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China WatchCan Europe Compete with China's Belt and Road Initiative?
The European Union this week launched a $340 billion “Global Gateway” fund to boost global infrastructure, which analysts say is aimed at rivaling China’s Belt and Road Initiative. But can the EU’s project compete with Beijing’s billions?
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PreparednessPreventing and Responding to High-Consequence Biological Threats
A new report offers actionable recommendations for the international community to bolster prevention and response capabilities for high-consequence biological events.
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PreparednessThe U.K. Government’s Preparedness for COVID-19: Risk-Management Lessons
A new report from the U.K. National Audit Office (NAO) examines the government’s risk analysis, planning, and mitigation strategies prior to the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report notes that the pandemic has exposed a vulnerability to whole-system emergencies – that is, emergencies which are so broad that they require the engagement of the entire system.
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School ShootingSchool Shootings Are at a Record High This Year – but They Can Be Prevented
Research has shown that school mass shooters tend to be current or former students of the school. They are almost always in crisis of some sort before their attack, as indicated by a noticeable change in behavior from usual. They often are inspired by other school shooters, and they also tend to leak their plans for violence in advance to their peers. And school shooters usually get their guns from family and friends who failed to store them safely and securely. The question now is how to translate these findings into policy and practice in order to prevent the next school shooting.
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Grid Resilience Balance of Power—Building a Resilient Electric Grid
Events such as blackouts and outages are increasing in frequency as the nation’s infrastructure ages and climate change leads to extreme weather events. Hotter, wetter summers and harsher winters require more reliance on heating and cooling utilities, placing higher stress on the nation’s electric grid. Newtechnology can ‘help keep the lights on’ during emergencies.
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Grid Resilience Microgrids May Hold the Key to Grid Resilience
The aging energy grid is being pushed to the breaking point. Power outages from extreme weather alone cost anywhere from $2 billion to $77 billion per year. And some isolated communities still rely on diesel generators for electricity, since powerlines don’t reach them. Grid expansion isn’t an option—in most cases, the economics don’t make sense. When the main grid falls short, the right mix of renewables offers local, low-carbon power.
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Planetary SecurityGetting the Asteroid Before It Gets Us
Last week, the stuff of Hollywood blockbusters became a reality when NASA launched its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a small spacecraft that will smash into an asteroid sometime in September or October to try to alter its path.
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Our picksBe Afraid of the Next ‘Lab Leak’ | Snarled Chip Supply Chains | China Wants to Write the Tech Rules for 5G, and more
· You Should Be Afraid of the Next ‘Lab Leak’
· Far Right Is Using Twitter’s New Rule Against Anti-Extremism Researchers
· The Taliban Are Banned by Facebook. Then Why Are They Allowed to Post?
· Biden Explores Talks as China Builds Arsenal
· Huawei Sanctions Snarled Chip Supply Chains
· Now That We’ve Left Afghanistan, Expect Fewer Islamic Terrorist Attacks on Americans
· Will Germany’s Compulsory Vaccine Plan Backfire?
· China Wants to Write the Tech Rules for 5G. Experts Say That’s a Big Problem
· U.S. to Lead Global Effort to Curb Authoritarians’ Access to Surveillance Tools
· Suspected Chinese Hackers Breach More U.S. Defense and Tech Firms
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The Russia ConnectionNATO Has Warned Russia, but Will NATO Defend Ukraine?
NATO warns Russia not to make any further moves against Ukraine. But NATO allies have been unable to formally agree on what the Russian military activity represents, much less how to respond to it.
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Children & COVID-19 VaccinationCovid Is Less Risky to Children than Covid Vaccines
We should be careful about vaccinating children against the COVID-19 because it is likely that more children will die from the effects of the vaccine than from Covid itself.
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Children & COVID-19 VaccinationCOVID: Will the U.K. Vaccinate Children Under 12?
The U.K. Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunizations (JCVI) will help decide whether the U.K. should follow other countries – the U.S., Israel – in offering COVID-1 vaccines to all children aged five and over. When the JCVI weighed up vaccinating the next youngest age group – 12-to-15-year-olds – it found that the benefits were only “marginally greater than the potential known harms.” So marginal, in fact, that it advised against offering vaccines to this group. So, for the JCVI to give the green light to vaccinating over-fives, the health benefits will need to be more compelling than for 12-to-15-year-olds. But what does the evidence say?
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CybersecurityUsing Math to Prove Computer Security
An academic mathematician thought maths was boring, but he now relies on it to secure critical systems like those of the Australian Department of Defense against hackers.
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DisastersEarthquakes and Tsunamis in Europe?
Earthquakes and tsunamis do not only threaten distant coasts, but also ports, cities and coasts in European waters. Researchers, provides for the first time comprehensive information on the marine geological hazards that can affect countries across Europe. The manifold risks should be considered more strongly in political and economic decisions.
