• Five Years After “Unite the Right”: Reflections on Charlottesville for Today’s Threat Landscape

    Five years ago, racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists from across the United States traveled to Charlottesville, Virginia for the “Unite the Right” rally. Nicholas Rasmussen and Sarah Kenny write that “Unite the Right” is best appreciated as a watershed moment in U.S. politics. “With the clear vision of hindsight, the incidents in Charlottesville five years ago sounded a wakeup call about where the United States may be headed.” The very real threat “of political violence and radicalization that flow from the highly toxic political climate we currently live in, make for a turbulent domestic threat landscape in both city parks and virtual chatrooms.”

  • Mar-a-Lago Search Sparks Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories Online

    Antisemitic conspiracy theories circulated widely on social media after the search at Mar-a-Lago. Extremist groups and influencers have used the faith of the judge who signed the search warrant, Bruce Reinhart, as ammunition to promote unfounded claims that Jewish individuals are controlling the FBI and other government entities in order to take down Donald Trump and defend the “deep state.”

  • Sensors Help Fight Wildfires

    As climate change leads to larger and more frequent wildfires, researchers are using sensors, drones and machine learning to both prevent fires and reduce their damage to the electric grid. Engineers are honing technology to remotely sense electrical arcing and faulty equipment, as well as the direction of spreading fires.

  • Iran to Supply Combat Drones to Russia for Use in Ukraine War

    Iran has supplied drones to its proxies in the Middle East and employed them during reconnaissance, sabotage, and attack missions in the region. Now, Iranian-made drones could end up in the hands of Russia for use in its war in Ukraine.

  • Nuclear War Would Cause Global Famine

    More than 5 billion people would die of hunger following a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, according to a global study that estimates post-conflict crop production. Even a regional nuclear conflict would devastate crop production.

  • Prediction of Human Movement During Disasters Allows More Effective Emergency Response

    The COVID-19 pandemic, bigger and more frequent wildfires, devastating floods, and powerful storms have become facts of life. With each disaster, people depend on the emergency response of governments, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector for aid when their lives are upended. But there is a complicating factor: people tend to disperse with such disasters, making aid delivery more difficult.

  • Brain-Monitoring Tech Advances Could Change the Law

    There is an ankle-bracelet for offenders. What about a brain-bracelet? A new reportscrutinizes advances in neurotechnology and what it might mean for the law and the legal profession.

  • Experts Shed Light on Preventing Violence

    As the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at CU Boulder turns 30, its founder and current director share thoughts on the center’s legacy.

  • U.S. Ready to Conclude Iran Nuclear Deal Based on EU's 'Final Draft'

    The United States is ready to “quickly conclude a deal” to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement on the basis of proposals put forward on August 8 by the European Union, a State Department spokesperson said.

  • Iran’s Latest Advanced Centrifuge Deployment

    Iran just announced that it has recently installed or plans to install in the near term almost 1570 new advanced centrifuges. This represents a 70 percent increase from the number of advanced centrifuges installed as of last May. Iran’s announcement puts it well on its way to achieving about 4450 installed advanced centrifuges at all three enrichment plants by the end of 2022.

  • Why Are Nuclear Weapons So Hard to Get Rid Of? Because They’re Tied Up in Nuclear Countries’ Sense of Right and Wrong

    States’ motivations for keeping nuclear weapons are often perceived as rooted in hard-nosed security strategy, with morality considered as irrelevant or even self-defeating. I see these explanations as incomplete. To understand leaders’ motives – and therefore effectively negotiate the elimination of nuclear weapons – we must acknowledge that policymakers express underlying moral concerns as strategic concerns. History shows that such moral concerns often form the foundations of nuclear strategy, even if they’re deeply buried.

  • Origins of Unconventional War

    Flamethrowers, poison gases, incendiary bombs, the large-scale spreading of disease: are these terrifying agents of warfare modern inventions? Not by a long shot. Societies around the world have used biological and chemical weapons for thousands of years. “One sobering result of writing this book is the realization that there was no time or place when biological weapons were unthinkable,” says Adrienne Mayor, the author of a new book on the subject.

  • Making Muons for Scientific Discovery, National Security

    The Pentagon and other agencies have sought advanced sources that generate gamma rays, X-rays, neutrons, protons, and electrons to enable a variety of scientific, commercial, and defense applications – from medical diagnostics, to scans of cargo containers for dangerous materials, to non-destructive testing of aircraft and their parts to see internal defects. The problem: None of these sources can image through concrete walls several meters thick, map the core of a volcano from the outside, or peer deep underground to locate chambers and tunnels. Muons — deeply penetrating subatomic particles – can do all those things. DARPA seeks a compact source for muons.

  • Texan Who Prosecutors Say “Lit the Match” of Jan. 6 Riot Sentenced to More Than 7 Years in Prison

    Guy Reffitt, a 49-year-old Wylie resident, never entered the Capitol but helped ignite the crowd “into an unstoppable force,” a prosecutor at his trial said. His sentence is the longest given out so far from the Jan. 6 riot.

  • Might Russia Turn to Terror Bombing Civilians in Ukraine?

    Recent Russian missile attacks against civilian targets in cities far away from the front lines have killed scores of Ukrainians, leading to widespread outrage. These events raise the question of whether the war in Ukraine is entering a new phase in which terror attacks might become common.