• Happy 60th Birthday to Vela, Watchman for Nuclear Detonations

    By Rebecca Ullrich

    Sixty years ago last week, on Oct. 16, 1963, the United States launched a pair of satellites whose primary purpose was to determine the feasibility of using satellites to detect nuclear detonations in outer space. The satellites were part of the Vela program, initiated in 1959 to provide a nuclear detonation detection capability to verify compliance with nuclear treaties. On Sept. 27, 1984, the last of the Vela satellites were turned off.

  • Training Future Supply Chain Leaders

    By Toby Gooley

    The field of supply chain management (SCM) deals with managing the complex, global webs of product design, manufacturing, inventory, warehousing, inbound and outbound logistics, and returns activities that underpin everything we use or consume.

  • Arizona Is Evicting a Saudi Alfalfa Farm, but the Thirsty Crop Isn’t Going Anywhere

    By Jake Bittle

    As Arizona struggles to adapt to a water shortage that has dried out farms and scuttled development plans, one company has emerged as a central villain. The agricultural company Fondomonte, which is owned by a Saudi Arabian conglomerate, has attracted criticism over the past several years for sucking up the state’s groundwater to grow alfalfa and then exporting that alfalfa to feed cows overseas. Now Arizona has cancelled one of the company’s leases and says it will not renew the others, but the decision will do little to solve a water shortage largely driven by irrigated agriculture.

  • China, U.S. Escalate Trade-Restrictions War

    By Rob Garver

    The Chinese government announced Friday that it would tighten export controls on graphite, a material essential to the construction of batteries used in electric cars and other green energy systems and of which China is the world’s preeminent supplier. The move came days after the Biden administration announced that the United States would widen the list of semiconductors that it prevents from being exported to China.

  • How Poland’s Election Results Could Reshape Europe

    By Matthias Matthijs

    After nearly a decade in power, Poland’s dominant Law and Justice Party fell short of a new mandate in last Sunday’s election. The outcome underscores that there is nothing inevitable about illiberal populist parties coming to power, even if this threat is not quite gone. And as the case of Viktor Orban’s Hungary shows, once illiberal populists have been in power long enough, it becomes harder to stop the slide towards “competitive” authoritarianism, where the outcome of elections is all but guaranteed.

  • DARPA Selects Teams to Boost Supply-and-Demand Network Resiliency

    DARPA selected teams to develop new tools and analytics capable of helping the Department of Defense and its commercial partners improve systemic resilience in various supply-and-demand networks. Resilient Supply-and-Demand Network performers will create a general-purpose toolkit to improve systemic resilience in modern supply chains.

  • Even War Has Rules, So Why No Rules for Espionage?

    By Liz Mineo

    There are even rules for war, which is why it makes little sense that there are none for espionage during times of peace. Espionage is “the second oldest profession,” says one expert, but it is often overlooked at law schools.

  • Iran's “Axis of Resistance”: Network Designed to Create Chaos, Fight Tehran's Enemies

    By Michael Scollon

    Iran has been increasingly vocal about the prospect of additional firepower entering the fray to score a victory for what Tehran calls the “axis of resistance” against Israel. The axis, refined by the Islamic republic over the last four decades, is a loose-knit network of proxies, Tehran-backed militant groups, and allied state actors who play an important role in Iran’s strategy to oppose the West, Arab foes, and, primarily, Israel.

  • Gaza Tunnels Give Hamas an Advantage in Fight Against Israel

    By Clive Williams

    Following its intensive aerial bombardment of northern Gaza over the last two weeks, Israel, in the coming days, is planning to introduce a large number of ground troops to secure northern Gaza, which will allow specialist units to start searching and destroying the sprawling Hamas tunnel system. This phase could be costly in terms of Israeli lives because Hamas fighters underground will have access to the surface to inflict casualties on Israeli troops.

  • U.S.: China's Nuclear Arsenal Exceeding Predictions

    By Jeff Seldin

    China’s nuclear arsenal is growing faster than expected, according to the latest unclassified Pentagon assessment, with a senior U.S. defense official warning the Chinese military is “on track to exceed previous projections.”

  • DHS Must Evaluate and Overhaul its Flawed Automated Systems

    DHS is likely the single largest collector and consumer in the U.S. government of detailed, often intimate, information about Americans and foreigners alike. Rachel Levinson-Waldman and José Guillermo Gutiérrez write that “these systems and the data that powers them operate behind a veil of secrecy, with little meaningful documentation about how they work, and are too often deployed in discriminatory ways that violate Americans’ constitutional rights and civil liberties.”

  • The Rise of “Incels”

    By Anna Lamb

    What happens when lonely men, embittered by a sense of failure in the sexual marketplace, find each other and form communities on the internet? The result can be deadly. Psychologist examines genesis of online groups of sexually embittered men, roots in evolutionary behavior, why some turn violent.

  • Clear Relationship Between Antisemitism, Political Violence and Antidemocratic Conspiracy Theories

    A new national poll found that highly antisemitic Americans are three times more likely to support violence to achieve certain political goals compared to the general population. A new study establishes a clear relationship between antisemitism, political violence and antidemocratic conspiracy theories on both ends of the political spectrum.

  • How Does Israel's Last Invasion of Gaza Compare to Now?

    By Gabriel Levin

    Analyzing the 2014 Gaza War, the last time Israel invaded the strip, could give a window into how the coming days and weeks will play out.

  • Israel's Strategic Crisis

    By Lawrence Freedman

    After the crisis caused by being caught by surprise on 7 October, Israel now faces a second crisis as its government struggles to find a strategy to meet its stated objective of pushing Hamas out of Gaza and rendering it incapable of further atrocities in the future.