Short Takes – 11-29-22

Russia Firing Old and Empty Missiles as Putin Runs out of Weapons: U.K. MSN.com article. Pull quote: “Former British military intelligence officer Philip Ingram told Newsweek said Russia's defense industrial base will have difficulty replenishing their Kaliber and other native missiles "through poor manufacturing capability made worse by years of corrupt practices and western sanctions."”

McConnell holds the cards in spending fight. TheHill.com article. Pull quote: ““If you go back to 2013, we had a Republican House — with a larger margin — and a Democratic Senate and a Democratic president and we employed the [government] shutdown as the leverage and we got absolutely nothing out of that,” said Grover Norquist, a prominent conservative activist and president of Americans for Tax Reform.”

How close were House races? A few thousand votes could have swung control. TheHill.com article. Shows the importance of actually voting. Pull quote: “TargetSmart’s Tom Bonier calculated Sunday that Democrats could have held the House if just 3,340 Republican voters instead cast their ballots for Democrats in the five closest House races won by Republicans.”

EXPLAINER: What hazards are posed by Hawaii's Mauna Loa? ABCNews.go.com article. Pull quote: “Mauna Loa is spewing sulfur dioxide and other volcanic gases. They form volcanic smog, or vog, when they mix with vapor, oxygen and dust in sunlight. As a result, state health officials are urging people to cut back on outdoor exercise and other activities that cause heavy breathing.” And, of course, small rivers of lava are the most visible problem.

Cyber Insurers Turn Attention to Catastrophic Hacks. WSJ.com article. Pull quote: “Still, the biggest risk hasn’t yet materialized: a cyberattack against a company or information services system so important to an economy, or to society as a whole, that it reaches systemic levels. One so big, perhaps, it might take down carriers.” No mention of attacks on OT systems that caused catastrophic physical damage.

Inspectors general from Commerce and Treasury present a tale of two testing regimes. NextGov.com article. Pull quote: “The Commerce IG conducted the test in reaction to a January 2020 attack on the Census Bureau in which outside malicious hackers successfully exploited security holes. During the more recent exercise, the Commerce IG’s “red team” was able to avoid detection while gaining access to personally identifiable information, or PII, stored by the Census Bureau.”

Biden, Congress race to avert economy-shaking railroad strike. TheHill.com article. Update on potential congressional action. Pull quote: “The proposal has been panned both by liberals, who said it doesn’t go far enough to help rail workers, particularly when it comes to sick leave benefits, and by conservatives, who are attacking the very notion that the federal government would “meddle” in a private sector dispute. And Hoyer stopped short of saying it has the votes to pass.”