What Happened Here.

Brad Parscale is software.

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1. Donald Trump became the first former president ever convicted of a crime, with a Manhattan jury finding him guilty Thursday of 34 felonies for falsifying records to cover up hush money paid to a porn star. The historic verdict, stemming from conduct that took place around Trump’s run to the presidency in 2016, could threaten his 2024 bid to return to the White House. Trump can still run, and his poll numbers remained steady during the more than monthlong trial, though some voters have said they might be less likely to vote for him if he were convicted. A jury of five women and seven men found the former president guilty of all the counts he faced, on the second day of deliberations. (Source: wsj.com)

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2. Mr. Trump yesterday railed against the “rigged, disgraceful trial” after the jury found him guilty on all 34 counts. “The real verdict is going to be November 5th by the people,” Trump said, speaking to reporters outside the courtroom, “and they know what happened here, and everybody knows what happened here.” Trump’s sentencing was set for July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention is scheduled to begin in Milwaukee. (Source: washingtonpost.com)

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3. John Authers:

Journalists love a Big Story, and the verdicts against Trump certainly counts as one. The way it has already polarized opinion is fascinating and terrifying in equal measure. As it’s hard to think of much else, here are some takes to have appeared so far that struck me as worth reading: my boss and Trump biographer Tim O’Brien reprising The Clash in Trump Fought The Law and the Law Won; David Remnick in The New Yorker; old friend Ed Luce in the Financial Times, focusing on how Trump channeled Billy Joel to say he was an innocent man; Frank Bruni in the New York Times; Sean Hannity’s take on Fox News; the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page reaction; former Obama staffers’ slightly different view on Pod Save the World; and Ben Shapiro’s instant response on his podcast. That lot should bring you up to speed without damaging your sanity as much as a trawl through social media. (Source: bloomberg.com)

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4. Josh Tyrangiel:

For more than a year, FBI Director Christopher A. Wray has warned about a wave of election interference that could make 2016 look cute. No respectable foreign adversary needs an army of human trolls in 2024. AI can belch out literally billions of pieces of realistic-looking and sounding misinformation about when, where and how to vote. It can just as easily customize political propaganda for any individual target. In 2016, Brad Parscale, Donald Trump’s digital campaign director, spent endless hours customizing tiny thumbnail campaign ads for groups of 20 to 50 people on Facebook. It was miserable work but an incredibly effective way to make people feel seen by a campaign. In 2024, Brad Parscale is software, available to any chaos agent for pennies. There are more legal restrictions on ads, but AI can create fake social profiles and aim squarely for your individual feed. Deepfakes of candidates have been here for months, and the AI companies keep releasing tools that make all of this material faster and more convincing. (Source: washingtonpost.com)

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5. An unidentified hacking group launched a massive cyberattack on a telecommunications company in the U.S. heartland late last year that disabled hundreds of thousands of internet routers, according to research published Thursday. Security analysts with Lumen Technologies' Black Lotus Labs discovered the attack in recent months and reported on it in a blog post. The October incident, which was not disclosed at the time, took more than 600,000 internet routers offline. Independent experts said it appeared to be one of the most serious cyberattacks ever against America’s telecommunications sector. (Source: reuters.com)