo camera images at 400hz, and combine both for output to a 400hz display (repeating each frame of synthetic overlay video 4 times per camera-frame).The net effect would be similar to optical AR (eg, Magic Leap & Hololens) today... the synthetic image would still lag a bit, but at least the reality-anchoring passthrough video wouldn't slosh.Slosh is just one problem of many... but it's a BAD problem that totally kills the usability of passthrough AR @ 90hz.I'd also propose a short-term display compromise: 8k displays, with the understanding that only a small part can sustain synthetic video at full framerate. Use case: developers who run their IDE directly on virtual monitors in the headset. At 8k, you can render the equivalent of 3 2560x1600 monitors (one fully in view, plus ~1/2 of the adjacent ones) at normal viewing distance, so you can develop VR apps without having to constantly put on & take off the headset. Yes, everyone knows 90hz + 8k games aren't viable with present-day GPUs... and that's ok. Make 'developer' headsets with double-rez displays so they can render the IDE at 8k, but program games for 4k & just scale them 2x2 when running on a 'developer' headset.Same deal with 4k monitors. Yes, we all know interface speeds & GPUs are too slow today for 4k @ 240hz. So make the display 3848x2560 & capable of 60-120fps at that resolution... but capable of 240-480fps at 1920x1080 with 2x2 nearest-neighbor scaling, and maybe even 960-1000fps at 960x540. I'm so sick of having to choose between a display that can do 1080p120 or 2160p30, instead of both 1080p120 and 2160p30 (or 1080p240 + 2160p60). Computationally, any monitor with g-sync or FreeSync should be able to do this. Worst-case, it might need another $5 worth of RAM to allow static double-buffering. For an expensive premium monitor, that's *nothing*.

PARIS -- France's president is taking on the role of salesman in chief for his strike-battered country. Emmanuel Macron used the splendor of the Palace of Versailles to woo international business leaders on Monday, insisting that his reforms are attracting investors despite six weeks of crippling protests and walkouts over his plan to overhaul the retirement system. Driving home the message that the eurozone's second-largest economy remains open for business, Macron's government announced a 2 billion-euro ($2.2 billion) contract for the French shipyard of Saint-Nazaire on the Atlantic coast. It will build two cruise ships for the company MSC, representing some 2,400 jobs over three years. MSC confirmed plans to build other ships in France for another 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion). “Good news doesn't arrive out of nowhere. It comes because we are implementing reforms, because our country is moving, mobilizing,” Macron said. "I know that our heads are being filled with bad news and that we're led to believe that everything is going to explode. But it's not true." Macron delivered those comments to workers at a plant of British-Swedish pharmaceuticals company Astrazeneca in the northern town of Dunkirk, one of his stops on a frenetic day of efforts to convince investors to choose France. Astrazeneca announced $500 million in new investments over the next 5 years. Later, in Versailles, Macron hosted 180 international business leaders, including top executives from Google, Netflix, Coca-Cola, Toyota, Samsung and General Electric. Many executives were stopping en route to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Coca-Cola said it would invest 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) over the next 5 years in France, including in its Dunkirk plant. Japanese automaker Toyota said last week it will build a new car model at its plant in Valenciennes, northern France, which represents 400 jobs and 100 million euros ($110 million) in investments. Macron was elected in 2017 on a pro-European, pro-business platform and argued that France must become more globally competitive. He has started cutting taxes on business revenue and passed laws to make it easier to hire and fire workers and make it harder to get unemployment benefits. For such policies, Macron has faced strikes and protests by French workers. The yellow vest economic justice movement erupted in November 2018 and included street demonstrations for months over the cost of living and perceived social injustices. In recent weeks, the president's plan to overhaul the pension system has prompted major transport strikes. Macron says his plan to unite over 40 different retirement systems into one will be fairer for all French workers. People who have special retirement deals are objecting to the changes, and a wide variety of workers are against any moves to raise the full retirement age from 62. Train traffic was close to normal on Monday and the Paris metro was only slightly disrupted after a major union on Saturday called to suspend the strikes. The government says labor measures have started producing results and are creating more jobs. France's unemployment rate has decreased this year to its lowest level in a decade, but at 8.6% it still remains among the highest in the European Union. The World Economic Forum in its 2019 global competitiveness report - an assessment of the competitive landscape of 141 economies - rated France at the 15, up from 22 in 2017.

The survival of strike-hit Air France is in the balance, according to the country's economy minister.Bruno Le Maire's warning that Air France could "disappear" comes as staff begin another round of industrial action over a pay dispute.Despite the French state owning 14.3% of the Air France-KLM parent group, the loss-making airline would not be bailed out, he said.On Friday Air France-KLM's chief executive quit over the crisis.Air France-KLM is one of Europe's biggest airlines, but has seen a series of strikes in recent weeks. Monday's walk-out is the 14th day of action, as staff press for a 5.1% salary increase this year.The government's response is seen as a test of labour reforms launched by French President Emmanuel Macron. There have also been strikes at the state-owned SNCF rail company.On Sunday, Mr Le Maire told French news channel BFM: "I call on everyone to be responsible: crew, ground staff, and pilots who are asking for unjustified pay hikes."The survival of Air France is in the balance," he said, adding that the state would not serve as a backstop for the airline's debts."Air France will disappear if it does not make the necessary efforts to be competitive," he warned.Despite the strike, the airline insisted that it would be able to maintain 99% of long-haul flights on Monday, 80% of medium-haul services and 87% of short-haul flights.On Friday, Jean-Marc Janaillac, chief executive of parent company Air France-KLM, resigned after staff rejected a final pay offer from him, which would have raised wages by 7% over four years.Air France-KLM reported a net loss of €269m (£238m) in the first quarter of the year. British Airways and Lufthansa have already undergone heavy cost-cutting in recent years, amid rising competition from low-cost airlines and carriers from the Gulf states.But many analysts say Air France has lagged far behind when it comes to restructuring and has failed to address its continued losses.The group has already downgraded expectations of its financial performance for 2018. Air France merged with Dutch carrier KLM in 2004. The joint company flies tens of millions of passengers around the world every year.

U.S. music streams on services like Spotify Technology AB, Apple Music and YouTube rose 30% last year to top one trillion for the first time, according to Nielsen Music’s annual report, fueled by big releases from artists like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Post Malone.Streaming services have upended how people listen to and pay for music, and now account for 82% of music consumption in the U.S., according to Nielsen. Sales of physical albums, meanwhile, dropped off 19% in 2019 and now make up just 9% of overall music consumption....

