• AI Is Making Disinformation Harder to Spot—but We've Found a New Way to Catch It

    As generative AI becomes more powerful, malicious groups are increasingly using it to produce and spread disinformation online. Automated accounts can flood social media with convincing comments designed to sow division, inflame political debate and undermine trust in reliable information. But our latest research offers a way to spot these attempts.

  • Fiasco in the Factory: Taxpayers Funded a $533 Million Artillery Plant That Made Nothing

    In a rushed process exempted from normal rules, the Army hired General Dynamics, which brought on a Turkish subcontractor with little vetting, to make artillery shells. Despite being paid $533 million, General Dynamics did not produce a single usable shell at its new factory — and has not been held publicly accountable. Since the Army halted two production lines at the factory, the General Dynamics unit responsible for the debacle has received contract awards totaling $2.5 billion.

  • Immigration Enforcement: More Than 175,000 Visas Revoked in 20 Months

    In roughly 20 months, the U.S. State Department has revoked more than 175,000 visas of foreign nationals who “violated the terms of their visas, committed crimes, called for violence against U.S. citizens, defrauded Americans, abused the immigration system or endangered national security,” the State Department announced. 

  • With New Tactics, ICE Reaches New High in Monthly Arrests

    Federal immigration agents are employing new tactics — from arresting academics at airports to setting up a checkpoint at a popular creek in a National Forest — to boost their arrest numbers, leading to a new high of 51,000 arrested immigrants in July.

  • The White House’s Secret AI Testing Framework Threatens Trust and Innovation

    A framework that raises more questions than the ones it answers is worse than no framework at all. The lack of transparency around the potential new framework the White House has landed on makes it difficult to understand the current policy position, which could foster greater public distrust due to the risk of abuse and cronyism. 

  • The Real Thucydides Trap Is Inside Western Tech

    Thucydides Trap is a theory which describes how the established power is so anxious about the rising power that it strikes at the rising power and starts a war. Whether or not history provides examples of Thucydides Trap is a subject of lively scholarly debates, but it does exist within Western tech companies. And if we do not change our ways, our desire for intense technological competition within and among Western nations, with economic outcomes prioritized over geostrategic, will again benefit only China.

  • Criminal Gangs Have Diversified Across Latin America, Making Them More Resilient – but Not Untouchable

    Latin America’s most powerful criminal groups have expanded beyond the drug trade – and have become more resilient as a result. Criminal networks now draw revenue from illicit and legal sources alike. Many of them police neighborhoods and influence local politics. Brazil is one place where these trends are on display.

  • The Long Shadow of the Cuban Mafia: From Havana’s Casinos to Quintana Roo’s Smuggling Rings

    An investigative report has pulled back the curtain on one of the most violent and well-connected human-smuggling networks operating between Cuba, Mexico, and the United States: a group Mexican authorities call La Mafia Cubana en Quintana Roo. A threads appears to be leading from the criminal organization all the way to the inner circle of the Castro family itself.

  • Trump Is Blocking Billions of Dollars of Grants That Would Fix the Grid

    The Department of Energy has canceled or stalled funding for thousands of projects that would improve the country’s stressed grid — and not just in blue states.

  • China-Linked Social Media Network Seeks to Shift COVID Responsibility from China to U.S.

    Long after COVID-19 ended, China is still trying to shape the world’s perception of the pandemic. At least 50 coordinated assets across 10 platforms spreading claims that U.S. biological laboratories developed bioweapons that caused COVID-19. This network revives a longstanding Chinese effort to shift blame for the pandemic and portray Washington as a biological threat.

  • White House Plan for a “Golden Age” of Science Ignores the Structures That Made the U.S. a Scientific Superpower

    A new White House report argues that the model which has governed eight decades of U.S. science policy, and which has helped make the United States the world’s scientific leader, requires significant reform. It is not that the report’s heavy emphasis on innovation, commercialization, and technology deployment is wrong: it is that it misses the main point, which is how the capacity for future innovation is created and sustained.

  • Immigration as a Test Case for Executive AI Governance

    DHS deploys AI in immigration enforcement largely untested, undisclosed, and unreviewed, a preview of how AI could reshape executive power. DHS deploys AI in immigration enforcement largely untested, undisclosed, and unreviewed, a preview of how AI could reshape executive power. These systems are being developed and normalized first on noncitizens before expanding to all. DHS is now deploying artificial intelligence (AI) systems that already exhibit many of the governance problems AI scholars warn could emerge as more capable systems enter government.

  • Strategic Attack on Iran: Airpower’s Promises, Limits, and Lessons

    Operation Epic Fury demonstrates that airpower is both essential and insufficient. Strategic success ultimately depends on altering Iranian behavior in ways that advance U.S. geopolitical objectives. Five months into a campaign that was originally promised to last weeks, Iran not only has not changed its behavior, but it now controls the vital Strait of Hormuz.

  • ASEAN, Still Toothless, Is Losing Its Faith in the U.S.

    At the July meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers, most of whom were already furious at the United States, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio did little to lower the temperature. But ASEAN also continued its trend of saying much while doing almost nothing.

  • What October 7 Taught Hospitals About Preparing for Modern Warfare

    A new study of an Israeli hospital’s response to the October 7 attacks shows that while years of disaster training enabled staff to continue treating patients under rocket fire, real wartime conditions exposed critical gaps in communication, staffing, logistics, and casualty distribution. The findings offer practical lessons that could help hospitals worldwide prepare for prolonged armed conflicts and other large-scale emergencies.