• How Climate Change Will Impact National Security

    By Christina Pazzanese

    The recent U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) lays out the likely security implications over the next two decades of the mounting climate crisis. Calder Walton, the research director at Harvard’s Belfer Center, says: “Let’s start with the basics: that climate change does pose a threat to U.S. national security. The National Intelligence Estimate is a joint assessment produced by the entire U.S. intelligence community, 18 agencies. That’s significant. There are no naysayers; there’s no doubt. So that’s a breakthrough. In this extraordinarily polarized and politicized environment, that is a big milestone itself.”

  • Iran Can Produce One Nuclear Weapon in as Little as Three Weeks

    The growth of Iran’s stocks of near 20 and 60 percent enriched uranium has dangerously reduced breakout timelines: Iran has enough enriched uranium hexafluoride (UF6) in the form of near 20 and 60 percent enriched uranium to produce enough weapon-grade uranium (WGU), taken here as 25 kilograms (kg), for a single nuclear weapon in as little as three weeks. It could do so without using any of its stock of uranium enriched up to 5 percent as feedstock.

  • When Police Forces Grow, Homicides Drop and Low-Level Arrests Increase

    Research by criminologists found that an additional 10 to 17 officers prevented one homicide annually, but each extra officer added up to 22 arrests for crimes like drug possession.

  • Modern Warfare: “Precision” Missiles Will Not Stop Civilian Deaths – Here’s Why

    By Peter Lee

    No degree of missile precision will stop the tragedy of civilian deaths in war. And wars show no sign of ending. Perhaps it is time for a more honest dialogue about the limits of technology and the human costs involved.

  • Russian Anti-Satellite Weapon Test: What Happened and What Are the Risks?

    By Wendy Whitman Cobb

    Anti-satellite weapons, commonly referred to as ASATs, are any weapon that can temporarily impair or permanently destroy an orbiting satellite. The one that Russia just tested is known as a direct ascent kinetic anti-satellite weapon. These are usually launched from the ground or from the wings of an airplane and destroy satellites by running into them at high speeds.

  • Interpol Unveils Emerging Cyberthreats

    The exceptional COVID-19 crisis has fueled the increase of cybercrime in all its forms, while grey infrastructure serves to facilitate the proliferation of crime.

  • Taiwan: China Is Using “Gray Zone” Warfare to Degrade Island’s Defenses

    Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday that China is practicing “gray zone” warfare against it with the aim of degrading and exhausting the island’s ability to defend itself. The Defense Ministry said China carried out 554 intrusions by flying warplanes into the island’s southwestern theater of air defense identification zone between September of last year and the end of August. In October alone there were 148 intrusions, Taiwan said.

  • Human-Caused Climate Change Increases Wildfire Activity

    The western United States has experienced a rapid increase of fire weather as the vapor pressure deficit (VPD) increases in the area during the warm season. New research shows that two-thirds (approximately 68 percent) of the increase in VPD is due to human-caused climate change.

  • Biological Weapons in the “Shadow War”

    The COVID-19 pandemic has led to renewed discussion of biological weapons, but Glenn Cross, a former deputy national intelligence officer for Weapons of Mass Destruction responsible for biological weapons analysis, argues that the development and possession of biological weapons is trending dramatically downward since the end of World War II. “Nations likely no longer see utility in developing or possessing biological weapons for use in large-scale, offensive military operations given the devastating capabilities of today’s advanced conventional weapons,” he writes.

  • One and Done: Experts Urge Testing Eyewitness Memory Only Once

    If a witness was confident the very first time their memory was tested, there’s too high a chance that a contaminated, it is likely that their identification is correct. But if they are not confident the first time their memory was tested, there’s too high a chance that a contaminated memory will convict an innocent person. Experts say that in order to prevent wrongful convictions, only the first identification of a suspect should be considered.

  • Critical Interoperable Messaging Capability for First Responders

    “With no dedicated public safety messaging and collaboration platform, many public safety and emergency response officials are leveraging non-secure, consumer-grade messaging tools,” says DHS’s Kathryn Coulter Mitchell. The address this problem, DHS ST has awarded more than $1.5 million to advance the development of the Bridge 4 Public Safety (Bridge4PS) messaging and collaborating platform for first responders.

  • U.S. Supreme Court Hears Case of Surveillance of Muslims

    By Ken Bredemeier

    A decade ago, three Muslim men filed suit against the FBI, alleging the Bureau deployed a confidential informant who claimed to be a convert to Islam to spy on them based solely on their religious identity. On Monday, the Supreme Court heard the argument by the administration that it has the right to invoke the protection of “state secrets” to withhold information from the plaintiffs.

  • German Engine Technology Used in Chinese Warships: Report

    By Amanda Rivkin

    Engines developed in Germany can evade export control bans due to their status as a so-called dual-use technology, a German media investigation has revealed.

  • Protecting Soft Targets

    There is a need to construct a versatile system designed to protect the vast array of so-called soft targets such as stadiums, schools, and places of worship. After an eight-month competition among the nation’s biggest universities, DHS awarded Northeastern University a $36 million, ten-year contract to develop such a system.

  • China Nuclear Arsenal Growing Faster Than Previously Thought: Pentagon

    By Carla Babb

    The Pentagon warns that China’s rapidly growing nuclear arsenal is expanding at a much faster pace than estimated just a year ago, while a new Chinese military modernization goal could provide Beijing with “more credible military operations in Taiwan.”