A US treasury department official has been arrested and charged with leaking information relating to the Trump-Russia investigation to a journalist.Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards is accused of disclosing reports over the past year on suspicious financial activity by figures including Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman.Federal prosecutors alleged that the leaks were used for a series of reports published by BuzzFeed News titled The Money Trail, which has revealed details of numerous money transfers flagged as suspicious to treasury investigators.Edwards, a senior adviser at the treasury’s financial crimes enforcement network, has been charged with unlawfully disclosing suspicious activity reports and conspiring to do so. She was due to appear in a court in Virginia on Wednesday afternoon.She allegedly admitted to FBI agents that she gave the reports to the journalist, but said she was acting as a whistleblower. Investigators said she had previously filed an unrelated whistleblower complaint and discussed this with congressional officials.Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney in Manhattan, said Edwards had “betrayed her position of trust”. Berman said the charges showed unauthorised leaks “will not be tolerated and will be met with swift justice” by the government.In an 18-page criminal complaint, prosecutors said that Edwards, 40, saved suspicious activity reports to a flash drive and sent photographs of them to an unidentified reporter over an encrypted messaging application.As well as Manafort, the reports allegedly leaked by Edwards included information on Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, and Maria Butina, the alleged Russian spy. Another report related to money transfers by Russia’s embassy in Washington.Authorities said that Edwards’s cellphone activity was monitored after investigators obtained permission from a judge. The complaint suggested they were able to see she was messaging the reporter despite their use of the encrypted app, which was not identified.Prosecutors said that when Edwards was arrested, she was found to be carrying the flash drive and a cellphone containing “numerous communications” between her and the reporter on the encrypted messaging app.A spokeswoman for BuzzFeed said: “We have no comment at this time.” Topics Trump-Russia investigation Paul Manafort BuzzFeed news

Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election has seen the latest in a series of high-profile guilty pleas in recent weeks. The president’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen joined his former campaign chair Paul Manafort and his former national security adviser Michael Flynn in cooperating with the FBI.The Guardian’s Jon Swaine takes Anushka Asthana through the major turning points so far in Mueller’s inquiry and considers where it could go next. Is the net closing in on the president, his property business and his immediate family?Also today: it’s exactly 18 months since the Grenfell Tower fire in London that claimed the lives of 72 people. The Guardian’s social affairs correspondent, Robert Booth, has been following the inquiry as it concludes its first phase. He reflects on the testimony he has heard, and how the families are reacting to the announcement of delays in the second phase.

First, Congress should restrict when and how the White House intervenes in law enforcement actions, giving teeth to the norms of the post-Watergate era. One model for such legislation is a reform born out of President Richard Nixon’s abuse of the I.R.S. to target enemies. Congress made it unlawful for certain officials, including the president, to “request, directly or indirectly,” any I.R.S. officer or employee to, in effect, weaponize a taxpayer audit. Congress could apply that approach by prohibiting a president from intervening in individual law enforcement proceedings — or at a minimum require notification when a president or members of the White House staff do so. Such a rule would have imposed an additional bar, for example, on the president trying to get the Department of Justice to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger in retaliation for CNN’s coverage, or from trying to investigate or prosecute political opponents.Second, Congress should ensure that if the president issues or even dangles pardons in an attempt to block an investigation into his own interests, legislators will receive documents regarding the underlying investigation (once it’s concluded). This will both ensure accountability and deter bad faith behavior. Representative Adam Schiff’s Pardon Abuse Prevention Act provides a good start; it could be supplemented to apply to so-called dangled pardons and to force disclosure of discussions with pardon seekers in investigations implicating the president.Third, Congress can make it harder for the government to mislead the public. A little-known law called the Information Quality Act creates a requirement that federal agencies ensure the quality, objectivity, utility and integrity of information they provide to the American people. Strengthening the act so that it applies to the president would help expose disinformation and make it more difficult for presidents to take executive actions based on false “determinations” and “findings.” Finally, Congress should prohibit the president from using federal law enforcement powers to interfere in an electoral campaign. Procedures designed to check some such activity exist in the United States Attorneys Manual, but that merely compiles prudential guidelines. Congress should harden these rules and expand them to cover other law enforcement agencies (such as the Department of Homeland Security). It could require a Civil Service process to approve sensitive actions around campaign season. An even stronger measure could require early-stage confidential judicial approval before a law-enforcement action that might impact the outcome of an election could be taken. Such reforms would make it harder for a president to abuse power — such as by timing investigations or announcements to affect a political campaign, using the security clearance process to silence critics, sending immigration authorities to polling places or intervening in Secret Service activities to protect candidates and events.

