• “Battleship”-Style Math Can Improve Sustainable Design, Groundwater Management, Nuclear Waste Storage and More

    Scientists can now accurately determine where randomly distributed components appear in concrete, soil, and other common materials using a statistical model. The findings could enable the design of better, stronger, cheaper materials.

  • Electric Cars May Be the “Green” Choice, but They're Driving a Scramble for Critical Minerals

    Our cars are responsible for about 20 per cent of global carbon emissions. The move to electric vehicles (EVs) is central to the effort to decarbonize the world’s transport. But the clean-energy transition is also creating a new extractive frontier: the minerals that power electric car batteries. And the same forces that shaped the geopolitics of oil are re-emerging in the race to power the electric revolution.

  • Innovative AI Video Generators Produce Antisemitic, Hateful and Violent Outputs

    In a matter of seconds, anyone can now use popular AI video generation tools to create antisemitic and extremist content. As this technology continues to evolve, existing guardrails often fail to catch prompts that can be used to generate extremist content, contributing to the proliferation of antisemitic propaganda across social media.

  • Technology Evolves the Tactics: Preparing for the Rise of Terrorist AI Harms

    Terrorist groups, like the societies they emerge from, adapt to new technologies. As AI capabilities evolve, so too do the tactics of extremist actors. While the full effects may take years to observe, as the technologies continue to develop, we are starting to see them directly alter extremism tradecraft.

  • Satellites and Space Trash Threaten the Ozone Layer and Space Safety

    Every year, we shoot several thousand satellites and other objects out into space. When satellites die, they become space trash that threatens aerospace safety.

  • China, the United States, and a Critical Chokepoint on Minerals

    Critical minerals today are “America’s most dangerous dependence,” in the words of CFR’s Heidi Crebo-Rediker. With near total control of the world’s critical minerals production, China maintains significant economic leverage over access to inputs that are necessary for everything from everyday products like smartphones to advanced weapons systems like the F-35.

  • A New Generation of Industries Emerges in Texas as Feds Push to Mine More Rare Minerals

    The U.S. doesn’t produce the minerals and metals needed for renewable energy, microchips or military technology. Major oil companies are drilling in East Texas again, but not for oil. This time, they’re after lithium for batteries and other rare elements.

  • Bookshelf: A Tale of American Lawyers and Chinese Engineers

    The U.S. and China have fundamental differences, a new book argues. China would be an “engineering state” whereas the U.S. is a “lawyerly society.” Most Chinese Communist Party leaders have been engineers focused on building mega projects such as highways, bridges, fast trains. and airports. In recent decades the U.S. has become a “lawyerly society” as the country’s elite, dominated by lawyers, focused on procedure and process rather than getting things done.

  • How AI Can Improve Storm Surge Forecasts to Help Save Lives

    Hurricanes are America’s most destructive natural hazards, causing more deaths and property damage than any other type of disaster. The No. 1 cause of the damage and deaths from hurricanes is storm surge. I have recently been exploring ways that artificial intelligence can improve the speed of storm surge forecasting.

  • Europe’s Banks Quietly Mobilize for Economic Warfare

    For years, banks treated defense as a reputational issue, as well as an environmental, social and governance risk, often lumping it with tobacco or fossil fuels as something to be managed at arm’s length. That era is ending. Russia’s war in Ukraine, China’s coercive trade tactics and the United States’ pressure on Europe to shoulder more of its defense burden have exposed the limits of moralistic restraint. Financial mobilization is the new norm.

  • UK Man Attempting to Make Firearms Using 3D Printer Guilty of Terrorism Offenses

    A man has been found guilty of various terrorism and firearms offenses after he was caught attempting to use a 3D-printer to make a sub-machine gun.

  • Walk-Through Screening System Enhances Security at Airports Nationwide

    A new security screener that people can simply walk past may soon be coming to an airport near you. Last year, U.S. airports nationwide began adopting HEXWAVE to satisfy a new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) mandate for enhanced employee screening to detect metallic and nonmetallic threats.

  • The U.S. Critical Minerals Dilemma: What to Know

    Critical minerals play an essential role in security and technological competitiveness, but the United States relies heavily on imports from China and other foreign sources. The Trump administration is trying to change that.

  • Critical Action Needed to Address Growing Biosecurity Risks

    A new report warns that biosecurity risks are increasing. Emerging technologies and other trends are making biological threats more numerous, frequent, and consequential. The report outlines how emerging biotechnology must itself be used to secure biology, akin to how software is required to secure software.

  • Circumcision, Tylenol, and Autism? RFK Jr. Misses the Cut

    When public health officials use their platforms to promote pet theories instead of proven science, it’s not just sloppy—it’s dangerous. These pronouncements shape research priorities, regulatory decisions, and the information the public is allowed to hear. When science gets filtered through political agendas and personal crusades, public health becomes a tool of control rather than a source of trust. HHS officials wield enormous influence over Americans’ medical choices; that power demands humility and restraint—not speculation masquerading as science.