Security, Spoken

The threat of a nuclear missile strike on United States soil has felt more tangible over the past few years, thanks to North Korea's intercontinental ballistic missile testing and oscillating relationships between the two countries. Against that backdrop, President Donald Trump announced plans on Thursday for the next generation of missile defense on land, sea—and in space. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The current federal government shutdown, the longest in United States history, is in its fourth week, with no clear path to resolution. With 800,000 federal employees on full or partial leave as a result, cybersecurity experts raised an early alarm about how the shutdown would impact US cybersecurity. Those early concerns have since compounded, and evolved into a mounting crisis. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Stochastic Terrorism n. Acts of violence by random extremists, triggered by political demagoguery. When President Trump tweeted a video of himself body-slamming the CNN logo in 2017, most ­people took it as a stupid joke. For Cesar Sayoc, it may have been a call to arms: Last October the avowed Trump fan allegedly mailed a pipe bomb to CNN headquarters. No one told Sayoc to do it, but the fact that it happened was really no surprise. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Late Thursday night, Buzzfeed published a report that President Donald Trump instructed his former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. If true, it means impeachment can’t be far off. In fact, Trump’s behavior has been so broadly suspect, Garrett Graff argues, that he’s either a Russian agent or the biggest “useful idiot” in history. Or both. In other government news, we took a look at the major toll the government shutdown has taken on US cybersecurity. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

With Netflix's recent price hike announcement, you may be taking stock of all the streaming accounts you pay for every month. It's no secret that the easiest way to cut down without sacrificing Blue Planet is to share logins with friends, family, or your neighbor's cousin's coworker. The Greatest Generation had party lines, and millennials have communal cord-cutting. No judgment here if you're voluntarily sharing your Hulu or Netflix or Spotify account. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

As the government shutdown neared the one-month mark, the political landscape shifted under Washington’s feet Thursday night, dramatically and perhaps permanently altering the path of our nation’s politics. BuzzFeed’s duo of Russia probe reporters posted a blockbuster report that President Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow Project. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

The secure messaging app Telegram is significant for two very different reasons. One is that the app is a go-to encrypted communication tool for hundreds of millions of users around the world, particularly those looking to duck government surveillance and censorship in countries like Russia and Iran. The other is that many cryptography experts have cast doubt on the integrity of Telegram's encryption scheme. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

They kept the kids in cages. And Excel spreadsheets. And more than 60 other government files and databases that made it nearly impossible to track the thousands of children who have been separated from their parents by the Trump administration while trying to enter the United States. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

There are breaches, and there are megabreaches, and there’s Equifax. But a newly revealed trove of leaked data tops them all for sheer volume: 772,904,991 million unique email addresses, over 21 million unique passwords, all recently posted to a hacking forum. The data set was first reported by security researcher Troy Hunt, who maintains Have I Been Pwned, a way to search whether your own email or password has been compromised by a breach at any point. (Trick question: It has. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Fortnite topped 200 million registered players at the end of 2018, continuing its run of massive growth and dominance in online gaming. But huge platforms also inevitably have huge targets on their backs. Fortnite has already dealt with its share of digital security issues, particularly scams like imposter Android apps. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices