BOOKSHELF: Measuring Russia’s StrengthStoner’s Quantitative and Qualitative Assessment of Russia’s New Strength By Paul Saunders Published 5 May 2021 Understanding Russia’s power and the Russian leadership’s goals is a necessary task in formulating effective policy. Moreover, as Russia has become considerably more powerful over the last two decades, the stakes in accurately discerning the Kremlin’s

The Russia connectionRussian Mercenaries in Great-Power Competition: Strategic Supermen or Weak Link? By Molly Dunigan and Ben Connable Published 5 May 2021 Russia’s worst-kept secret is its increasingly heavy reliance on private security contractors—really, mercenaries—to maintain a Russia-favorable global status quo and to undermine its competitors’ interests. This reliance on mercenaries stems from a known

Climate challengesThe New U.S. Climate Normals Are Here Published 5 May 2021 Every 10 years, NOAA releases an analysis of U.S. weather of the past three decades that calculates average values for temperature, rainfall and other conditions. That time has come again. Known as the U.S. Climate Normals, these 30-year averages — now spanning 1991-2020

EncryptionAn Uncrackable Combination of Invisible Ink and Artificial Intelligence Published 5 May 2021 Coded messages in invisible ink sound like something only found in espionage books, but in real life, they can have important security purposes. Yet, they can be cracked if their encryption is predictable. Now, researchers have printed complexly encoded data with normal

RefugeesBiden to Quadruple Refugee Cap By Steve Herman Published 4 May 2021 U.S. President Joe Biden, who initially decided to keep intact his predecessor’s historically low number of annual refugee admissions, Monday announced he is quadrupling this year’s total. Two weeks ago, the White House announced that the cap for the current fiscal year would

Cloak & daggerRussia’s Secret Services Betray Their Weakness By Christopher Nehring Published 4 May 2021 Spying, attacks, murder: Moscow’s secret services have shown they are capable of striking even in the heart of the West. Intelligence experts, however, say they are marked by failure and limited means. So far, 2021 has been the year of Russian

Truth decayNew AI tool Tracks Evolution of COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories on Social Media Published 4 May 2021 A new machine-learning program accurately identifies COVID-19-related conspiracy theories on social media and models how they evolved over time—a tool that could someday help public health officials combat misinformation online. A new machine-learning program accurately identifies COVID-19-related conspiracy theories

CybersecurityZero-Knowledge Proofs in Vulnerability Disclosure Published 4 May 2021 Today, the disclosure process for software vulnerabilities is fraught with challenges. Cybersecurity researchers and software security analysts are faced with an ethics versus efficacy dilemma when it comes to reporting or sharing discovered bugs. Revealing a vulnerability publicly may get the attention of the program’s developers

Nuclear powerNuclear Micro-Reactors Published 4 May 2021 The idea of a nuclear power plant today evokes images of large cooling towers and expansive, warehouse-size buildings. Such facilities generate about a fifth of electricity in the United States without emitting greenhouse gases. A different picture of nuclear energy is emerging, however, in the form of micro-reactors

EarthquakesEntire U.S. West Coast Now Has Access to ShakeAlert Earthquake Early Warning Published 4 May 2021 After fifteen years of planning and development, the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system is now available to more than fifty million people in California, Oregon and Washington, the most earthquake-prone region in the conterminous U.S. Tuesday’s debut of ShakeAlert-powered public alerting to