• Little Improvement in Mandated Disaster plans, Despite Required Updates

    Hurricanes, floods, heat waves and other disasters are striking the United States with increased severity and frequency, and since 2000 the Federal Disaster Mitigation Act has required states and local jurisdictions to have plans in place to reduce damages from such events. There has been only little improvement over time to these plans, in spite of regularly required updates.

  • U.S., Marshall Islands Security Deal Will Limit China’s Access to Western Pacific

    The Republic of the Marshall Islands and the U.S. signed agreements Monday evening that will give Washington a stronger presence in the Western Pacific and the right to deny China and other nations access to the islands’ territorial waters.

  • Gun Deaths Among Children and Teens Have Soared – but There Are Ways to Reverse the Trend

    Firearm injuries are now the leading cause of death among U.S. children and teens following a huge decadelong rise. Recently published analyses found an 87% increase in firearm-involved fatalities among Americans under the age of 18 from 2011 to 2021.

  • New Cyber Algorithm Shuts Down Malicious Robotic Attack

    Researchers have designed an algorithm that can intercept a man-in-the-middle (MitM) cyberattack on an unmanned military robot and shut it down in seconds.

  • Analysts Examine Israel’s Security Failures in Hamas Attack

    Analysts point to numerous security failures by Israel’s intelligence and military apparatus ahead of Hamas’ unprecedented attack on Israel.

  • Intelligence Failure or Not, the Israeli Military Was Unprepared to Respond to Hamas’ Surprise Attack

    Intelligence can only do so much. The other key piece of defense is understanding how your enemy thinks and operates. And there the Israelis also appeared to struggle.

  • Improving Strategy for Social Media Communications During Wildfires

    In the last 20 years, disasters have claimed more than a million lives and caused nearly $3 trillion in economic losses worldwide. Specifically examining wildfires, researchers contradict existing crisis communication theory that recommends Disaster relief organizations (DROs) speak with one voice during the entirety of wildfire response operations.

  • Not the Usual Suspects: New Interactive Lineup Boosts Eyewitness Accuracy

    Allowing eyewitnesses to dynamically explore digital faces using a new interactive procedure can significantly improve identification accuracy compared to the video lineup and photo array procedures used by police worldwide.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.