• NYC terrorist captured: What we know so far

    Ahmad Khan Rahami, the suspect in placing two bombs in Manhattan on Saturday – one of them exploded, injuring twenty-nine people, while the other was disarmed — has been arrested in Linden, New Jersey. He was spotted by residents sleeping in a vestibule next to a bar, and they called the police. Fire was exchanged as the police closed in on him, and two policemen, and Rahami himself, were injured, but not seriously. The Rahami family’s chicken restaurant had problems city ordinances in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and in 2011 the family sued that city and its police department for discrimination and harassment.

  • FBI identifies Manhattan bombs suspect as Ahmad Khan Rahami of New Jersey

    The FBI has identified the suspect behind Saturday Manhattan blast – and the explosive device which was found before it exploded in another Manhattan location – as Ahmad Khan Rahami, 28 — a naturalized American living in New Jersey. He is originally from Afghanistan.

  • Explosive devices found in New Jersey train station

    An explosive device found in a backpack near the Elizabeth, New Jersey train station exploded as a bomb squad robot tried to disarm it. The bag was discovered in a trash can at 8:30 p.m. Sunday. The blast in Manhattan, and the devices which were found in Manhattan and New Jersey before they exploded, were preceded on the same Sunday by an explosion which went off near a Marine Corps charity run in New Jersey, and the attack by a man who stabbed nine people at a Minnesota mall.

  • Training future problem solvers at DHS Centers of Excellence

    DHS Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) says that focusing on the future does not just mean focusing on the technology, research, and development. Focusing on the future also includes the specialized research and education programs at the university-based DHS Centers of Excellence (COEs). It is this approach that has led S&T’s Office of University Programs (OUP), which manages the COEs, to offer grants, internships, and summer research experiences to help undergraduate and graduate students and recent graduates gain real-world exposure to homeland security challenges both in the field and in the lab.

  • Teaching the next generation of cybersecurity professionals

    In 2003, I founded Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) with a group of students, with the simple goal of attracting more engineering students to our cybersecurity lab at NYU. Today, with as many as 20,000 students from around the globe participating, CSAW is the largest student-run cybersecurity event in the world. The ability quickly to adapt as new threats are perceived is a top priority for security personnel. That’s a key element of all CSAW competitions – the idea that successful cybersecurity is not limited to mastering what’s known. Rather, students and professionals alike must constantly push their abilities to intercept future threats in an ever-evolving field. The competitors in the CSAW-sponsored games and competitions, which take place in educational settings in the United States and around the world, will — not long from now — be the protectors of our most sensitive personal and national data. We need them to be prepared.

  • Colin Powell leaked e-mail: “Israel has 200 [nukes], all targeted on Tehran”

    Former secretary of state Colin Powell, in a leaked e-mail, says that Israel has 200 nuclear weapons. Powell sent the e-mail to a colleague last year, and it was obtained by the hacking group DCLeaks and published on LobeLog, a foreign policy blog. Intelligent experts, historians, and journalist trying to estimate the size of Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal begin with estimating the size of the Dimona reactor, which went on line in 1962, and the amount of plutonium that can be extracted from the reactor’s spent uranium rods. In the literature, the number of nuclear weapons Israel is estimated to have ranges from 90-100 to 400.

  • Tracking low-flying unmanned aerial systems in cities

    Airspace for the flying public today is perpetually congested yet remarkably safe, thanks in no small part to a well-established air traffic control system that tracks, guides, and continuously monitors thousands of flights a day. When it comes to small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) such as commercial quadcopters, however, no such comprehensive tracking system exists. And as off-the-shelf UAS become less expensive, easier to fly, and more adaptable for terrorist or military purposes, U.S. forces will increasingly be challenged by the need to quickly detect and identify such craft — especially in urban areas, where sight lines are limited and many objects may be moving at similar speeds.

  • What causes mass panic in emergency situations?

    In emergency situations such as terrorist attacks, natural catastrophes, and fires, there is always a risk of mass panic leading to deadly crowd disasters. But what causes mass panic and where are the danger zones? Because these questions are difficult to study in the real world, researchers exposed experiment participants to an emergency in a three-dimensional virtual environment.

  • Sizable increase in U.S. R&D spending

    U.S. research and development (R&D) performance rose to $477.7 billion in 2014 — an increase of $21.1 billion over the previous year — and is estimated to hit $499.3 billion in 2015. adjusted for inflation, growth in U.S. total R&D performance averaged 1.2 percent annually between 2008 and 2014, matching the average pace of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).

  • Somalia: Al Shabaab weakened but not defeated

    Efforts to weaken the al Qaeda-linked terrorist group al Shabaab in Somalia have had some success over the past five years, but the U.S. campaign there is now in jeopardy, according to a new study. Al Shabaab may resurge if urgent steps are not taken to address the political, economic, and governance challenges at the heart of the conflict, researchers say.

  • Disaster communications: Lessons from 9/11

    What we and the other responders learned on 9/11, under the pressure of a disaster of incredible scale, scope and urgency – not to mention the international media spotlight – went on to spark major changes in U.S. emergency response communication. By ensuring that – no matter what happens – we can communicate with each other, the emergency response community keeps the memory of 9/11 alive in our own way every single day.

  • Terrorist attacks are more likely to succeed if there are more plot participants

    An examination of the relationship between success of terrorist plots and the number of participants and preparatory acts, and the length of the planning process, shows that the more people involved in planning a terrorist attack in the United States, the more likely it is to be successful. The greater the number of preparatory acts required, however, the greater the probability for failure.

  • Linking terrorism with mental illness reinforces stigma, impedes prevention efforts

    An “automatic assumption” to link terrorist acts with mental illness unfairly stigmatizes the millions of people with mental health problems and impedes prevention efforts, psychiatry experts warn. They explain that terrorist groups and networks seem to avoid recruiting people with mental health problems, “probably because they share some of the same stigmatized views as the rest of society and see people with mental health conditions as unreliable, difficult to train, and a security threat.”

  • Case study offers insights for more effective countering violent extremism (CVE) campaigns

    New research offers insights into the psychological motives and mechanisms that radicalize a person to commit violence. The new study takes a detailed look at Momin Khawaja, a convicted terrorist who was arrested in 2004 in connection to a U.K. bomb plot, and offers some possible implications for countering violent extremism (CVE). The researchers argue that in addition to fitting a “caring-compelled” profile of lone-actor terrorists, Khawaja is an early example of a Western foreign fighter.

  • U.S. destroys large ISIS chemical weapons manufacturing facility

    The U.S. on Monday destroyed an ISIS chemical manufacturing facility in Iraq, which posed a “significant chemical [weapons] threat.” Footage of Monday air strikes showed twelve aircraft hitting a sprawling industrial site in Mosul. The hits were followed by huge explosions in multiple buildings and storage facilities. The buildings were quickly engulfed by flames, and heavy plumes of dark smoke rose into the air. USAF spokesman said that fifty individual targets were hit in the attack.