• Guns, Drones and Poison: The New Age of Assassination

    We are living in the greatest-ever age of assassination as states, fearful of the twin threats of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, are using increasingly sophisticated intelligence to track and kill dangerous people and deprive other states of dangerous knowledge.

  • Virtual Reality Battlefield Technology Designed to Train Military Leaders

    Researchers have developed battlefield simulation technology that they used to produce a virtual reality tour of the D-Day beaches in Normandy, France. Their work is part of the FORCES (4S) – Strategy, Security and Social Systems Initiative at Purdue University. The initiative supports the use of social scientific research in strategy and security activities to shape long-range and global military, political and organizational decision-making.

  • Brazil: Apps Warn Residents of Shootings

    Every year there are thousands of shooting incidents on Brazil’s streets in which innocent bystanders are injured or killed. In some cities, apps now give real-time warnings to residents about areas to avoid. This year alone, there have been at least 3,000 shootings in the state of Rio de Janeiro. But this statistic does not come from the authorities. The number is taken from data supplied by “Onde Tem Tiroteio” (OTT), a crowdsourcing app that warns users about shootouts and where users can report shooting incidents themselves. In English, “Onde Tem Tiroteio” literally means “Where is a shootout.”

  • Brain Drain: China’s Campaign of Intellectual Property Theft

    Hundreds of scientists at British universities, who would be banned from almost all postgraduate study in the United States over their ties to military-linked Chinese universities, are currently researching subjects which involve knowledge useful to the creation of Weapons of Mass Destruction. A new reportexplores the number of individuals researching seven subjects considered particularly sensitive by the U.K.’s Academic Technology Approval Scheme.

  • I’m an Astronomer and I Think Aliens May Be Out There – but UFO Sightings Aren’t Persuasive

    If intelligent aliens visit the Earth, it would be one of the most profound events in human history. Scientists don’t deny the existence of intelligent aliens, but they set a high bar for proof that we’ve been visited by creatures from another star system. Belief in the possibility of intelligent aliens does not mean that we should believe stories about UFOs. UFOs are part of the landscape of conspiracy theories, including accounts of abduction by aliens and crop circles created by aliens. I remain skeptical that intelligent beings with vastly superior technology would travel trillion of miles just to press down our wheat. I’m not signing on to the UFO “religion,” so call me an agnostic. I recall the aphorism popularized by Carl Sagan, “It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.”

  • Making Our Infrastructure Safer

    Saurabh Amin, a systems engineer at MIT, focuses on making transportation, electricity, and water infrastructure more resilient against disruptions. “There are a lot of commonalities among these networks — they are built and operated by human actors, but their functionality is governed by physical laws. So, that is what drives me forward,” Amin says.

  • How Easy Is it to Build a Robot Assassin?

    Someone—almost certainly Israel—recently assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the leading scientist behind the Iranian nuclear program. The latest reporting from Iran suggests that the assassins employed a remotely controlled machine gun mounted on a pickup truck. So how hard is it to build such a tool? How expensive? Nicholas Weaver writes that “Unfortunately, the answer is “hard but doable” and “not much money”—with the further complication that in a few years, it will probably be possible to pick up the necessary equipment online from vendors like Banggood.”

  • Novel Chemical Process a First Step to Making Nuclear Fuel with Fire

    Uranium dioxide, a radioactive actinide oxide, is the most widely used nuclear fuel in today’s nuclear power plants. A new “combustion synthesis” process recently established for lanthanide metals—non-radioactive and positioned one row above actinides on the periodic table—could be a guide for the production of safe, sustainable nuclear fuels.

  • Guidance Will Improve Critical Infrastructure Resilience

    It is easy to understand the importance of our “critical infrastructure,” such as telecommunications, energy, transportation, and emergency services, but what’s often overlooked are the underlying technologies that enable them. DHS S&T is doing something about it.

  • Study Identifies Reasons for Soaring Nuclear Plant Cost Overruns in the U.S.

    Analysis points to ways engineering strategies could be reimagined to minimize delays and other unanticipated expenses. Many analysts believe nuclear power will play an essential part in reducing global emissions of greenhouse gases, and finding ways to curb these rising costs could be an important step toward encouraging the construction of new plants.

  • Putting Nuclear Reactors in Space

    A new agreement hopes to speed along a nuclear reactor technology that could be used to fuel deep-space exploration and possibly power human habitats on the Moon or Mars.

  • Your Smart Watch May Be Sharing Your Data

    You may not realize it, but your internet-connected household devices such as the Ring doorbell, Peloton exercise bike and Nest thermostat are all exchanging data with other devices and systems over the network. These physical objects, all part of the Internet of Things (IoT), come with sensors and software, and they often use cloud computing. Most people would consider the information contained in these household items as highly private.

  • System Brings Deep Learning to “Internet of Things” Devices

    Deep learning is everywhere. This branch of artificial intelligence curates your social media and serves your Google search results. Soon, deep learning could also check your vitals or set your thermostat. Advanced could enable artificial intelligence on household appliances while enhancing data security and energy efficiency.

  • Putting Games to Work in the Battle Against COVID-19

    While video games often give us a way to explore other worlds, they can also help us learn more about our own — including how to navigate a pandemic. That was the premise underlying “Jamming the Curve,” a competition that enlisted over 400 independent video game developers around the world to develop concepts for games that reflect the real-world dynamics of COVID-19.

  • New Body Armor Offers Better Knife Protection

    The number of knife attacks in Britain has increased over the past few years, while police officers and correctional personnel must contend with an increasing threat from makeshift weapons, such as shanks and spikes. PPSS Group the other day announced a replacement for their polycarbonate-based stab resistant body armor. According to company CEO Robert Kaiser, the new body armor is lighter, thinner, more effective, and more functional.