• Arizona Is Evicting a Saudi Alfalfa Farm, but the Thirsty Crop Isn’t Going Anywhere

    As Arizona struggles to adapt to a water shortage that has dried out farms and scuttled development plans, one company has emerged as a central villain. The agricultural company Fondomonte, which is owned by a Saudi Arabian conglomerate, has attracted criticism over the past several years for sucking up the state’s groundwater to grow alfalfa and then exporting that alfalfa to feed cows overseas. Now Arizona has cancelled one of the company’s leases and says it will not renew the others, but the decision will do little to solve a water shortage largely driven by irrigated agriculture.

  • China, U.S. Escalate Trade-Restrictions War

    The Chinese government announced Friday that it would tighten export controls on graphite, a material essential to the construction of batteries used in electric cars and other green energy systems and of which China is the world’s preeminent supplier. The move came days after the Biden administration announced that the United States would widen the list of semiconductors that it prevents from being exported to China.

  • It’s High Time for Alliances to Ensure Supply Chain Security, Researchers Urge

    The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the interconnected nature of global supply chains, and showed how a disruption in one part of the world can have global effects. In 2021, supply disruptions were cost the global economy an estimated $1.9 trillion.

  • DARPA Selects Teams to Boost Supply-and-Demand Network Resiliency

    DARPA selected teams to develop new tools and analytics capable of helping the Department of Defense and its commercial partners improve systemic resilience in various supply-and-demand networks. Resilient Supply-and-Demand Network performers will create a general-purpose toolkit to improve systemic resilience in modern supply chains.

  • In Wildfire-Prone Areas, Homeowners Are Learning They’re Uninsurable

    Wildfires cause billions in home damage every year – and they are not only a problem in the U.S. West. Close to a quarter of the Americans now at risk of catastrophic wildfires live in the eastern half of the country, in places that may not be prepared to respond. Now, insurers no longer want to take on the risk.

  • Finland: Pipeline Leak Likely Caused by 'External Activity'

    Damage to an underwater gas pipeline and telecommunications cable connecting Finland and Estonia may have been a deliberate act, according to Finnish authorities.

  • Southeast Asian Casinos Emerge as Major Enablers of Global Cybercrime

    A growing number of casinos in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar are engaging in large-scale money laundering, facilitating cyberfraud that is costing victims in America and abroad billions of dollars, according to new research by the United Nations.

  • Sam Bankman-Fried Trial Shines Light on the Rise and Fall of Cryptocurrency and Concerns About Its Use in White-Collar Crime

    While Sam Bankman-Fried’s crime – he is accused of orchestrating a conspiracy to use $10 billion that FTX’s customers had entrusted to him for venture capital investments, political donations and luxury real estate purchases — may seem complicated because bitcoin is involved, a criminology expert says it really comes down to traditional embezzlement.

  • How Foreign Investment in U.S. Land Affects Food Security

    The United States has approximately 1.3 billion acres of privately held agricultural land, including forestland. Out of these 1.3 billion acres, around 40 million acres were under full or partial foreign ownership as of 2021. Current foreign agricultural holdings represent 3.1% of the country’s privately owned agricultural land.

  • What’s Causing the Panama Canal Logjam

    Low water levels have, the result of prolonged drought conditions, led to a traffic jam at one of the world’s busiest maritime passages. The Panama Canal Authority has capped the number of ships that cross the canal each day, and has restricted their maximum weight and draft, or how deep below the waterline a ship sits. The bottleneck demonstrates how accelerating climate change is threatening global supply chains.

  • Book Review: How Xi Jinping Derailed China’s Peaceful Rise

    In just one decade, Xi Jinping managed to dismantle the collective leadership system carefully crafted by Deng Xiaoping; sour China’s relations with most of its neighbours; and set China on a collision course with the United States. A new book offers an answer.

  • AI Risks to the Financial Sector

    In a world where AI algorithms can already analyze real-time financial information and make high-stakes trading decisions with little or no human oversight, our financial regulations are failing to keep up. A professor of computer science and engineering identifies new concerns that recent AI advances pose for financial markets.

  • NSF invests $35M in future manufacturing

    Manufacturing is a linchpin of the U.S. economy, bolstering national security, economic growth, and American employment. The National Science Foundation (NSF) makes targeted investments in the future of manufacturing research and helps grow the manufacturing workforce.

  • The Contribution of High‐Skilled Immigrants to Innovation in the United States

    Innovation and technological progress are key determinants of economic growth. There is growing evidence that immigrants play a key role in U.S. innovation. Based on a 2003 survey, U.S. immigrants with a four‐year college degree were twice as likely to have a patent than U.S.-born college graduates.

  • Wind and Solar Power Could Significantly Exceed Britain’s Energy Needs

    Britain’s energy needs could be met entirely by wind and solar, according to a policy brief from Oxford University. Wind and solar can provide significantly more energy than the highest energy demand forecasts for 2050 and nearly ten times current electricity demand (299 TWh/year). The research shows up to 2,896 TWh a year could be generated by wind and solar, against the demand forecast of 1,500 TWh/year.