James Comey has accused Donald Trump of being “morally unfit” to be president and treating women like “meat” in his first television interview in support of his new book, A Higher Loyalty.Comey further described Trump as a “stain” on everyone who worked for him, according to a transcript of a five-hour interview published by ABC and first obtained by the New York Times. Yet Comey said he does not wish for Trump’s impeachment because that “would let the American people off the hook”.“People in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values,” Comey said. “And impeachment in a way would short-circuit that.”A one-hour edited version of the interview with George Stephanopolous aired on ABC News on Sunday night.“Our president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country,” Comey told Stephanopoulos. “The most important being truth. This president is not able to do that. He is morally unfit to be president.”Turning first to Trump’s defence of a white supremacists’ march, he said: “A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds.”Replying to a question about whether Trump had committed an obstruction of justice, Comey said “it’s possible”.“There’s certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice,” Comey said. But for the president to follow through on threats to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, Comey said, would “set off alarm bells that this is his most serious attack yet on the rule of law”.In his book, Comey compares Trump to a mafia don and challenges the president’s character, honesty and commitment to public service.Sitting in his Virginia living room across from Stephanopolous, Comey answered questions about the Trump team’s response to Russian election tampering, about his handling of the Clinton emails investigation and his personal impressions of the president-elect.“He had impressively coiffed hair that looks to be all his,” Comey said. “I confess I stared at it pretty closely … He looked slightly orange up close with small white half-moons under his eyes which I assume were from tanning goggles.”Comey also described the “really weird” Trump Tower meeting in which he briefed the president-elect on the contents of an unverified intelligence document compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele, including allegations that Trump had been in a Moscow hotel room in 2013 with urinating Russian prostitutes. “I did not go into the business about people peeing on each other” in his briefing with Trump, Comey said. “I just wanted to get it done and get out of there.”It was “unlikely” but “possible” that Russians had material with which to blackmail or otherwise compromise Trump, Comey said. “It is stunning, and I wish I wasn’t saying it, but it’s the truth.”Comey spoke for the first time about his immediate family’s disappointment at Hillary Clinton’s loss. He said his four daughters and his wife, Patrice Comey, all wanted Clinton to win, and as the ABC broadcast showed pictures of them protesting, Comey disclosed they attended the Women’s March in Washington a day after Trump’s inauguration.Comey responded to criticism by Clinton and others that he had cost her the election by making public a late-stage twist in an investigation of her emails.“It sucked,” he said.After the election, Comey said, he felt “vaguely sick to my stomach, feeling beaten down. I felt that I was totally alone, that everybody hated me, and that there was no way out because it was the right thing to do”.But Comey said he would make the same decision again, quoting verbatim from his book: “Down that path lies the death of the FBI as an independent force in American life.”Comey described his intense discomfort at his first meeting with the president, at a reception for law enforcement officials at the White House two days after the election. Comey tried to camouflage himself in the drapery but was spotted by Trump and called across the room, video of which moment has been widely circulated.Patrice Comey called the look on his face in the video “Jim’s Oh Shit face,” Comey said.Comey also detailed a one-on-one dinner with Trump in the Green room of the White House at which he said Trump asked for his pledge of loyalty – an account Trump has denied. Trump made his pitch “after the salad but before the shrimp scampi”, Comey said. The former FBI director said – not wanting to give the president any signals and realizing the gravity of the moment – that he thought to himself: “Don’t you dare move.”Comey dismissed Trump’s denial of a different scene, in which Comey said Trump told him to “let go” of an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn.“The president says he didn’t say that,” Stephanopoulos said. “What am I gonna do? He did,” Comey replied with a shrug.Brisk pre-sales for the book, and the ambitious national tour Comey has planned beginning in New York City on Tuesday, have prompted criticism about the amount of money Comey seems to be making as he settles scores with the president.Yet Comey’s career as a government prosecutor speaks to the seriousness of his commitment to the public good, and whatever other motivations he may have for going in front of the cameras, Comey clearly sees Trump as a threat to the country and sees himself as capable of defending it.Comey described his reaction to finding out on TV, during a trip to California, that he had been fired less than halfway through his 10-year term.“That’s crazy,” Comey remembered thinking. “How could that be?” Then Comey got on the FBI plane for the long flight back to Washington.“I drank red wine from a paper coffee cup and just looked out at the lights of the country I love so much as we flew home.”The White House did not reply to a query about whether Trump planned to watch the Comey interview, which was taped earlier in the week. Trump did not tweet during the broadcast.However, Ronna McDaniel, Republican National Committee chairwoman, said on Twitter that Comey had “no credibility” and “his true higher loyalty is to himself”. Topics James Comey Donald Trump US politics news

Donald Trump has issued a full pardon to I Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff to vice-president Dick Cheney under George W Bush.Libby was convicted in 2007 of obstruction of justice and perjury, in connection with an investigation into the leak of the identity of a CIA agent, Valerie Plame. His conviction was the result of an investigation by the special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who was appointed by the then deputy attorney general, James Comey.President Bush commuted Libby’s sentence, sparing him jail time but leaving him a convicted felon who had to pay a fine and do community service. Trump’s pardon totally expunges the conviction.In a statement, the president said: “I don’t know Mr Libby but for years I have heard that he has been treated unfairly. Hopefully, this full pardon will help rectify a very sad portion of his life.”The White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, told reporters: “The president thought it was the right thing to do.”A spokesman for Bush said: “President Bush is very pleased for Scooter and his family.”In his own statement, Libby said: “My family and I are immensely grateful to President Trump for his gracious decision to grant a pardon. For over a dozen years we have suffered under the weight of a terrible injustice.”Plame, whose identity was made public after her husband, Joseph Wilson, wrote an op-ed critical of part of the Bush administration’s justification for the Iraq war, said it was “simply false” that Libby had been treated unfairly. She added: “If a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable. President Trump’s pardon is not based on the truth.”Recent reports that a Trump lawyer inquired about pardoning power prompted controversy in Washington. The inquiries were reportedly made in relation to the former Trump aides Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, the former having pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and the latter having pleaded not guilty on financial charges arising from the Mueller investigation into Russian election interference.Trump has reportedly considered firing Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed after Comey was fired as FBI director last May.Talking to reporters on the way into the White House on Friday morning, Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway said: “Many people think that Scooter Libby was a victim of a special counsel gone amok.”In a statement, the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, said: “President Trump’s pardon of Scooter Libby makes clear his contempt for the rule of law.“This pardon sends a troubling signal to the president’s allies that obstructing justice will be rewarded. The suggestion that those who lie under oath may be rewarded with pardons poses a threat to the integrity of the special counsel investigation, and to our democracy.”A White House statement said: “Before his conviction, Mr Libby had rendered more than a decade of honorable service to the nation as a public servant at the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the White House. His record since his conviction is similarly unblemished, and he continues to be held in high regard by his colleagues and peers.”Libby said: “Many good and noble Americans have told me that, having seen how I was treated, they would never go into public service. No one understands their misgivings more than I do. Perhaps one day public service in America will prove less of a blood sport. Until then, we are all fortunate that there are those who will enter the arena for their love of our country and our freedoms.” Libby is the third person pardoned by Trump. He has pardoned former sheriff Joe Arpaio, a Trump supporter convicted for violating a federal court order to stop racial profiling against Latinos, and Kristian Saucier, a sailor who took photos in a classified area of a submarine. Saucier’s case was often compared by Trump and other Republicans to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state.Libby’s case is discussed in A Higher Loyalty, the book by Comey which was obtained by the Guardian and other outlets on Thursday ahead of publication next week. The book prompted an angry Twitter outburst from Trump in which he called Comey “a proven LEAKER & LIAR” and “an untruthful slime ball”.Comey writes that the Libby case was “one of my early experiences in Washington of people deciding motivations based on their partisan allegiance. To Democrats, it was obvious members of a Republican administration were subverting justice to undermine and punish their critics. To Republicans, it was just as obvious that this was a witch-hunt against people who made an inconsequential mistake.”On Friday, there was disagreement within Bush-era Republican circles. Liz Cheney, the former vice-president’s daughter and now a US representative for Wyoming, wrote on Twitter: “Scooter Libby is a good, honorable and innocent man who was the victim of prosecutorial misconduct and a miscarriage of justice. Thank you [Donald Trump] for righting a terrible wrong and delivering the full pardon Scooter deserved.”But Matthew Dowd, an ABC political analyst who was chief strategist on Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004, wrote: “This pardon of Scooter Libby is simply outrageous. “I worked for President Bush from 1999 to 2005, and Scooter is a felon whom President Bush would not even pardon. He was convicted of obstruction of justice, lying, and perjury. This is a dark day for the rule of law in America.” Topics Donald Trump Dick Cheney US politics George Bush James Comey Trump administration FBI news

