• IRAN’S NUKESU.S. Ready to Conclude Iran Nuclear Deal Based on EU's 'Final Draft'

    The United States is ready to “quickly conclude a deal” to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement on the basis of proposals put forward on August 8 by the European Union, a State Department spokesperson said.

  • IRAN’S NUKESIran’s Latest Advanced Centrifuge Deployment

    By David Albright, Sarah Burkhard, and Spencer Faragasso

    Iran just announced that it has recently installed or plans to install in the near term almost 1570 new advanced centrifuges. This represents a 70 percent increase from the number of advanced centrifuges installed as of last May. Iran’s announcement puts it well on its way to achieving about 4450 installed advanced centrifuges at all three enrichment plants by the end of 2022.

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  • TERRORISMDo Targeted Killings Weaken Terrorist Groups?

    By Max Boot

    Targeted operations by U.S. forces have eliminated notorious leaders of armed extremist groups, al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri the latest among them. But how much they disrupt these terrorist organizations is questionable.

  • CYBERSECURITYNSF Grants to Protect Data, User privacy

    Researchers are working on two new cybersecurity projects, recently funded by the National Science Foundation, to ensure trustworthy cloud computing and increase computing privacy for marginalized and vulnerable populations.

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  • PUBLIC HEALTHHow Polio Crept Back into the U.S.

    By Robin Fields

    U.S. public health agencies generally don’t test wastewater for signs of polio. That may have given the virus time to circulate silently before it paralyzed a New York man.

  • AIAn AI Pilot May Be Able to Navigate Crowded Airspace

    Researchers believe they have developed the first AI pilot that enables autonomous aircraft to navigate a crowded airspace. The artificial intelligence can safely avoid collisions, predict the intent of other aircraft, track aircraft and coordinate with their actions, and communicate over the radio with pilots and air traffic controllers.

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  • AIArtificial Intelligence Isn’t That Intelligent

    By Harriet Farlow

    In the world of information security, social engineering is the game of manipulating people into divulging information that can be used in a cyberattack or scam. Cyber experts may therefore be excused for assuming that AI might display some human-like level of intelligence that makes it difficult to hack. Unfortunately, it’s not. It’s actually very easy.

  • OUR PICKSDHS’ Information Security Program | An American Catastrophe | Legal Basis of Zawahiri Strike, and more

    ·  An American Catastrophe

    ·  Ericsson Sued by U.S. Terror Victims Over Alleged Iraq Bribe Payments

    ·  ISIS Praises Devastation in Ukraine, Accuses West of Defaming Putin, and Welcomes ‘Great War’ Ahead

    ·  Top Experts Raise Questions Regarding Legal Basis of Zawahiri Strike

    ·  The Oak Creek Massacre Signaled the Rise of White Nationalist Violence. But the Warnings Went Unheeded

    ·  On Fringe Social Media Sites, Buffalo Mass Shooting Becomes Rallying Call for White Nationalists

    ·  Evaluation of DHS’ Information Security Program for Fiscal Year 2021

    ·  Were Facebook and Twitter Consistent in Labeling Misleading Posts During the 2020 Election?

  • TERRORISMFBI: Al-Qaida Determined to Strike at US Despite Leader's Killing

    The FBI remains worried about the potential for a large-scale attack planned or inspired by al-Qaida despite the killing of its top leader in a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan last weekend. Ayman Al-Zawahiri, who took over as al-Qaida leader after Osama bin Laden was killed in a U.S. raid in 2011, was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List with a $25 million reward for his capture.

  • NUCLEAR WEAPONSWhy Are Nuclear Weapons So Hard to Get Rid Of? Because They’re Tied Up in Nuclear Countries’ Sense of Right and Wrong

    By Thomas E. Doyle, II

    States’ motivations for keeping nuclear weapons are often perceived as rooted in hard-nosed security strategy, with morality considered as irrelevant or even self-defeating. I see these explanations as incomplete. To understand leaders’ motives – and therefore effectively negotiate the elimination of nuclear weapons – we must acknowledge that policymakers express underlying moral concerns as strategic concerns. History shows that such moral concerns often form the foundations of nuclear strategy, even if they’re deeply buried.

  • UNCONVENTIONAL WEAPONSOrigins of Unconventional War

    By Adrienne Mayor

    Flamethrowers, poison gases, incendiary bombs, the large-scale spreading of disease: are these terrifying agents of warfare modern inventions? Not by a long shot. Societies around the world have used biological and chemical weapons for thousands of years. “One sobering result of writing this book is the realization that there was no time or place when biological weapons were unthinkable,” says Adrienne Mayor, the author of a new book on the subject.

