Weapons

US Military Reverses Course, Won’t Ban Use of Cluster Bombs

The US had planned to end its use of cluster bombs, a type of explosive that ejects smaller submunitions to kill personnel and obliterate vehicles, by 2019, but on Thursday, the Pentagon approved a new policy reversing this promise.

US President George W. Bush declared in 2008 that US would stop using cluster bombs by 2019. On Thursday, though, the Pentagon declared that the weapons have a legitimate use in military operations.

When deployed, cluster bombs scatter hundreds or thousands of bomblets across swaths of territory than can encompass several football fields. The bombs are notorious for failing to explode during the initial weapon deployment — leaving mine-like explosives that can blow up decades later. Anywhere from two to 20 percent of the bomblets released in modern cluster bombs fail to detonate on first use, according to Legacies of War, a Washington-based non-profit.

The United Nations-backed Convention on Cluster Munitions banning the weapons took effect in 2010. More than 100 nations have become signatories to the agreement. The US, Israel, China, Russia, Brazil, Pakistan and India, though, opposed the treaty. These nations are believed to produce or stockpile cluster munitions in significant quantities.

Under the policy approved Thursday, the US will authorize military commanders to use cluster munitions at their discretion until a better option becomes available that reduces the humanitarian hazards, the Associated Press reports.

Criminal investigation

48 Argentinian military personnel are jailed for their involvement in 'death flights' - when prisoners were thrown out of planes - and other torture during junta rule 40 years ago

An Argentine court has jailed 48 former military personnel for involvement in murder and torture at a notorious detention center in the 1970s and 80s.

The 48 men were found guilty of torture, murder and carrying out 'death flights', which saw regime critics and opponents killed by being thrown out of airplanes into the Rio de la Plata or the sea.

The crimes took place at a Buenos Aires navy school used as a secret torture and detention center during the years of Argentina's military dictatorship.

Only a fraction of an estimated 5,000 opponents of the regime, which ruled from 1976-1983, survived being sent to the ESMA Naval Mechanics School.

Twenty-nine people were handed life sentences, 19 received sentences of between eight and 25 years, and six were acquitted on Wednesday.

Weapons

Could North Korea's nuclear-tipped missile actually reach entire US?

North Korea on Wednesday boasted its new Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile can carry a “super heavy nuclear warhead” that can strike “the whole mainland” of the United States -- and an expert said this is a possibility. 

The ICBM launched Wednesday flew nearly 2,800 miles and traveled 590 miles before it hit a sea target in Japanese waters, the Hermit Kingdom said. South Korea’s military announced it had similar data. The missile’s flight time was reportedly 53 minutes. If flown on a standard trajectory, instead of Wednesday's lofted angle, the missile would have a range of more than 8,100 miles, said U.S. scientist David Wright, a physicist who closely tracks North Korea's missile and nuclear programs.

International security

Russia Assessing Possible Outcome of North Korea Military Option

Russia is examining a possible outcome of a military option for dealing with the North Korea crisis, Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev has told Sputnik.

Asked whether Russia had any contingency plan in place for a potential military solution to the standoff over the North's nuclear ambition, he replied that "we are assessing this and preparing ourselves. We will not be taken by surprise."

Patrushev admitted that Pyongyang’s behaviour put Russia at risk. "We basically share the border with them. That’s why we are interested in a political and diplomatic solution."

The secretary stressed that Russia will not allow military action against North Korea, after the US diplomat at the United Nations threatened Pyongyang with destruction.

"If there is military action – and you know some countries do not rule it out – this would create all sorts of problems, including for us," he said. "But we cannot let that happen."

Cybersecurity

Homeland Security claims DJI drones are spying for China

A memo from the Los Angeles office of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau (ICE) has been making the rounds and it states some pretty bold claims about drone-maker DJI. The memo, which was apparently issued in August, says that the officials assess "with moderate confidence that Chinese-based company DJI Science and Technology is providing US critical infrastructure and law enforcement data to the Chinese government." The LA ICE office also says that the information is based on, "open source reporting and a reliable source within the unmanned aerial systems industry with first and secondhand access."Part of the memo focuses on targets that the LA ICE office believes to be of interest to DJI. "DJI's criteria for selecting accounts to target appears to focus on the account holder's ability to disrupt critical infrastructure," it said.

Intel gathering

White House, CIA reportedly considering proposals to privatize spying, counterterrorism

The White House and the CIA are supposedly thinking about outsourcing certain covert operations and counterintelligence efforts in "hostile countries" to a private company of former U.S. intelligence officers, BuzzFeed News reported Thursday. Under one proposal, the company in question, Amyntor Group, would reportedly receive millions of dollars to create networks for information gathering and in another proposal, former intelligence officials affiliated with Amyntor would be involved in efforts to capture terrorists and bring them back to the U.S.

