Avert your eyes! My Sunday morning look at incompetency, corruption and policy failures:
• Terror on repeat: A rare look at the devastation caused by AR-15 shootings (Washington Post)
• Failure at the fence: How Israel’s vaunted ‘Iron Wall’ crumbled: Hamas exploited vulnerabilities created by Israel’s reliance on technology at the “Iron Wall” to carry out the deadliest single assault in Israel’s history. The video details how Hamas fighters neutralized long-range cameras, sophisticated sensors and remote-control weapons — a tactic known inside the group as the “blinding plan” — to breach the high-tech fence. (Washington Post)
• The shadowy network smuggling European microchips into Russia: A rare look inside a covert Russian-led operation to get strategic technology protected by European export controls into the hands of the state. (Financial Times)
• Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation? More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis. (The Atlantic)
• How Florida’s ‘unscrupulous’ auto glass shops fuel an insurance crisis: A coterie of glass repair shops and lawyers has exploited legal loopholes in Florida to rake in millions of dollars in insurance payouts. Legislators are trying to end it. (Washington Post)
• “Do they not realize I like to fight?” The 6 most revealing Fox News details in “Network of Lies” Brian Stelter’s latest book takes us deeper into the bowels of Fox News, unearthing some glorious kernels. (Salon)
• How R.F.K. Jr. Has Turned His Public Crusades Into a Private Windfall: The causes Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has championed have brought him admiration, criticism — and tens of millions of dollars. (New York Times)
• The Supreme Court’s new ethics code is a joke: The code is so weak that it serves to legitimize Clarence Thomas’s corruption. It is literally worse than nothing. (Vox)
• Ex-Trump allies detail efforts to overturn election in Georgia plea videos: A former attorney for Donald Trump has told Georgia prosecutors that a top presidential aide said to her in December 2020 that “the boss” did not plan to leave the White House “under any circumstances.” (Washington Post) see also Behind the Curtain: Trump allies pre-screen loyalists for unprecedented power grab: Former President Trump’s allies are pre-screening the ideologies of thousands of potential foot soldiers, as part of an unprecedented operation to centralize and expand his power at every level of the U.S. government if he wins in 2024, officials involved in the effort tell Axios. Why it matters: Hundreds of people are spending tens of millions of dollars to install a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists across government to rip off the restraints imposed on the previous 46 presidents. (Axios)
• What the Hasan Minhaj controversy says about the trouble with storytelling: The New Yorker tried to pin the comedian down with facts. It didn’t work. (Vox)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business this week with Brad Gerstner, founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital. The tech-focused fund started in 2008 and invests in both public and private firms. Gerstner began as an entrepreneur and has had multiple exits, including travel startup NLG (to IAC). Openlist.com, (to Marchex) and Farecast (to MSFT). He also was an early investor in Zillow, Real Self, Nor 1, Instacart, Expedia, Silver Rail Tech and Room 77. After returning $7B in profits to its LPs, Altimeter currently manages $7B in assets.
Biden gives center stage to the climate report Trump tried to bury
Source: Vox
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