Hills, Rivers and Rocky Terrain: Why the Hill Country Keeps Flooding

When storms roll in, water rushes downhill fast, gaining speed and force as it moves — often with deadly results.

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The National Security Costs of Trump’s Tariffs

Looking at the national security ledger, the costs of President Donald Trump’s tariffs are starting to become clearer than the benefits, especially for the U.S. defense industry, critical infrastructure, and relations with partners and allies.

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What Damage Did the U.S. Do to Iran’s Nuclear Program? Why It’s So Hard to Know

Disagreements over the damage the U.S. bombing did to Iran’s nuclear facilities are unsurprising. Battle damage assessment –originally called bomb damage assessment –is notoriously difficult, and past wars have featured intense controversies among military and intelligence professionals.

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Potential Environmental Effects of Nuclear War

In the 1980s, in response to the buildup of U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals during the Cold War, scientists issued warnings about the potential for a “nuclear winter” scenario which would follow a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Since then, military, political, and technological changes have reshaped the nuclear weapons landscape, while scientific advances have deepened the understanding of and ability to model Earth system processes.

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Flock Safety’s Feature Updates Cannot Make Automated License Plate Readers Safe

Two recent statements from the surveillance company reveal a troubling pattern: when confronted by evidence of widespread abuse, Flock Safety has blamed users, downplayed harms, and doubled down on the very systems that enabled the violations in the first place.

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Post-Attack Assessment of the First 12 Days of Israeli and U.S. Strikes on Iranian Nuclear Facilities

Israel’s historic Operation Rising Lion and the United States Operation Midnight Hammer have targeted many Iranian nuclear sites, causing massive damage to its nuclear program and setting it back significantly. 

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Quote of the Day

One thing I think that this attack signals is that there’s a big distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear states in that you can do whatever you want to a non-nuclear state. It would be much harder if Iran actually had a nuclear program…. Once you get nuclear weapons, it’s really hard for anybody to come and overturn your regime…. And so there’s going to be all these long-run consequences that aren’t going to be necessarily so pretty, meaning that a lot of countries are going to see this as a signal that they need to get serious about their own separate nuclear deterrence.

— Francis Fukuyama, interviewed by Yascha Mounk, Persuasion, 25 June 1925