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Labs Director “Absolutely Confident in the Stockpile”
The annual certification of the nuclear weapons stockpile is Sandia’s most important responsibility, according to Labs Director Laura McGill. As part of the certification, at least one of each weapon system in the stockpile is brought through the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, to be tested and examined.
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Trump’s National Guard Deployments Reignite 200-Year-Old Legal Debate Over State vs. Federal Power
If you’re confused about what the law does and doesn’t allow the president to do with the National Guard, that’s understandable. The conflict between the Trump administration and states such as Oregon and Illinois throws into relief a question as old as the Constitution itself: Where does federal power end and state authority begin?
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Unfettered and Unaccountable: How Trump is Building a Violent, Shadowy Federal Police Force
Under President Donald Trump’s deportation mission, ICE officers are using force to detain and jail immigrants. The administration gutted guardrails and offices meant to rein in abusive actions. Some families say they have no idea where their loved ones were jailed after immigration raids.
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Global Risk Index for AI-enabled Biological Tools
Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the life sciences, accelerating breakthroughs in research, drug discovery and biotechnology. However, some of the AI tools that drive innovation can also be misused, posing significant dual-use risks.
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FBI Director Kash Patel Waived Polygraph Security Screening for Dan Bongino, Two Other Senior Staff
As the FBI’s deputy director, Bongino receives some of the country’s most sensitive secrets, including the President’s Daily Brief. His ascent to that position without passing a standard bureau background check is unprecedented, insiders say.
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Time to Accept Risk in Defense Acquisitions
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth launched enterprising Pentagon reforms that prioritize speed in acquiring new military capabilities, but this ambitious proposal is at risk of running into the same bureaucratic obstacles that have plagued past efforts.
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How Drones Are Altering Contemporary Warfare
A new book by scholar and military officer Erik Lin-Greenberg examines the evolving dynamics of military and state action centered around drones.
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Online Mobilization and Violence in the United States
Even before the Charlie Kirk assassination, the United States was facing a resurgence of politically motivated violence that is deeply intertwined with the digital sphere. Extremists across the ideological spectrum exploit acts of violence to recruit followers, justify their ideologies, and sustain propaganda networks.
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Trump’s Squeeze of Venezuela Goes Beyond Monroe Doctrine – in Ideology, Intent and Scale, It’s Unprecedented
The actions of the current U.S. administration smack of a long history of interventions in the region. But while it does hearken back to some quasi-piratical practices of the U.S. Navy, the U.S. military buildup now is in key respects both unprecedented and shocking. It could also damage U.S. relations with the rest of the hemisphere for a generation to come.
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Don’t Repeat Libya: The Dangers of US Intervention in Venezuela
Calls for US military action against the cartels have evolved in some circles into a push for regime change in Venezuela, and the US has assembled the force to do it. If Trump pulls the trigger on a “Libya model” intervention, it would risk repeating a disastrous foreign policy mistake that resulted in civil war, a refugee crisis, and regional instability.
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Cold War Arms-Control Pioneers Perhaps Weren’t Peacemakers We Thought They Were
Nuclear-age historian argues scientists who backed arsenals as deterrent aided military-industrial complex, hampered disarmament.
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Canadian-Based Company Fined by U.S. Commerce Department for Hiding U.S. Exports to Iran
On October 2, 2025, a Canada-headquartered biotechnology company, Luminultra, agreed to pay the Bureau of Industry and Security $685,051 after admitting to illegally exporting water quality testing and analytical instruments to Iran by means of the United Arab Emirates.
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Robot to the Rescue When Buildings Collapse
When disaster strikes, a small robot steps in to save lives. The researchers have dubbed it a “Smurf.” It uses its eyes, ears and nose to find survivors in collapsed buildings.
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What Really Happened in Portland Before Trump Deployed the National Guard
President Donald Trump said there was a need to deploy National Guard troops to “War ravaged” Portland to protect “under-siege” ICE agents. The president’s claims were divorced from the reality on the ground. In the two months before Trump’s decision, criminal charges were announced against only three people. On nights when physical conflict did erupt, it often came from police firing on, shoving, pepper-spraying, and tackling protesters.
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Mass Shootings in Michigan, North Carolina Paint Complicated Portrait of Military Veterans, Experts Say
Two separate mass shootings —one at a Michigan church and the other at a North Carolina bar —involved suspects who were reportedly Iraq War veterans. The two incidents aren’t necessarily emblematic of a trend among military veterans, says James Alan Fox, a Northeastern University criminologist.
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The long view
An Analysis by The Trace of 150 U.S. Cities Shows One of the Greatest Drops in Gun Violence — Ever
Gun violence is trending downward for more than three quarters of cities with the most shootings, according to a new analysis by The Trace’s Gun Violence Data Hub. The downward trend cuts across red and blue cities and states in every region of the country.
Trump’s National Guard Deployments Raise Worries About State Sovereignty
In two instances – Portland and Chicago – President Trump’s campaign to send the National Guard into Democratic-leaning cities he falsely describes as crime-ridden, has turned to out-of-state National Guard troops. Presidents who have federalized National Guard forces in the past, even against a governor’s will, have done so in response to a crisis in the troops’ home state. But the decision to send one state’s National Guard troops into a different state without the receiving governor’s consent is both extraordinary and unprecedented, experts on national security law.
Correctly Assessing Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence in the United States
A recent CSIS report, making sweeping claims about a supposed rise in leftwing terrorism in the United States, risks feeding false narratives about political violence and polarization. Michael Jensen and Amy Cooter write that the evidence used to sound this alarm consists of just five plots and attacks, and that these five events not only “are doing a lot of heavy lifting” in the report, but that they are given “an unwarranted level of causal and predictive power.” This tiny sample “simply does not justify inducing panic with eye-popping headlines.”
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.
U.S. and Australia Deepen Critical-Minerals Engagement to Counter China
Engagement between Australia and the United States on critical minerals has matured from technical cooperation into a strategic partnership, aligning resource security with clean energy and defense priorities.