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The Dark Figure of Crime
“Extremely wicked, shockingly evil, and vile” – this is how the judge described serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy was sentenced to death for killing 30 young women and girls between 1974 and 1978. He was executed in 1989. A new book offers a detailed analysis arguing that Bundy’s murder count was likely 100 or more, and that his first killing was in adolescence. It is estimated that there are 250,000 to 350,000 unsolved homicide cases in the U.S. Ted Bundy is a “microcosm of the unsolved murder epidemic he helped to set into motion,” the book’s author says.
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Nationwide Test of Wireless Emergency Alert System Could Test People’s Patience – or Help Rebuild Public Trust in the System
The Wireless Emergency Alert system is scheduled to have its third nationwide test on Oct. 4, 2023. Similar tests in 2018 and 2021 caused a degree of public confusion and resistance. We believe that concerns about previous tests raise two questions: Is public trust in emergency alerting eroding? And how might the upcoming test rebuild it?
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Cities Should Act NOW to Ban Predictive Policing...and Stop Using ShotSpotter, Too
Sound Thinking, the company behind ShotSpotter, is reportedly buying Geolitica, the company behind PredPol, a predictive policing technology. When companies like Sound Thinking and Geolitica merge and bundle their products, it becomes much easier for cities who purchase one harmful technology to end up deploying a suite of them without meaningful oversight, transparency, or control by elected officials or the public.
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New Firearms Safety Grants Explore Reporting Systems, Safe Storage, Childhood Injuries, More
As part of a broad federal investment focused on reducing firearm-related injuries and deaths, five research teams at the University of Michigan recently received grants totaling $2.1 million to launch new projects that identify the root causes of and find solutions for firearms injuries and deaths in the United States.
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It's Easier to Get Valuable Metals from Battery Waste If You “Flash” It
Demand for valuable metals needed in batteries is poised to grow over the coming decades in step with the growth of clean energy technologies, and the best place to source them may be by recycling spent batteries.
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What Fuels Wildfires in Sierra Nevada Mountains
Wildfires in California, exacerbated by human-driven climate change, are getting more severe. To better manage them, there’s a growing need to know exactly what fuels the blazes after they ignite. One of the chief fuels of wildfires in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains is the decades-old remains of large trees.
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The Southern Border Poses Terrorism Risks. Homegrown Threats Still Loom Larger.
The fears of terrorists entering the U.S. illegally can never be completely dismissed, but to date they have been mostly hypothetical, as there is scant evidence that illegal immigrants have committed acts of terrorism in the United States. For now, the most serious terrorist danger still comes from lone-actor racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs), radicalized online here inside the United States, attacking soft targets using firearms.
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Is Myanmar About to Go Nuclear?
The specter of the world’s first ‘Buddhist bomb’ still hangs over Myanmar. It has been given impetus by the coup in February 2021 and the military regime’s increasingly close relations with Russia. The question must be asked: why is the junta expending precious resources on a nuclear reactor of arguable utility when it is already struggling with a costly civil war, an economy in dire straits, the collapse of government services and widespread poverty and hardship?
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The U.S. Government Should Stockpile More Critical Minerals
The 2022 National Defense Strategy describes China as America’s “most consequential strategic competitor for the coming decades.” Yet, Gregory Wischer and Jack Little write, the United States is unprepared to fight a major war against the Chinese. “A longer, more intense U.S.-Chinese conflict over Taiwan would expose even deeper cracks in the defense industrial base and undermine the U.S. military’s ability to defeat the Chinese military: The United States lacks sufficient stocks of critical minerals to support the defense industrial base, from nickel in superalloys for jet engines to rare earth elements in magnets for guided munitions,” they write.
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Largest Fire Death Toll Belongs to Aftermath of 1923 Japan Earthquake
Fires that raged in the days following the 1 September 1923 magnitude 7.9 Kantō earthquake killed roughly 90% of the 105,000 people who perished in and around Tokyo, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in history—comparable to the number of people killed in the World War II atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
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The Cyber Threat to Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Most cyber scholars looking at the nexus of cyber campaigns/operations and the nuclear weapons enterprise—command and control, communications, and delivery systems—focus on the consequences of targeting the enterprise through cyber operations during militarized crises or armed conflicts between nuclear powers. Michael P. Fischerkeller writes that there is, however, a third geopolitical condition—competition short of crisis and armed conflict—where the consequences, although of a different ilk, are no less severe.
