Via LLRX – Threatening ‘the enemy within’ with force: Military ethicists explain the danger to important American traditions – Marcus Hedahl, Professor of Philosophy, United States Naval Academy and Bradley Jay Strawser, Professor of Philosophy, Naval Postgraduate School worry that Trump’s actions while president, and his comments about his plans for a potential second term,… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Defense
Foreign Malign Election Meddling Persists but Struggles to Gain Traction
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD): “In September 2024, FDD published a report documenting Russian, Chinese, and Iranian influence operations targeting the 2024 U.S. elections. This follow-up report details the ongoing efforts of U.S. adversaries who seek to undermine voters’ confidence in the electoral process in the weeks leading up to the November election.… Continue Reading
Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind
The New York Times unlocked article Robert Paxton thought the label was overused. But now he’s alarmed by what he sees in global politics — including Trumpism…Paxton, who is 92, is one of the foremost American experts on fascism and perhaps the greatest living American scholar of mid-20th-century European history. His 1972 book, “Vichy France:… Continue Reading
Online Talk About ‘Civil War’ Could Inspire Real-World Violence, DHS Warns Cops
Wired [unpaywalled]: “The agency also cautioned that it’s unable to get a grasp on the full scale of the threat, due to extremists increasingly using encrypted chat tools…Last month, the agency’s intelligence office emphasized in a report that “perceptions of voter fraud” had risen to become a primary “trigger” for the “mobilization to violence.” This… Continue Reading
The National Security Case for Public AI
Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator: In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posed a simple but striking question: “Who will control the future of AI?” Altman frames the choice as between two futures: “Will it be one in which the United States and allied nations advance a global AI that spreads the… Continue Reading
The Civil Rights Implications of Federal Use of Facial Recognition Technology
The Civil Rights Implications of the Federal Use of Facial Recognition Technology. September 19, 2024. Meaningful federal guidelines and oversight for responsible FRT use have lagged behind the application of this technology in real-world scenarios. With the advent of biometric technology and its widespread use by both private and government entities, the Commission studied how… Continue Reading
We Underfunded Our Libraries Once. It Almost Lost Us World War II
TIME – Graham is a historian and professor at Stony Brook University. – Her latest book is BOOK AND DAGGER: How Scholars and Librarians Became the Unlikely Spies of World War II: “2024 has seen many devastating budget cuts to libraries. Earlier this year, New York City’s Mayor Eric Adams proposed to cut more than… Continue Reading
Today is the 23rd anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks
AP – US commemorates 9/11 attacks with victims in focus and politics in view – “The U.S. is remembering the lives taken and those reshaped by 9/11, marking an anniversary laced with presidential campaign politics as President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris stood together in the plaza where the… Continue Reading
In Tied Presidential Race, Harris and Trump Have Contrasting Strengths, Weaknesses
“Ahead of the scheduled Sept. 10 presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, the presidential race is deadlocked. About half of registered voters (49%) say if the election were held today, they would vote for Harris, while an identical share say they would back Trump. With less than two months… Continue Reading
The Accelerationists’ App: How Telegram Became the “Center of Gravity” for a New Breed of Domestic Terrorists
ProPublica: “…Late last month, Telegram burst into the news with another arrest related to alleged criminal activity on the giant messaging and social media platform. This time, the man in police custody was the company’s founder, Pavel Durov. French authorities detained the Russian-born billionaire after his plane touched down at an airport a few miles… Continue Reading
Safeguarding Subsea Cables Protecting Cyber Infrastructure amid Great Power Competition
“The length in kilometers — 750,000 miles — of the world’s undersea fiber-optic cables. These cables, which carry more than 95% of international data globally, are highly vulnerable to accidental disruption such as from ships’ anchors or natural disasters like earthquakes, a new report from the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies warned. The… Continue Reading
The federal budget: an overview
USAFacts: “The federal budget is a measure of how much the federal government spends and how much revenue it takes in. Typically, annual budgetary data is broken up into fiscal years, which run from October 1 to September 30. In fiscal year 2023, the US spent $6.16 trillion on public programs and generated $4.47 trillion… Continue Reading
