SOPA ImagesGetty Images
If you read nothing else on Wednesday, I hope you catch this genuinely epic saga from David Folkenflik at NPR. I freely admit that my cyber knowledge and my general tech savvy can be measured with an eyedropper, but I know a good story when I read one, and any tale that includes Falun Gong, Steve Bannon, several incomprehensible acronyms, and the overall incompetence of the previous administration* is good to be going on with, as they say.
And specifically, it involves a fierce, months-long battle over whether the U.S. Agency for Global Media and the U.S. State Department should subsidize software developed by adherents of Falun Gong. The decision to prioritize this software stripped money intended for critical apps from a federal fund designed to bolster technology vital to dissidents overseas, officials say. On top of that, once approved for funding, over a six-month period the software served a grand total of four people. That's right, four.