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How Local Police Could Help Prevent Another January 6th-Style Insurrection
As scholars who study street gangs and far-right groups, we see that the larger law enforcement community continues to focus – we believe mistakenly – on the belief that, like terrorist groups, white supremacists are coordinated in ideology and intent. Evidence shows that perception actually diverts local police agencies’ attention from identifying and managing these groups. We believe that if police had treated Proud Boys as members of a street gang from the group’s inception in 2016, the events of Jan. 6, 2021, might have been avoided, or at least reduced in severity.
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High Rate of Mental Health Problems and Political Extremism Found in Those Who Bought Firearms During COVID Pandemic
People who bought firearms during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic have much higher rates of suicidal thoughts, self-harm behaviors and intimate partner violence, a study suggests, compared with other firearm owners and people who don’t own firearms. Pandemic firearm buyers were also much more likely than the other groups to hold extreme beliefs, ranging from anti-vaccination views to support for QAnon conspiracy theories.
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Walking the Artificial Intelligence and National Security Tightrope
Artificial intelligence (AI) presents nations’ security as many challenges as it does opportunities. While it could create mass-produced malware, lethal autonomous weapons systems, or engineered pathogens, AI solutions could also prove the counter to these threats. Regulating AI to maximize national security capabilities and minimize the risks presented to them will require focus, caution and intent.
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New Flood Prediction Model Has Potentially Life-Saving Benefits
A new simulation model that can predict flooding during an ongoing disaster more quickly and accurately than currently possible. The new model has major potential benefits for emergency responses, reducing flood forecasting time from hours and days to just seconds, and enabling flood behavior to be accurately predicted quickly as an emergency unfolds.
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More headlines
The long view
How Quickly Could Iran Make Nuclear Weapons Today?
For Iran, two of the three poles in the tent of building nuclear weapons – fissile material and delivery vehicles — are essentially complete. It will take them one week to enrich enough uranium to 90 percent for one bomb (and one month to enrich enough uranium for six bombs). Iran also has a variety of delivery systems, including nuclear-capable missiles: the delivery pole is ready. Weaponization is the pole that needs more work. The accelerated weaponization program can be accomplished in a matter of six months.
Fifty-Five Hours of Risk: The Dangerous Implications of Slow Attack Attribution
Assuming that its foreign adversaries’ recent violent threats are to be taken seriously, and that the likelihood of a direct attack against the United States is, if not on the rise, at least significant enough to warrant serious attention, the United States has an urgent mandate to prepare effective cognitive defenses. Foremost among these is the ability to quickly and accurately attribute attacks to their originators, and to deliver that information to the public through a trustworthy vehicle.
What Can We Learn from the Nation’s Historic Decline in Murders?
The U.S. endured a spike in gun violence during the pandemic, but it’s subsiding in many places. A researcher puts the latest homicide statistics into context — and warns lawmakers not to become complacent.
Is Left-Wing Terrorism Making a Comeback in Germany? Analyzing the “Engel – Guntermann Network”
For Germany, the reemergence of more violence orientated left-wing extremist actors has diversified the threat posed by non-state actors even further. Violent left-wing extremism is also of growing concern across Europe. While left-wing violent extremism does not currently represent as acute a threat as currently manifested by jihadist and right-wing terrorist attacks, the recent concerning trend among German left-wing extremists is toward greater violence and transnationalism.
Saving Seconds, Saving Lives: NIST-Funded Challenge Crowns Winners in 3D Tracking Technology
NIST has awarded $1.9 million to six teams for innovative 3D tracking solutions in the final phase of a competition. The winning designs combine localization and biometric monitoring, using sensors affixed to first responders’ equipment. This competition is part of an $8 million NIST-funded initiative to address first responders’ need for improved tracking in emergency settings where GPS falls short.
For First Responders, Communication with Their Teams is Essential
When a first responder enters a building during an emergency, they count on being able to communicate with their team at all times. Their safety and their ability to carry out the mission relies on knowing they can reach help and support anywhere that they need to go within a structure.