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Recent discoveries in psychology and neuroscience have improved our understanding of why our decision making processes fail to match standard social science assumptions about rationality.

At the end of July, Dan Coats, the U.S. director of national intelligence (DNI), announced his resignation. When he leaves office on August 15, the U.S. intelligence community will be left with two crises to confront. One is obvious and immediate: how to protect the objectivity and professionalism of the intelligence agencies against the rising tide of politicization by the White House.

Corruption of the information ecosystem is not just a multiplier of two long-acknowledged existential threats to the future of humanity—climate change and nuclear weapons. Cyber-enabled information warfare has also become an existential threat in its own right, its increased use posing the realistic possibility of a global information dystopia, in which the pillars of modern democratic self-government—logic, truth, and reality—are shattered, and anti-Enlightenment values undermine civilization around the world. 

For U.S. intelligence agencies, the twenty-first century began with a shock, when 19 al Qaeda operatives hijacked four planes and perpetrated the deadliest attack ever on U.S. soil. In the wake of the attack, the intelligence community mobilized with one overriding goal: preventing another 9/11. The CIA, the National Security Agency, and the 15 other components of the U.S. intelligence community restructured, reformed, and retooled. Congress appropriated billions of dollars to support the transformation.

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What are the effects of international intervention on the rule of law after civil war? Rule of law requires not only that state authorities abide by legal limits on their power, but also that citizens rely on state laws and institutions to adjudicate disputes.

Abstract: Technical tools dominate the cyber risk management market. Social cybersecurity tools are severely underutilised in helping organisations defend themselves against cyberattacks. We investigate a class of non-technical risk mitigation strategies and tools that might be particularly effective in managing and mitigating the effects of certain cyberattacks. We call these social-science-grounded methods Defensive Social Engineering (DSE) tools.

Abstract: This chapter reviews the evolution of Martha Crenshaw’s interests in and approaches to researching terrorism, a trajectory that begins in the 1960s and extends to the present. The story is necessarily partial and incomplete as well as personal. Her first research project concentrated on the use of terrorism by the FLN during the Algerian War, and her current research deals with patterns of cooperation and competition among militant groups and with the relationship between jihadist-oriented transnational terrorism and civil war.

First proposed in 1964 by the Sri Lankan prime minister, the Indian Ocean Zone of Peace [IOZP] entailed eradication of foreign military bases from the Indian Ocean region as well its denuclearisation. During the Cold War, India was one of the most vehement supporters of IOZP. If some saw India’s interests in the IOZP as another manifestation of Nehruvian idealism, others viewed it as a part of its non-aligned foreign policy. This analysis argues otherwise.

Offensive cyber operations have become increasingly important elements of U.S. national security policy. From the deployment of Stuxnet to disrupt Iranian centrifuges to the possible use of cyber methods against North Korean ballistic missile launches, the prominence of offensive cyber capabilities as instruments of national power continues to grow. Yet conceptual thinking lags behind the technical development of these new weapons. How might offensive cyber operations be used in coercion or conflict? What strategic considerations should guide their development and use?

The “safety case” approach has been developed to address the issue of evaluating the performance of a geologic repository in the face of the large uncertainty that results for evaluations that extend over hundreds of thousands of years. This paper reviews the concept of the safety case as it has been defined by the international community. We contrast the safety case approach with that presently used in the U.S. repository program. Especially, we focus on the role of uncertainty quantification.

The final disposal of nuclear waste is at the interface between the technologies of the nuclear fuel cycle that produce the waste and the natural hydrologic and geochemical cycles of geologic repositories. Despite this broad interdisciplinary scope, nuclear waste management, as practiced, remains “balkanized” among the relevant disciplines.

This study’s purpose was to highlight the changing safety and security landscape engendered by the emergence of new genome editing technologies, help policy-makers and other stakeholders navigate this space, and illuminate broader trends in the life sciences that may impact the biosecurity landscape.

The U.S. government has worked for decades and spent tens of billions of dollars in search of a permanent resting place for the Nation’s nuclear waste. Some 80,000 tons of highly radioactive spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and millions of gallons of high-level nuclear waste from defense programs are stored in pools, dry casks and large tanks throughout the country at more than 75 sites in 39 states.

Abstract: The Founding Fathers relied on deceit in championing American independence—and that has lessons for the present.

Abstract: We present a new perspective on geological disposal systems for nuclear waste. Geological disposal systems encompass all the processes required for the permanent isolation of highly-radioactive materials from humans and the biosphere. Radioactive materials requiring geological disposal are created by commercial nuclear power plants, research reactors, and defense-related nuclear activities, such as spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors and high-level waste from reprocessing to reclaim fissile material for weapons.

This article argues that China’s rise and its growing military power have intensified the Sino-Indian security dilemma. For a long time after the 1962 war, India’s military posture along the India–China border was mostly defensive in nature and could be characterized as imposing “deterrence by denial.” However, over the last decade, China’s growth trajectory coupled with rapid modernization of its military called into question the efficacy of this approach.

For years, the U.S. government has been waging counterterrorism campaigns against al-Qaida and other armed groups in safe havens and weak states. What explains the effectiveness of such campaigns? The variation in effectiveness may result from differences in select tactical, organizational, and technological capabilities of the counterterrorism state and its local partner, captured by the concept of the Legibility and Speed-of-Exploitation System (L&S).

This article assesses American public attitudes toward the just war principles of proportionality, due care and distinction. Consistent with the logic of proportionality, the authors find that Americans are less willing to inflict collateral deaths on foreign civilians when the military advantage of destroying a target is lower. Most Americans also are willing to risk the deaths of American soldiers to avert a larger number of collateral foreign civilian deaths, which accords with the due care principle.

The maternal body is a site of contested dynamics of power, identity, experience, autonomy, occupation, and control.

Abstract: The paper deals with the challenges of energy access, efficiency and security as essential conditions to improve people's living in the Southern African region. It supports energy policies by providing material for an integrated assessment of alternative energy systems at national level.