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President Biden Has Banned Some U.S. Investment in China. Here’s What to Know.
A new executive order restricts U.S. investments in sensitive technologies that Washington fears could help Beijing increase its military power. It is the latest in a raft of policies erecting barriers between the world’s two largest economies, and U.S. allies could soon adopt similar measures. The Biden administration says the restrictions are directed at protecting national security, not stifling economic competition.
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U.S.-led Deterrence in South China Sea May Push China to Become More Confrontational: Analysts
The U.S. and its allies conducted several joint military exercises near the Philippines. Analysts say Washington and its allies are showcasing an “inter-alliance cohesion” through these coordinated activities. While Washington and its allies hope to shift China’s aggressive behaviors in the South China Sea through deterrence and other means, some defense experts say Beijing may view these moves as an intensification of U.S.-led efforts to contain it.
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The Vital Role of the Civilian Community in Responding to Natural Disasters
Disaster preparedness is not about prediction. Leaders shouldn’t get caught up in trying to define what precisely we need to prepare for and when. Instead, they need to be ready for compounding national disruptions of any kind, at any time. Given the interconnectedness of our modern world, integrating broad economic, social and environmental preparedness will be better for resilience than mapping out overly detailed contingencies.
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Wildfires Are Much Worse Than a Sign of Climate Change
Summer headlines have screamed of climate extremes: Record temperatures, an ocean heat wave, and rampant wildfires. The fires present a dual problem: Not only are they a symptom of climate change — becoming bigger, hotter, and more common in regions where they can affect large population centers — but they also make the crisis worse. By burning vast layers of partially decomposed vegetable matter called peat, fires like those in Canada release even more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
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Malicious AI Arrives on the Dark Web
Nefarious non-state actors are already harnessing AI to scale up their malicious activities. Just as legitimate users have moved on from exploring ChatGPT to building similar tools, the same has happened in the shadowy world of cybercrime.
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Number of U.S. Children Killed by Guns Hit Record High in 2021
Firearm death rates among children and teens rose almost 9% from 2020 to 2021, while disparities worsened, according to a new study. The increasing rates meant firearms remained the leading cause of death for youths. In 2021, 4,752 children and teens were killed by firearms, a rate of almost 6 per 100,000 youths. The rate is up 9% from 2020 and 42% from 2018.
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Climate-Fueled Wildfires Lead to Rethink on Fire Tactics
Climate change is making wildfires more frequent and more destructive, and long-time firefighting strategies are no longer working. Scientists are calling for a radical rethink of how we fight wildfires.
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Do Armed Guards Prevent School Shootings?
Roughly a third of parents with school-age kids are very or extremely worried about gun violence at their child’s school, according to a 2022 survey by The Pew Research Center. The same Pew survey found that roughly half of U.S. parents think armed security in schools is an effective response. Do armed guards — sometimes called school resource officers or school police officers — are actually a deterrent to gun violence and mass shootings?
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AI-Controlled Weapons Should Be Banned from the Battlefield: Experts
AI expert says autonomous systems being used in the current Ukraine conflict need to be prohibited in the same way as chemical and biological weapons. “I’m quite hopeful that we will, at some point, decide that autonomous weapons also be added to the lists of terrible ways to fight war like chemical weapons, like biological weapons. What worries me is that in most cases, we’ve only regulated various technologies for fighting after we’ve seen the horrors of them being misused in battle,” he says.
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Using Hydrogen to Power Disaster Relief
A new vehicle will not only get emergency responders safely to the site of an emergency, but also directly provide power at the scene for up to 72 hours as they assess next steps. And it does all this running on hydrogen—a much more sustainable solution for our environment.
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As Competition with China Heats Up, Japan Turns to Africa for Critical Minerals
Demand for such minerals is expected to grow sharply in the coming years. There are, however, supply constraints, as only a limited number of countries produce them. Tokyo has signed agreements with a number of African countries as competition with China for key raw materials and minerals heats up.
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Nuclear Engineer Uses Machine Learning on Weapons Testing Images to Understand Fallout
After WWII, the U.S. wanted to better understand what happened after a nuclear weapon was detonated. Researchers conducted tests in the southwestern U.S. and the Pacific Ocean and recorded those experiments on film. Scientists used the original reel-to-reel films to manually measure data from the blasts. Today, nuclear forensic scientists combine modern computational techniques with the historical records of nuclear tests to obtain precious insights into the physics of these type of events, which are otherwise hard to study experimentally.
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How Reliable and Robust Is Human Ability to Recognize Suspicious Activity?
Security procedures at large public venues and transportation hubs rely upon vigilant and engaged security officers who are tasked, in part, with timely and appropriate responses to suspicious behavior of potential hostile actors. But how capable are individuals at detecting suspicious behavior?
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Study Confirms Link Between Concealed Carry Weapons and Gun Homicide Rates
Concealed guns significantly impact homicide rates and public safety, according to a Rutgers study that found an increase in homicides based on the number of concealed carry weapons licenses issued.
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Develop 3D Printable Robots for Search-and-Rescue Operations
Researchers are developing a small and flexible 3D-printed robots with integrated fluidic circuits that can be rapidly fabricated for specific disasters. These robots can aid rescue efforts by exploring areas that pose potential hazards to humans or are otherwise inaccessible, including earthquake debris, flooded regions, and even nuclear accident sites.
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More headlines
The long view
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Using Drone Swarms to Fight Forest Fires
Forest fires are becoming increasingly catastrophic across the world, accelerated by climate change. Researchers are using multiple swarms of drones to tackle natural disasters like forest fires.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
European Arms Imports Nearly Double, U.S. and French Exports Rise, and Russian Exports Fall Sharply
States in Europe almost doubled their imports of major arms (+94 per cent) between 2014–18 and 2019–23. The United States increased its arms exports by 17 per cent between 2014–18 and 2019–23, while Russia’s arms exports halved. Russia was for the first time the third largest arms exporter, falling just behind France.
How Climate Change Will Affect Conflict and U.S. Military Operations
“People talk about climate change as a threat multiplier,” said Karen Sudkamp, an associate director of the Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations Program within the RAND Homeland Security Research Division. “But at what point do we need to start talking about the threat multiplier actually becoming a significant threat all its own?”
The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
From popular films like a War Games or The Terminator to a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the security risk of weaponized AI, there has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. There is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons.