Amid warnings of online extremism, Air Force Academy monitors incidents | The Excerpt

On Friday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: USA TODAY National Correspondent Will Carless looks at an Air Force Academy plan to monitor online extremism. The Justice Department sues Apple. USA TODAY Health Reporter Karen Weintraub explains the medical significance of the first-ever kidney transplant from a gene-edited pig. The U.S. fails to crack the top 20 in the World Happiness Report.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Friday, March 22nd, 2024. This is The Excerpt.

Today, a look at a military academy's plan to combat bullying and extremism. Plus, the Justice Department sues apple and there's been a kidney transplant from a gene edited pig.

♦

Amid warnings of online extremism, one military academy has a new plan, but it's raising questions. I spoke with USA TODAY national correspondent, Will Carless, to learn more.

Will, thanks for hopping on.

Will Carless:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

So, Will, let's just start with this. What alarms have we previously heard that the military isn't doing enough to address hate and extremism?

Will Carless:

So, especially after the January 6th insurrection, after which there was a lot of analysis done on how many people who were involved in the insurrection and who indeed stormed the capitol had either military backgrounds or, in some cases, were still serving in the military, defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, back in March 2021, launched a real effort to try and rid the US military of extremism. And, ever since then, this has been a hot button talking point with people on one side saying, "There's a huge problem with extremists and extremism in the military," and then, people on the other side saying, "That's not true. There really isn't a problem with extremism in the military, and any efforts to seek it out or stop it are a waste of time and money." It's a very polarizing topic.

Taylor Wilson:

So, amid that, the Air Force now has this plan for monitoring its cadets online. What does this look like, Will?

Will Carless:

The Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs basically took it upon themselves to do this. They said, "We have a problem. There is a problem with hate speech and bullying, cyber bullying, people posting things that we don't think are honorable and reflect badly upon the academy." And so, they've basically hired a tech company to monitor social media use, and, if necessary, to identify bad actors on social media within the academy and to track them down and put a stop to it, basically.

Taylor Wilson:

And Will, what concerns do critics have about this?

Will Carless:

So,, I talked to a few experts on surveillance. I've also done some writing on just general surveillance by the FBI and other agencies, and they're really concerned about this. Essentially, their biggest concerns about it are that the contract itself is very open-ended. It's very, I would say, mealy-mouthed. It doesn't really put parameters on what can be looked at and, remarkably, there doesn't seem to be any limit on who can be essentially spied on. So, anybody from obviously cadets, which is their primary concern, but then it seems like anybody in the geographical location of this large military base can have their social media use snooped on by this private company. And that's really concerning to people who know a lot about surveillance, primarily because they're worried about this being used to quiet dissent and to quiet discussions about the efficacy or moral questions within the military itself. So, they're raising some serious red flags about this issue.

Taylor Wilson:

You mentioned something called the Protective Services Battalion in this piece, Will. Can you just fill us in on what that is and how this program relates to it?

Will Carless:

As far as the second question, they're unconnected as far as I know, but this is something that I actually discovered in the course of writing and researching this story.

I guess this isn't the first time that the US military has used a unit to essentially spy on what troops are saying and to keep track of their social media. So, the Protective Services Battalion, its main purpose is to physically safeguard senior members of the militaries. Think of them as a Secret Service agency for the military. So, they're the people who guard generals and majors as they move around the country and around the world to different military bases. But they also have a unit that does this protective service looking at online media, and they're essentially looking for anything that might embarrass or cast senior brass at the military in a negative light. I don't know very much about what they've ever found. There's only been a couple of stories written about them, but it's certainly an interesting unit and it's certainly analogous to what the Air Force Academy is doing. Although, to be fair, no one's really suggesting that the Air Force Academy is trying to stop cadets from saying embarrassing things about their leaders. At least ostensibly this is more about extremism and hate speech than it is about protecting reputations.

Taylor Wilson:

Is this Air Force Academy program, Will, something we're going to see in other branches of the military?

Will Carless:

That's a really astute question, and that was really my first question going into this. And, according to a guy called Dr. Thomas Torkelson who is spearheading this program, it's not. This is something that they've come up with on their own, that they've recognized as an issue to be taken care of within the academy. Now, having said that, but the US military does have a tendency to create programs that then a contractor comes in, makes a decent paycheck out of that program, and then starts selling it elsewhere in the military. So, we know that extremism is a problem in the military. We know cases like the Jack Teixeira case, the guy who was leaking classified documents on a Discord server. We know that that sort of thing goes on and is of concern to the military. So, you have to think, if this program is successful and yields results, then people elsewhere in the massive military bureaucracy are going to look at it and say, "Hey, that's quite a good idea."

Taylor Wilson:

Will Carless covers extremism and emerging issues for USA TODAY. Thanks as always, Will.

Will Carless:

Thank you.

