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A Brief History of Federal Funding for Basic Science
Biomedical science in the United States is at a crossroads. For 75 years, the federal government has partnered with academic institutions, fueling discoveries that have transformed medicine and saved lives. Recent moves by the Trump administration — including funding cuts and proposed changes to how research support is allocated — now threaten this legacy.
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Bookshelf: Preserving the U.S. Technological Republic
The United States since its founding has always been a technological republic, one whose place in the world has been made possible and advanced by its capacity for innovation. But our present advantage cannot be taken for granted.
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Financial Surveillance Is Expanding—but So Is the Resistance
The last few months were hectic, but not all bad. Amidst the government surveilling cash, prosecuting people in bad faith, and creating new surveillance mechanisms, there were significant wins: Courts pushed back on overreach and Congress began to offer reforms to correct past mistakes.
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It’s Not Just Software. Physical Critical Equipment Can’t Be Trusted, Either
Just auditing the software in critical equipment isn’t enough. We must assume that adversaries, especially China, will also exploit the hardware if they can.
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Why the United States, South Korea, and Japan Must Cooperate on Shipbuilding
The tides of naval power are shifting as China’s shipyards churn out warships at an unprecedented pace, leveraging its massive commercial shipbuilding base, direct government funding, and integrated military-industrial strategy. To counter this, the United States, South Korea, and Japan should form a shipbuilding alliance.
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How to Help the U.S. Navy as It Helps Us: Build a Joint Submarine Facility
There’s a way for Australia to strengthen its case for the US presidential certification it will need for acquiring Virginia-class submarines. It should do so by accelerating construction of a planned shipyard in Western Australia and using it to help get US submarines out of a long maintenance queue.
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USGS to Fund States’ Efforts to Find Critical Minerals in Mine Waste
The U.S. Geological Survey invited states to compete for $5 million in cooperative agreements to find critical minerals needed to drive the U.S. economy in the materials left over from mining at active and legacy sites.
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Busting ‘Manufacturing Jobs’ Myths
A nostalgia-soaked return to the 1950s industrial workforce is neither preferable nor possible. Promises to use blanket tariffs to reengineer an industrial workforce of our parents’ distant memories are laughably out of touch.
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Ransomware Drives U.S. Health Data Breaches
Ransomware attacks — which involve a hacker putting encryption controls into a file and then demanding a ransom to unlock the files—have become the primary driver of health care data breaches in the United States, compromising 285 million patient records over 15 years.
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As Temperatures Rise, the U.S. Corn Belt Could See Insurance Claims Soar
Crop insurance is a lifeline for farmers. But research shows it’s not ready for climate change, as global warming worsens, bringing more uncertainty to the agricultural sector.
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Governments Continue Losing Efforts to Gain Backdoor Access to Secure Communications
The spotlight on encrypted apps such as Signal is a reminder of the complex debate pitting government interests against individual liberties.
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Shipbuilding to Citizenship: Solving the U.S. Skills Shortage with Immigration
Skill-based immigration can help the United States fill its severe shortage of shipbuilding workers, for both naval and civilian construction.
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U.S.-UK Trade Deal Illustrates Trump’s Shifting Trade Policy
The U.S.-UK trade agreement is Trump’s first since his “Liberation Day” tariff announcements. It could be a possible template for other nations seeking a deal, but it could also have major implications for global trading norms.
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Texas House Advances Bill That Would Prohibit Land Sales to People and Entities from Certain Countries
The legislation had only pertained to countries the government deemed national security threats. A last-minute change would let the governor add more countries to the ban.
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Apprentices Needed: Construction Shortages Threaten American Growth
U.S. plans for new factories, new tech hubs—even new homes—are about to crash into one very inconvenient fact: Not enough people work in construction to turn those plans into actual, hammer-and-nail reality. Not even close.
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The long view
Need for National Information Clearinghouse for Cybercrime Data, Categorization of Cybercrimes: Report
There is an acute need for the U.S. to address its lack of overall governance and coordination of cybercrime statistics. A new report recommends that relevant federal agencies create or designate a national information clearinghouse to draw information from multiple sources of cybercrime data and establish connections to assist in criminal investigations.
Trying to “Bring Back” Manufacturing Jobs Is a Fool’s Errand
Advocates of recent populist policies like to focus on the supposed demise of manufacturing that occurred after the 1970s, but that focus is misleading. The populists’ bleak economic narrative ignores the truth that the service sector has always been a major driver of America’s success, for decades, even more so than manufacturing. Trying to “bring back” manufacturing jobs, through harmful tariffs or other industrial policies, is destined to end badly for Americans. It makes about as much sense as trying to “bring back” all those farm jobs we had before the 1870s.
The Potential Impact of Seabed Mining on Critical Mineral Supply Chains and Global Geopolitics
The potential emergence of a seabed mining industry has important ramifications for the diversification of critical mineral supply chains, revenues for developing nations with substantial terrestrial mining sectors, and global geopolitics.
Are We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?
Anthropic’s Claude 4 is a warning sign: AI that can help build bioweapons is coming, and could be widely available soon. Steven Adler writes that we need to be prepared for the consequences: “like a freely downloadable ‘DeepSeek for bioweapons,’ available across the internet, loadable to the computer of any amateur scientist who wishes to cause mass harm. With Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 having finally triggered this level of safety risk, the clock is now ticking.”