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Small, Cheap and Numerous: A Military Revolution Is Upon Us
Only the most hidebound will be ignoring the revolution in military affairs under way in Ukraine and the Red Sea. For want of a better name, call it the cheap-drone revolution. A big change in military affairs has long been predicted, one in which big, costly and scarce weapons would be challenged by things that would be small, cheap and numerous. In the Middle East and especially in Ukraine, the revolution is upon us.
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A C2SMARTER Way to Reduce FDNY Response Time
In a pioneering effort to help provide faster life-saving emergency services in areas with high traffic congestion, researchers are leveraging AI technology to analyze and improve emergency vehicle travel times in partnership with the New York City Fire Department (FDNY).
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New, Portable Antenna Could Help Restore Communication After Disasters
Researchers from Stanford and the American University of Beirut have developed a lightweight, portable antenna that can communicate with satellites and devices on the ground, making it easier to coordinate rescue and relief efforts in disaster-prone areas.
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“Cascading Failures”: DOJ Blasts Law Enforcement’s Botched Response to Uvalde School Shooting
“Cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training”: A long-anticipated 575-page report details the catastrophic leadership and training errors that led to delays in confronting a gunman who killed 21 people. The most significant failure was that officers should have immediately recognized that it was an active shooter situation and confronted the gunman, who was with victims in two adjoining classrooms.
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U.S. Lawmakers Push for Limits on American Investment in China Tech
U.S. lawmakers renewed calls Wednesday to pass bipartisan legislation that would restrict American investment in Chinese technology. A pending bill, H.R. 6349, would target specific technology sectors, like AI and quantum computing, which are empowering China’s military development and surveillance.
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How the Drone War in Ukraine Is Transforming Conflict
From drones that fit in the palm of the hand to drones weighing more than 1,000 pounds (454 kilograms), Ukraine has built and acquired a diverse fleet of remotely piloted aircraft to complicate and frustrate Russia’s advances. The constantly evolving scope of this technology and its ever-growing use signal not only the potential for drones to level the playing field in the Russia-Ukraine war, but also their ability to influence how future conflicts are waged.
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As the World’s Conflicts Spread, Should You Be Digging a Bunker? How to Think About the Future of War
How concerned should we be about the possibility of future global chaos and disorder unlike anything most of us have experienced? If the many warnings currently circulating are to be believed, then the answer looks grim. The world might be in a moment of dramatic and uncertain transformation, congested with new actors, technologies, tactics and terrains. Moreover, there might be one timeless lesson from the history of war and international politics: Politicians and policymakers make strategic errors and miscalculations which can have unforeseen consequences.
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Iceland Battles a Lava Flow: Countries Have Built Barriers and Tried Explosives in the Past, but It’s Hard to Stop Molten Rock
Fountains of lava erupted from the Sundhnúkur volcanic system in southwest Iceland on Jan. 14, 2024, invading the outskirts of the coastal town of Grindavík. Humans have tried many ways to stop lava in the past, from attempting to freeze it in place by cooling it with sea water, to using explosives to disrupt its supply, to building earthen barriers. It’s too soon to say if Iceland’s earthworks will succeed in saving Grindavík, a town of about 3,500 residents, and a nearby geothermal power plant.
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The Hidden Cost of Being Branded a Terrorist by the U.S. Government
The FBI credits its Terror Watchlist with keeping the country safe, but critics point to the experience of thousands of innocent American Muslims who were swept up by a screening system, and then found themselves trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare as they tried to clear their names. The watchlist currently contains nearly two million names, of which about 15,000 are U.S. citizens and permanent residents.
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Don’t Bring a Patriot to a Drone Fight—Bring Fighter UAVS Instead
Recent conflicts such as the war in Ukraine and the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh demonstrate the growing importance of unmanned aerial vehicles. Naturally, there have been attempts to defeat this new threat. No matter the defense mechanism chosen, there just are not enough systems to provide sufficient protection against swarms of UAVs. The solution for this dilemma is to take the next step in UAV evolution: air superiority drones.
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Is North Korea Preparing for War in 2024?
North Korea’s Kim Jong Un is ratcheting up the war rhetoric against South Korea and the US once again. This time, however, analysts warn the threat goes beyond the usual bluster.
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“Killer Robots” Are Coming, and UN Is Worried
Long the stuff of science fiction, autonomous weapons systems, known as “killer robots,” are poised to become a reality, thanks to the rapid development of artificial intelligence. In response, international organizations have been intensifying calls for limits or even outright bans on their use. Human rights specialist lays out legal, ethical problems of military weapons systems that attack without human guidance.
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Do Violent Video Games Numb Us Towards Real Violence?
Video games have become an integral part of the everyday life of many children and adults. Many of the most popular video games contain explicit depictions of extreme violence. Concerns have been raised that these games may blunt the empathy of their players and could therefore lower the inhibition threshold for real violence. Results of a neuroscientific study suggest that violence in video games has no negative influence on the empathy of adults.
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Do Gun Regulations Equal Fewer Shootings? Lessons From New England
Gun rights advocates often point to low rates of shootings in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont to argue that you don’t need strong gun laws to keep violence in check. Here’s what the data actually reveals.
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ZeroEyes AI-based Gun Detection, AEGIX Incident Management to Be Deployed in Urah’s 1,086 Public K-12 Schools
ZeroEyes, the creators of the AI-based gun detection video analytics, and AEGIX Global, a Utah-based provider of incident management services, announced that the Utah State Board of Education has approved a contract to provide the joint solution for all Utah public K-12 schools, including charter schools.
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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.