Today’s Headlines and Commentary

The Senate Intelligence Committee issued a report concluding that Russia targeted the election systems of all 50 U.S. states in 2016, the New York Times says. The report will be the first of five volumes detailing the committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and was heavily redacted at the recommendation of the U.S. intelligence community.

The House Judiciary Committee will petition the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to release the grand jury materials underlying former special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, Politico writes.

The Senate voted to confirm Gen. Mark Milley as the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by a vote of 89 to 1, CNN reports. Sen. Jeff Merkley, the single dissenting vote, said that he “was concerned by Gen. Milley's stated support for building up the U.S.'s nuclear arsenal and deployments" and "voted no accordingly."

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed another bill to block certain arms sales to Saudi Arabia and prevent in-flight refueling of the Kingdom’s aircraft, Politico writes. The measure comes after President Trump vetoed similar joint resolutions. The Senate will vote to override the president’s veto before the August recess.

A week before gangs of masked men attacked protesters at a rural Hong Kong train station, an official from China’s local Central Government Liaison office had encouraged locals to protect their towns and drive activists away, Reuters reports.

Ransomware targeted Johannesburg’s electricity supplier, encrypting its “databases, applications and network”, the BBC writes. More than a quarter of a million residents of South Africa’s city were reportedly affected.

An entire U.S. Navy SEAL platoon was withdrawn from Iraq following internal reports that members of the team had consumed alcohol against regulations and that a senior enlisted member of the platoon had raped a female servicemember, according to a senior navy official, the Times reports.

Australia looks to establish a dedicated office to scrutinize privacy concerns regarding Facebook and Google’s use of algorithms to match advertisements with viewers, according to Reuters. This would be part of a series of reforms that attempt to make big tech companies more transparent.

The state of Louisiana declared a cybersecurity emergency after it was brought to their attention that several school systems had been compromised by malware, CNN says.

ICYMI: Yesterday on Lawfare

Jessica Zhang and Andrew Patterson analyzed the implications of decriminalizing illegal border crossings.

Bobby Chesney and Steve Vladek shared the latest episode of the National Security Law Podcast in which they discuss war powers, prosecution vs .military detention, prosecuting Khalid Sheik Mohammed and more.

Eli Sugarman and Heath Wickline announced a new project from the Hewlett Foundation’s Cyber Initiative working to make cybersecurity more comprehensible using visualizations.

Vishnu Kanan shared the Senate Intelligence Committee’s new report on Russian active measures in the 2016 election.

Elena Kagan shared a bonus edition of the Lawfare Podcast titled, “Robert Mueller vs. the Committees with No Bull.” The episode condenses Mueller’s testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees by eliminating non-substantive or repetitive questions. The episode is also divided into two segments aggregating all of the Republican questions into one and Democratic questions into another.

Jen Patja Howell shared the most recent episode of Rational Security in which Tamara Coffman Wittes, Shane Harris, Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes discuss Mueller’s testimony and its implications for the future.

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