James Mattis, the US defense secretary, has said Washington is still looking for evidence on who carried out Saturday’s chemical weapons attack in Damascus and that his main concern about a military response was how to stop it “escalating out of control”.Donald Trump consulted his top national security advisers on a US response but the White House spokeswoman, Sarah Sanders, said on Thursday “no final decision has been taken”.According to the New York Times, Mattis appealed at the meeting for more time to gather evidence to prove the Assad regime was responsible for the attack. But the administration appeared determined to deliver on the president’s threat to punish the use of poison gas. After the White House meeting, Trump called the British prime minister, Theresa May, and the two leaders agreed that “it was vital that the use of chemical weapons did not go unchallenged”.French president Emmanuel Macron said that his government had “proof” that the government of Bashar al-Assad was responsible for the attack, which is reported to have killed about 50 people and affected hundreds more. NBC and CNN quoted US officials as saying that blood and urine samples from the victims of Saturday’s attack showed traces of chlorine and a nerve agent, and that US intelligence had other evidence pointing to the regime’s culpability, which would be presented to the president.Trump himself appeared to walk back an earlier threat of an imminent attack. On Wednesday, the president tweeted that US missiles “will be coming” and told Russia, which has forces in Syria, to “get ready”. But the next morning, Trump tweeted that he “never said when an attack on Syria would take place”. An attack, the president said “could be very soon or not so soon at all!”Analysts said the more measured tone suggested that the US and allies were prepared to take longer to ready a more comprehensive attack than the US missile salvo launched last April after a previous poison gas attack, while building pressure on Russia to rein in the regime’s worst atrocities and accept Assad’s departure as part of a Syrian political settlement.At the UN, the Russian envoy, Vassily Nebenzia, said Russia’s “immediate priority is to avert the danger of war”.Asked if he was referring to a war between the United States and Russia, Nebenzia told reporters: “We cannot exclude any possibilities unfortunately because we saw messages that are coming from Washington. They were very bellicose.”Nebenzia added: “The danger of escalation is higher than simply Syria because our military are there. So the situation is very dangerous.”In testimony to the House armed services committee, Mattis voiced similar concerns, saying “on a strategic level, it’s how do we keep this from escalating out of control, if you get my drift on that.”Mattis said he believed chemical weapons had been used, but “we are looking for evidence” on who was responsible. Trump has blamed Assad and Russia for backing him.Macron, who has repeatedly insisted that proven use of chemical weapons in Syria was a “red line” for France, said on Thursday that his government would decide its response “in due course”.“We have the proof that last week chemical weapons were used – at least chlorine – and that they were used by the Assad regime,” Macron told a TV interviewer.The French president said one of his aims in Syria was to “remove the regime’s chemical attack capabilities” once all information had been checked. He he added: “France will in no way allow an escalation or anything that would harm regional stability, but we cannot allow regimes that believe they can act with impunity to violate international law in the worst possible way.”In London, the cabinet emerged from a discussion on Syria, and put out a statement saying it had agreed “that the Assad regime has a track record of the use of chemical weapons and it is highly likely that the regime is responsible for Saturday’s attack”.“Cabinet agreed on the need to take action to alleviate humanitarian distress and to deter the further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime,” the statement from Downing Street said.Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) were due to arrive in Damascus on Thursday, but they are not due to visit the site of the attack – until Saturday.Mattis said repeatedly he believed use of chemical weapons was “inexcusable” and required a forceful response. Asked about a legal justification for punitive strikes, he pointed to the presence of US troops in Syria, who could be vulnerable. He said: “We don’t have to wait until a chemical attack, when [chemical weapons] are be used in the same theatre we are operating in.”The Kremlin said on Thursday that Russia and the US were currently using a “deconfliction” telephone line for Syria. Mike Pompeo, the CIA director and Trump’s pick for secretary of state, appeared to affirm at his confirmation hearing reports that about 200 Russian mercenaries were killed in a February clash with US-led forces in Syria. The deconfliction line between the US and Russian militaries was used during that incident.Nicholas Heras, a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, says that the US and its allies appeared to be preparing a more comprehensive assault on the sinews of Assad powers than the single Tomahawk missile barrage against a Syrian airbase last year.“If you are going to conduct a campaign that goes beyond the strike in April, you need to plan out who does what,” Heras said. “What are the range of targets and who is responsible for putting a bomb on them? If they are going to do saturation strikes, they have to go after the air defences so that planes can come in to do really specific targeting. The more planes you see in the battlespace the more clear it will be a multiple-day deep targeted campaign.”Heras said that the deliberative approach is also aimed at ratcheting up pressure on Vladimir Putin, to end his unstinting support of Assad.“They are trying to give time for Russia to come to the conclusion that the US and France and UK are serious,” he said. “Trump has entered his hard negotiation phase and is personally pissed off with Putin about this. He is asking: what are you doing to put Assad to heel and put him into retirement?”There were signs that Moscow was preparing for a missile strike. Satellite images released by the Israeli company ImageSat International showed ships had been deployed from Russia’s naval base in the Syrian city of Tartus. Topics Syria US military Russia Middle East and North Africa Europe Chemical weapons Bashar al-Assad news

U.S. President Donald Trump pauses during his declaration of a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border during remarks about border security in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, U.S., February 15, 2019. REUTERS/Carlos BarriaWASHINGTON (Reuters) - A key committee in the U.S. House of Representatives announced on Friday it was launching an immediate investigation into President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration, saying his move to fund his promised wall at the U.S.-Mexico border raised constitutional and statutory issues. In a letter to Trump, Democrats who control the House Judiciary Committee asked the Republican president to make available for a hearing White House and Justice Department officials involved in the action. They also requested legal documents on the decision that led to the declaration, setting a deadline of next Friday. “We believe your declaration of an emergency shows a reckless disregard for the separation of powers and your own responsibilities under our constitutional system,” said the letter signed by committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler and other top Democrats on the panel. Reporting by David Morgan; editing by Jonathan OatisOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

U.S. music streams on services like Spotify Technology AB, Apple Music and YouTube rose 30% last year to top one trillion for the first time, according to Nielsen Music’s annual report, fueled by big releases from artists like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Post Malone.Streaming services have upended how people listen to and pay for music, and now account for 82% of music consumption in the U.S., according to Nielsen. Sales of physical albums, meanwhile, dropped off 19% in 2019 and now make up just 9% of overall music consumption....

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper on Sunday said that he hadn't seen evidence to support President Donald Trump’s claim that a top Iranian general killed by a U.S. airstrike was “actively planning” imminent attacks on four American embassies, saying that he “didn’t see” specific intelligence to support that assertion.In an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that aired on Friday, the president justified the decision to kill former Qods Force chief Qassem Soleimani by telling Ingraham “I can reveal that I believe it probably would’ve been four embassies.” This was an expansion on previous comments, as Trump had told reporters earlier in the week that Soleimani was “looking to blow up our embassy” in Baghdad and later said at a campaign rally that he was “actively planning new attacks” on multiple embassies.Members of Congress, however, are saying intelligence briefings did not mention threats to embassies, and senior Trump officials have stated that they “were only aware of vague intelligence about a plot against the embassy in Baghdad and that the information did not suggest a fully formed plot.” During an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Esper noted that while the president pointed out that he “believed” the attacks on multiple embassies was imminent, there wasn’t actually any direct evidence to support his assertion.“The president said that he believed that there probably and could have been attacks against additional embassies,” Esper told host Margaret Brennan. “I shared that view. I know other members of the national security team shared that view.”“‘Probably and could have been,’ that is—that sounds more like an assessment that a specific tangible threat with a decisive piece of intelligence,” Brennan reacted. “Well, the president didn’t say there was a tangible—he didn’t cite a specific piece of evidence,” the Pentagon chief replied. “Are you saying there wasn’t one?” Brennan wondered.“I didn’t see one with regard to four embassies,” Esper admitted. “What I’m saying is I shared the president’s view that probably, my expectation is they were going to go after our embassies.”In a separate interview on CNN’s State of the Union, Esper reiterated his insistence that the president never said he had “specific intelligence” that Soleimani was targeting four embassies but was merely expressing his “belief,” a belief that he himself shared.CNN host Jake Tapper, meanwhile, wanted to know if the president was “embellishing” the imminence of the threats, noting that some members of Congress have expressed concern that this could make things more dangerous for troops abroad.“I don’t believe so,” Esper responded. “The bottom line is we had exquisite intelligence that could only be shared with the Gang of Eight. So I understand the frustration of many members of Congress. But what was shared with that Gang of Eight—I spoke to one of the briefers. The briefer told me that most, nearly all of the members of that Gang of Eights said that the information was persuasive and it should not be shared with the broader membership because of the concerns—it could reveal our sources and methods.”“But President Trump said it on TV on Friday?” Tapper shot back, adding that it “doesn’t make sense” that Esper can’t tell something to Congress that Trump is willing to publicly claim on Fox News.“We briefed Congress, and the Gang of Eight—the legitimate representatives of the broader Congress on affairs like this when you have exquisite intelligence—they were briefed. And I'm not going to go into details of what they were briefed, partly because I wasn't there,” Esper answered.

French high-school students face an anxious wait for exam results this week amid protests by teachers who are threatening not to hand over results and an embarrassing leak of baccalaureate maths papers.Police arrested 19 high-school children on Tuesday and Wednesday in Marseille and Paris as part of an investigation into the leak of a maths paper sat by thousands of students which was shared via text message and WhatsApp in June.Seven have been released, while 12 remain in custody and could face charges of exam fraud, breaching trust and conspiracy, the Paris prosecutor’s office said on Wednesday.French education authorities have decided for the time being not to cancel the exam, which was sat by about half of the 740,000 students who completed their baccalaureate this year.The education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, faces another crisis caused by markers in some regions, who are threatening not to return exam papers as part of efforts to resist changes to the end-of-school exam from 2021.Results are due to be published on Friday.“At this time, I must admit there is a small risk, but we’re doing everything we can to make sure it doesn’t happen,” Blanquer told the French TV station BFM.“I have told the teachers who have decided to play this game, which completely goes against the principles of public service, that there will be very severe financial consequences,” he added. He threatened to cut “up to two weeks” of their salary.The strike affects 108,000 of the 4m exam papers submitted for marking, the “Block Blanquer” group of protesting teachers has said.The teachers are trying to convince the government to reopen talks on an overhaul of the French baccalaureate from 2021, which will mean more continuous assessment and less dependence on final exams.Thousands have taken to the streets around France in recent months. Some have occupied classrooms overnight while others have dressed in black during protests to “mourn” the exam.The French president, Emmanuel Macron, pledged in his 2017 election campaign to overhaul the bac, saying it was failing to prepare teenagers for university and the modern job market.Blanquer has argued that the education system relies too heavily on final exams.The famously tricky baccalaureate, based on a structure created under Napoleon in 1808, includes philosophy brain-twisters such as “Do we always know what we desire?”It is not the first time France has grappled with leaked exam papers. Four students were handed suspended sentences last year after a maths problem leaked on an internet forum in 2011. Topics France Europe Emmanuel Macron news

When news broke that Brazil’s president had sacked his controversial far-right education minister, any hopes that Jair Bolsonaro might have moderated his views lasted about as long as it took Brazilians to research his replacement.The new minister, Abraham Weintraub, is an economist and university professor who spent most of his career in the financial sector and has voiced rightwing conspiracy theories – arguing last year that crack was deliberately introduced in Brazil as part of a communist plot.Before joining Bolsonaro’s transition team to work on an overhaul of the pensions system, Weintraub was a professor at the Federal University of São Paulo. He worked 18 years at the Votorantim bank, becoming chief economist.On Monday, Weintraub was brought in to replace Ricardo Vélez, whose brief stint in government was marked by a string of controversies.In February, Vélez wrote to schools instructing them to film students singing the national anthem and being read Bolsonaro’s campaign slogan.He later told the conservative magazine Veja that Brazilians behaved like cannibals when abroad and stole things from hotels, and last week he was accused of “historical revisionism” after saying schoolbooks would be rewritten to whitewash Brazil’s 1964 military coup and 21-year dictatorship.But education specialists expressed dismay at his replacement.“I don’t think anyone who works in education is happy with this appointment,” said Daniel Cara, of the National Campaign for the Right to Education, a not-for-profit group – and a former leftist parliamentary candidate. “[Weintraub] does not have good experience and does not show appreciation for the area.”Bolsonaro announced Weintraub on Monday on Twitter. “Abraham is a doctor, a university professor and has ample experience in management and the knowledge needed for the post,” he tweeted. He later corrected himself and said Weintraub had a master’s in administration and an MBA.Both Abraham Weintraub and his brother Adam are specialists in pensions. His brother is part of Bolsonaro’s economic team.“Today, South America and Brazil in particular are vital parts of a clear strategy by totalitarian socialist and communist groups to take power,” Weintraub told the Estado de S Paulo newspaper in a 2018 interview. In the same interview, he said that crack was deliberately introduced in Brazil and that the Colombian Farc rebel group had been “honoured guests” at the Saõ Paulo Forum, an annual gathering of leftist parties.“Look at the files, it’s on the internet!” he said. (Farc were barred on at least two occasions, the Folha de S Paulo newspaper reported in 2008, and have since become a legal political party.)Cara expressed concern over what concrete projects Weintraub might introduce to improve education in a country where a third of the population from ages 15 to 64 is functionally illiterate. “He argues for reducing spending and Bolsonaro’s cultural war,” he said.“It’s not clear he has the solid project for education on a national level that the position demands,” said Anna Conte, a junior school teacher in Rio.After his appointment was announced on Monday, Weintraub praised Bolsonaro’s intellectual guru Olavo de Carvalho – a former astrologer and philosopher who berates his enemies with obscenity-laden YouTube videos from his home in Richmond, Virginia, and has questioned whether the world revolves around the sun.“He has good ideas but I don’t follow literally what he says,” Weintraub told the Estado de S Paulo newspaper. Topics Brazil Jair Bolsonaro Americas news

