Lawrence Lessig has a message for America:
Donald Trump’s assault on democracy in 2020, with his stolen-election lie and refusal to concede the White House, may have been shocking, but wait till you see what’s coming next.
“We are in a profoundly dangerous moment,” the Harvard law professor says. “This is a catastrophic year, and the odds are not in our favor.”
Such a blunt warning carries the gravitas of its source. Lessig is a leading thinker on how public institutions can be corrupted, and has probed deeply into vulnerabilities that leave US democracy undefended against authoritarian attack.
Lessig has teamed up with Matthew Seligman of the constitutional law center at Stanford. Their new book, 🔸How to Steal a Presidential Election, 🔸asks whether a second Trump attempt to subvert democracy could succeed.
Their answer makes for uncomfortable reading.
“We are convinced,” they write, “that an informed and intelligent effort to undermine the results of a close, free and fair election could work in America – if the rules governing our presidential elections are not changed.”
It is a sign of troubled times that prominent scholars are wargaming the next election.
Nor is this Lessig’s first such thought experiment.
Four years ago, months before Trump launched his stolen-election conspiracy, Lessig and Seligman devised a class at Harvard law school:
Wargaming 2020.
They looked at whether it would be possible to hack the presidential election and send the losing candidate to the White House.
Their conclusion was that American democracy had dodged a bullet.
“We discovered that Trump didn’t really understand what he could have done,” Lessig says.
“There were obvious moves he and his team could have made, but they didn’t take them.”
The insurrection on 6 January 2021 was tragic in its loss of life, but as a method of overturning the election it was the “dumbest thing they could have possibly done. No court would ever allow the election to be decided by force of bayonets.”
Having repeated the wargaming exercise for the new book, Lessig is far less confident that another assault on democracy would end so positively.
With the former president almost certain to secure the Republican nomination, having won in Iowa and New Hampshire, Lessig has no doubt about how far Trump is prepared to go.
“We’ve seen that he’s willing to do much, more more than we expected back in 2020,” he says.
Another reason for people to be “very anxious” is that Trump and his inner circle have had four years to conduct their own wargames and are likely to be far more sophisticated:
“Trump didn’t understand how to undo the structures of government. Now he’s well-trained, he knows exactly what he needs to do.”
https://www.copperfieldsbooks.com/book/9780300270792
Pixelfed Urges Admins to Update After 9.9/10 CVE Reveal https://wedistribute.org/2024/02/pixelfed-cve/ #CVE, #Security, #Vulnerability
🇩🇪 #Germany has its own Mastodon server for its federal and state government accounts.
We know these are official as their server is on the German bund.de domain.
(Most are in German)
➡️ @Bundesregierung - The German Government
➡️ @hib_Nachrichten - Today in the Bundestag
➡️ @bmi - Federal Ministry of the Interior
➡️ @AuswaertigesAmt - Federal Foreign Office
➡️ @GermanyUN - Germany in the United Nations
➡️ @GERonCyber - Federal Foreign Office Cyber Ambassador
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Hi friends! If you know someone in a non-profit, parent teacher org, church group, or other charitable organization, my little company just entered the online auctions space to help these great organizations keep more of their money by providing a great platform at a substantially lower cost. Would love a shout out and pointing folks at https://thedoodleproject.com/auctions - boosts appreciated! #nonprofit #fundraising #pta
@taylorlorenz Cause Daddy Tim Apple says no.
@taylorlorenz Cause Daddy Tim Apple says no.
I get more done in the 3 hours a day of not sitting in traffic than most do in a full day. #RemoteWork is better. Better for me. Better for my colleagues. Better for my programs. Better for my company. https://mstdn.social/users/amydiehl/statuses/111881154835135994
@VModifiedMind No worries at all! The new provider has a few kinks to work out I think
Fun, cool tech. Shame they screwed pricing up so badly. https://www.pcmag.com/news/starlinks-laser-system-is-beaming-42-million-gb-of-data-per-day #starlink #musk
Are you following the publishers that @Flipboard recently federated? Check them out:
@csmonitor (World news)
@ConversationUS (Smart analysis)
@euronews (Europe news)
@FastCompany (Business and tech news)
@LGBTQNation (Queer news)
@NatObserver (Canadian News)
@NewsLitProject (News literacy advocates)
@Semafor (World news)
@The74 (Education news)
Seeing 23andMe Implode is a particular joy. Not for the people that are losing their jobs, that sucks for anyone, but this company profits off the actual most sensitive data a human could ever hold. It should not exist and no other company like it should be allowed to exist. https://slashdot.org/story/24/01/31/1532255/23andmes-fall-from-6-billion-to-nearly-0?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed
Feeling feisty today! Ass holes! This should have been done, I dunno, 20 years ago. https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/29/icann_internal_tld/ #dns #internet
Ass holes! #remote work is here and it's not going anywhere. Companies that don't embrace remote work will be irrelevant sooner than later as talent votes with their feet. #ibm https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-29/ibm-to-managers-move-near-an-office-or-leave-company