• Grok’s ‘White Genocide’ Responses Show How Generative AI Can Be Weaponized

    The AI chatbot Grok spent one day in May 2025 spreading debunked conspiracy theories about “white genocide” in South Africa, echoing views publicly voiced by Elon Musk. There has been substantial research on methods for keeping AI from causing harm by avoiding such damaging statements – called AI alignment – but this incident is particularly alarming because it shows how those same techniques can be deliberately abused to produce misleading or ideologically motivated content.

  • Trump Has Punished South Africa for Something Its Government Has Not Done

    The US president has claimed the South African government is seizing land from white farmers. The reality is much more mundane.

  • Federal R&D Funding Boosts Productivity for the Whole Economy − Making Big Cuts to Such Government Spending Unwise

    Large cuts to government-funded research and development can endanger American innovation – and the vital productivity gains it supports. If the government were to abandon its long-standing practice of investing in R&D, it would significantly slow the pace of U.S. innovation and economic growth.

  • Guns Kill More U.S. Children Than Other Causes, but State Policies Can Help, Study Finds

    More American children and teens die from firearms than any other cause. Black children, especially, suffer when laws allow more guns to circulate, researchers found. There are more deaths — and wider racial disparities — in states with more permissive gun policies, according to a new study.

  • Violent Extremists Like the Minnesota Shooter Are Not Lone Wolves

    The threat of domestic violence and terrorism is high in the United States – especially the danger posed by white power extremists, many of whom believe white people are being “replaced” by people of color. Contrary to popular myth, the vast majority of far-right extremists are not abnormal deviants with anti-social personalities, but are, in fact, otherwise ordinary men and women.

  • Escalation Between Israel, Iranian Regime Sparks Vicious Antisemitic, Anti-Israel Rhetoric Online

    As reports emerged of preemptive Israeli airstrikes against the Iranian regime late Thursday evening (early Friday local time), antisemites and extremists of varying ideologies quickly reacted with their predictable rhetoric: open hatred of Jews and hoping for the destruction of Israel.

  • Trump’s Military Response to Protests: A Conversation on Law and Precedent

    “The federalized response to riots in Los Angeles will inspire demonstrations in other cities, not just against ICE and its tactics, but against the use of military forces in civilian law enforcement. If those demonstrations turn violent, they could lure the president to use military forces elsewhere within the United States—creating a dangerous feedback loop with a very uncertain ending,” says Peter Mansour.

  • The Mounting Crisis of Militarizing Immigration Enforcement

    President Donald Trump has federalized 2,000 California National Guard troops to quell immigration protests pursuant to an obscure provision in federal law–10 USC §12406–which has not been used since 1970, when President Richard Nixon federalized the Guard to deliver mail during a postal strike. William Banks and Mark Nevitt write that “the last time the National Guard was federalized over a governor’s objection was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson deployed the Guard to Selma, Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators.”

  • Trump’s Lawless, Baseless Immigration Ban

    President Trump signed a proclamation that, with few exceptions, bans nineteen nationalities from entering the United States, supposedly based on “security” concerns, and went into effect on June 9. The president claims that there is no way to vet these immigrants. Yet that is precisely what his consular officers and border officials were successfully doing for decades—up until June 9.

  • Israel and Iran: An Early Read

    It’s too soon to tell how exactly the current waves of Israeli strikes could transform the region, but one thing is clear: Israel’s actions have fundamentally reshaped the security landscape of the Middle East in the span of less than two years. These two years saw the collapse of Iran’s regional strategy as its two main proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, have been decimated, while Syria, the linchpin of Iran’s regional aspirations, has changed sides when the country’s Sunni majority removed the pro-Iran Assad regime in December last year.

  • The Shadow Architects of Power

    Intelligence agencies in authoritarian regimes have distinct foreign policy preferences and actively work to advance them. MIT Ph.D. candidate Suzanne Freeman reveals how these intelligence agencies do it.

  • The Hole in Canada’s Intelligence System Is ASIS-shaped

    A hardy perennial in Ottawa politics is whether Canada should create a foreign intelligence service equivalent to the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, aka MI6).

  • RFK Announces New ACIP Members, Including Vaccine Critics

    HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. removed all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory committee, replacing them with a group of eight new members, some of whom are vaccine skeptics.

  • RFK Jr’s Shakeup of Vaccine Advisory Committee Raises Worries About Scientific Integrity of Health Recommendations

    HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed the immunization experts serving on the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and replaced them with eight new members. The newly appointed members have expertise in psychiatry, neuroscience, epidemiology, biostatistics, and operations management. Many of them are vaccine skeptics who have actively spread vaccine-related misinformation, particularly relating to COVID-19 vaccines.

  • Examining State Legislation on Foreign Ownership of U.S. Farmland

    Foreign entities now hold 3.5% of privately owned U.S. agricultural land, prompting growing attention from lawmakers. In 2023 alone, more than 30 U.S. states introduced bills seeking to restrict foreign ownership of farmland. An MSU study shows that these legislative efforts are driven more by national security concerns and political ideology than by economic factors.