The seriousness with which the White House is examining these proposals is reportedly in dispute, however. One government official who spoke to BuzzFeed News claimed that "[t]he idea [Amyntor] is pitching is absurd on its face and it is not going anywhere," while a lawyer for the private company would only say that the hypothetical plan was legally permissible "with direction and control by the proper government authority." BuzzFeed News' sources claim that the Trump administration has been open to intelligence privatization proposals because the administration believes "the CIA bureaucracy has an anti-Trump bias that would thwart efforts to fulfill the president's objectives."

Nuclear security

The Geopolitics of Nuclear Weapons

Nuclear bombs have a strange quality: They are a type of weapon that countries spend enormous sums of money to develop but don’t actually intend to use. While chemical weapons have been frequently used in war, no country has detonated a nuclear bomb since the end of World War II.

Nuclear weapons are in their own category. Their efficacy comes from their ability to deter aggression, as the potential for massive devastation forces countries to rethink moves that threaten an adversary’s essential national security interests. States, therefore, are unlikely to use nuclear weapons against one another. However, the risk of a nuclear attack would increase if they were to fall into the hands of non-state actors that follow a different set of calculations that don’t necessarily take into account the defense of a predefined territory.

Nine countries currently have nuclear weapons with an assortment of delivery systems. The following graphics outline which countries possess or have possessed nuclear weapons, as well as some states capable of producing them. They also show how these weapons have reshaped the constraints that countries face in their geopolitical calculations.

Economic security

George Friedman: A US Recession Is Imminent, So Watch Germany

“We have to wait for Germany to make its move,” George Friedman declared at the 2017 CFA Institute European Investment Conference.

Friedman, the founder and chair of Geopolitical Futures, has a history of being right when others are wrong and being predictive when others are reactive. He has spent his career navigating the convergence of geography with history, politics, economics, and societal imperatives.

In his presentation to financial professionals in Berlin, he explained that “there is one last piece” of the global financial crisis that must play out “before we can move on.”

Friedman challenged the definition of “normal” for the global financial system. “The period between 1991 and 2008 was an anomaly,” he said. A growing interdependence among nations, along with an unprecedented degree of connectedness, eroded the safeguards that had protected individual countries from the global crises of the past.

As Friedman sees it, individual nations had built and configured their banking and legal systems for their own interest and benefit — and for their own protection. That work was abandoned “in an interesting fantasy that nations are not relevant.”

Financial safety

Own Gold Bullion To “Support National Security” – Russian Central Bank

Last week Russia’s Central Bank First Deputy Governor Sergei Shvetsov said Russians own gold bullion and their central bank is adding to its gold reserves in order to “beef up national security.”

Yesterday, the Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov warned Washington yesterday: “If our gold and currency reserves can be arrested, even if such a thought exists, it would be financial terrorism.”

Russia is prepared for the possible toughening of US sanctions. However, if they include the seizure of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves, it would be regarded as a “declaration of a financial war,” the Russian finance minister warned as reported by RT.

This is not the first time, senior Russian officials has declared the importance of Russia’s gold and fx reserves and indeed the economic and political strategy behind the country’s fx diversification and gold buying activities. Putin has frequently signaled his belief in gold including in symbolic photos, as has the head of the Central Bank.

Russian gold bullion reserves have increased in value to $73.7 billion as of Nov. 1 from $60.2 billion at the beginning of the year. In September 34 tons of gold was added to the country’s reserves, pushing the country to sixth place in the global rankings of gold holdings. It now sits one place behind China.

Military

China's military rise erodes American leadership in Asia

The “rise” of China is based on rapid and sustained Chinese economic growth, but it includes an upgrade of China’s military power made possible by increased wealth and more advanced technology. China is not a military superpower like the United States, but after decades of increasing its military budget and deploying modern weapons systems, China can now challenge the accustomed status quo of America dictating the strategic agenda in the Asia Pacific region. China’s military rise shakes up this status quo in at least five ways.

First, China is pursuing a more assertive foreign policy. After his predecessors tried to avoid looking threatening, President Xi Jinping has apparently decided China is now strong enough to insist on winning its strategic disputes with its neighbors, even at the risk of generating alarm in the region about China’s intentions...

Sexual harassment

State, DHS respond to 223 women in national security field speaking out on sexual harassment

The State Department and Department of Homeland Security are responding to 223 women who have worked in the national security field who are speaking out about having been victims of sexual harassment, abuse or assault or knowing others who are victims.

A State Department spokesperson said that the department is updating its sexual harassment training in the wake of recent scandals.

