• It’s Time to Surge Resources into Prosecuting Ransomware Gangs

    In the popular imagination, hacking is committed by lone wolves with exceptional computer skills. But in reality, the vast majority of hackers do not have the technical sophistication to create the malicious tools that are essential to their trade. Kellen Dwyer writes that hacking has exploded in recent years because criminals have specialized and subspecialized so that each one can concentrate on facilitating just a single phase of a successful data breach. This is known as cybercrime-as-a-service and it is a massive business. This intricate cybercrime ecosystem offers the key to fighting it: “While organization and specialization are strengths of cybercriminals, they are also weaknesses. That means there are organizations that can be infiltrated and exploited.”

  • Rare Earth Supply Disruptions Have Long-Range Impacts

    Rare earth materials are essential to a variety of industries. From phones to fighter jets, a range of devices and machines rely on rare earth elements that are mined and refined largely in China. Disruptions to this supply can have wide-ranging consequences, but the understanding of how those disruptions play out in global markets is limited. A new study from explores the effects of supply disruptions such as mine shutdowns.

  • Engineers and Economists Prize Efficiency, but Nature Favors Resilience – Lessons from Texas, COVID-19 and the 737 Max

    The damage from Winter Storm Uri, the economic devastation from the COVID-19 pandemic and the fatal Boeing 737 Max accidents show the price society pays for a relentless pursuit of efficiency. Modern society has prioritized free-market economics and efficient computer systems to the detriment of other priorities. Studies of algorithms show that efficiency can come at a high cost. Sexual reproduction and car insurance highlight the benefits of resilience.

  • Tips and Tactics for Dealing with Ransomware

    Used in cyberattacks that can paralyze organizations, ransomware is malicious software that encrypts a computer system’s data and demands payment to restore access. To help organizations protect against ransomware attacks and recover from them if they happen, NIST has published an infographic offering a series of simple tips and tactics.

  • Can the West Devise an Alternative to China's Belt and Road?

    Since it was announced by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has channeled hundreds of billions of dollars into foreign infrastructure, boosting trade, and clearing the way for China to forge political and economic links around the world. But a combination of growing disillusionment among partner countries with the resulting projects, room for more investment, and increased unease about the strategic implications of the BRI might have opened the door for an alternative to emerge.

  • The U.S. Is Trying to Reclaim Its Rare-Earth Mantle

    Rare earths elements (REEs) are used in cancer treatment and electric engines, telescope lenses and TVs, cellphones and fighter jets. Many REEs are extracted and refined almost entirely in China. The U.S. was 100% net import reliant on rare-earth elements in 2018, importing an estimated 11,130 metric tons of compounds and metals valued at $160 million. The Department of Energy is funding research to make separating rare earths easier and more efficient, and to promote recycling. “There is a clock ticking in the background of this race for a rare-earth supply chain. There is a danger that the electric vehicle market, which will demand large quantities of critical minerals including rare earths, may move faster than the rare-earth supply chain, which would feed it,” Sabri Ben-Achour writes.

  • Hydropower’s Evolving Value to the Grid and Energy Storage

    Across the United States, hydroelectric dams are capturing energy from river water to create electricity that powers everything from street lights to mega industrial plants. Hydropower represents 41 percent of all renewable energy generated across the nation and is a key element of a flexible, resilient electric grid. But in some parts of the country, operations at dams are changing.

  • Supply Chains and National Security—the Lessons of the COVID-19 Pandemic

    National power relies on globally efficient and intertwined supply chains. These highly interconnected supply chains are a fact of life, bringing benefit and vulnerability. Supply chain vulnerability stretches across whole sectors of the U.S. economy and is a national security issue in that sense: a set of interests that if disrupted could directly affect the health and well-being of the United State and its allies.

  • Huawei’s Ability to Eavesdrop on Dutch Mobile Users Is a Wake-up Call for the Telecoms Industry

    Chinese technology provider Huawei was recently accused of being able to monitor all calls made using Dutch mobile operator KPN. While the full report on the issue has not been made public, journalists reporting on the story have outlined specific concerns that Huawei personnel in the Netherlands and China had access to security-essential parts of KPN’s network – including the call data of millions of Dutch citizens – and that a lack of records meant KPN couldn’t establish how often this happened.

  • The Liberals Who Can’t Quit Lockdown

    Among the relieved Americans going back out to restaurants and planning their summer-wedding travel is a different group, Emma Green writes: liberals who aren’t quite ready to let go of pandemic restrictions. “For this subset, diligence against COVID-19 remains an expression of political identity—even when that means overestimating the disease’s risks or setting limits far more strict than what public-health guidelines permit.” For many progressives, extreme vigilance was in part about opposing Donald Trump - but the spring of 2021 is different from the spring of 2020, as scientists know a lot more about how COVID-19 spreads—and how it doesn’t. “Public-health advice is shifting. But some progressives have not updated their behavior based on the new information,” Green says.

  • Stoner’s Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment of Russia’s New Strength

    Understanding Russia’s power and the Russian leadership’s goals is a necessary task in formulating effective policy. Moreover, as Russia has become considerably more powerful over the last two decades, the stakes in accurately discerning the Kremlin’s motives have become commensurately higher.If Russia Resurrected approached these challenges with more care, discipline and nuance, it could have been an important work.

  • Increasing U.S. Production of Rare Earth Elements

    The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) the other day awarded $19 million for 13 projects in traditionally fossil fuel-producing communities across the country to support production of rare earth elements and critical minerals vital to the manufacturing of batteries, magnets, and other components important to the clean energy economy.

  • Help Wanted: The Cybersecurity Workforce of the Future Starts with Students Today

    Today’s critical infrastructure systems from farm fields planted with digital sensors that track soil moisture and nutrient levels to electric power grids equipped to instantly respond to digital signals about shifts in supply and demand are increasingly vulnerable to attacks that could cripple civil society, according to cybersecurity experts. Today, there are nearly 2 million U.S. job openings in the field of cybersecurity, studies indicate.

  • New Cybersecurity Degree Offered at UH West O’ahu

    The University of Hawaiʻi–West O’ahu has unveiled a new slate of academic offerings—including another STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) degree—to address the state’s workforce needs, in time for the start of the fall 2020 semester.

  • Homes in Floodplains Are Overvalued by Nearly $44 Billion

    Analysis of sales data and flood risk data over two decades indicates that housing markets fail to fully account for information about flood risk. The findings suggest that policies to improve risk communication could influence market outcomes.