• DHS’ assertion of broad authority to search travelers’ phones, laptops challenged

    The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU the other day asked a federal court to rule without trial that the Department of Homeland Security violates the First and Fourth Amendments by searching travelers’ smartphones and laptops at airports and other U.S. ports of entry without a warrant.

  • What helps, or prevents, U.S. military interventions from achieving their goals?

    Using an original data set of 145 ground, air, and naval interventions from 1898 through 2016, a new report identifies those factors that have made U.S. military interventions more or less successful at achieving their political objectives. The United States has successfully achieved its political objectives in about 63 percent of the interventions, but the levels of success have been declining over time as the United States has pursued increasingly ambitious objectives.

  • Ending the myth of the poor terrorist

    The jihadists who carried out the Easter massacre in Sri Lanka were educated members of their country’s elite, a background that’s closer to the terrorist norm than the exception, Claude Berrebi and Owen Engel write in The Tablet. Researchers have been demonstrating for years that most terrorism is committed by individuals who are, on average, wealthier and better educated than the median level in their respective society.

  • FBI thwarts terrorist plot in Los Angeles

    The FBI Monday said the agency had foiled a domestic terror plot by an American military veteran, who was aiming to attack “multiple targets” in Southern California, including Huntington Beach, the port of Long Beach, and the Santa Monica Pier. The suspect, identified as 26-year old Mark Steven Domingo of Reseda, California, is a recent convert to Islam. He said he was planning the attack in retribution for the attacks on mosques in New Zealand.

  • Islamic State leader: Next chapter in IS’s campaign will be “war of attrition”

    Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is showing his face for the first time in five years, appearing on a video posted to the internet Monday by the terror group. Baghdadi acknowledges the fall of the last IS-held territory in Baghuz, Syria, and describes the terror group’s fight now as a “battle of attrition.”

  • Sri Lanka bans face veils in wake of Easter terror attacks

    Women in Sri Lanka will no longer be able to cover their faces under new emergency regulations which came into effect Monday. Sri Lanka issued the ban as part of a series of emergency measures enacted in the wake of the Easter Sunday suicide attacks.

  • World military expenditure reaches $1.8 trillion in 2018

    Military spending in Ukraine and several other Central and Eastern European countries rose sharply in 2018, largely in reaction to perceived threats from Russia, a leading research institute says. Total world military expenditure rose to $1822 billion in 2018, representing an increase of 2.6 percent from 2017, according to new data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

  • Sri Lanka: Militant leader killed in Easter bombings

    Sri Lankan Islamic militant leader Zahran Hashim was apparently killed in one of the suicide attacks on Easter, President Maithripala Sirisena said on Friday. Police are now hunting for 140 people with suspected “Islamic State” ties.

  • How artificial intelligence systems could threaten democracy

    U.S. technology giant Microsoft has teamed up with a Chinese military university to develop artificial intelligence systems that could potentially enhance government surveillance and censorship capabilities. The advent of digital repression is profoundly affecting the relationship between citizen and state. New technologies are arming governments with unprecedented capabilities to monitor, track and surveil individual people. Even governments in democracies with strong traditions of rule of law find themselves tempted to abuse these new abilities.

  • Studying Russian disinformation campaigns

    An interdisciplinary research team from communications, anthropology, and political science will study Russian disinformation campaigns in three former Soviet republics as part of a $1.6 million Minerva research grant awarded through the U.S. Department of Defense.

  • ICE looking at housing migrant children at Guantánamo Bay: Report

    DHS is considering housing migrant children at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay to help deal with a sharp increase in the number of immigrants crossing the U.S. southern border. The idea was first proposed earlier this year as DHS looked for military facilities in which to hold undocumented immigrants as they wait for their cases to be processed. There are no immediate plans to bring children to Guantanamo Bay, and officials admit that the optics of housing children next to terrorists would be problematic.

  • Islamist gunmen kill polio vaccinator in Pakistan

    In Pakistan, a Islamist gunmen on Thursday shot dead a female polio vaccinator and wounded another. Conservative Islamic clerics – and the Taliban — have long been suspicious of the polio vaccine, claiming it is a Western plot to harm or sterilize Muslim children. The Pakistani authorities also arrested ten men in the provincial capital Peshawar for spreading unfounded rumors through fake social media videos that a polio vaccine had led to fainting and vomiting. In recent years, anti-vaccination agitators have killed dozens of people in Pakistan, one of three countries in the world — along with Afghanistan and Nigeria — where wild polio virus is still endemic.

  • Analysts: China trying to use Belt and Road meeting to counter U.S. influence

    China is getting ready to welcome representatives from 150 nations, including senior leaders of 40 countries, to discuss its international infrastructure program at the second Belt and Road Forum, beginning Thursday and running through Saturday in Beijing. Analysts say it is not merely a conference on infrastructure building, but an attempt by China to display its popularity and power as a political rallying force.

  • Lasting U.S. preeminence: A review of Michael Beckley’s “Unrivaled”

    The Economist last year proclaimed that the “Chinese century is well under way,” and that China is on its way to replacing the United States as the new global “hegemon.” Tufts University’s Michael Beckley says: Not so fast. He argues not only that U.S. preeminence is safer than most contemporary commentary would have one believe, but also that it is more resilient: “Unipolarity is not guaranteed to endure,” he concludes, “but present trends strongly suggest that it will last for many decades.”

  • New Zealand, France leading an effort to ban terrorists from social media

    New Zealand and France will host a meeting with technology companies and world leaders to develop a strategy to block terrorists from social media. The meeting comes in the wake of the March shootings at two mosques in Christchurch.