"The Department has two anti-harassment policies: one prohibiting sexual or gender-based harassment, and the other prohibiting harassment based on other protected discriminatory bases of race, color, national origin, religion, disability, age, and genetic information," the spokesperson said.

The Department of Homeland Security said that it's also reviewing training and guidance "both to further reinforce its policies to employees, as well as to remind employees on how to file a harassment complaint."

Human trafficking

A tale of human traffickers and Libyan slave markets

Hundreds of African refugees are being bought and sold in “slave markets” across Libya every week, a human trafficker has told Al Jazeera, with many of them held for ransom or forced into prostitution and sexual exploitation to pay their captors and smugglers.

Many of them ended up being murdered by their smugglers in the open desert or die from thirst or car accidents in the vast Libyan desert.

A morgue in southern city of Sebha — an entry point for many refugees coming from Africa — is overflowing with corpses, with faulty refrigerator making the situation worse, according to a Libyan health official.

The official in Sebha, 650km south of the capital Tripoli, described horrendous scenes of bodies dumped in threes, fives or more at the gates of the Sebha health facility by smugglers. The refugees who died were never identified and many ended being buried without names or proper graves, he said.

Climate security

Climate change is disappearing from government websites — and from research, too.

The EPA’s climate change webpage was taken down for revisions in April to “reflect EPA’s priorities under the leadership of President Trump and Administrator Pruitt.” And 214 days later, the page — which explained the basics of climate science and how it affects us — is still down.

Though an archived version remains, it is missing pages, PDFs, and entire sections, such as the Student’s Guide to Global Climate Change.

It’s not just the EPA: Mentions of climate change have disappeared from government websites across the board, from the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Transportation.

And now, it’s disappearing from science itself. An NPR report found that scientists have begun omitting the term “climate change” from public summaries of their research. National Science Foundation grants on the topic have dropped 40 percent this year. Meanwhile, euphemisms like “extreme weather” and “environmental change” appear to be on the rise.

Given President Trump’s open hostility to climate science, it’s not exactly surprising that his administration has ushered in an era of self-censorship, where agency staffers and scientists tip-toe around the subject to protect their funding and research. But the pace and scale of that change over the past year is shocking.

Spy story

The Unbelievable Story of How the CIA Helped Foil a Russian Spy Ring in London
This story is revealed in remarkable tranche of records declassified on Tuesday by the British Security Service, better known as MI5, about a major Russian spy network that operated in Britain in the post-war years, known as the Portland Spy Ring. Its discovery in the early 1960s set off alarm bells in capitals across the Western world. Unlike all previous post-war Soviet espionage cases investigated by MI5 in Britain, the Portland spy ring did not involve Soviet KGB and GRU (military) intelligence officers using official (“legal”) diplomatic cover. Instead, more alarmingly for British and Western intelligence agencies, it involved a deep-cover Soviet “illegal,” with no diplomatic cover, living out in the cold, under a false name and nationality— and almost impossible to detect. As British and U.S. intelligence were to discover, the spy network they uncovered was linked to some of the most important Soviet illegals operating in the United States, including Rudolf Abel, who was recently depicted in the Steven Spielberg film Bridge of Spies.

Sabotage

Incredibly rare exploding 'rat bomb' given to British spy to destroy German factories during the Second World War goes up for auction for £1,500

A rare exploding 'rat bomb' that was used by Allied spies in a bizarre bid to destroy German factories in the war has been unearthed.

British scientists stuffed dozens of dead rats with explosives, detonators and fuses to act as a disguised bomb.

The idea was to get French Resistance fighters and Special Operations Executive agents to infiltrate German armament factories and leave the dead rodents in the boiler rooms.

The Germans would naturally throw the vermin straight into the furnace, triggering a huge explosion and wreaking havoc in Nazi-occupied France.

In the event, the first batch of 100 'Rat Bombs' were intercepted by the Germans in 1942 and the plan was never put into practice.

It did, however, cause a great deal of confusion amongst the Germans as they assumed there were thousands of other 'Rat Bombs' that had been laid and went on an epic hunt for them,

Personal data security

Insiders stole personal data from 246,000 Homeland Security staff - so they could test software they planned to sell to OTHER federal departments

The Department of Homeland Security was subjected to a data heist by its own staff as part of a nefarious scheme to sell knockoff software to other government departments, it has been alleged.

The unnamed insiders are accused of stealing the personal information of around 246,000 agency employees with a plan to use it o test software stolen from the office of the department's inspector general.

That data included names, dates of birth and social security numbers, officials with knowledge of the case told the New York Times.

The theft was committed by three employees in the office of the Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, according to the insiders.

