• Rare Earths Find in Sweden: A Gamechanger?

    A big find of raw materials critical for green technology has been announced in Sweden. Since Europe does not produce its own so-called ‘rare earths’ so far could this news be a gamechanger?

  • EV Transition Will Benefit Most U.S. Vehicle Owners, but Lowest-Income Americans Could Get Left Behind

    More than 90% of vehicle-owning households in the United States would see a reduction in the percentage of income spent on transportation energy—the gasoline or electricity that powers their cars, SUVs and pickups—if they switched to electric vehicles. But more than half of the lowest-income U.S. households (an estimated 8.3 million households) would continue to experience high transportation energy burdens.

  • Leveraging U.S. Capital Markets to Support the Future Industrial Network

    $56 trillion is nearly three times the size of the U.S. economy.  This vast pool of capital in U.S. capital markets — $46 trillion in public capitalization and another $10 trillion in private money – dwarfs that of China. Tapping U.S. equity and debt markets would enable the Department of Defense to remedy current capability shortfalls, fund technological advances from leading private-sector innovators, invest in generational transformation efforts across the military services, and upgrade antiquated global infrastructure to sustain U.S. forces.

  • Bringing Manufacturing Back to the U.S. Requires Political Will, but Success Hinges on Training American Workers

    The lack of manufacturing competitiveness in the U.S. leaves the U.S. vulnerable to shortages of critical goods during times of geopolitical disruption and global competition. The strategies the U.S. employs in bringing back manufacturing, along with innovative practices, will be key to ensure national security.

  • 2022 U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters in Historical Context

    2022 was an intense year of costly disasters and extremes throughout much of the country. 2022 tied 2017 and 2011 for the third highest number of billion-dollar disasters. 2022 was also third highest in total costs (behind 2017 and 2005), with a price tag of at least $165.0 billion. This total annual cost may rise by several billion when we’ve fully accounted for the costs of the December 21-26 Central and Eastern winter storm/cold wave.

  • Achieving Foundational Security for Food Systems

    U.S. cereal crops such as corn, rice, and wheat feed hundreds of millions of Americans and millions more around the world. Ensuring active defense of these and other staple food grasses is a critical national security priority. New DARPA project seeks advanced threat-detection and warning capabilities for crop defense.

  • Winners of AI for Critical Mineral Assessment Competition

    Winning solutions in DARPA-USGS competition will help the USGS automate key steps in evaluating geologic maps of mineral deposits that are vital to the U.S. economy and security.

  • Insurance for a Changing Climate

    Among the many facets of the economy being challenged and changed by warming global temperatures is the insurance industry. Damaging extreme events such as wildfires, hurricanes, and floods are happening with greater frequency and intensity, which leaves insurance companies facing larger financial risks and paying out more in claims — and it also leaves policy holders paying higher prices to insure their homes and businesses.

  • Coughing Up Billions of Dollars to Save Florida’s Insurance Market

    In the three months since Hurricane Ian struck Florida, the state’s fragile property insurance market has been teetering on the brink of collapse. The historic storm caused over $50 billion in damage, and dealt a body blow to an industry that was already struggling to stay standing: Several insurance companies had already collapsed this year even before the hurricane, and major funders are now poised to abandon those that remain.

  • China Launches WTO Dispute Over U.S. Chip Export Controls

    Capping a year of increasing tension between Washington and Beijing over advanced chips used in everything from smartphones to weapons of mass destruction, China has initiated a trade dispute at the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the United States for imposing wide-ranging semiconductor export controls on China.

  • McDonald's Sets Targets for Reducing Antibiotics in Its Beef Supply

    Following criticism that it was backtracking on a commitment to reduce the use of medically important antibiotics in its beef supply chain, fast-food giant McDonald’s has set targets for responsible antibiotic use in the countries that supply most of its beef.

  • New Bill Proposes Banning TikTok in the U.S.

    Both the administration and Congress have moved to limit, or even ban, TikTok in the United States because of worries about China using the Chinese-owned platform to gather personal data on millions of Americans. Justin Sherman writes that “all told, it is a noteworthy piece of legislation, and it delineates between the risk of data access and the risk of content manipulation better than then-President Trump’s executive order on TikTok.”

  • $4.8M to Address National Cybersecurity Workforce Shortage

    Oregon State University has received $4.8 million from the National Science Foundation to help the United States close a big gap between the number of cybersecurity job openings and the number of qualified applicants for those positions.

  • Wildfires Threats Not Commonly Disclosed by U.S. Firms Despite Risk to Economy

    Wildfires in the United States, especially in Western states, increasingly pose a significant risk to entire communities, often destroying homes, businesses and lives. Yet U.S. firms rarely report their wildfire risks in required federal filings and instead bury such risks in nonspecific risk disclosures.

  • Phosphorus Supply Is Increasingly Disrupted – We Are Sleepwalking into a Global Food Crisis

    Without phosphorus food cannot be produced, since all plants and animals need it to grow. Put simply: if there is no phosphorus, there is no life. All farmers therefore need access to it, but 85% of the world’s remaining high-grade phosphate rock is concentrated in just five countries, making the global food system extremely vulnerable to disruptions.