• Houthi Attacks: What Happens Next?

    The longer the Gaza War goes on the greater the concern that it will escalate into something much larger. The most dramatic escalation has been with the Houthis in Yemen. The threat their actions pose to international shipping led to US and UK strikes early on Friday morning. As the dust settles on these strikes and the Houthis threaten retaliation, has this brought us closer to a wider war?

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • New Report Card to Assess, Rank Campus Responses to Antisemitism

    In the face of growing antisemitism across U.S. college campuses, ADL announced that it is developing a new tool to evaluate the climate of antisemitism on individual campuses. The ADL will create comparative evaluation of how leading colleges and universities are responding to the surge of antisemitism and protecting their Jewish students.

  • Course on Antisemitism and the Law Debuts in Spring Semester

    A new course at Cornell University aims to give students the tools to understand antisemitism and its history through the lens of the law. “One of my principal goals is to give my students the tools to be able to both recognize manifestations of antisemitism as well as other forms of bigotry and confront and counter them effectively,” said Menachem Rosensaft, adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School.

  • Truth Decay and National Security

    The line between fact and opinion in public discourse has been eroding, and with it the public’s ability to have arguments and find common ground based in fact. Two core drivers of Truth Decay are political polarization and the spread of misinformation—and these are particularly intertwined in the national security arena. Exposure to misinformation leads to increased polarization, and increased polarization decreases the impact of factual information. Individuals, institutions, and the nation as a whole are vulnerable to this vicious cycle.

     

  • How Can California Solve Its Water Woes? By Flooding Its Best Farmland.

    Restored floodplains in the state’s agricultural heartland are fighting both flooding and drought. But their fate rests with California’s powerful farmers.

  • Israel/Gaza: Retrospect and Prospect

    Planning for the ‘Day After’: After three months of this war Israel has weakened Hamas but not eliminated it, and cannot promise that elimination can be achieved quickly, if at all. The Israeli government is close to breaking point and perhaps only if it breaks will there be an opportunity for a serious consideration of options for addressing the Palestinian issue. There are, however, reasons why this issue has proved to be intractable in the past.

  • Namibia’s Reparations Conundrum

    In 2021 the governments of Namibia and Germany announced an agreement for Germany to pay reparations to Namibia for atrocities committed by the German colonial authorities in Namibia between 1904 and 1908. The Herero and Nama people, the two main targets of German colonial brutality, argue that they were the ones to suffer most from German colonial brutality, yet they were not included in the negotiations over reparations, their voices were not heard, and their grievance have not been addressed.

  • Cyber 'Kidnapping' Scams Target Chinese Students Around the World

    A recent cyber kidnapping incident involving a Chinese exchange student in Utah appears to be part of an international pattern in which unknown perpetrators, often masquerading as Chinese police or government officials, target Chinese students around the world and extort their families for upwards of tens of thousands of dollars.

  • Republicans Are Pushing for Drastic Asylum Changes – an Immigration Law Scholar Breaks Down the Proposal

    There is bipartisan agreement for the need for immigration reform and stark disagreement on what that reform should be. Conservative Republicans in Congress are now proposing legal changes that would make it harder for most applicants to get asylum. The Republicans’ plan is similar to both a similar rule that the Department of Homeland Security adopted in 2019 and a policy that President Joe Biden is trying to push through. The proposed changes would make it almost impossible for a migrant entering through the U.S.-Mexico border to get asylum, even if that migrant has a legitimate fear of returning to his or her home country.

  • Are Ski Mask Bans a Crime-Fighting Solution? Some Cities Say Yes.

    Amid concerns about crime and public safety, at least two major U.S. cities recently considered banning ski masks or balaclavas to prevent criminal behavior, despite a lack of academic research about the effectiveness of such bans. Philadelphia is the latest city to prohibit ski masks in some public areas.

  • How Houthi Attacks in the Red Sea Threaten Global Shipping

    Houthi attacks against commercial ships in the Red Sea have upended global shipping. The disruptions could soon ripple through the global economy.

  • Ethiopia and Somalia: Conflict Intensifies Over Port Deal

    Ethiopia’s agreement with breakaway region Somaliland, seeking port access in exchange for potential sovereignty recognition, could cause upheaval in the Horn of Africa. Somalia views it as an attack on its sovereignty.

  • The Signal in the Noise: The 2023 Threats and Those on the Horizon

    We enter the new year with “blinking lights everywhere,” Austin Doctor writes. “From a U.S. homeland security perspective, the terrorism threat in 2023 can be summarized as diverse, diffuse, and active. In 2024, we are likely to continue to see signs of continuing shifts in the terrorism landscape—such as the threats posed by lone juvenile offenders, the malign use of democratized technologies, and ‘violent resistance’ narratives adopted across the extremist ecosystem.”