• Study Shows AI-Generated Fake Reports Fool Experts

    AIs can generate fake reports that are convincing enough to trick cybersecurity experts. If widely used, these AIs could hinder efforts to defend against cyberattacks. These systems could set off an AI arms race between misinformation generators and detectors.

  • Supreme Court: Migrants Temporarily in US Ineligible for Permanent Residency

    The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday that 400,000 immigrants from 12 countries living in the United States for humanitarian reasons are not eligible to become permanent residents. Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the court, said that U.S. immigration law blocks migrants who entered the country illegally from obtaining permanent residency, or “green cards,” although they have Temporary Protected Status.

  • IAEA Warns on North Korea and Iran

    IAEA Director Rafael Grossi issued dire warnings, saying Pyongyang may be reprocessing plutonium and that Iran’s lack of compliance is hurting prospects for salvaging the JCPOA (the 2015 nuclear deal). Pyongyang has continued to pursue its nuclear ambitions since that time and detonated its last nuclear device in 2017, while working with Iran was “becoming increasingly difficult.”

  • A History of Political Murder

    Michael Burleigh explores the many facets of political assassination, explaining why it is more frequent in certain types of society than others and asking whether assassination can either bring about change or prevent it, and whether, like a contagious disease, political murder can be catching.

  • Analysis: The Texas Electric Grid and the Improvements that Didn’t Come

    After the deadly and expensive electrical outages during a winter freeze in February, Texas lawmakers passed major bills aiming to make such disasters less likely in the future. But there’s still a lot to do.

  • U.S. Judge Overturns California's Decades-Long Ban on Assault Weapons

    A judge in San Diego has slammed a 1989 ban on assault weapons as unconstitutional and said Americans should have the right to own semi-automatic rifles. “Like the Swiss Army knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment. Good for both home and battle,” San Diego District Judge Roger Benitez said. “Guns and ammunition in the hands of criminals, tyrants and terrorists are dangerous; guns in the hands of law-abiding responsible citizens are better.”

  • Americans Bought 1.6 Million Guns Last Month. Who Were the Buyers?

    Americans bought 1.6 million guns last month – an impressive number, but only the 14th highest on record, and still down 18 percent from May 2020. What has remained far more opaque is who exactly was doing the buying last year. This week, we started to have a more definitive answer.

  • From Gradualists to Jihadists: Islamists in the West

    Individuals and groups adhering to militant Islamism, a political ideology underpinned by a strict and literalist interpretation of religion, have claimed tens of thousands of lives around the world. They have provoked the response of the most powerful military alliance in history. In recent years, the appeal of their utopian ideal has convinced thousands to abandon their lives and travel to join the brutal Islamic State experiment in Iraq and Syria. What narratives have Islamist propagandists used to persuade thousands of Westerners to follow go to the Caliphate, or carry out terrorist acts at home.

  • Defining Domestic Terrorism: Does the U.S. Need New Criminal Penalties for Domestic Terrorism Events?

    Debates over what legally constitutes domestic terrorism—and the barriers to prosecuting these incidents—stretch back decades. “Significant political opposition to anti-domestic terrorism statutes are already being observed among lawmakers,” Lucy Tu writes, adding that “Individual lawmakers, however, are not the only opponents to the new bill.”

  • Is Covid-19 a Bio-Weapon?

    The “racial disparity” of the deaths from Covid should raise alarms.  Not the relatively small differences between white, black and Hispanic death rates in America, but the massive disparity between death rates of East Asian countries, and everyone else on earth. On a per capita basis, non-East Asians are dying at rates 20 times higher that of East Asians. That is not a statistical “blip.” It screams that the virus has massively unequal kill rates - and kills people of different races very differently. That is the signature of a bio-weapon.

  • A 20-Foot Sea Wall? Miami Faces the Hard Choices of Climate Change.

    In Miami, the U.S. metropolitan area that is perhaps most exposed to sea-level rise, the problem is not climate change denialism. Patricia Mazzei writes that “the trouble is that the magnitude of the interconnected obstacles the region faces can feel overwhelming, and none of the possible solutions are cheap, easy or pretty.”

  • The Weaponized Web: The National Security Implications of Data

    Open societies have encouraged and promoted rapid technological advancement and market innovation —but both have outpaced democratic governance. Authoritarian powers have noticed the underlying opportunity to exploit the open standards of the democratically regulated digital information environment and undermine democratic values and institutions while shoring up their own regimes. This poses a novel challenge for democracies, which must adapt to compete in this conflict over the data, architecture, and governance framework of the information space without compromising their democratic principles.

  • The Evolution of Extremist Groups

    Early online support for the extremist antigovernment Boogaloos followed the same mathematical pattern as ISIS, despite the stark ideological, geographical and cultural differences between their forms of extremism, a new study finds. The findings suggest new strategies to limit the growth of groups like the Boogaloo and ISIS.

  • Antisemitism on TikTok

    Over the last few years, TikTok—the social media app that allows users to create and share short videos—has gained immense popularity. While much of the content on TikTok is lighthearted and fun, extremists have exploited the platform to share hateful content and recruit new adherents.

  • Berlin Court: Searching Phone of Asylum-Seeker Was Unlawful

    Refugees have sued Germany for searching their cell phones during asylum applications. Regional judges have now ruled one such search unlawful. The impact could be far-reaching.