Stevenson’s army, May 30

We really need to be careful about distinguishing between cyber thefts and cyber attacks as well as between criminal and governmental cyber attacks. NYT makes clear that ransomware is a criminal enterprise.
Politico says US is monitoring Iranian ships heading toward Venezuela.
Matt Yglesias has good explanation of how the Wuhan lab culpability got caught up in the media’s search for a Vovid narrative and blinded reporters to important questions.

My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).