Christopher Steele, the former MI6 officer who wrote the Trump dossier, is suing one of Germany’s biggest engineering companies for allegedly failing to pay for work carried out by his intelligence firm, Orbis.Steele and his ex-MI6 business partner Christopher Burrows have taken legal action against Bilfinger, a global industrial group based in Mannheim, south-west Germany. They allege it owes Orbis €150,000 (£130,000) for an investigation into Bilfinger’s activities in Nigeria.It is understood that Steele may give evidence in a German court. It would be his first public appearance since March 2017, when he made a brief statement and was photographed on the steps of Orbis’s office in London Victoria.Steele has kept a low profile since his dossier was published suggesting collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election.It set off an investigation by the special prosecutor, Robert Mueller, and a scandal that continues to dominate US politics. Trump has denied wrongdoing. He has dismissed Steele as a “lowlife” and a “failed spy”.At the time Steele was uncovering Trump’s alleged secret dealings with Moscow, his colleagues at Orbis were investigating corruption in west Africa. In 2003, one of Bilfinger’s local subsidiaries paid $6m in bribes in order to win a $400m pipeline contract in the Niger Delta.Bilfinger admitted corrupt practices. It paid a $32m fine and entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the US Department of Justice (DoJ). As part of the DoJ deal, Bilfinger appointed a compliance monitor and in 2016 a high-powered head of investigations, Marie-Alix von Sachsen-Meiningen.Meiningen hired Orbis to carry out a confidential investigation into Biflinger’s international subsidiaries. They included the Nigeria-based firm that gave bribes. Orbis’s research lasted eight months, covered three continents, and involved a network of sources and contacts, it says.Burrows and his colleagues concluded that the business environment in Nigeria had not changed, and that the payment of bribes to politicians was widespread. They discovered that the subsidiary, Julius Berger Nigeria PLC, was still involved in government projects.Orbis’s reports were sent to Meiningen who passed them on to the compliance monitor. The firm was paid for some of its work including a report on a facility management deal between an energy company on the Russian island of Sakhalin and a Bilfinger subsidiary.However, soon after Bilfinger appointed a new British CEO, Tom Blades, Meiningen was put on leave and fired. This happened on the eve of a major deal with Oman, Bilfinger’s Middle East hub. Meiningen sued the company for unfair dismissal. It launched a counter-suit against her for €1.8m.In a statement Bilfinger described Orbis’s legal claim as “unfounded”. It said it saw no reason to pay the intelligence firm’s outstanding bill. “This dispute will be settled by the district court, and not by the media,” it said.The company said it regularly used law firms and consulting and research firms like Orbis in the course of investigations. It said disputes sometimes arose, especially with complex international investigations. Disagreements might involve scope, work products and “ultimately compensation”.It added: “This, however, is nothing particularly unusual and is being dealt with by normal means of negotiation, settlement, or potentially also legal disputes.” Burrows said Orbis was “perplexed” by Bilfinger’s approach: “With some regret we are having to take legal action following six months of intensive work for this client on a range of projects.”It was the first time a client had failed to settle a bill since Orbis was set up a decade ago, he said.Burrows – a fluent German speaker who lived in Berlin and Bonn in the 1980s – will attend a court hearing in Mannheim scheduled for late February. If the parties fail to agree, the case will go to a full trial.Several other intelligence firms hired by Meiningen as part of her investigation have also not been paid, it is understood. They include the strategic consulting firm Control Risks. Topics MI6 Donald Trump UK security and counter-terrorism Nigeria Germany Europe news

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn has completed his cooperation with the special counsel’s Russia investigation, although he is still aiding another federal probe, according to a court filing on Tuesday. FILE PHOTO: Former U.S. national security adviser Michael Flynn passes by members of the media as he departs after his sentencing was delayed at U.S. District Court in Washington, U.S., December 18, 2018. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File PhotoThe disclosure came in a joint court filing between Flynn’s lawyers and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office in which they asked for another delay in Flynn’s sentencing, citing his ongoing cooperation with the other federal investigation. The other investigation is a case brought by prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) against Flynn’s former business partner, Bijan Rafiekian, for unregistered lobbying on behalf of Turkey. Rafiekian has pleaded not guilty and Flynn could be a witness at a trial scheduled to begin in July. “While the defendant remains in a position to cooperate with law enforcement authorities, and could testify in the EDVA case should it proceed to trial, in the government’s view his cooperation is otherwise complete,” Mueller wrote in the filing. The comment is the latest sign that Mueller may be winding up his 22-month probe into the links between Russia and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Flynn and Mueller’s office had been given a deadline of March 13 to update U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan about Flynn’s cooperation. The deadline was set in December when Sullivan excoriated Flynn, including by suggesting he may have committed treason, and recommended he put off Flynn’s sentencing until his cooperation was complete and he could get full credit for it. In Tuesday’s filing, Flynn’s lawyers asked to report back again to Sullivan in 90 days. Flynn has been cooperating with Mueller since pleading guilty in December 2017 to lying to FBI agents about his conversations in late 2016 with Sergei Kislyak, then Russia’s ambassador in Washington, about U.S. sanctions imposed on Moscow by the administration of Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama. The conversations took place between Trump’s November 2016 election victory and his inauguration in January 2017. The indictment against Rafiekian accuses him of working with Turkish government officials on a secret plan to return Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who is living in exile in Pennsylvania, to Turkey — all without registering as a lobbyist as is required by law. Flynn worked with Rafiekian, a former director at the U.S. Export-Import Bank, on that project. Reporting by Mohammad Zargham in Washington and Nathan Layne in New York; Editing by Sandra Maler and Leslie AdlerOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