♦

Taylor Wilson:

The Justice Department sued Apple yesterday for allegedly monopolizing the smartphone market. Apple allegedly restricted developers of apps, products and services used on the iPhone that could otherwise lower costs for consumers, according to the lawsuit filed in New Jersey. The alleged monopoly allows Apple to extract more money from consumers, software developers, publishers, and merchants. That's according to the lawsuit, joined by 16 state and district attorneys general. Attorney General, Merrick Garland, said, "Apple commands 65% of the US smartphone market with products that cost up to nearly $1,600."

Merrick Garland:

Consumers should not have to pay higher prices because companies break the law. We allege that Apple has employed a strategy that relies on exclusionary anti-competitive conduct that hurts both consumers and developers.

Taylor Wilson:

Apple issued a statement saying, "The lawsuit threatens the company's ability to provide innovative technology and could set a dangerous precedent."

♦

The first ever kidney transplant from a gene edited pig is offering medical hope. I spoke with USA TODAY health reporter, Karen Weintraub, to learn more. Karen, it's always a treat having you on.

Karen Weintraub:

Thanks. Nice to be here.

Taylor Wilson:

So, Karen, what happened here with this kidney transplant from a gene edited pig?

Karen Weintraub:

So, it was the first time ever that a pig kidney has been placed in a human instead of a human kidney. You may have heard me talking before about a pig heart being transplanted into a human. This was a kidney, not a heart, so, that's the distinction. And the other difference is that patients who get kidneys tend to be much healthier than patients who get hearts. People who need a heart are on death's door where people who need a kidney have been kept alive via dialysis. So, they're sick, but they're not quite as ill as the people who need hearts. So, the two patients who got hearts both died within two months. This patient with a kidney is expected to last a lot longer, hopefully.

Taylor Wilson:

So, Karen, why use pig organs in humans in the first place?

Karen Weintraub:

So, pigs are roughly the right size, their organs, and similar biologically, and frankly, ethically, they're less controversial than, say, a primate would be. We eat billions of them a year, so it's less concern to kill a pig.

Taylor Wilson:

This procedure we're talking about, what are some potential complications and what advances have been made in recent years to help make this happen?

Karen Weintraub:

So, the big difference with this pig is that its genes have been edited. This is a cloned pig and it has 69 edits to its genetic makeup. Three genes have been kicked out. The genes that have been eliminated were genes that identified the pig to the human immune system. So, without those genes, the human immune system won't immediately say, "Pig," notice that this is a pig as opposed to a person. So, without these genes, the human immune system won't immediately recognize the pig kidney as foreign, and then, other genes also delay the recognition. Other genes that have been eliminated or inactivated mean that viruses that are natural to the pig will be unable to jump to the human.

Taylor Wilson:

A lot of people don't want to be the first when it comes to medical procedures like these, Karen. I'm curious why the patient agreed to this. Was it out of a lack of other options or why did he do so?

Karen Weintraub:

Yes, you're exactly right. This patient has had diabetes for 30 years, had a kidney transplant in 2018 that failed after five years. He's had 30 or 40 procedures since then to try to keep his veins open so that dialysis would work. He was probably not a good candidate for another human transplant. This really was the best option for him at this point.

Taylor Wilson:

And, just going forward, Karen, how big of a deal is this for medicine?

Karen Weintraub:

Well, it depends on a couple of things. One is how long he lives, hopefully a very long time. The longer he lives, the bigger deal it is. If he can live for as long as he would've lived with a human kidney, that's a really big deal. It also depends on how repeatable this is. If they can do this again with more patients, and they will go to the FDA now. This was done at Mass General Hospital in Boston. They will go to the FDA now and request permission to do it again with other patients here and at other hospitals. If they get that permission and succeed elsewhere, then it becomes repeatable, and then, eventually, if it wins approval, then it can become more routine.

The cost of this is impossible to predict at the moment. Obviously, this procedure was wildly expensive. Dialysis is quite expensive. The hope in the future is that a transplant could be a long-term solution, longer term solution. Dialysis is quite a miserable way to live your life. It's three times a week, three hours at a time. So, the potential for quality of life for folks is tremendous. There's 600,000 Americans right now on dialysis. If they could be offered something like this instead of that, if it becomes feasible, we're still years away from that, but could be transformative.

Taylor Wilson:

Karen Weintraub covers health for USA TODAY. Thank you, Karen.

Karen Weintraub:

Thank you.

♦

Taylor Wilson:

The 2024 World Happiness Report, a list of the happiest countries in the world has been released and the United States is not at the top. In fact, for the first time since the World Happiness Report was first released 12 years ago, the US is not ranked in the world's top 20 happiest countries. It sits at number 23 behind the United Arab Emirates at 22 and Slovenia at 21. So who is the happiest Northern Europe? Fared well on the list with Finland at the top, followed by Denmark, Iceland, and Sweden. The report is a collaboration between a number of entities and measures factors ranging from social support systems to a freedom to make life choices.

♦

Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.