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Games 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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Flock 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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States 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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Post-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 Uncertainty in the Aftermath of the U.S. Bombing in Iran
The U.S. bombing of Iranian nuclear sites Sunday had a concrete strategic objective: thwart Iran’s ability to enrich nuclear material and potentially build nuclear weapons. It was intended to make the world a safer place. At the moment, however, the world remains a dangerous place.
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Quote of the Day
One thing I think that this attack signals is that there’s a big distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear states in that you can do whatever you want to a non-nuclear state. It would be much harder if Iran actually had a nuclear program…. Once you get nuclear weapons, it’s really hard for anybody to come and overturn your regime…. And so there’s going to be all these long-run consequences that aren’t going to be necessarily so pretty, meaning that a lot of countries are going to see this as a signal that they need to get serious about their own separate nuclear deterrence.
— Francis Fukuyama, interviewed by Yascha Mounk, Persuasion, 25 June 1925
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A New Trump Plan Gives DHS and the White House Greater Influence in the Fight Against Organized Crime
The Trump administration has launched a major reorganization of the U.S. fight against drug traffickers and other transnational criminal groups. The overhaul would give new authority to DHS and deepen the influence of the White House.
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Quote of the Day
“The alleged Minnesota assassin was known as a ‘deeply religious’ Christian man. That should be an alarm bell for all of us.”
— Mona Charen, The Bulwark, 18 June 2025
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Trump Quietly Shutters the Only Federal Agency that Investigates Industrial Chemical Explosions
Hazardous chemical accidents happen in the U.S. about every other day. Who will investigate them now?
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Minnesota Assassination Prompts Many Lawmakers to Wonder: Is Service Worth the Danger?
More public officials across the country are taking stock of their safety. Nearly 9 in 10 state lawmakers reported facing insults and 4 in 10 facing harassment and threats.
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Feds Warn Americans at Home and Abroad of Potential Terrorist Attacks
The U.S. departments of State and Homeland Security issued warnings to Americans on Sunday in all 50 states and living abroad of heightened security concerns and potential terrorist attacks after the U.S. targeted strikes against Iranian nuclear sites.
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Targeting Nuclear Scientists
The killing of Iranian nuclear scientists has been an integral part of Israel’s campaign, stretching back more than two decades, to disrupt and derail Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The 14 Iranian scientists killed on and since 13 June were all leading members of the Iran’s nuclear weaponization group.
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MIx Helps Innovators Tackle Challenges in National Security
Startups and government defense agencies have historically seemed like polar opposites. Startups thrive on speed and risk, while defense agencies are more cautious. Mission Innovation x creates education and research opportunities while facilitating connections between defense agencies and MIT innovators.
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Nuclear Scientists Have Long Been Targets in Covert Ops – Israel Has Brought That Policy Out of the Shadows
Since 1944, there have been at least 100 instances of what researchers call nuclear “scientist targeting.” The most recent example are the 14 senior Iranian nuclear scientists Israel killed on 13 June as part of the opening move of its surprise attack on Iran, in which Israel has also decapitated the Iranian military, intelligence services, and Revolutionary Guard by killing practically all of these organizations’ leaders and senior officers – several dozen in all. In the week since the attack was launched, Israel has killed three more Iranian nuclear scientists.
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How Might Israel Attack Iran’s Underground Nuclear Plant? A 2024 Raid in Syria Could e a Template
One of the key elements of Iran’s nuclear-weapons program is the uranium enrichment plant at Fordow, where about 5,000 centrifuges operate in an underground centrifuge farm 80 meters below ground. Israel may find it difficult to destroy the facility in an aerial attack — it does not have the U.S.-made 30,000lb GBU-57 MOP (massive ordnance penetrator) or the planes to carry this munition. But it may decide to destroy Fordow in a daring ground attack, similar to the one it conducted in Syria on 8 September 2024, in which Israeli commandoes destroyed an underground Syrian missile production facility.
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The long view
Are 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.”
“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.
Luigi 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.”
Autonomous 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.
Ukraine 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.
Shots 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.