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Garland Would Not Object to Designating Wagner a Foreign Terrorist Organization
Founded in 2014, the Wagner Group is run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a sanctioned oligarch with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin. With an estimated 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, the majority recruited from Russia’s prisons, the paramilitary force has become a veritable arm of the Russian military in Ukraine.
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U.S. Creates New Antisemitism Task Force
Four out of 10 Jews in the US feel less secure than they did a year ago. Faced with an uptick in antisemitism, the White House responds with an action plan.
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Three Ways to Prevent School Shootings, Based on Research
We study the circumstances that lead to violence in which an attacker picks a target – like a person, group, or school – in advance. We find that the same patterns of concerning behavior emerge among the perpetrators, but that’s not all. We also find that there are often many opportunities to intervene with the perpetrator before the tragedy that peers, family members, school staff, law enforcement officials, and others miss.
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The U.S. Needs to Ditch Its America-First Approach to Critical Minerals
More and more countries with advanced economies have begun to prioritize the supply and value chains for critical minerals and rare-earth elements because of their links with advanced and low-emissions technologies. In some countries, governments have responded to the critical minerals challenge by adopting a new version of economic nationalism. But unilateral responses will not produce secure or reliable supply chains. Indeed, economic nationalism may actually aggravate the problem.
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Havana Syndrome Not Caused by Directed-Energy Weapons: U.S. Intelligence
In 2016 in Havana, Cuba’s capital, a growing number of U.S. diplomats reported symptoms of unexplained ailment, and over the next five years, employees in many other U.S. embassies complained about identical symptoms, which included dizziness, nausea, headaches, ringing ears, and disorientation. A comprehensive investigation by several agencies of the U.S. intelligence community has now concluded that the symptoms of what came to be called the Havana Syndrome were not the result of an adversary nation using directed-energy or radiation weapons.
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Directed Energy Weapons Shoot Painful but Non-Lethal Beams – Are Similar Weapons Behind the Havana Syndrome?
The latest episodes of so-called Havana syndrome, a series of unexplained ailments afflicting U.S. and Canadian diplomats and spies, span the globe. The cause of these incidents is unknown, but speculation in the U.S. centers on electromagnetic beams.
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AI Nuclear Weapons Catastrophe Can Be Avoided
There is a growing concern that emerging AI features will only increase the potential for disaster through the possibility of semiautonomous or fully autonomous nuclear weapons. Noah Greene writes that “As the Soviet-era Col. Petrov case kindly taught us, without a human firmly in control of the nuclear command-and-control structure, the odds of disaster creep slowly toward an unintended or uncontrolled nuclear exchange.”
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ATF Director: Action Needed on Auto Sears Which Are“Flooding Our Communities”
Fully automatic weapons are highly regulated, but the agency has recovered a startling number of machine gun conversion devices in recent years.
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Crowdsourced Reports Can Quickly Identify an Earthquake’s Impact
Within minutes, a statistical model based on a global database of public reports of ground shaking can be used to identify an earthquake as a high- or low-impact event, according to a new study.
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Iran Enriching Uranium to Near-Weapon-Grade 84%: IAEA
IAEA inspectors found uranium particles enriched up to nearly 84 percent in Iran’s underground Fordow uranium enrichment site. The 83.7 percent enriched uranium is just below the 90 percent purity needed for nuclear weapons. Experts say that Iran would need no more than 10-14 days to use the material to produce an atomic bomb.
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Farrakhan Predicts Another Holocaust, Espouses Antisemitism and Bigotry in Saviours’ Day Speech
The Nation of Islam (NOI) held its annual Saviours’ Day conference in Chicago the weekend of February 24–26, serving once again as a platform for vitriolic antisemitism and bigotry.
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30 Years Later, Waco Siege Still Resonates – Especially Among Anti-Government Extremists
The Waco siege and fiery end continue to inspire extremists. What unites many of the groups influenced by Waco is a belief that the federal government is tyrannical and willing to attack citizens while depriving them of liberty, freedom, and firearms. The perception of a lack of consequences for the deaths at Waco is perceived, in and of itself, as proof of extremist beliefs.
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Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2022
The number of U.S. mass killings linked to extremism over the past decade was at least three times higher than the total from any other 10-year period since the 1970s, according to a new report. “It is not an exaggeration to say that we live in an age of extremist mass killings,” the report says.
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Violent Extremists Are Not Lone Wolves – Dispelling This Myth Could Help Reduce Violence
After decades of research on numerous attacks that have left scores dead, we have learned that extremists are almost always part of a pack, not lone wolves. But the myth of the lone wolf shooter remains tenacious, reappearing in media coverage after almost every mass shooting or act of far-right extremist violence. Because this myth misdirects people from the actual causes of extremist violence, it impedes society’s ability to prevent attacks.
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2023 Border Security & Intelligence Summit
Defense Strategies Institute announced its 11th Annual Border Security & Intelligence Summit. This forum will bring together DHS, IC, Federal Agencies, and Industry to discuss the protection of U.S borders through enhanced technology and intelligence solutions.
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More headlines
The long view
AI-Controlled Fighter Jets May Be Closer Than We Think — and Would Change the Face of Warfare
Could we be on the verge of an era where fighter jets take flight without pilots – and are controlled by artificial intelligence (AI)? US R Adm Michael Donnelly recently said that an upcoming combat jet could be the navy’s last one with a pilot in the cockpit.
What We’ve Learned from Survivors of the Atomic Bombs
Q&A with Dr. Preetha Rajaraman, New Vice Chair for the Radiation Effects Research Foundation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
Need for National Information Clearinghouse for Cybercrime Data, Categorization of Cybercrimes: Report
There is an acute need for the U.S. to address its lack of overall governance and coordination of cybercrime statistics. A new report recommends that relevant federal agencies create or designate a national information clearinghouse to draw information from multiple sources of cybercrime data and establish connections to assist in criminal investigations.
Autonomous Weapon Systems: No Human-in-the-Loop Required, and Other Myths Dispelled
“The United States has a strong policy on autonomy in weapon systems that simultaneously enables their development and deployment and ensures they could be used in an effective manner, meaning the systems work as intended, with the same minimal risk of accidents or errors that all weapon systems have,” Michael Horowitz writes.
Twenty-One Things That Are True in Los Angeles
To understand the dangers inherent in deploying the California National Guard – over the strenuous objections of the California governor – and active-duty Marines to deal with anti-ICE protesters, we should remind ourselves of a few elementary truths, writes Benjamin Wittes. Among these truths: “Not all lawful exercises of authority are wise, prudent, or smart”; “Not all crimes require a federal response”; “Avoiding tragic and unnecessary confrontations is generally desirable”; and “It is thus unwise, imprudent, and stupid to take actions for performative reasons that one might reasonably anticipate would increase the risks of such confrontations.”
Luigi Mangione and the Making of a ‘Terrorist’
Discretion is crucial to the American tradition of criminal law, Jacob Ware and Ania Zolyniak write, noting that “lawmakers enact broader statutes to empower prosecutors to pursue justice while entrusting that they will stay within the confines of their authority and screen out the inevitable “absurd” cases that may arise.” Discretion is also vital to maintaining the legitimacy of the legal system. In the prosecution’s case against Luigi Mangione, they charge, “That discretion was abused.”