• The Infrastructure of Hate: Epik Hosts Extremist Groups

    Social media platforms have received the lion’s share of attention for enabling users to spread hate and disinformation and plan and incite violence and terrorist acts. Flying under the radar are infrastructure providers like Epik, a domain registrar and web hosting company that works with nearly 750,000 websites and is ranked among the 50 largest web hosts. While some companies at the infrastructure level have acknowledged a level of responsibility for addressing abuse of their services—for example, this framework by domain registrars signed by leading companies such as GoDaddy, Tucows and Amazon—Epik is not among them.

  • The Biden Administration Should Review and Rebuild the Trump Administration’s China Initiative from the Ground Up

    In mid-January an MIT engineering professor Gang Chen was arrested as part of the Trump administration’s China Initiative, which was launched in November 2018 as a prosecutorial response to China’s persistent, pervasive, and well-documented campaign of economic espionage and illicit knowledge transfer. The Chen case demonstrates why the initiative’s overly broad focus on China has been met with relentless criticism from academic institutions and Asian American advocacy groups.

  • What Went Wrong with Texas’ Power Grid?

    On 13 February, a severe winter storm swept across Texas and nearby southern states, bringing sub-zero temperatures and snowfall as far south as the border with Mexico. The polar air that descended on Texas lasted many days, leading to a statewide crisis as energy grids failed to supply enough power, fuels froze, and water pipes burst. Why did it happen? Experts explain.

  • A Looming Crisis for Local U.S. Water Systems?

    Water bills in the U.S. are eating up a growing share of household budgets — and becoming increasingly unaffordable for low-income families. In many cities, shrinking populations and aging infrastructure mean increasingly unaffordable water.

  • IAEA Chief: Iran to Give “Less Access” to UN Nuclear Inspectors

    The head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog agency said after talks in Iran on February 21 over Tehran’s threat to curb international inspections that the two sides reached an agreement but that Iran will suspend a key document on cooperation and offer “less access” to inspectors.

  • Extremist Minds: These Psychological Traits Might Help Identify People Vulnerable to Becoming Radicalized

    The characteristics of peoples’ brains might offer clues about the political beliefs they hold dear. In a study of around 350 U.S. citizens, we examined the relationship between individuals’ cognitive traits – the unconscious ways in which their brains learn and process information from the environment – and their ideological worldviews. We found parallels between how those with extreme views perform in brain games and the kind of political, religious and dogmatic attitudes they adhere to.

  • Inoculating against the Spread of Radical-Islamist and Islamophobic Disinformation

    Misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda are core components of radicalization and extremism and apply equally to Islamist radicalization and the generation of Islamophobia. One method of countering disinformation is to inoculate the information consumer.

  • Lessons from the Texas Grid Disaster: Planning and Investing for a Different Future

    It is now a week out from the start of the massive Texas grid failure. Alexandra Klass writes that at this point we already know that freezing wind turbines – in fact, wind turbines outperformed grid operator expectations, despite the extreme cold, and the outages would have been worse without the wind energy that remained online. the state’s electric grid failed for a very simple reason—because Texas power plant operators do not insulate their facilities for sustained cold temperatures. As a result, pipes and equipment needed to run the state’s natural gas plants, nuclear plants, and wind turbines froze.

  • U.S. Says It's Ready to Meet, but Iran Says Sanctions Should Be Dropped First

    Iran says it will “immediately reverse” its actions that contradict a 2015 nuclear agreement once U.S. sanctions are lifted after Washington said it was ready to revive the deal that former U.S. President Donald Trump abandoned in 2018 before reimposing the crippling penalties on Tehran.

  • Texas Leaders Failed to Heed Warnings Which Left the State's Power Grid Vulnerable to Winter Extremes, Experts Say

    Texas officials knew winter storms could leave the state’s power grid vulnerable, but they left the choice to prepare for harsh weather up to the power companies — many of which opted against the costly upgrades. That, plus a deregulated energy market largely isolated from the rest of the country’s power grid, left the state alone to deal with the crisis, experts said.

  • Not Your Father’s Extremists

    Two studies of the demographic characteristics of the rioters who stormed the Capitol on 6 January found a surprising, and disturbing, fact: The majority of those arrested for storming the Capitol were middle class, middle-aged, employed, earning more than the average household income, mostly college-educated, and had no ties with the extremist groups. One study says that the finding suggests that there is “a new kind of violent mass movement in which more ‘normal’ Trump supporters—middle-class and, in many cases, middle-aged people without obvious ties to the far right—joined with extremists in an attempt to overturn a presidential election.” The second study says its findings suggest the emergence of “a new breed of extremist, one foundationally animated by devotion to President Trump, placing him over party or country.”

  • Extremists, Old and New, Face Uncertain Future Following 6 January Insurrection

    An examination of the records of 212 of the more than 250 people arrested by the police for taking part in the 6 January 2021 attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, shows that only 25 percent of those arrested were affiliated with extremist groups such as Proud Boys or Oath Keepers. The other 75 percent appear to be the product years of lies and repeated conspiracy theories being circulated and amplified within a nearly hermetically sealed ecosphere of disinformation, fertilized by conspiratorial radio personalities, TV channels competing with each other in their support for Donald Trump, and Trump’s own unrelenting torrent of falsehoods with which he has fed his followers. We may be seeing a new breed of extremists, foundationally animated more by a devotion to Trump than a commitment to a specific ideology or party.

  • Congress Repeats Calls for Independent Commission to Probe U.S. Capitol Attack

    U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called for a commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the latest in a long line of independent panels appointed by lawmakers and U.S. presidents to examine moments of national crisis as well as policy issues.

  • How the Federal Government Investigates and Prosecutes Domestic Terrorism

    In the aftermath of the 6 January riot at the U.S. Capitol, many politicians, including President Biden, and public commentators called for renewed efforts by the federal government to combat domestic terrorism. Eric Halliday and Rachael Hanna write that that reaction followed a pattern over recent years in which mass shootings and other violent attacks have spurred demands for an increased federal focus on domestic terrorism. “[I]t is important to understand exactly what powers the federal government can and cannot use when pursuing domestic terrorists. This is particularly relevant because domestic terrorism occupies a gray area in federal criminal law between international terrorism and nonterrorism criminal offenses,” they write.

  • Deployment of Emotion-Recognition Technologies in China Threatens Human Rights

    Emotion recognition is a biometric technology which purports to be able to analyze a person’s inner emotional state. These biometric applications are used by law enforcement authorities to identify suspicious individuals, and by schools to monitor how well a student is paying attention in class. China is deploying the technology to allow the authorities to better monitor forbidden anti-regime thoughts among citizens who are subject to police interrogation or investigation.