• The History and Future of the Nordic Resistance Movement

    In June 2024, the United States designated Scandinavia’s largest National Socialist organization, the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), as a terrorist entity. NRM has grown into a pan-Nordic organization with a rigid hierarchy and has expanded with chapters throughout Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland. The designation is a disruption to NRM’s ability to operate, but it is unlikely to dismantle the network that makes up its far-right membership.

  • Global AI Adoption Is Outpacing Risk Understanding, Warns MIT CSAIL

    As organizations rush to implement artificial intelligence (AI), a new analysis of AI-related risks finds significant gaps in our understanding, highlighting an urgent need for a more comprehensive approach.

  • The Danger of AI in War: It Doesn’t Care About Self-Preservation

    Recent wargames using artificial-intelligence models from OpenAI, Meta and Anthropic revealed a troubling trend: AI models are more likely than humans to escalate conflicts to kinetic, even nuclear, war.

  • How U.S. Military Planning Has Shifted Away from Fighting Terrorism to Readying for Tensions and Conflict with China and Russia

    As changes emerge in the types of threats facing the U.S., the American military adjusts its strategic focus, budgets and planning. For instance, after 9/11, the U.S. military refocused away from its Cold War emphasis on preparing for combat against a powerful nation – the Soviet Union – and toward fighting small terrorist and insurgent groups instead. Over the past decade, the Pentagon’s efforts have shifted back to preparing for what officials call “great power competition” among the U.S., Russia and China.

  • Yacht Crew’s Decisions Questioned as Investigation Continues

    Investigators continue to piece together the events which led to the sinking of the superyacht Bayesian on 19 August. They focus on two issues: whether the yacht’s keel was lowered to provide stability as the storm raged, and whether large quantities of water managed to flood the yacht and sink it. The crew’s decisions may have contributed to problems with both issues. The captain n and two crew members are being investigated for manslaughter by the Italian police.

  • Floating Piers and Sinking Hopes: China’s Logistics Challenge in Invading Taiwan

    Last month the United States disassembled and removed the floating pier it had assembled at a Gaza beach to take aid deliveries. It took almost a month to assemble, waves damaged it and almost destroyed it, and waves drove ashore boats that serviced it. And all that was nothing compared with the challenges that China’s armed forces would face in trying to deliver a mountain of personnel, equipment and supplies in an invasion of Taiwan.

  • UC Berkeley Making Several Changes to Combat Antisemitism This School Year

    The University of California Berkeley is expanding its antisemitism education in the 2024-25 school year as well as banning encampments and prohibiting masking to conceal one’s identity. University leaders say that Berkeley aims to ‘address the campus culture’.

  • Biosecurity for Food Security

    Biosecurity is a fundamental enabler for a country’s’ food security, a critical but often overlooked element of national security, and it is time for it to be treated accordingly.

  • We Need a New Discussion About Iran’s Nuclear Weapons Work

    U.S. intelligence is shielding the Biden-Harris administration from having to take serious action on Iran’s nuclear program. While hinting at nuclear weapon activities taking place, the U.S. intelligence community is focusing on public Iranian statements and old news on Iran’s capabilities to produce weapon-grade uranium — but it avoids any type of public discussion on what nuclear weaponization activities Iran may be undertaking, and how soon it can build a nuclear weapon. Likely, because some uncomfortable truths would come out: Iran can do it way too quickly, and initial activities to build the bomb could be difficult to detect.

  • U.S. Says Iran Nuclear Deal Remains 'Off the Table' as Tehran Calls for 'New Negotiations'

    Reviving the Iran nuclear deal remains off the agenda for the Biden administration, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said, but the deal “is not on the table right now.”

  • Space Militarization Could Pose a Challenge to Global Security

    Typically, we would not be thinking of killer satellites, space nukes, and orbital debris fields that could lead to global collapse. But maybe we should. In May 2024, Russia launched a satellite that some observers believe is a weapon system that could allow the targeted destruction of other satellites in orbit.

  • China May Be Putting the Great Firewall into Orbit

    The first satellites for China’s ambitious G60 mega-constellation are in orbit in preparation for offering global satellite internet services—and we should worry about how this will help Beijing export its model of digital authoritarianism around the world.

  • America’s Iran Policy Is a Failure − Piecemeal Deterrence and Sanctions Can Go Only So Far

    A decade of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has failed to contain Iran’s ambitions and has instead substantially contributed to the current escalation of hostilities in the region. Washington’s ability to project power and manage American interests in the Mideast has eroded dramatically since 2010, and, as a result of Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the nuclear deal, Iran’s military nuclear program has reached its most advanced stage. The failed policies have culminated in the collapse of American deterrence in the Middle East. Simply put, the U.S. no longer projects enough power there to stop Iranian hostilities.

  • Artificial Intelligence at War

    The Gaza war has shown that the use of AI in tactical targeting can drive military strategy by encouraging decision-making bias. At the start of the conflict, an Israeli Defense Force AI system called Lavender apparently identified 37,000 people linked to Hamas. Its function quickly shifted from gathering long-term intelligence to rapidly identifying individual operatives to target.

  • To Win the AI Race, China Aims for a Controlled Intelligence Explosion

    China’s leader Xi Jinping has his eye on the transformative forces of artificial intelligence to revolutionize the country’s economy and society in the coming decades. But the disruptive, and potentially unforeseen, consequences of this technology may be more than the party-state can stomach.