• “Smart” Tech Coming to a City Near You

    The data-driven smart tech trend extends far beyond our kitchens and living rooms. Will real-time sensors and data offer new solutions to the challenges cities face, or just exacerbate existing inequalities?

  • Creating a Tsunami Early Warning System Using Artificial Intelligence

    Tsunamis are incredibly destructive waves that can destroy coastal infrastructure and cause loss of life. Early warnings for such natural disasters are difficult because the risk of a tsunami is highly dependent on the features of the underwater earthquake that triggers it.

  • FBI: Active Shooter Incidents Fell in 2022 but Remained Relatively High

    The FBI is reporting a slight decline in the number of “active shooter” incidents last year but says the tally still surpassed the levels seen in most of the last five years. The FBI defines an active shooter as “one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area” such as a school or night club.

  • Light-Based Defensive Device Could Help Stop Attacks from Assailants

    In 2020, the most recent year for which complete data is available, 45,222 people died from gun-related injuries in the United States. Researchers have designed a device called Lightguard, which—when triggered by a well-placed button—can temporarily dazzle an assailant.

  • Pentagon Leaks Suggest China Developing Ways to Attack Satellites – Here’s How They Might Work

    The recent leak of Pentagon documents included the suggestion that China is developing sophisticated cyber attacks for the purpose of disrupting military communication satellites. Disruption of civilian satellite communication would be disruptive, but disruption of military communication would be much more dangerous and debilitating.

  • World Military Expenditure Reaches New Record High as European Sending Surges

    Total global military expenditure increased by 3.7 per cent in real terms in 2022, to reach a new high of $2240 billion. Military expenditure in Europe saw its steepest year-on-year increase in at least 30 years. The three largest spenders in 2022—the United States, China and Russia—accounted for 56 per cent of the world total.

  • SPFPA Disney Local under DOL Investigation

    Three officers of a Walt Disney Land local police security union allegedly received payoffs to affiliate with a national union, according to sources, and the U.S. Department of Labor is now investigating.

  • Militaries, Metals, and Mining

    The U.S. aerospace and defense industries need access to critical minerals. Securing these minerals today may be an even more-complex task than it was during the cold war: the task requires more than deploying audacious subterfuge, as the CIA did in the 1960s to get titanium out of the Soviet Union. These minerals are now very much in the public eye, and they are also needed for the clean energy technologies that will help combat climate change.

  • U.S., Taiwan Defense to Firms Explore Weapons Co-Production

    Defense contractors from the U.S. and Taiwan will next month resume in-person conversations to explore possibilities of co-producing weapons, a move likely to ignite protests from China. The Taiwan-US Defense Industry Forum will meet on May 3 in Taipei, with a focus on co-production, integrating Taiwan’s industrial capabilities, and a range of defense cooperation issues.

  • The U.S. Is About to Blow Up a Fake Warship in the South China Sea – but Naval Rivalry with Beijing Is Very Real and Growing

    As part of a joint military exercise with the Philippines, the U.S. Navy is slated to sink a mock warship on April 26, 2023, in the South China Sea. For its part, China is holding its own staged military event involving actual warships and fighter jets deployed around Taiwan. More than a century after President Theodore Roosevelt made the United States the preeminent maritime power in the Pacific, that position is under threat. China is seeking to displace it. The next time a warship is blown up in the South China Sea, it may not be just a drill.

  • U.S. Cities Less Violent Than Two Years Ago, Data Shows

    The truth about American cities: Despite popular belief, they are much less violent than they were just a couple of years ago. Consider New York: The city witnessed a staggering 50% increase in homicides in 2020 and 2021. But last year, they fell by 11% to 433, and so far this year, they’ve dropped another 7% to 113, according to city police data.

  • Officers of China’s National Police Charged in Transnational Repression Schemes Targeting U.S. Residents

    Forty defendants accused of Creating fake social media accounts to harass PRC dissidents, and Working with employees of a U.S. telecommunications company to remove dissidents from company’s platform.

  • Two Arrested for Operating Illegal Overseas Police Station of the Chinese Government

    Defendants Aare New York City residents who allegedly operated the police station in lower Manhattan and destroyed evidence when confronted by the FBI. The defendants and their co-conspirators helped the Chinese intelligence service locate Chinese dissidents living in the United States.

  • Iraq: Twenty Years On, Two Narratives Emerge

    Twenty years on, discussions of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq offer two distinct yet incongruent narratives. Most, if not all, veterans of “Iraqi Freedom” tell an inward-facing story focusing on tactical and operational “lessons” largely devoid of political context. Meanwhile, Iraqi scholars and civilians look at the political and social upheaval, concentrating far more on the costs of war than on the supposed benefits of U.S. interventionism.

  • Why Do Mass Shooters Kill? It’s About More Than Having a Grievance

    The year 2023 is still young, and already there have been at least 146 mass shooting events in the U.S. on record, including the killing of five people in a Louisville, Kentucky, bank that the shooter livestreamed. There were 647 mass shootings in 2022 and 693 in 2021, resulting in 859 and 920 deaths, respectively. Since 2015, over 19,000 people have been shot and wounded or killed in mass shootings. In the wake of most shootings, the news media and the public reflexively ask: What was the killer’s motive?