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First conviction under the Economic Espionage Act of 1996
Chinese-born software engineer sentenced for stealing industrial and military secrets on behalf of the PRC; first conviction under a 1996 law for misappropriating a trade secret with the intent to benefit a foreign government
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China in campaign to impriove coastal water, inland waterways security
China has a long coast and many rivers and canals; there are about 200,000 boats and ship plowing these waters, the the Chinese authorities want them to be able to communicate more effectively with security and law enforcement; U.K. company helps
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New biometric measures: Birth marks, scars, and tatoos
Michigan State researcher develops a system that could allow police to identify individuals by matching marks on their body with those stored in a computer database
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Good results in tests for BioNeutral's anti-anthrax technology
New Jersey company uses its Ygiene formulation to kill anthrax spores on contact; formulation killed all anthrax spores exposed to the formulation in as little fifteen seconds
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Shipment of restricted technology to India brings 35-month sentence
A South Carolina businessmen is sentenced the three years in prison for smuggling restricted technology to India; technology used in India’s space and ballistic-missile programs
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Lower Mississippi River region braces for major flood
Floodwaters are projected to crest at St. Louis at 38 feet on 22 or 23 June, marking the eleventh time since the Civil War that St. Louis has reached that flood stage; during the flood of 1993 waters at St. Louis crested at 49.6 feet
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Assessing landslide risk
Researchers develop new technique for assessing areas most at risk from landslides
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Midwest floods threaten IT infrastructure
More than 100 blocks in the Cedar Falls’s downtown are underwater and 3,900 homes have been evacuated; companies must cope with the threat of rising water to IT infrastructure
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Flood protection call for utilities
Twelve months after the devastating U.K. floods a government agency says much more must be done to tackle the vulnerability of buildings such as power stations and hospitals to flooding
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Botnet cyberattack costs Japanese company 300 million yen
There is a new type of blackmail in Japan: Hackers use botnets in denial-of-service attacks on companies’ computers — ending the attacks only when hefty ransom is paid
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FEMA will be aggregator/gateway for CMAS
FEMA said it will be the aggregator and gateway for the Commercial Mobile Alert System, a voluntary nationwide emergency alert system
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FEMA announces fiscal year 2008 CEDAP application period
FEMA is open to applications from state and local emergency services for funding the purchase of emergency equipment; $16 million in funding will be awarded, and the application period ends at the end of the month
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Breakthrough: Reading fingerprints even after they are gone
The name is Bond, John Bond (of Leicester University, that is): Researchers at Leicester develop a fingerprints visualization technique which would allow reading a fingerprint even after the print itself has been removed; new method would allow solving decade-old unsolved cases
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Stretchy spider silks can be springs or rubber
Spider silk is stronger than steel and nylon, and more extensible than Kevlar; it would be ideal for personal protective gear for soldiers and law enforcement, and medical applications; “would be ideal” — because we do not yet know how to spin artificial silk; Canadian scientists have interesting ideas
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EU funds disaster modeling project
Do people from different countries and cultures behave differently during disasters — for example, when evacuating a burning building? EU-funded research aims to find out whether different disaster-behavior patterns should influence the design of buildings and the fashioning of emergency policies
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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.