The "Sloop John Stamos" Edition

About this episode

This week, Scott sat down with his Lawfare colleagues Alan Rozenshtein, Michael Feinberg, and Loren Voss to talk through the week’s big news in national security, including: • “Under Pressure.” Over the past two weeks, hackers have breached the industrial control systems of water and wastewater utilities in at least seven states, prompting an urgent joint warning from federal agencies. The intruders locked operators out of internet-connected control devices, changed passwords, and in some cases caused water-pressure drops and flooding, forcing utilities to switch to manual operation and issue boil-water notices. The attacks came just days after federal agencies renewed their warning about Iranian-affiliated cyber activity targeting U.S. critical infrastructure amidst the ongoing war with Iran—though the administration has not formally attributed them, and President Trump has publicly waved off the Iran theory. How worried should we be about the security of our critical infrastructure? And what, if anything, can Washington actually do about it? • “The Shawshank Resumption.” Last week, at the annual Black Hat cybersecurity conference, OpenAI provided a detailed look into the recent