• 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.

  • 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.

  • 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?

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Americans in Former Confederate States More Likely to Say Violent Protest against Government Is Justified, 160 Years After Gettysburg

    Americans living in the Confederate states that violently rebelled against the United States during the Civil War express significantly greater support for the notion that it can be justifiable to violently protest against the government. Residents of what are known as the Border States, the slave states that did not secede from the Union, are also more likely than residents of Union states to say it can be justifiable to violently protest against the government.

  • Close to 100,000 Voter Registrations Were Challenged in Georgia — Almost All by Just Six Right-Wing Activists

    Many states allow challenges to voter registration, but officials in Georgia and experts say that in the past challengers have typically had relevant personal knowledge, such as someone submitting a challenge to remove a dead relative from the rolls. Georgia, however, is unusual: changes to the law after the 2020 election explicitly allow citizens unlimited challenges against anyone in their county. Georgia officials say that they did not know of any instances of challenges resulting in a successfully prosecuted case of voter fraud.

  • Far-Right Populism is Resurgent in Germany

    The far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party recently won two local elections in breakthrough victories. Rising energy costs, widespread inflation, and migration levels that have doubled over last year are providing fodder for far-right messaging throughout Europe.

  • China’s Gallium and Germanium Controls: What They Mean and What Could Happen Next

    From August, China is to restrict exports of gallium and germanium, two critical elements for making semiconductor chips. China dominates the supply of both elements. The restrictions look likely to lead to higher prices for gallium and germanium, as well as longer delivery times.

  • Truth Decay Is Putting U.S. National Security at Risk

    America’s troubled relationship with facts is putting national security at risk. “Truth Decay”—the diminishing role of facts and analysis in public life—could weaken our military, costs us credibility with our allies, and calls into question our ability to respond to the next big crisis.

  • Preliminary Injunction Limiting Government Communications with Platforms Tackles Illegal “Jawboning,” but Fails to Provide Guidance on What’s Unconstitutional

    A July 4 preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge in Louisiana limiting government contacts with social media platforms deals with government “jawboning” is a serious issue deserving serious attention and judicial scrutiny. The court order is notable as the first to hold the government accountable for unconstitutional jawboning of social media platforms, but it is not the serious examination of jawboning issues that is sorely needed. The court did not distinguish between unconstitutional and constitutional interactions or provide guideposts for distinguishing between them in the future.

  • Muting Trump’s “Megaphone” Easier Said Than Done

    How do you cover Donald Trump? He’s going to do a lot of speeches, and parts of his message will be provably false, reflect intolerance, and promote anti-democratic ideas. Political experts suggest ways media can blunt the former president’s skillful manipulation of coverage to disseminate falsehoods and spread messages which are often sharply divisive and periodically dangerous.

  • Facing Charges, Some Goyim Defense League Extremists Embrace “Sovereign Citizen” Tactics

    As they rack up littering charges for distributing propaganda, some individuals associated with the antisemitic and extremist Goyim Defense League (GDL)—including leader Jon Minadeo—have adopted pseudo-legal “sovereign citizen” tactics in a misguided attempt to escape legal troubles.

  • China-Based Chemical Manufacturing Companies Charged, Executives Arrested in Fentanyl Manufacturing

    DOJ announced the arrest of two individuals and the unsealing of three indictments in the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York charging China-based companies and their employees with crimes related to fentanyl production, distribution, and sales resulting from precursor chemicals.