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TEXAS FLOODSCan Sirens Help Save Lives in the Next Flood? Yes, but There’s More to It.
While sirens can help in areas with shaky cell service, experts say officials also need to consider alert fatigue and provide education on what to do in an emergency.
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DEFENSE BUDGETWill Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful’ Defense Spending Last?
Trump’s signature legislation will push defense spending past $1 trillion, with new funding for innovation and other capabilities. But those investments are at risk of becoming one-off acquisitions without sustained follow-on funding.
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MILITARY TECHNOLOGYHypersonic Weapons and Contemporary Conflicts
The use of hypersonic weapons in contemporary conflicts marks a turning point in modern warfare as they make defenses vulnerable and expand strategic ambiguity. The US, China and Russia have operational hypersonic weapons. India has recently joined the list by successfully testing a hypersonic missile.
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TEXAS FLOODSWeather Warnings Gave Officials a 3 Hour, 21 Minute Window to Save Lives in Kerr County. What Happened Then Remains Unclear.
Federal forecasters issued their first flood warning at 1:14 a.m. on July 4. Local officials haven’t shed light on when they saw the warnings or whether they saw them in time to take action.
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TEXAS FLOODSHills, Rivers and Rocky Terrain: Why the Hill Country Keeps Flooding
When storms roll in, water rushes downhill fast, gaining speed and force as it moves — often with deadly results.
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FLOODSIn Texas Region Prone to Catastrophic Floods, Questions Grow About Lack of Warning
Water rose fast along the Guadalupe River, causing dozens of deaths. Local officials said they couldn’t have seen it coming.
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TARRIFS & NATIONAL SECURITYThe National Security Costs of Trump’s Tariffs
Looking at the national security ledger, the costs of President Donald Trump’s tariffs are starting to become clearer than the benefits, especially for the U.S. defense industry, critical infrastructure, and relations with partners and allies.
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GUNSParked Cars Are Now a Leading Source of Stolen Guns, New Report Finds
By 2022, 40% of all reported gun thefts involved a vehicle, and the numbers are rising.
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IRAN’S NUKES What Damage Did the U.S. Do to Iran’s Nuclear Program? Why It’s So Hard to Know
Disagreements over the damage the U.S. bombing did to Iran’s nuclear facilities are unsurprising. Battle damage assessment –originally called bomb damage assessment –is notoriously difficult, and past wars have featured intense controversies among military and intelligence professionals.
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IRAN’S NUKESWhy the U.S. Bombed a Bunch of Metal Tubes − a Nuclear Engineer Explains the Importance of Centrifuges to Iranian Efforts to Build Nuclear Weapons
It’s not clear what the U.S. attack has accomplished, but destroying the facilities targeted in the attack and hindering Iran’s ability to continue enriching uranium might be a way to slow Iran’s move toward producing nuclear weapons. But history shows that a more reliable means of preventing Iran from achieving its nuclear aims would be for diplomacy and cooperation to prevail.
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NUCLEAR WARPotential Environmental Effects of Nuclear War
In the 1980s, in response to the buildup of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals during the Cold War, scientists issued warnings about the potential for a “nuclear winter” scenario which would follow a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Since then, military, political, and technological changes have reshaped the nuclear weapons landscape, while scientific advances have deepened the understanding of and ability to model Earth system processes.
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WILDFIRESGames Can Promote Preparedness and Build Community Resilience to Wildfire
If a wildfire causes an evacuation, people are forced to leave quickly and make decisions under pressure. These challenging decisions can have serious impacts on the outcome of a fire, and are what players confront in ‘Firewise Residents,’ one of three simulation games created by University of California, Santa Cruz computational media researchers.
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SURVEILLANCEFlock Safety’s Feature Updates Cannot Make Automated License Plate Readers Safe
Two recent statements from the surveillance company reveal a troubling pattern: when confronted by evidence of widespread abuse, Flock Safety has blamed users, downplayed harms, and doubled down on the very systems that enabled the violations in the first place.
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DISASTER RESPONSEStates Fear Critical Funding from FEMA May Be Drying Up
Many states rely on the federal government for the vast majority of their emergency management funding. Now, local leaders are looking for clues about the money —and the future of FEMA itself.
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IRAN’S NUKESPost-Attack Assessment of the First 12 Days of Israeli and U.S. Strikes on Iranian Nuclear Facilities
Israel’s historic Operation Rising Lion and the United States Operation Midnight Hammer have targeted many Iranian nuclear sites, causing massive damage to its nuclear program and setting it back significantly.
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The long view
ARGUMENT: AI-DESIGNED BIOWEAPONS LOOMAre We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?
Anthropic’s Claude 4 is a warning sign: AI that can help build bioweapons is coming, and could be widely available soon. Steven Adler writes that we need to be prepared for the consequences: “like a freely downloadable ‘DeepSeek for bioweapons,’ available across the internet, loadable to the computer of any amateur scientist who wishes to cause mass harm. With Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 having finally triggered this level of safety risk, the clock is now ticking.”
EXTREMISM“The Federal Government Is Gone”: Under Trump, the Fight Against Extremist Violence Is Left Up to the States
As President Donald Trump guts the main federal office dedicated to preventing terrorism, states say they’re left to take the lead in spotlighting threats. Some state efforts are robust, others are fledgling, and yet other states are still formalizing strategies for addressing extremism. With the federal government largely retreating from focusing on extremist dangers, prevention advocates say the threat of violent extremism is likely to increase.
ARGUMENT: A KILLER, NOT A TERRORISTLuigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak write, noting that “lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise.” Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system. In the prosecution’s case against Luigi Mangione, they charge, “That discretion was abused.”
ARGUMENT: AUTONOMOUS-WEAPONS MYTHSAutonomous Weapon Systems: No Human-in-the-Loop Required, and Other Myths Dispelled
“The United States has a strong policy on autonomy in weapon systems that simultaneously enables their development and deployment and ensures they could be used in an effective manner, meaning the systems work as intended, with the same minimal risk of accidents or errors that all weapon systems have,” Michael Horowitz writes.
DRONE WARFAREUkraine Drone Strikes on Russian Airbase Reveal Any Country Is Vulnerable to the Same Kind of Attack
Air defense systems are built on the assumption that threats come from above and from beyond national borders. But Ukraine’s coordinated drone strike on 1 June on five airbases deep inside Russian territory exposed what happens when states are attacked from below and from within. In low-level airspace, visibility drops, responsibility fragments, and detection tools lose their edge. Drones arrive unannounced, response times lag, coordination breaks.
GOLDEN DOMEShots to the Dome—Why We Can’t Model US Missile Defense on Israel’s “Iron Dome”
Starting an arms race where the costs are stacked against you at a time when debt-to-GDP is approaching an all-time high seems reckless. All in all, the idea behind Golden Dome is still quite undercooked.