• Small Modular Reactors and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

    Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are widely heralded as the next major leap in civilian nuclear energy. Beneath this optimism, however, lies a growing unease within the nuclear policy community relating to the nuclear weapons proliferation and safeguards challenges that SMRs pose to the existing global nuclear governance system.

  • Who Can Start a Nuclear War? Inside U.S. Launch Authority and Reform

    The U.S. president can order a nuclear launch without consulting anyone, including Congress, and U.S. nuclear weapons have been prepared to launch within minutes since the Cold War. While reforms to U.S. retaliation policy seem unlikely, restraining a president’s ability to launch a first strike could be possible. 

  • Afghan Terrorism Is a Small Threat in the United States

    It is still not clear whether Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who murdered a West Virginia National Guard member in Washington, D.C., two weeks ago, was a terrorist – but assuming he is a terrorist, it would mean that since 1975, Lakanwal is the only Afghan terrorist to have murdered somebody on U.S. soil in an attack. In other words, the annual chance of being murdered in an Afghan terrorist attack on U.S. soil is about 1 in 14.2 billion per year. The annual chance of being murdered in a normal homicide is about 1 in 14,000 per year, approximately one million times greater.

  • Capturing Rogue Drones

    A new system is capable of repelling and capturing unauthorized drones. The defensive system’s own drones are equipped with an extendable net which snags unruly drones.

  • Bookshelf: War Lessons from Robert McNamara

    Robert McNamara was the architect of the wasteful, unwinnable U.S. involvement in Vietnam. In retrospect, he stressed the importance of understanding local conditions and having an exit strategy: “Before each operation there should be a paper on how to get out. And if you can’t get out, don’t do it.” As the administration is considering expanding its questionable military efforts in the Caribbean into an invasion of Venezuela, it would do well to heed McNamara’s advice.

  • Scientists Pioneer Breakthrough Fingerprint Forensic Test

    For decades, investigators have struggled to recover fingerprints from weapons because any biological trace is usually destroyed by the high temperatures, friction and gas released after a gun is fired. Scientists have developed a method to recover fingerprints from ammunition casing, once thought nearly impossible.

  • Mass Killings Hit a 20-year Low, Northeastern Data Shows — but Public Perception Hasn’t Caught Up

    As 2025 winds to a close, new data show a surprising trend: this year is on track to record the fewest mass killings in two decades.

  • Using Smartphones to Improve Disaster Search and Rescue

    When a natural disaster strikes, time is of the essence if people are trapped under rubble.When visibility is limited, sound that can penetrate through rubble is the key to finding trapped victims quickly.

  • The President Should Not Have a License to Kill

    The administration claims that the “war” on drugs justifies extrajudicial killing. But redefining civilian drug criminals as “combatants” gives away the reality: the government just militarized what was a low-level criminal law enforcement incident outside the United States. Once we consider the victims’ alleged illegal actions, we can see that the government committed the most egregious crime here.

  • Gun Dealers Are Major Source of Trafficked Firearms

    Licensed gun dealers are a major source of firearms that end up illegally trafficked, according to a new analysis using federal data. The report estimates that 1.27 million guns will have been trafficked nationwide by 2026.

  • Labeling Dissent as Terrorism: New U.S. Domestic Terrorism Priorities Raise Constitutional Alarms

    There is no single official definition of terrorism in U.S. law, but all the different definitions focus on identifying violent or dangerous acts done with the intent to intimidate or coerce civilians or influence government policy. But more than redefining terrorism,National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7, issued on 2 September 2025 (NSPM-7) reorients the machinery of national security toward the policing of belief. The directive’s emphasis on ideological orientations –“anti-Christianity, “anti-capitalism,” and “anti-American” views –as indicators of domestic terrorism potentially jeopardizes First Amendment rights.

  • Attacking Drug Boats: Bending or Breaking the Law?

    The Trump administration’s policy of attacking alleged narcotics trafficking boats continues unabated with little apparent concern for near-unanimous legal condemnation. Geoffrey Corn and Ken Watkin write that the administration’s argument that it is engaged in self defense against a non-state group engaged in armed conflict against the United States is factually flawed and “legally defective.”

  • Pardoning Hernández—Where’s the Logic?

    The presidential pardon power can serve real and legitimate purposes, and Trump himself has used it in some deserving cases. But history will long remember his use of it to free political allies and persons who have benefited his cronies and family.

  • Electromagnetic Warfare: NATO's Blind Spot Could Decide the Next Conflict

    The war in Ukraine has exposed a critical front long neglected by Western militaries: electromagnetic warfare (EW). Control over this invisible battlespace, where communications are jammed, drones blinded, and precision weapons thrown off course, can decide the outcome of a conflict.

  • Fool Me Once… You Can’t Get Fooled Again: America Has Seen This Move Before

    If drug trafficking truly threatens American communities, the solution lies in intelligence cooperation, economic pressure, cross border law enforcement, and deep regional diplomacy, not in hammer-fist militarism.