RNC Revisited, Global Tech Meltdown, Latest From Israel

An unconventional Republican convention.

Vivid details about last week's attempt on the life of former President Trump.

And little dissension about who the party nominee should be.

I'm Scott Simon.

I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is Up First from NPR News.

And even more pressure on President Biden to withdraw from his re-election campaign.

And how one small mistake led to a cascade of technological problems around the world.

What the CrowdStrike fiasco can teach us about computer security.

Also, a different sort of error led to a drone evading Israel's air defenses.

One person died, several were injured.

Stay with us, we have the news you need to start your weekend.

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The Republican Party wrapped up its convention this week solidly behind former President Donald Trump.

But who will be his opponent on the Democratic side? NPR senior Washington editor and correspondent Ron Elving joins us. Ron, thanks for being with us.

Good to be with you, Scott.

Let's begin with the convention in Milwaukee. What were your impressions?

It was not like the conventions of the past, Scott, where party heavyweights beat up on the opposition party. But also traded blows with each other. There was no suggestion of dissent or discord anywhere. The platform was rewritten to repeat what Trump has said already on social media about abortion, about trade and taxes, about every salient issue. Every speaker was either a longstanding Trump loyalist or a member of his family, or a past or potential Trump rival, who has recanted and pledged absolute fealty to the leader.

And Trump diverged from his prepared remarks a lot. For example, when he talked about the assassination attempt that occurred just a week ago. And here is, I think, what we can fairly call a riff on international relations.

And they were ready to make a deal.

Iran was going to make a deal with us.

And then we had that horrible, horrible result that we'll never let happen again.

The election result, we're never going to let that happen again. They used COVID to cheat. We're never going to let it happen again.

What is Trump really saying here? when he's talking about an Iran deal? He doesn't tell us anything about the deal. But he is mostly saying that the verified and certified vote of 2020, when he lost by 7 million votes, was a horrible thing. And surely, from his perspective, it must have been painful. But it was certified by 50 state governors, Republican and Democratic alike, and also by the U.S. Congress. Trump's challenges in the courts failed. And election experts in both parties and Trump-era election officials called it the most secure election in U.S. history. Then Trump refers to Democrats cheating with COVID when he's talking about pandemic-era voting by mail. That's a practice widespread in America well before anyone ever heard of COVID. Voting early or by mail has historically been most popular among Republicans. And when he says, we're never going to let it happen again, just what does that mean? We assume he does not mean that we won't have elections or that we will only count the elections when he thinks they should. We assume that. But does he?

Meanwhile, President Biden recovers from COVID at his home in Delaware. We're told his case is mild. Vital signs are fine. And that he's feeling cold for many in his party to step aside. What do a number of these major Democrats, which include dozens at this point, see that the president reportedly does not?

Well, they see Biden's own performance and they're hearing conversations and seeing polls in their own states and in their own races, polls nationwide and in the crucial states that decide our elections. They're seeing these polls, say the two thirds of Democrats want Biden to step aside. Now, these are people who may still vote for him in November if he's the candidate, but they think he should give way to a stronger candidate. And they are also drawing on their own experience as politicians. When a party's headliner fails in a statewide election or a national election, that party suffers all the way down the ballot. And when a party unites behind a strong national leader, they can gain or at least hold their own contests for other offices. Now, Biden can see all this, we think, but he claims at this point to be unmoved. He is reading the data selectively and listening to people he has trusted the most for the longest time. He may still think he can change the data with a rip roaring campaign this fall. But the consensus among party people not named Biden and not employed in the White House or in the Biden campaign is that Biden cannot win.

But so many Americans have voted for him already in the primaries. Are those votes just swept aside?

No, they're not all for naught. They expressed the best hopes of the party at the time they were cast. But they may have been cast in the dark, so to speak. During the primaries, typical Democratic voters were simply not as aware of Biden's age-related diminishment as they are now. There is a palpable fear that he cannot drive the turnout needed to keep the White House and to maintain a strong Democratic presence in Congress and in the states.

Ron Elving, thanks so much.

Thank you, Scott.

Hundreds of thousands of people faced the blue screen of death yesterday.

That's in computer lingo, the B.S.O.D.

That's when Microsoft Windows crashes. This time, it was due to a faulty update from the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike.

And our cybersecurity correspondent, Jenna McLaughlin, joins us now. Thanks for being with us. Of course, Scott. How much havoc?

Quite a lot. Just yesterday, we saw thousands of flight delays around the entire world, cancellations of non-emergency surgeries. There were outages for 911 emergency services. I'm actually in Aspen, Colorado, for a family trip. The local public radio station had some issues broadcasting, but they pulled it off. I'm flying back home to D.C. today and hoping things are a little less chaotic.

Well, good luck. Have we seen anything like this before?

In some ways, sure. I cover cyber incidents all the time. Sometimes, it's a technical error. It takes down a website for a few hours. Other times, it's more malicious. Nation-state hackers can wipe computers or steal data. Or, even more commonly, cyber criminals are looking to make money through ransomware attacks, for example. But in this case, the number of different companies impacted is just so massive. I'm not sure that I've seen this before.

How can one mistake have such a far-reaching impact?