  • IMMIGRATIONHow Have Attitudes Towards U.S. Immigration Changed?

    By Edmund L. Andrews

    Hostility to immigrants isn’t new to the United States. From the Know Nothings in the 1850s, to Henry Cabot Lodge in the 1890s, to Donald Trump, there were political movements and leaders who demonized immigrants. Are the Know Nothings, Cabot Lodge, or Trump representative of the broader opinion of their times? A new study that uses artificial intelligence to chart the tone of more than 200,000 congressional and presidential speeches on immigration since 1880 provides a surprising historical perspective.

  • GRID RELIABILITYSupport for Carbon Capture and Sequestration Key to Greener, More Reliable Grid

    Existing fossil-fuel capacity can play a significant role in reaching net-zero with both current and modified “Section 45Q” tax incentives for carbon capture and storage (CCS).

  • GRID RELIABILITYNew Dataset Shows Value Building Flexibility Adds to Grid

    New study estimates the gross value (including capacity, energy, and ancillary service values) of generic building flexibility in future power systems projected for the contiguous United States using computer modeling. Building flexibility refers to a building’s capability to shed, shift, and modulate electricity demand.

  • DROUGHTSFor Advance Drought Warning, Look to the Plants

    Among the extreme weather impacts resulting from climate change, drought is a growing problem around the globe, leading to frequent wildfires, threats to water resources, and greater food insecurity. Researchers find signals in vegetation can help forecast devastating ‘flash’ droughts.

  • OUR PICKSDetecting the Origins of a Pandemic | Protection in an Era of Cyberwarfare | Unifying Cybersecurity Efforts, and more

    ·  The Lessons—and Limits—of the Jan. 6 Committee

    ·  A Better Way to Detect the Origins of a Pandemic

    ·  As Bioweapons Negotiators Prepare to Meet Amid a Pandemic and Torrents of Disinformation, Can They Accomplish Anything? 

    ·  QAnon’s Ron Watkins finishes last in Arizona primary race

    ·  UC Berkeley Cybersecurity Master’s Students Double Their Salaries Postgrad

    ·  How Companies Can Protect Themselves and the Country in an Era of Cyberwarfare

    ·  $9 Million Research Grant Targets Software Supply Chain Security

    ·  Seeing the Dots, Connecting the Dots: How Government Can Unify Cybersecurity Efforts

  • NUCLEAR THREATSSituation at Europe's Largest Nuclear Plant “Out of Control”

    By Stuart Braun

    After Russian forces occupied a Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in March, the situation has deteriorated, experts say. The IAEA said that the reactor — Europe’s biggest — is “extremely vulnerable” to meltdown after all safety measures had been “violated” by Russian forces.

  • CHINA WATCHChina Has a New Global Development Initiative, but Who Will Actually Benefit from It?

    By Amitrajeet A. Batabyal

    China is a major player in world affairs, representing the second-largest economy in the world after the United States. A year after assuming power in 2012, President Xi Jinping announced the creation of the so-called Belt and Road Initiative, a massive infrastructure project designed to increase investment and promote economic development in many of the world’s poor nations. In the past year, Xi has advanced another idea – the Global Development Initiative.

  • SURVEILLANCEHow Daycare Apps Can Spy on Parents and Children

    Daycare apps are designed to make everyday life in daycare centers easier. Parents can use them, for example, to access reports on their children’s development and to communicate with teachers. However, some of these applications have serious security flaws.

  • CYBERSECURITYWhen the Hardware Traps Criminals

    Up to now, protecting hardware against manipulation has been a laborious business: expensive, and only possible on a small scale. And yet, two simple antennas might do the trick.

  • DETECTIONMaking Muons for Scientific Discovery, National Security

    The Pentagon and other agencies have sought advanced sources that generate gamma rays, X-rays, neutrons, protons, and electrons to enable a variety of scientific, commercial, and defense applications – from medical diagnostics, to scans of cargo containers for dangerous materials, to non-destructive testing of aircraft and their parts to see internal defects. The problem: None of these sources can image through concrete walls several meters thick, map the core of a volcano from the outside, or peer deep underground to locate chambers and tunnels. Muons — deeply penetrating subatomic particles – can do all those things. DARPA seeks a compact source for muons.

  • ENERGY SECURITYDrones Approved for Aerial Inspections of Power Facilities

    Drones have allowed companies new ways to stretch the boundaries of current regulations. One of the latest wins for drone technology is a waiver from the FAA that gives Dominion Energy, one of the U.S. largest energy companies, permission to use drones to inspect power-generation facilities in seven states.