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Grid ResilienceNew Generation of Grid Emergency Control Technology
Grid operators face big challenges and big opportunities when it comes to managing through emergency conditions that disrupt power service. The increasing number of power outages in the United States cost an estimated $30-50 billion and affect millions of customers each year. A real-time adaptive system can safeguard the grid against costly disruptions.
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Water SecurityGroundwater in California’s Central Valley May Be Unable to Recover from Past and Future Droughts
Groundwater in California’s Central Valley is at risk of being depleted by pumping too much water during and after droughts. Water resources could be pushed beyond recovery in a region that provides about a quarter of the U.S. food supply.
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Our picksThe New Geopolitics of Energy | MI6 Recruits | Colombian Guerrillas
· The World Has No Answer for Migration
· The Far-Right Is Worrying Enough, but Let’s Not Pretend It’s the Biggest Threat We Face
· Green Upheaval: The New Geopolitics of Energy
· The West Still Needs Russia’s Energy
· U.S. Targets Colombian Guerrilla Splinter Groups with Terrorist Listing
· After 7 Years, A U.S.-Led Task Force Fighting ISIS Is Getting a New Name and Taking a New Approach to Its Mission
· MI6 Recruiting from World’s Most Dangerous Groups to Combat Al Qaeda
· Trump’s Intelligence Briefings: Better Than Some Feared, Worse Than Many Hoped
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TerrorismAfghanistan: Taliban Kill, “Disappear” Ex-Officials
Taliban forces in Afghanistan have summarily executed or forcibly disappeared more than 100 former police and intelligence officers in just four provinces since taking over the country on 15 August 2021. The Taliban leadership has directed members of surrendering security force units to register to receive a letter guaranteeing their safety. However, Taliban forces have used these screenings to detain and summarily execute or forcibly disappear people within days after they register, leaving their bodies for their relatives or communities to find.
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TerrorismFormer Islamic State Member Found Guilty of Genocide in German Court
A German court has found a former Islamic State member guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity for the 2015 killing of a 5-year-old girl, sentencing him to life in prison. The Frankfurt case is the first in the world to decide whether a former member of the Islamic State group played a role in the attempted genocide of the Yazidi religious group.
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ExtremismSines v. Kessler: Reckoning and Weaponization
On 23 November 2021, a jury returned guilty verdicts against the organizers of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. But while the trial put the defendants’ bigotry, antisemitism and racism on full display, it also provided them a stage to share their bigotry and hate with a large, captive audience, while aggressively harassing their critics.
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EncryptionSimple and Efficient Method of Quantum Encryption
Quantum computers will revolutionize our computing lives. But these computers will be able to crack most of the encryption codes currently used to protect our data, leaving our bank and security information vulnerable to attacks
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Public HealthAre Political Parties Getting in the Way of Our Well-Being?
Today, the two major political parties are often blamed for a plethora of problems in American governance. But for most of the last century and a half, political party competition has had positive effects on the welfare of Americans. Party competition is linked to increased public investment, greater social well-being.
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ResilienceBoosting Resilience of U.S. Timekeeping
The U.S. should bolster research and development of systems that distribute accurate time via fiber-optic cable and radio as part of the effort to back up GPS and enhance the resilience of critical infrastructure that depends on it.
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More headlines
The long view
ARGUMENT: Deterring BioattacksA Deterrence by Denial Strategy for Addressing Biological Weapons
The U.S. political failures have loomed large in coverage of the COVID-19 crisis. Christine Parthemore and Andy Weber write that, what is more, a number of analysts have warned that, after watching these failures play out, hostile powers might take a new interest in using biological weapons to target the United States. “This risk is real. Fortunately, the pandemic has also brought into use cutting-edge technologies that can help counter it,” they write.
ARGUMENT: Unprepared We’re Already Barreling Toward the Next Pandemic
America’s frustrating inability to learn from the recent past shouldn’t be surprising to anyone familiar with the history of public health. Ed Yong writes that many public-health experts, historians, and legal scholars worry that the U.S. is lapsing into neglect, that the temporary wave of investments isn’t being channeled into the right areas, and that COVID-19 might actually leave the U.S. weaker against whatever emerges next.
BIG PICTURE: Ideological OverreachLiberalism’s Graveyard: Afghanistan Is Where Ideologies Go to Die
It used to be said the Afghanistan is the “graveyard of empires.” Sumantra Maitra writes that the U.S. failed 20-year war in Afghanistan will go down as one of the more consequential wars –a “paradigm-shifting event” — because Afghanistan proved to be the graveyard of ideologies as well: “Evangelical Marxism failed in Afghanistan, as did evangelical liberalism.”
Radiation detectionRadSecure 100 Radiological Security Initiative Launched in 100 U.S. Cities
The RadSecure 100 Initiative focuses on removing radioactive material from facilities where feasible and improving security at the remaining facilities located in 100 metropolitan areas throughout the United States. Partnerships with local medical facilities, industrial firms, and law enforcement will be key to the project.
