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AI and the Spread of Fake News Sites: Experts Explain How to Counteract Them
With national elections looming in the United States, concerns about misinformation are sharper than ever, and advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have made distinguishing genuine news sites from fake ones even more challenging.
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How to Keep Robots from Killing Us
Closer robot-human interaction presents positive opportunities, but also some danger. An expert gives us 3 key insights on managing the relationship.
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Cybersecurity Software Wins a 2024 Federal Laboratory Consortium Excellence in Technology Transfer Award
Lincoln Laboratory–developed Timely Address Space Randomization (TASR) was transferred to two commercial providers of cloud-based services.
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Science Fiction Meets Reality: New Technique Overcome Obstructed Views
Using a single photograph, researchers created an algorithm that computes highly accurate, full-color three-dimensional reconstructions of areas behind obstacles – a concept that can not only help prevent car crashes, but help law enforcement experts in hostage situations, search-and-rescue and strategic military efforts.
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Earthquake Fatality Measure Offers New Way to Estimate Impact on Countries
A new measure that compares earthquake-related fatalities to a country’s population size concludes that Ecuador, Lebanon, Haiti, Turkmenistan, Iran and Portugal have experienced the greatest impact from fatalities in the past five centuries.
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Cybersecurity for Satellites Is a Growing challenge, as Threats to Space-Based Infrastructure Grow
In today’s interconnected world, space technology forms the backbone of our global communication, navigation and security systems. As our dependency on these celestial guardians escalates, so too does their allure to adversaries who may seek to compromise their functionality through cyber means.
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Cybersecurity and Data Protection: Does ChatGPT Really Make a Difference?
Cybersecurity and data privacy have become central concerns, affecting business operations and user safety worldwide. A new analysis has looked at the various approaches to cybersecurity and data protection taken by key global players, namely the European Union, the United States, and China.
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If Russia Is Developing Some Kind of Space-Based Weapon, Putin May Never Get to Use It. Here’s Why.
Although it’s unclear exactly what the feared Russian capability is, the country may be too crippled by the war in Ukraine to ever test such a weapon, says an expert who focuses on space diplomacy.
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Cult of the Drone: At the 2-Year Mark, UAVs Have Changed the Face of War in Ukraine – but Not Outcomes
Unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, have been central to the war in Ukraine. Some analysts claim that drones have reshaped war, yielding not just tactical-level effects, but shaping operational and strategic outcomes as well. Mounting evidence, however, suggests that drones have delivered some tactical and operational successes for both Ukraine and Russia. Yet they are strategically ineffective.
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Are Drones Revolutionizing Warfare? They Do Not, Skeptics Argue
Drones have been employed by both sides to the Russia-Ukraine war on unprecedented scale. The prevalence of drones in Ukraine and other recent conflicts has led some observers to conclude that drones are revolutionizing warfare, while other analysts argue that drones are incremental improvements to existing technologies. These drone-skeptics contend that drones are not fundamentally shifting the character of war.
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Study Projects Geothermal Heat Pumps’ Impact on Electrical Grid, Carbon Emissions
New study gives the first detailed look at how geothermal energy can relieve the electric power system and reduce carbon emissions if widely implemented across the United States within the next few decades.
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Using AI to Develop Enhanced Cybersecurity Measures
Using artificial intelligence to address several critical shortcomings in large-scale malware analysis, researchers are making significant advancements in the classification of Microsoft Windows malware and paving the way for enhanced cybersecurity measures.
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China’s Chip Industry Is Gaining Momentum – It Could Alter the Global Economic and Security Landscape
China is advancing its semiconductor capabilities. The economic, geopolitical and security implications will be profound and far-reaching. Given the stakes that both superpowers face, what we can be sure about is that Washington will not easily acquiesce, nor will Beijing give up.
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American Nuclear Power Plants Are Among the Most Secure in the World — What If They Could Be Less Expensive, Too?
Researchers harness the power of machine learning-driven models to study nuclear reactor performance as scientists seek to develop cost-effective small nuclear reactors.