It's basically because of the unique position that CrowdStrike is in. It's one of the top cybersecurity vendors. It's worth billions, though its stock dropped a bit yesterday. So, monitoring software has a very deep level of access to machines. They have that so that they can monitor everything happening on the devices to sniff out potential bad actors. But in part because of that access, Scott, the way the software interacts with the Windows operating system, one error and a routine automatic update, crash servers all around the world. I talked to Andy Ellis about this. He's an expert who led security at the cloud company Akamai for 20 years. And he said that his team always worried about hackers, but they were really worried about mistakes like this one. He said he went through something really similar at Akamai.

In fact, 20 years ago, two months ago, and we spent years going through and hardening all of our systems because it would have been hard for an adversary to inject, but we were far more worried about just accidental injections that we might do.

By injections, he means lines of additional code that change the way the program works or causes it to stop working. Now, CrowdStrike has pushed out a fix and many clients are back online. But people are not likely to forget just how disruptive this was.

It doesn't appear to have been an attack, Jenna, but is this a wake-up call for how vulnerable tech systems can be?

Absolutely. You know, it doesn't take a skilled hacker to get this done just to slip up. In this case, it's probably a good idea for more testing of security updates before they go live. More broadly, I've talked to a lot of cybersecurity experts who argue we need to get a better sense of what is critical when it comes to software. Just recently, we saw the entire healthcare industry disrupted for weeks because a digital payment platform got hit with a ransomware attack. We need to prioritize protecting these things like healthcare. Otherwise, this is going to keep happening.

And here's Jenna McLaughlin. Thanks so much.

Thank you.

A drone came in from over the Mediterranean Sea yesterday and struck near the Tel Aviv beachfront.

Separately, the U.N.'s highest court ruled against Israel, saying its settlements in the West Bank are unlawful. And Greg Myrie is in Tel Aviv. Greg, thanks for being with us.

Good to be here, Scott.

First, Israel appeared to be surprised by a drone attack in Tel Aviv yesterday. What happened?

Yeah, Scott, when you're in Tel Aviv, and the beachfront in particular, you just don't feel the war that's taking place in Gaza, less than 50 miles down the Mediterranean coast. Surfers are out at dawn. Young people are playing volleyball under the lights until very late at night. The restaurants are full. But just after 3 a.m. Friday, a large drone came in over the Mediterranean. It crashed into an apartment building a block off the beach. Jonathan Carton and some friends were up late on the apartment balcony at the time of the attack.

That friend of mine said, cool, what's that? What's that? over there? I turned my head to see. And then I heard a buzzing like an F-35, but it was only maybe 30 meters above sea level. So it was strange. And then I saw a red and orange blast. I felt this heat, a blowback.

One man was killed and several people injured. The drone hit just a block from the U.S. Embassy branch office and shattered windows for several blocks.

And who claims responsibility for the attack?

The Houthi militia in Yemen, which means this drone traveled hundreds of miles to reach Tel Aviv. And this is not the kind of attack Israel has typically faced. It was dealing with thousands of Hamas rockets coming from the south, out of Gaza, though that's been halted almost entirely. It's still combating Hezbollah rockets that rain down daily in the north from Lebanon. But until Friday, Tel Aviv hadn't really encountered an aerial attack coming from the Mediterranean to the west. And this apparently caught Israel off guard. The military said its air defense system did not detect the threat. There were no sirens or other warnings, and the military called it human air.

Also, late this week, the U.N.'s International Court of Justice ruled that settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem violate international law. What has been the reaction in Israel and in the territories?

Yeah, the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who's based in the West Bank, called it historic. In contrast, Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejected the ruling, saying, quote, the Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land. A couple of important points here. This is an advisory, a non-binding opinion. The U.N. General Assembly requested this formal opinion, though it's been saying essentially the same thing about Israeli settlements for decades, that they're unlawful, illegal, and yet they just keep growing and they're expanding very rapidly right now. And the Palestinians say there's simply no way to create a viable state with all these settlers spread across these areas.

And the ruling comes just as Prime Minister Netanyahu plans to visit the U.S. What are you going to be watching for?

Well, we should all be looking for signs of tension in the U.S.-Israel relationship. And I think the mixed reaction Netanyahu is likely to get. President Biden has grown frustrated with the way Israel has prosecuted the war in Gaza, especially the very high civilian death poll. Now, the two leaders are expected to meet if Biden has sufficiently recovered from his bout with COVID. And yet Netanyahu is addressing a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday. So expect strong report from Republicans and sharp criticism from at least some Democrats.

And President Gregg Myrie in Tel Aviv, thanks so much for being with us.

Sure thing, Scott.

And that's up first for Saturday, July 20th, 2024.. I'm Scott Simon.

And I'm Ayesha Roscoe. Michael Radcliffe produced today's episode with help from Samantha Balaban, Danny Hensel, and Fernando Naro. Andrew Craig is our director.

Our editors, Red McNulty, Andrew Sussman, Mark Katkoff, Shannon Rhodes, and Matthew Sherman.

Hannah Glovna and Andy Huther are our technical directors, with engineering support from Nisha Hynes, Arthur Laurent, and Ted Meebane.

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Tomorrow on the Sunday Story podcast, a story about two Chinese dissidents living in the Netherlands.

And you can listen to more news, interviews, sports all weekend long on your NPR station. You can find it, too, by going to stations.npr.org. And we sure hope you will.

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For a while now, you've probably been hearing about book bans, how they're gaining momentum everywhere in Texas, in Missouri, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

On the Code Switch podcast, we're taking a look at why. Why are so many books suddenly considered so dangerous to kids?

Listen to our new series on the Code Switch podcast from NPR.