• Can Europe Secure Its Own Critical Raw Materials?

    With the EU’s Critical Raw Materials’ Act coming into force, the 27-nation bloc is looking to diversify its supplies of minerals away from China. But can it source enough of it at competitive prices?

  • Fool’s Gold: Overhyped Tech Startups Distract from Military Innovation

    Technology startups almost never live up to all the hype they generate. Much of this innovation is fool’s gold. Often, these solutions are not developed beyond an initial concept. It’s a missed opportunity for the U.S. military. Startup companies often present the Pentagon with more cost-effective, swift, and adaptable solutions compared to the weapons systems typically provided by the handful of major contractors the Pentagon usually turns to.

  • Why This Summer Might Bring the Wildest Weather Yet

    Summers keep getting hotter, and the consequences are impossible to miss: In the summer of 2023, the Northern Hemisphere experienced its hottest season in 2,000 years. Forecasts suggest that this year’s upcoming “danger season” has its own catastrophes in store. El Niño has been rough, but its departure could be even rougher.

  • Analysis of the IAEA’s Iran NPT Safeguards Report - May 2024

    For the second time in its quarterly safeguards reports on Iran’s compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has drawn attention Iran’s current ability to make nuclear weapons. Without strong and decisive action y the IAEA, Iranwill succeed in steadily augmenting its nuclear program penalty-free, enabling it to build a nuclear weapon more quickly than Western powers could detect and stop.

  • Reports: Russian Physicists Being Denied Entry to U.S.

    After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the US government attempted to make it easier for Russian scientists to enter the United States. But there are reports that it has actually become more difficult.

  • The ‘Dead Internet Theory’ Makes Eerie Claims About an AI-run Web. The Truth Is More Sinister

    Is most of the content on the internet fake? Here’s what the dead internet theory really means – and why we should be warier of how we’re manipulated for profit and political gain.

  • How Secure Is Gene Synthesizing Research?

    Critics warn that the benefits of gene synthesizing research are undermined by security measures which are not sufficiently tight to prevent such research form being used by bad actors to do harm. One expert writes: “The problem is that governments don’t mandate security across the industry — and even though it’s a crime to ship DNA sufficient to generate the entire infectious 1918 influenza, there’s no law against shipping pieces of it.” The International Gene Synthesis Consortium disagrees.

  • China’s Control and Coercion in Critical Minerals

    Markets for critical minerals are no longer shaping up to be the next components of the global economy to be dominated by China. They already are. While Western nations were sleeping, China built vertically integrated supply chains for several critical minerals vital to the energy transition and high technology applications, including defense equipment.

  • Autonomous Vessels Need to Be More Afraid of Dying

    Could the Helge Ingstad maritime accident have been avoided if the Royal Norwegian Navy’s warships had been equipped with artificial intelligence?

  • Dependable AI for National Security Applications

    AI is rapidly becoming one of the most important assets in global competition, including AI-assisted autonomy and decision-making in battlefield applications. But today’s AI models are vulnerable to novel cyberattacks and could be exploited by adversaries, and are not sufficiently robust and dependable to orchestrate and execute inherently human-centric, mission-critical decisions.

  • The Homeowner Mutiny Leaving Florida Cities Defenseless Against Hurricanes

    The only protection the town of Hendrickson, Florida, has from the Gulf of Mexico’s increasingly erratic storms is a pristine beach that draws millions of tourists every year — but that beach is disappearing fast. A series of storms have eroded most of the sand that protects Redington Shores and the towns around it, leaving residents just one big wave away from water overtaking their homes. The federal government is refusing to restore eroded beaches in Pinellas County unless homeowners agree to one condition: public access.

  • Real-Time Satellite Data Improves Earthquake Early Warning System in the United States

    The U.S. Geological Survey and its partners have announced a new capability to characterize large earthquakes quickly, helping inform the public about potentially damaging shaking headed their way. The ShakeAlert System now makes use of sensors that detect earth-surface movement via satellite.

  • Artificial Geysers Can Compensate for Our Mineral Shortages

    By imitating nature, it may be possible to recover seabed minerals by extracting hot water from the Earth’s crust. We can harvest green energy and be sensitive to the environment – all at the same time.

  • Some Countries Could Meet Their Total Electricity Needs from Floating Solar Panels

    Researchers calculated the global potential for deploying low-carbon floating solar arrays. The researchers looked at nearly 68,000 lakes and reservoirs around the world which were no more than 10km from a population center, not in a protected area, didn’t dry up and didn’t freeze for more than six months each year. The potential annual electricity generation from FPV on these lakes was 1302 terawatt hours (TWh), around four times the total annual electricity demand of the UK.

  • Sounding the Alarm: Exposing Audio Deepfake

    Audio deepfakes are becoming ubiquitous – blurring the line between fact and fiction – but researchers are working to develop methods to help the public navigate this new technological terrain.