• Anti-Asian Hate Crime Crosses Racial and Ethnic Lines

    For many Americans, a 21-year-old white man has become the face of anti-Asian violence that has swept the country over the past year. That impression may be misleading. Robert Aaron Long, the son of a southern Baptist lay leader from Canton, Georgia, is accused of murdering eight people, including six Asian American women, at three spas in the Atlanta metropolitan area last week. Long has told police he launched his killing spree to eliminate sexual “temptation,” not to target the Asian community. While investigators have yet to determine a motive in the case, many of those who carry out attacks on Asian Americans do not fit Long’s racial profile. 

  • Why There’s Not Much Data on Anti-Asian Violence

    The murder of eight people in Atlanta on 16 March, including six Asian women, has brought the issue of an apparent rise in hate crimes against Asians and Asian Americans into the national spotlight. Jeff Asher writes that there is some evidence that anti-Asian hate crimes increased in 2020, though national data won’t be fully available for another six months. The reason: data on hate crimes is scarce—and incomplete. “Whether you are building a baseball team, combating a pandemic, or responding to a surge in hate crimes, a prerequisite to effective problem-solving is accurate, comprehensive and timely data,” he writes.

  • New Fire-Simulating Tool Could Improve In-Flight Fire Safety

    Some of the most dangerous fires are the ones you don’t see coming. That goes not only for fires in buildings but for those kilometers off the ground, aboard commercial airliners. Many aircraft have systems to detect fires early on, but fires that spark in their attics, or overhead compartments — spaces with curved ceilings, filled with air ducts, electrical wiring and structural elements — could potentially sneak past them.

  • Working Toward a More Secure World

    Neutron resonance transmission analysis (NRTA), which is used for identifying specific kinds of special nuclear materials. Elements come in different forms, or isotopes, and one way to differentiate among isotopes is to bombard them with neutrons. A reliable method for pinning down the nature of nuclear materials is crucial in nuclear security, where verification of weapons treaties may depend on establishing if a warhead slated for elimination is real or fake. The same kind of technology is useful for determining the enrichment status of nuclear fuel, or for revealing the presence of concealed radioactive material.

  • U.K. Launches Military Revolution

    The British government has unveiled its new, post-Brexit military strategy on Monday, highlighting a major reform of the British armed forces which aims to adapt the British military employ new tools to face new threats. The number of soldiers will be reduced – making the post-reform military the smallest British army in 300 years – with hundreds of tanks, armored troops carriers, and jet fighters mothballed. Money will go toward developing and deploying innovative capabilities, including satellites, electronic warfare, cyber, drones, and robots.

  • Think Global, Act Local: Reconfiguring Siege Culture

    It is not an easy time to be in a branded neo-Nazi group. Some groups have dissolved themselves, other groups have been proscribed by different governments, while group members of some groups have been arrested for a variety of offenses across the U.S., U.K., Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries. Societal attitudes towards the broader extreme-right are hardening, and for the most extreme right-wingers, the future may be less digital, more local, and harder to police.

  • Covert Action, Espionage, and the Intelligence Contest in Cyberspace

    In recent months, the world learned that China carried out an indiscriminate hack against Microsoft Exchange, while Russia hacked U.S. information technology firm SolarWinds and used cyber capabilities in an attempt to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Michael Poznansky writes that the attacks raise important questions about how best to characterize these and other kinds of disruptive cyber events. Cyber-enabled espionage and covert cyber operations both qualify as intelligence activities, but they are also distinct in key ways from one another. “Failing to appreciate these differences impedes our ability to understand the richness of cyber operations, underlying motivations, the prospect for signaling, and metrics of success,” he writes.

  • Drone Detection Test

    Transportation Security Administration (TSA) law enforcement and police departments from Connecticut, and New York recently partnered with the Connecticut State Police (CSP) to assess their ability to hunt and stop unauthorized drones from interfering with commercial aviation.

  • Iran Begins Uranium Enrichment with More Advanced Centrifuges

    Iran has begun enriching uranium at its underground Natanz plant using a cascade of advanced centrifuges, the latest breach of a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. The use of the advanced centrifuges is the latest violation of the nuclear accord, which only allows slower first-generation IR-1 centrifuges for enrichment.

  • Expanding Domestic Manufacturing of Secure, Custom Chips for Defense Needs

    DARPA announced the Structured Array Hardware for Automatically Realized Applications (SAHARA) program, which aims to expand access to domestic manufacturing capabilities to tackle challenges hampering the secure development of custom chips for defense systems. DARPA selected Intel and university researchers to automate conversion of Structured ASICs with leading-edge, domestic foundry capabilities for defense electronic systems.

  • Extremism in the U.S. Military: Problems and Solutions

    Extremist movements pose many problems to society, from spreading hate and intolerance to engaging in significant and deadly violence.  It is particularly problematic when adherents of extreme causes are able to persist in key institutions dedicated to protecting the people of the United States, institutions such as emergency response units, law enforcement and the military.

  • Call for Action on Hate Crimes and Racism Against Asian-Americans

    The Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders in National Security, founded in 2021, is a grassroots initiative which seeks to advance discourse, develop policy, and implement solutions to combat the surge of hate crimes and racism against Asian-Americans in the United States. The group has just issued a statement, signed by dozens of Asian-Americans involved in U.S. national security inside and outside of the government, calling for more effective action to combat the surge of hate crimes and racism against Asian-Americans in the United States.

  • Harnessing Earth’s Magnetic Field to Detect Chemicals

    A newly designed spectroscopy instrument allows scientists, industry, and governments to decipher even trace amounts of chemicals using the Earth’s own magnetic field. The portable tool will help scientists, industry, and governments easily detect and identify trace amounts of chemicals.

  • Racially Motivated Violent Extremists Pose Most Lethal Domestic Threat: U.S. Intelligence

    Domestic violent extremists pose the most serious threat to public safety, says the unclassified summary of an intelligence community report released Wednesday. The intelligence report, echoing academic studies, stressed that white supremacists – to which the report also refers as “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” — and militia extremists pose the most lethal threat among domestic extremists. In addition to racial and ethnic hatred, domestic extremists are motivated by the false “narrative of fraud” in the 2020 presidential election; the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol; Covid-19 restrictions; and conspiracy theories. The report found that extremists motivated by biases against minorities and “perceived government overreach” will continue to drive radicalization and violent mobilization. The report was prepared by the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

  • Gun Violence Rises in TV Dramas over Two Decades, Paralleling U.S. Gun Homicide Tends

    Gun violence in popular prime-time broadcast television dramas has increased steadily over almost two decades, a trend that parallels the rise in U.S. homicide deaths attributable to firearms, according to new research. Overall gun violence on popular prime-time dramas doubled from 2000 through 2018. More important, gun violence as a proportion of the violence depicted in the shows rose significantly as well.