• Green Rare-Earth Recycling Goes Commercial

    Rare earths are essential ingredients in the magnets that power many technologies people rely on today, such as cell phones, computers, electric vehicles, and wind turbines. Researchers have  developed a novel way to extract rare earth elements (rare earths) from the high-powered magnets in electronic waste (e-waste).

  • History Never Ended: Ukraine and the Risk of Nuclear Escalation

    Putin has issued implicit and explicit nuclear threats, and has also raised the specter of chemical weapons. Together, these threats imply that Putin may seek deliberate escalation in order to limit NATO’s options. Putin’s assumption may be that the West won’t be prepared to risk escalation to a strategic nuclear exchange and will back down even in the face of a demonstrative use of a low-yield nuclear weapon, or large-scale use of chemical weapons against urban areas in Ukraine.

  • Communication Breakdown: How Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Bogged Down

    Military fortunes can swing quickly, in even major offensives like the one launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 24 to “demilitarize” and subdue Ukraine, but many Western military experts suggest that the Kremlin and its planners botched key aspects of the early weeks of the invasion: communication.

  • Drone Warfare Is Increasingly Sophisticated, Deadly

    Policymakers, legislators and military strategists must prepare for the consequences of other countries and actors such as the Islamic State using unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, in the Ukraine-Russia conflict and others.

  • The False Promise of Arming Insurgents: America’s Spotty Record Warrants Caution in Ukraine

    Covertly coming to the aid of Ukrainian insurgents may appear to be the prudent choice for U.S. policymakers facing an array of unattractive options, but history suggests that this would be a risky gamble. The United States has a “remarkably poor” record for covertly backing insurgencies: “of 35 U.S. attempts to covertly arm foreign dissidents during the Cold War, only four succeeded in bringing U.S. allies to power,” Lindsey O’Rourke writes.

  • No Letup in Russian Influence Operations

    Moscow’s efforts to win over the world with its accounts of events in Ukraine are doing no better than Russia’s military forces inside Ukraine. More often than not, they are meeting with stiff resistance.

  • The Information War – How to Deal with Fake News and Misinformation

    Over the past few weeks, we have seen a growth in the use of the term ‘Information War’. The term, at first glance, would appear to be fairly innocuous: I mean, how hurtful or harmful could information actually be? However, as the conflict in Ukraine continues, we have seen the use of information take on a more powerful, weaponized status. We can help stop the spread of misinformation.

  • Israel-Iran Stealthy War Intensifies

    Last Sunday, Iran launched a missile attack which destroyed an Israeli intelligence facility located in Irbil, in the Kurdish autonomous zone in Iraq. The Iranian attack was in retaliation for a daring, and successful, mid-February Israeli attack, using six armed drones, on an Iranian drone production facility, in which hundreds of advanced Iranian drones were destroyed. Israel operates several intelligence and military bases in the Kurdish region and in Azerbaijan.

  • A Solution to the Ukraine War Emerges

    Russian and Ukrainian sources said that both sides now agree that the likely solution to the Ukraine crisis is a neutral Ukraine with its own armed forces, but which is not a member of NATO. The examples of Austria and Sweden have been proposed as models. The status of the Crimean Peninsula and the Donbass region is still a sticking point, but both sides say that the atmosphere in the negotiations has become more positive and constructive.

  • Russia Enlisting 40,000 Syrian Soldiers, Militia Members to Bolster Russia’s Forces in Ukraine

    Russia has told the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad to draw up lists of 40,000 fighters from Syrian army and militias allied with the Syrian military, and put them on standby for deployment in Ukraine. Kurds in northern Syria are sending volunteers to help Ukraine.

  • Global Arms Trade Falls Slightly, but Imports to Europe, East Asia, and Oceania Rise

    International transfers of major arms saw a slight drop between 2012–16 and 2017–21 (–4.6 per cent). Nevertheless, exports by the United States and France increased substantially, as did imports to states in Europe (+19 per cent), East Asia (+20 per cent) and Oceania (+59 per cent). Transfers to the Middle East remained high, while those to Africa and the Americas decreased, according to new data on global arms transfers published today by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).  

  • Germany's Military Budget: Unanswered Questions

    Germany’s defense budget is not exactly small, and it has now been given a massive defense budget boost — but it is dogged by allegations of inefficiency. The parliamentary Bundeswehr commissioner’s report was not comforting.

  • War in Ukraine Could Cut Global Supply of Essential Elements for Making Green Technology

    The EU imports 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia, and nearly half of the five million barrels of crude oil Russia exports daily go to Europe. Decisive action by major economies to reduce coal, oil and gas imports from one of the world’s largest sources could accelerate the transition to green energy globally. But there’s a catch. Disruption to the supply of critical metals and other materials caused by the war in Ukraine could stall the roll-out of alternative technologies.

  • Calls Mount for West to Impose No-Fly Zone, Give Jets to Ukraine

    Poland surprised the United States by offering to donate its Soviet-era MiG-29 warplanes to Ukraine in exchange for advanced U.S. fighter jets to be transferred to Poland. The Polish government didn’t get the green light from the Biden administration before going public with the plan, and the Pentagon Tuesday rejected the idea as not “a tenable one.”

  • Putin May Use Chechen War Playbook in Ukraine

    The Russian military campaign in Ukraine has been slower than expected, and Vladimir Putin may turn to the indiscriminate tactics of the wars in Chechnya that turned Chechen cities to rubble in the 1990s and early 2000s, human rights activists say.