When British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his decision Wednesday to suspend Parliament for over a month, in an apparent bid to fetter the implacable opposition to his Brexit strategy, he got a raucous response.John Bercow, the speaker of the House of Commons – a nonvoting, neutral post – called it a “constitutional outrage.” Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party, said it was “a dark day for democracy.” Thousands of protesters gathered outside Parliament to decry the move. By Thursday, 1.5 million people had signed an online petition opposing suspension. And it is facing legal challenges in three separate U.K. courts.But while Mr. Johnson’s hardball tactics strain political propriety, they’re not quite the nuclear option that some had feared – though they may still intensify a political crisis ahead of Oct. 31, the current deadline for Britain to leave the European Union.By cutting the parliamentary days available before the deadline, Mr. Johnson’s minority government hopes to strengthen its hand over members of Parliament, including rebels in its own ranks. The risk is that both sides will escalate further, adding to the stress on a democracy that relies on unwritten norms and conventions.“It’s definitely sharp practice,” says Steven Fielding, a professor of political history at Nottingham University, England. “It’s the context [of Brexit] that makes it outrageous. But the British Constitution allows us to do these things.” What Virginia gun rally says about future of Second Amendment rightsThe tussle between legislature and executive over Brexit has already upended several norms.When Mr. Johnson’s predecessor, Theresa May, refused last December to publish the government’s legal advice on her Brexit deal, lawmakers voted to hold the government in contempt, a rare rebuke. (Ms. May later shared the legal advice.) Dominic Cummings, a sharp-tongued aide to Mr. Johnson and an architect of the Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum on EU membership, was separately found in contempt of Parliament when he refused to testify about alleged irregularities.“You have a government that is acting with contempt for Parliament,” says Thom Brooks, a professor of law and government at Durham University, England. While British leaders have long chafed at parliamentary scrutiny, they have also felt bound to make their case to MPs. A government that flouts norms to avoid scrutiny “is a real challenge for parliamentary democracy.” Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP Mr. Johnson's decision to prorogue Parliament until shortly before the Brexit deadline was top news across the U.K. The step of suspending, or proroguing, Parliament by royal command is a formality before starting a new legislative session. But the gap normally lasts days, not weeks, and the controversy turns on the timing: Opponents of Mr. Johnson, who took power in July, have been formulating a strategy to stop the United Kingdom leaving the EU without an agreement.One option under discussion was to pass emergency legislation that tied Mr. Johnson’s hands, as was done to Ms. May. That now looks much harder to achieve on time. Any bills that don’t pass before the end of the session must start over after Oct. 14, when Parliament returns.The other option to stop a no-deal Brexit is a no-confidence vote to bring down the government. But opposition MPs have struggled for weeks to agree on who should lead an alternative government and what to do about Brexit, beyond seeking another extension from EU leaders weary of British intransigence.“There’s a clear majority against no deal in the House of Commons. But there isn’t a majority for anything else, and that’s why they’re stuck,” says Mr. Fielding. How far Mr. Johnson’s opponents are prepared to go is an open question. So, too, is Mr. Johnson’s political endgame.His defenders say he was backed into a corner by the scheming of norm-defying MPs determined to stop Brexit, which he has vowed to deliver on time. By neutralizing their schemes, he can go back to his EU counterparts and insist on concessions that Ms. May wasn’t able to win because she couldn’t credibly threaten to walk away.“He can give the impression that in every sense he’s committed to no-deal Brexit in a way that Theresa May never was,” observes Dr. Brooks.In his letter to MPs, Mr. Johnson said that a deal may be reached at a summit of European leaders on Oct. 17-18 and that Parliament would then be able to vote on it. He said that “only by showing unity and resolve” could the U.K. secure a deal “that can be passed by Parliament.” Still, the chances for such a revised deal appear slim given the gulf between the EU and U.K. on key elements, including intra-Ireland border trade that is under EU rules. Mr. Johnson has said that the so-called Irish backstop – a temporary customs arrangement to prevent the return of a hard border – must be struck from the deal. EU officials have repeatedly rejected this idea.Rather, Mr. Johnson appears to be preparing for a no-deal Brexit and looking for a political upside, says Mr. Fielding. For millions of voters who want to leave the EU with or without a deal, the outrage over the suspension of Parliament burnishes Mr. Johnson’s image as a risk-taker who puts Brexit first, in contrast to Ms. May’s fitful efforts to build consensus for an orderly departure. Get the Monitor Stories you care about delivered to your inbox. In an increasingly fractured party system, this could be enough to win a snap election that is widely expected after Britain leaves. “He will go to the country as the man who has taken on all these people who tried to stop Brexit,” says Mr. Fielding.John Strafford, a Conservative activist and former party executive in Beaconsfield, a prosperous London suburb, says Mr. Johnson’s no-holds-bars leadership has fired up the base. “It’s such a difference. For three years we’ve been pessimistic and down in the dumps and getting nowhere. Now people have got hope,” he says. “They can see an end date.”

U.S. President Donald Trump smiles next to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (not pictured) at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore June 12, 2018. Kevin Lim/The Straits Times via REUTERS WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Friday a Justice Department inspector general’s report that concluded there was no bias in how the FBI handled its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails was wrong, saying there was “total bias.” “The end result was wrong,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Channel. “There was total bias when you look at (FBI staff member) Peter Strzok, what he said about me, when you look at (then FBI Director James) Comey and all his moves.” Reporting by Eric Walsh and Justin Mitchell; Writing by Tim Ahmann; Editing by Chizu NomiyamaOur Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

