• China’s Cyber Interference and Transnational Crime Groups in Southeast Asia

    The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of engagement with criminal organizations and proxies to achieve its strategic objectives. This activity involves the Chinese government’s spreading of influence and disinformation campaigns using fake personas and inauthentic accounts on social media that are linked to transnational criminal organizations.

  • U.S., Artificial Intelligence Companies Work to Mitigate Risks

    Can artificial intelligence wipe out humanity? A senior U.S. official said the United States government is working with leading AI companies and at least 20 countries to set up guardrails to mitigate potential risks.

  • Not the X-Files: Where Are Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Sightings in the United States?

    The February 2023 Chinese surveillance balloon incident raised questions about the degree to which the U.S. government knows who is flying what over its skies. Public reporting of unidentified aerial phenomena may help officials identify potential threats.

  • Six Ways AI Can Make Political Campaigns More Deceptive Than Ever

    Political campaign ads and donor solicitations have long been deceptive. These days, the internet has gone wild with deceptive political ads. Ads often pose as polls and have misleading clickbait headlines. Campaigns are now rapidly embracing artificial intelligence for composing and producing ads and donor solicitations, even as there are growing fears that AI will make politics more deceptive than ever.

  • Two Bills Aim to Bolster Bio and Health Security

    Two proposed bills aim to bolster the health security of Americans. The first bill aims to reduce the risks posed by gene synthesis while at the same time ensuring that responsible companies are not disadvantaged by doing the right thing. The second addresses to potential threats to public health posed by AI.

  • Protecting Health Security from Potential Threats Arising from Advances in Biotechnology

    The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security said it was applauding congressional leaders in health security for their introduction of two pieces of legislation to strengthen security around emerging threats from advances in biotechnology.

  • Paying the Costs of Climate Resilience

    The idea that climate pollution can be eliminated by political edict overestimates political power and underestimates economic power. It is not simply powerful economic interests that influence public policy, but the sense of economic well-being perceived and experienced by the mass public. The maintenance of that sense of well-being is a critical foundation of political stability. The transition to a renewable resource-based economy must be careful to reinforce and not undermine that sense of well-being.

  • One- to Four-Family Properties with Multiple Losses Insured by the National Flood Insurance Program

    What are the characteristics of properties that have experienced multiple flood losses (e.g., percentage of overall claims payments, number of losses, and structure characteristics)? What are the socioeconomic characteristics of multiple loss property (MLP) households and the communities in which they are located? What percentage of MLPs have been mitigated, what are the socioeconomics characteristics of neighborhoods where MLPs have been mitigated, and how effective has mitigation been in reducing risk?

  • The Dollar: The World’s Reserve Currency

    The dollar’s role as the primary reserve currency for the global economy allows the United States to borrow money more easily and impose painful financial sanctions. Other countries are beginning to consider alternatives.

  • U.S. Tech Leaders Want Fewer Export Curbs on AI Chips for China

    Intel Corp. has introduced a processor in China which is designed for AI deep-learning applications despite reports of the Biden administration considering additional restrictions on Chinese companies to address loopholes in chip export controls. Intel’s move is part of an effort by U.S. technology companies to bypass or curb government export controls to the Chinese market as the U.S. government, citing national security concerns, continues to tighten restrictions on China’s artificial intelligence industry.

  • Texas Investigating Claim that State Troopers Were Told to Push Migrants Back into the Rio Grande and Deny Them Water

    The Office of the Inspector General is investigating the claims, which include pushing small children and women with nursing babies back into the river and turning away a 4-year-old girl who later passed out on the riverbank from the heat.

  • The EU Border “Pushbacks” May Have Become a De Facto Migration Policy

     The word “pushback” has entered the EU’s lexicon along with hundreds of thousands of people who have sought asylum in the bloc since 2015. Campaigners say “pushbacks” are now so systematic, they are de facto policy.

  • Can You Trust AI? Here’s Why You Shouldn’t

    Across the internet, devices and services that seem to work for you already secretly work against you. Smart TVs spy on you. Phone apps collect and sell your data. Many apps and websites manipulate you through dark patterns, design elements that deliberately mislead, coerce or deceive website visitors. This is surveillance capitalism, and AI is shaping up to be part of it.

  • Proposed U.S. Missile Defense Plan a Source of White House, Congress Disagreement

    The $874 billion budget passed by the House on Friday calls for the military to maintain a “credible nuclear capability” to deter adversaries, while developing and deploying layered defense systems that can defeat complex missile threats “in all phases of flight.” The White House argues that this contradicts the balance-of-terror on which the nuclear relations of the great powers was based since the 1960s, and which is embedded in nuclear arms control treaties.

  • Events That Never Happened Could Influence the 2024 Presidential Election – a Cybersecurity Researcher Explains Situation Deepfakes

    The basic idea and technology of a situation deepfake are the same as with any other deepfake, but with a bolder ambition: to manipulate a real event or invent one from thin air. Situation deepfakes have already been used in recent weeks – the first in a Republican National Committee’s ad against President Joe Biden, the second in an anti-Trump ad by Ron DeSantis’s campaign.