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Finland: Pipeline Leak Likely Caused by 'External Activity'
Damage to an underwater gas pipeline and telecommunications cable connecting Finland and Estonia may have been a deliberate act, according to Finnish authorities.
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Israel’s War on Hamas: What to Know
Israel will seek to eliminate the threat posed by the Palestinian militant group for good, but its campaign in Gaza could draw in other adversaries, including Hezbollah and al-Qaeda.
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What Role Did Russia Play in Hamas's Attack on Israel?
Russia’s ties to Hamas are well-documented, as are its ties to Hamas’s main backer, Iran. For some observers and commentators of the ongoing bloodshed in Israel, that in itself is cause for blaming Moscow, accusing it of having a direct hand in the spiraling violence. That’s not correct, said Hanna Notte, a Berlin-based expert on Russian policy in the Middle East.
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Attitudes Toward Political Violence
Research reveals a complex mix of attitudes, concerns, and beliefs about the state of democracy and the potential for violence. A small segment of the U.S. population considers violence, including lethal violence, to be usually or always justified to advance political objectives.
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Hamas Assault Echoes 1973 Arab-Israeli War – a Shock Attack and Questions of Political, Intelligence Culpability
The parallels were striking – and surely not coincidental. Exactly 50 years and a day after being taken completely off guard by a coordinated military attack by its neighbors – Egypt and Syria – Israel was again caught by surprise. The invasion of southern Israel by Hamas militants on 7 October 2023 will probably be even more traumatic for Israelis than the 1973 war was because while in 1973 it was members of the military bearing the brunt of the surprise assault, this time it is Israeli civilians who have been captured and killed, and on sovereign Israeli territory. In this crucial respect, then, this war is unlike the one in 1973.
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Hamas Attacks Israel
While I am always wary of predicting the course of a war, we can be reasonably sure of one thing. The political backlash within Israel will be harsh and will go beyond inquiries into the intelligence failure. Not yet, for the country will come together as the fighting continues and partisan differences will be put aside. But once the dust settles. Not only has the coalition’s policies on judicial reform left Israeli society deeply divided, something of which Hamas will have been well aware, but also its active support of extremist groups stirring up trouble in the West Bank and Jerusalem meant that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were diverted to protect them. This is one explanation for the empty guard posts and thin lines of defense on the border with Gaza, which affected the ability to respond to the attacks.
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Scorpius Images to Test Nuclear Stockpile Simulations
One thousand feet below the ground, three national defense labs and a remote test site are building Scorpius — a machine as long as a football field — to create images of plutonium as it is compressed with high explosives, creating conditions that exist just prior to a nuclear explosion. The Sandia injector is key to validating plutonium pit performance.
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Chi-Nu Experiment Concludes with Data to Support Nuclear Security, Energy Reactors
The Chi-Nu project, a years-long experiment measuring the energy spectrum of neutrons emitted from neutron-induced fission, recently concluded the most detailed and extensive uncertainty analysis of the three major actinide elements — uranium-238, uranium-235 and plutonium-239.
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Why You Received a National Emergency Alert on Your Phone — and What the Cold War Has to Do with It
The U.S. wireless providers that participated in the federal alert program sent alerts to their customers on Wednesday around 2:18 p.m. Eastern Time. The Emergency Alert System and the more recent Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) has its roots in the early days of the Cold War, when there was a concern that the president would need a means to directly communicate to the American people in the event of an imminent Soviet attack on the United States involving nuclear weapons.
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States Vary in Firearm Ownership, and the Storage and Carrying Habits of Owners
Keeping a firearm in the home sharply increases the risk for injury and death. Researchers find firearm owning communities in five states are diverse, with risky behaviors more common in some than others.
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Mobile Positioning-Based Population Statistics Make Crisis Management More Effective
Human and economic losses inflicted by disasters are still growing in the world in spite of technological advances. A recent case study from Estonia shows that mobile positioning data can play a key role in improving the availability of emergency assistance, reducing the risk to human life and health in crisis situations.
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Simultaneous large wildfires will increase in Western U.S.
Simultaneous outbreaks of large wildfires will become more frequent in the Western United States this century as the climate warms, putting major strains on efforts to fight fires. This trend threatens to stretch firefighting resources.
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Researchers Blow Whistle on Forensic Science Method
Like fingerprints, a firearm’s discarded shell casings have unique markings. This allows forensic experts to compare casings from a crime scene with those from a suspect’s gun. Finding and reporting a mismatch can help free the innocent, just as a match can incriminate the guilty. But a new study reveals mismatches are more likely than matches to be reported as “inconclusive” in cartridge-case comparisons.
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The Dark Figure of Crime
“Extremely wicked, shockingly evil, and vile” – this is how the judge described serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy was sentenced to death for killing 30 young women and girls between 1974 and 1978. He was executed in 1989. A new book offers a detailed analysis arguing that Bundy’s murder count was likely 100 or more, and that his first killing was in adolescence. It is estimated that there are 250,000 to 350,000 unsolved homicide cases in the U.S. Ted Bundy is a “microcosm of the unsolved murder epidemic he helped to set into motion,” the book’s author says.
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Nationwide Test of Wireless Emergency Alert System Could Test People’s Patience – or Help Rebuild Public Trust in the System
The Wireless Emergency Alert system is scheduled to have its third nationwide test on Oct. 4, 2023. Similar tests in 2018 and 2021 caused a degree of public confusion and resistance. We believe that concerns about previous tests raise two questions: Is public trust in emergency alerting eroding? And how might the upcoming test rebuild it?
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More headlines
The long view
Tantalizing Method to Study Cyberdeterrence
Tantalus is unlike most war games because it is experimental instead of experiential — the immersive game differs by overlapping scientific rigor and quantitative assessment methods with the experimental sciences, and experimental war gaming provides insightful data for real-world cyberattacks.
Using Drone Swarms to Fight Forest Fires
Forest fires are becoming increasingly catastrophic across the world, accelerated by climate change. Researchers are using multiple swarms of drones to tackle natural disasters like forest fires.
Testing Cutting-Edge Counter-Drone Technology
Drones have many positive applications, bad actors can use them for nefarious purposes. Two recent field demonstrations brought government, academia, and industry together to evaluate innovative counter-unmanned aircraft systems.
European Arms Imports Nearly Double, U.S. and French Exports Rise, and Russian Exports Fall Sharply
States in Europe almost doubled their imports of major arms (+94 per cent) between 2014–18 and 2019–23. The United States increased its arms exports by 17 per cent between 2014–18 and 2019–23, while Russia’s arms exports halved. Russia was for the first time the third largest arms exporter, falling just behind France.
How Climate Change Will Affect Conflict and U.S. Military Operations
“People talk about climate change as a threat multiplier,” said Karen Sudkamp, an associate director of the Infrastructure, Immigration, and Security Operations Program within the RAND Homeland Security Research Division. “But at what point do we need to start talking about the threat multiplier actually becoming a significant threat all its own?”
The Tech Apocalypse Panic is Driven by AI Boosters, Military Tacticians, and Movies
From popular films like a War Games or The Terminator to a U.S. State Department-commissioned report on the security risk of weaponized AI, there has been a tremendous amount of hand wringing and nervousness about how so-called artificial intelligence might end up destroying the world. There is one easy way to avoid a lot of this and prevent a self-inflicted doomsday: don’t give computers the capability to launch devastating weapons.