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Using AI to Monitor the Internet for Terror Content Is Inescapable – but Also Fraught with Pitfalls
This vast ocean of online material needs to be constantly monitored for harmful or illegal content, like promoting terrorism and violence. The sheer volume of content means that it’s not possible for people to inspect and check all of it manually, which is why automated tools, including artificial intelligence (AI), are essential. But such tools also have their limitations.
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The long view
Are We Ready for a ‘DeepSeek for Bioweapons’?
Anthropic’s Claude 4 is a warning sign: AI that can help build bioweapons is coming, and could be widely available soon. Steven Adler writes that we need to be prepared for the consequences: “like a freely downloadable ‘DeepSeek for bioweapons,’ available across the internet, loadable to the computer of any amateur scientist who wishes to cause mass harm. With Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 having finally triggered this level of safety risk, the clock is now ticking.”
Bookshelf: Preserving the U.S. Technological Republic
The United States since its founding has always been a technological republic, one whose place in the world has been made possible and advanced by its capacity for innovation. But our present advantage cannot be taken for granted.
Autonomous Weapon Systems: No Human-in-the-Loop Required, and Other Myths Dispelled
“The United States has a strong policy on autonomy in weapon systems that simultaneously enables their development and deployment and ensures they could be used in an effective manner, meaning the systems work as intended, with the same minimal risk of accidents or errors that all weapon systems have,” Michael Horowitz writes.
Ukraine Drone Strikes on Russian Airbase Reveal Any Country Is Vulnerable to the Same Kind of Attack
Air defense systems are built on the assumption that threats come from above and from beyond national borders. But Ukraine’s coordinated drone strike on 1 June on five airbases deep inside Russian territory exposed what happens when states are attacked from below and from within. In low-level airspace, visibility drops, responsibility fragments, and detection tools lose their edge. Drones arrive unannounced, response times lag, coordination breaks.
Shots to the Dome—Why We Can’t Model US Missile Defense on Israel’s “Iron Dome”
Starting an arms race where the costs are stacked against you at a time when debt-to-GDP is approaching an all-time high seems reckless. All in all, the idea behind Golden Dome is still quite undercooked.
Our Online World Relies on Encryption. What Happens If It Fails?
Quantum computers will make traditional data encryption techniques obsolete; BU researchers have turned to physics to come up with better defenses.
Virtual Models Paving the Way for Advanced Nuclear Reactors
Computer models predict how reactors will behave, helping operators make decisions in real time. The digital twin technology using graph-neural networks may boost nuclear reactor efficiency and reliability.
Critical Minerals Don’t Belong in Landfills – Microwave Tech Offers a Cleaner Way to Reclaim Them from E-waste
E-waste recycling focuses on retrieving steel, copper, aluminum, but ignores tiny specks of critical materials. Once technology becomes available to recover these tiny but valuable specks of critical materials quickly and affordably, the U.S. can transform domestic recycling and take a big step toward solving its shortage of critical materials.
Microbes That Extract Rare Earth Elements Also Can Capture Carbon
A small but mighty microbe can safely extract the rare earth and other critical elements for building everything from satellites to solar panels – and it has another superpower: capturing carbon dioxide.
Virtual Models Paving the Way for Advanced Nuclear Reactors
Computer models predict how reactors will behave, helping operators make decisions in real time. The digital twin technology using graph-neural networks may boost nuclear reactor efficiency and reliability.
Critical Minerals Don’t Belong in Landfills – Microwave Tech Offers a Cleaner Way to Reclaim Them from E-waste
E-waste recycling focuses on retrieving steel, copper, aluminum, but ignores tiny specks of critical materials. Once technology becomes available to recover these tiny but valuable specks of critical materials quickly and affordably, the U.S. can transform domestic recycling and take a big step toward solving its shortage of critical materials.
Microbes That Extract Rare Earth Elements Also Can Capture Carbon
A small but mighty microbe can safely extract the rare earth and other critical elements for building everything from satellites to solar panels – and it has another superpower: capturing carbon dioxide.