BIG PICTURE: “A grasp of history”Afghanistan Always Defeats the West
William Dalrymple, a Scottish historian and author of Return of a King: the Battle for Afghanistan 1839-42, writes that the West’s 20-year failed effort in Afghanistan was as inevitable as it was predictable for anyone with “a grasp of history”: In Afghanistan, there had been only the briefest of “moments of anything approaching a unified political system. Afghanistan has always been less a state than a kaleidoscope of competing tribal principalities governed through maliks or vakils, in each of which allegiance was entirely personal, to be negotiated and won over rather than taken for granted.”
ARGUMENT: Afghanistan rapid collapseHow the Taliban Exploited Afghanistan’s Human Geography
The Taliban managed to seize power so quickly because it used Afghanistan’s human geography to exploit that state’s fragility: The country’s low population density empowers fast-moving and cohesive attackers, for which the poorly trained, disorganized, corrupt, and unmotivated Afghani army was no match. Alec Worsnop writes that, still, the evacuation could have been made safer and more orderly if a small Western contingent with air support would have been left behind to hold the Taliban at bay for a few more weeks — but this would only have delayed the inevitable: “Leaving a limited outside force in place, without significant reinforcement, could not have prevented an inevitable Taliban takeover within a matter of months,” he writes. “There were few prospects for long-term stability without a notably larger foreign troop presence.”
PERSPECTIVE: Aborted plotThe Tel Aviv Plot
Recently declassified information from the first-ever interrogation of someone presumed to be a senior al-Qaeda operative captured after 9/11 provides new insights into Osama bin Laden’s plans for a follow-up attack to Sept. 11. Bruce Riedel writes that, specifically, bin Laden was plotting a major attack in Israel. The attack was thwarted at the last minute, but information about it has been classified until now.
ARGUMENT: Nuclear threshold stateIrreversible: Iran’s Nukes
In 2018 the Trump administration withdrew from the nuclear deal with Iran, which the Obama administration had signed in 2015. David Albright and Sarah Burkhard of Institute for Science and International Security write that Iran’s nuclear capabilities now greatly exceed their status in early 2016, when the nuclear deal was implemented. Iran’s breakout time, namely the time needed to produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon or explosive device, is on order of one month, which was Iran’s breakout time in late 2014, before the nuclear deal was signed.
Social networksUsing Social Network Analysis to disarticulate criminal networks
Finding the broken link in the criminal networks that bind economies and societies is a gigantic task that often leads the investigative actions of the police and judiciary up a blind alley. the advancements in the field of information technology and data analysis may be used to effectively deal with organized crime, terrorist groups, and street gangs.
Hurricane IdaA Preview of What’s to Come: Climate Change Helped Intensify Hurricane Ida
Hurricane Ida started as a disturbance in the Atlantic Ocean quickly grew to what could be the worst hurricane to hit Louisiana since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. While scientists are uncertain whether climate change will increase the frequency of hurricanes, one thing is clear: Climate change is here, and it’s making these storms stronger and more destructive.
Radiation detectionRedesigning Radiation Monitors at U.S. Ports of Entry
Every day at ports of entry around the country, hundreds of thousands of vehicles and containers cross into the country. Since 9/11, all incoming vehicles and containers at land crossings, rail crossings, mail facilities, and shipping terminals are scanned by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers to detect potential threats, including radiation. The time has come to replace and upgrade the aging radiation detection systems.
Vulcanic eruptionsThreat of Catastrophic Supervolcano Eruptions Ever-Present
Supervolcanoes remain active and hazardous for thousands of years after a super-eruption, prompting the need for a rethink of how these potentially catastrophic events are predicted.
ResilienceImproving Florida’s Hurricane Resilience: Alternative Fuel Vehicles, Infrastructure
When events like tropical storms or other unforeseen crises disrupt a state’s primary supply of gasoline and diesel, emergency fleet efforts can become hampered as access to fuel is restricted or completely unavailable.
Planetary securityHitting a Bullseye with Closed Eyes
Recently NASA updated its forecast of the chances that the asteroid Bennu, one of the two most hazardous known objects in our solar system, will hit Earth in the next 300 years. New calculations put the odds at 1 in 1,750, a figure slightly higher than previously thought. Two statisticians put into perspective the chances of asteroid Bennu striking Earth in next 300 years.
DronesDetecting, Identifying Small Drones in Urban Environment
DHS has awarded $750K to a Texas company to develop a detection and tracking sensor system that can identify nefarious small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) in an urban environment.
FloodsScience’s Answers to Flood Disaster
On 14 July 2021, between 60 and 180 mm of rain fell in the Eifel region in just 22 hours - an amount that would otherwise have fallen in several months and which led to catastrophic flooding. The events were far more destructive than existing models had predicted.