One afternoon in late December, a team of hackers surreptitiously entered the computer network of a western Ukrainian power company, Prykarpattyaoblenergo, and began taking control of critical circuit breakers across the region. Employees watched in horror as the cursors on their computer monitors began moving on their own, opening and executing commands at will. One by one, the hackers took electrical substations offline, injecting malware as they went that rendered the entire power grid inoperable. For several hours, some 230,000 people were plunged back into the Stone Age.The December 23, 2015, cyberattack, which Ukrainian and American officials later blamed on Russia, is surely top of mind for many national security officials following the U.S. assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the second-most powerful military leader in Iran. The two countries have since backed away from the brink of war. But cybersecurity experts remain deeply concerned about the potential for more clandestine acts of retaliation. Iran, after all, is notorious for its use of asymmetric warfare. In 2018, U.S. officials warned that Iranian hackers had laid the groundwork for extensive cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure, including electric grids and water plants, as well as healthcare and technology companies. Might they seize the opportunity to attack?“Based on the attack that we did and the high profile of the individual that was killed in the drone strike, I could see them going after things like energy grids,” said David Harding, CTO and SVP of security company ImageWare Systems. “I could see them going after banking infrastructure. I could see them doing things that would cause large upheaval.”So far, Iran appears to be pulling its punches. A retaliatory missile strike on a U.S. military base in Iraq, launched last week, appeared precisely calibrated to avoid any casualties. The only known cyberattack was a minor act of digital vandalism, in which Iranian hackers briefly took over and defaced fdlp.gov, a website for the little-known Federal Depository Library Program. “This is only small part of Iran’s cyberability,” the hackers threatened. “We’re always ready.”Whether the United States is ready is more complicated. Sure, the U.S. military has fearsome offensive capabilities: The Stuxnet computer worm, which was allegedly built in partnership with Israel, is believed to have done massive damage to Iran’s nuclear program, for example. But the U.S. remains vulnerable at home. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the number of reported cyberincidents on federal systems increased more than tenfold between 2006 and 2015, culminating in a data breach at the Office of Management and Budget (attributed to China) that compromised about 4 million federal employees. And while the U.S. has yet to experience a major cyberattack on critical infrastructure, foreign adversaries and various nonstate actors have been probing our defenses. This past summer, three different cybersecurity firms reported observing Iran-linked hackers attempting to gain access to U.S. government targets in what appeared to be the first phase of a cyberespionage operation. More recently, security firm Dragos allegedly observed a password-spraying attack, also linked to Iran, targeting U.S. electric utilities and oil and gas firms.The worst-case scenario—a cyberconflict in which power grids are shut down, trains derail, and petrochemical plants are turned into bombs—still sounds a bit like science fiction. But it wouldn’t take thousands of deaths for an attack to have devastating consequences. “Losing water or power for even a short while can cause a shock to people’s sense of security,” wrote RAND senior engineer Isaac Porche in a recent report. “Furthermore, any real or perceived tampering with the nation’s electoral process could be equally shattering to Americans’ sense of freedom.”The next foreign adversary to hijack U.S. elections could go further than hacking emails or weaponizing Facebook. “In our simulations, one of the things that the red team actually came up with, the attack team, is to attack public infrastructure on election day,” said Roi Carmel, chief strategy officer at security firm Cybereason. “The way to make this impact doesn’t have to be attacking the Pentagon.” A multi-agency tabletop simulation scenario hosted by the company last year saw role-playing authorities forced by adversaries to shut down an election, after hackers sabotaged traffic lights, spread false propaganda about candidates and, in a futuristic twist, even hijacked self-driving cars to attack voters.“Our current assessment is that organizations in the financial, defense, government, and oil and gas sectors are the most likely targets for retaliation activity,” said Adam Meyers, VP of Intelligence at security firm CrowdStrike, in a statement emailed to Fast Company. “We are also monitoring for Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) activity, as Iran has employed DDoS attacks in the past, as well as other tactics, such as ransomware activity.”James Lewis, director of the Technology Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, suggested that industrial control systems in the energy sector are particularly vulnerable. “The nice thing about pipelines is they can practice this at home,” he said. “They can practice their attacks in Iran and then if they want to use them here in the US.”A more subtle sustained cyberattack could aim to sow discord by hacking and exposing embarrassing information about corporate and political leaders, as North Korean hackers are said to have done in the Sony Pictures hack in 2014 and Russian hackers are alleged to have done in the 2016 attacks on Democratic email servers. Attackers could also fan the flames of existing controversies to weaken sectors of the U.S. economy, like spreading doubt about various subsectors of the energy industry, suggests Theresa Payton, the CEO of security company Fortalice Solutions and the former White House CIO under President George W. Bush. “The right type of social media manipulation, misinformation, and amplification campaign could wreak havoc on how we think about our production of nuclear energy, coal, solar, wind,” she said. “They could go after all of the above.”Mutually assured destructionThough the U.S. has made progress in firming up its cybersecurity, there are still major vulnerabilities that could be exploited, writes Porche. First, many critical infrastructure systems lack effective software security. Second, many such systems are improperly configured and maintained, such as when IT personnel fail to deliver patches for operating systems or don’t use strong passwords. Third, with the growing number of WiFi-enabled devices that comprise the Internet of Things, the number of potential targets has expanded exponentially, and many government agencies haven’t improved their security procedures, sloppily leaving network connections open and failing to implement network segmentation.The good news, experts say, is that the worst-case scenario is highly unlikely. Iranian military leaders know that a violent cyberattack on civilian targets would likely result in serious retaliation from the United States and its allies. “The strategy that I see right now is they want to retaliate without dragging themselves into an all-out war with the U.S.,” said Carmel, the chief strategy officer at Cybereason.When Iran first retaliated for Soleimani’s death, for instance, it appeared to pick U.S. military targets in Iraq that did not result in any casualties, effectively capping the cycle of escalation. That same strategic thinking would likely guide Iran in any future cyberattack, Lewis suggested. “If they turned out the lights in an American city, they would probably expect a violent U.S. response,” he said. “If they wipe the data from another casino, they might think they could get away with it.”Of course, U.S. forces are always hunting for evidence of digital incursions—and are reportedly increasingly willing to use offensive cyberpower to prevent or preempt attacks. “It wouldn’t surprise me if Cyber Command is monitoring the Iranians to see if they should interfere,” said Lewis. In such cases, the costs of electronic snooping—probing U.S. systems for potential vulnerabilities—can escalate quickly.At the same time, Carmel said, U.S. organizations have begun to invest more in technology to detect and stop cyberattacks sooner rather than later. With enough time and effort, practically any computer system can be hacked, but more robust monitoring and defensive capabilities have limited the number of soft targets, and increased the resources required to cause widespread damage. “America’s a really big country, and so there’s millions of targets, and some of them are really tough,” noted Lewis. “Some of the ones the Iranians would want to hit like the really big banks, they probably wouldn’t have the capability.”Still, it’s not unlikely that heightened tensions could lead to some sort of digital attack by Iran, even if it’s less than apocalyptic. “They’ll be attracted to a cyberattack because it’s really the only way that they can do something in the continental United States,” said James Lewis, director of the Technology Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.Iran could even enlist independent hackers to penetrate U.S. systems and destroy data, warned Payton, the CEO of Fortalice Solutions. One possibility is that Iranian officials could hire existing ransomware rings to target systems, and either hold data for ransom as usual or simply destroy it, as hackers did in the Aramco attack. “Iran could just pay a group of ransomware-destructionware syndicates to do this work for them,” she noted.The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has advised companies and agencies to take typical cybersecurity steps like patching software, locking down unused ports, monitoring email for phishing attacks, and limiting account access. And organizations in general have ramped up their security practices in recent years, including sharing data on potential threats, Payton said. “A lot of information sharing has happened between us and our allies,” she added.But the fact remains that the large number of targets means Iranian hackers may still be able to gain a foothold in critical U.S. systems, just as hackers armed with ransomware have found their way into big companies and government agencies in recent years.“This is just an escalated situation,” said Harding. “It’s not new.”