• Nuclear Agency Cannot Continue With “Business as Usual” in the Shifting Supercomputing Landscape: Report

    The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) needs to fundamentally rethink the strategy for its next generation of high-performance computing, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences.

  • Producing Medical Isotopes While Lowering the Risk of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation

    Scientists and engineers at Argonne have been working for decades to help medical isotope production facilities around the world change from the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) to the use of low-enriched uranium (LEU), which is much more difficult to use in a weapon.

  • China’s Defense Spending Growth Continues Apace

    China, India and Japan are leading a surge in military spending in the Asian region with geopolitical tensions pushing South Korea, Australia and Taiwan, among others, to follow suit. China’s military spending now exceeds the combined outlays of the next 25 biggest nations in the region, for which there are reliable estimates.

  • Pentagon Leak of U.S. Intelligence on Ukraine and Other Allies Shows Failure to Learn from Chelsea Manning Affair

    To ask how someone so young as Jack Teixeira had access to secrets is to ask the wrong questions. It is perfectly reasonable for someone of his age to be security cleared and have access to classified material, but only if they need to know the information. But it is not immediately clear why the Massachusetts Air National Guard needs top-secret intelligence about Ukraine. More baffling is why there were not greater controls in place.

  • First to Respond, Come What May

    Of the emerging threats the U.S. is facing, climate change is particularly prominent. But climate change is just one factor currently impacting the evolving response environment. Human behavior, technology advancement, infrastructure, COVID-19, and protests/civil unrest are all making responders’ jobs more challenging as well.

  • Appeals Court Should Reconsider Letting the FBI Block Twitter’s Surveillance Transparency Report

    Twitter tried to publish a report bringing much-needed transparency to the government’s use of FISA orders and national security letters, including specifying whether it had received any of these types of requests. However, without going to a court, the FBI told Twitter it could not publish the report as written. Twitter sued, and last month the federal Court of Appeals for Ninth Circuit upheld the FBI’s gag order.

  • Enhancing Advanced Nuclear Reactor Analysis

    Nuclear power is a significant source of steady carbon-neutral electricity, and advanced reactors can add more of it to the U.S. grid, which is vital for the environment and economy. Sandia Lab researchers have developed a standardized screening method to determine the most important radioactive isotopes that could leave an advanced reactor site in the unlikely event of an accident.

  • U.S. in a Massive Crackdown on Darknet Fentanyl Trafficking

    In a massive global crackdown on fentanyl trafficking on the darknet, U.S. law enforcement agencies and their international partners announced Tuesday the arrests of nearly 300 suspects and seizure of a large cache of drugs, cash, virtual currency and weapons.

  • Lithuania Legalizes Border Pushbacks

    Lithuania enacted the so-called pushbacks in law, which allows border guards to push back border crossers – that is, push them back across the border – if they do not have the right papers. The move has been heavily criticized, but it is not without precedent in the EU.

  • Why the Situation in Cuba Is Deteriorating

    Cuba’s authoritarian regime has failed to avert an economic crisis, repair decaying state institutions, and prevent the country’s largest outflow of migrants since the 1960s.

  • Intelligence Agencies Have Used AI Since the Cold War – but Now Face New Security Challenges

    Intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the NSA, have been using earlier forms of AI since the start of the cold war. Today, budgetary constraints, human limitations and increasing levels of information were making it impossible for intelligence agencies to produce analysis fast enough for policy makers. The increasing use of AI aims to help intelligence agencies cope with such challenges, but AI creates both opportunities and challenges for these agencies.

  • Focus of 9/11 Families’ Lawsuit Against Saudi Arabia Turns to a Saudi Student Who May Have Been a Spy

    Twenty years after the Sept. 11 attacks, declassified FBI documents have changed a big piece of the story about possible Saudi government help to the hijackers. Families of the victims want more information.

  • CCP’s Increasingly Sophisticated Cyber-enabled Influence Operation

    Last week DOJ announced police officers from China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) created thousands of fake online personas on social media sites to target Chinese dissidents through online harassment and threats. The announcement marked the first definitive public attribution to a specific Chinese government agency of covert malign activities on social media. The MPS, however, is one of many party-controlled organizations that analysts have long suspected of conducting covert and coercive operations to influence users on social media.

  • To Restrict, or Not to Restrict, That Is the Quantum Question

    Innovation power—the ability to invent, scale, and adapt emerging technologies—will determine which country prevails in the great power competition of the 21st century. Export controls thus assume a central position in the U.S. foreign policy toolkit, carrying the ability to significantly impact an adversary’s innovation potential. “U.S. policymakers are right to identify quantum information science as a critical technology area ripe for restriction, but introducing export controls now is likely to cause more harm than good.,” Sam Howell writes.

  • Colorado River Water Plan Could Trigger Unprecedented Supply Cuts, Ripple Effects on Key Industries

    Decades of drought and overuse have brought the river’s water levels to historic lows. States in the Lower Colorado River Basin — Arizona, California and Nevada — now must choose between one of three options proposed by the federal government. The economic impact of the river’s dwindling water supplies is could be disastrous.