However, rather than selling on the data the trio intended to use it to test software designed for managing investigative and disciplinary cases, investigators say.

That software was itself a modified version of proprietary program owned by the office itself.

Electronic surveillance

Spies more free to use cellphone surveillance tech without warrant, under court ruling

A federal court judge has ruled that Canada's domestic spy agency can continue to use contentious cellphone surveillance devices without a warrant, in some cases. 

For several years, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has used a device it calls a Cell Site Simulator (CSS) to collect information about cellphones and other cellular-capable devices — such as some laptops or tablets — during its national security investigations. 

The devices are perhaps better known as IMSI Catchers or Stingrays, and pretend to be legitimate cellphone towers in order to collect information. Privacy advocates have long criticized the technology for how it indiscriminately gathers data, not merely on the subject of an investigation, but on all of the cellular devices in its operating radius.

Spy story

Was Royal Navy Commander 'Buster' Crabb a Double Agent?

In April 1956, Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin docked in British waters for a diplomatic visit. While the ship was in port, ex Royal Navy frogman Commander Lionel "Buster" Crabb, undertook a mission to spy on the Soviet warship, the Ordzhonikidze, for the secret British intelligence organization MI6. But once Crabb went under, he never came back up.

His disappearance sparked a national embarrassment for Britain, scotched their talks with Russia and caused years of speculation that haven't yet abated. So what happened to Commander Crabb? That's what Stuff They Don't Want You To Know hosts Matt Frederick, Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown dive into in the latest episode of the podcast.

Crabb was first an army gunner, then he joined the Royal Navy in 1941. His job was to disarm mines Italian divers attached to Allied ships with magnets, but then he decided to learn how to dive himself, despite not being a very good swimmer. His missions took him to Gibraltar, Northern Italy and Palestine before he was demobilized from the military. That's when MI6 recruited him in 1956 to investigate the propellers of Russian ships. This time, it was Khrushchev's and Bulganin's Ordzhonikidze.

Crabb dove down once and came back up 20 minutes later because of faulty equipment. He dove down a second time, but was never again seen alive.

Middle East

Israel could rely on ISIS to contain Iranian expansion – Israeli intelligence-linked report

A new study from a think-tank closely affiliated with Israeli intelligence says that Islamic State attacks are among the few remaining weapons holding back an Iranian sphere of influence that could soon stretch from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean.

“Iran, which previously displayed dexterity in exploiting every opportunity to enhance its standing as a regional power, wishes to capitalize on the vacuum created in Syria and Iraq by ISIS’s collapse, to advance its ambitions in the region and play a central role in shaping the post-ISIS Middle East,” says a 37-page report by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC).

Although ostensibly an NGO, ITIC is part state-funded, has an office at the Israeli Defense Ministry, and has often served as the informal voice of the country’s intelligence services.
According to the report’s lead author, prominent Iran researcher Raz Zimmt, Tehran is seeking to stabilize the Bashar Assad regime in Syria and the Shia government in Iraq, which would help it “dislodge the US” from the region, and “escalate the threat posed to Israel, while creating a state of deterrence.”

Particularly it would use the land corridor from its own territory to Lebanon, to “augment the military capabilities of Hezbollah, developing the abilities of Hezbollah to manufacture weapons, and establishing local terror networks in the Golan Heights, with the aim of creating a new front for challenging Israel.”

Cybersecurity

Smartphone apps track Android users with 'clandestine surveillance software'

Smartphone apps such as Tinder and Snapchat are being used to secretly monitor the activities of Android phone users, according to new research.

The joint study from Yale Privacy Lab, an initiative linked to Yale Law School, and French non-profit research group Exodus Privacy, looked into 25 trackers found hidden in popular Google Play apps such as Uber, Tinder, Skype, Twitter, Spotify and Snapchat. The samples were taken from a total of 44 suspected smartphone trackers identified by Exodus Privacy.

The apps Tinder, Spotify, Uber and Amazon Echo in particular were identified as using Crashlytics, a Google-owned service designed to monitor app crash reports but which was later found to be providing firms with insights into users’ activities.

“Publication of this information is in the public interest, as it reveals clandestine surveillance software that is unknown to Android users at the time of app installation,” Privacy Lab said in a blog posted to its website. “These trackers vary in their features and purpose, but are primarily utilized for targeted advertising, behavioral analytics, and location tracking.”

Sexual harassment

'We, Too, Are Survivors.' 223 Women in National Security Sign Open Letter on Sexual Harassment

More than 200 women who work on national security for the U.S. signed an open letter saying that they have survived sexual harassment and assault or know someone who has experienced it.

Signed by current and former diplomats, civil servants, servicemembers and development workers, the letter calls for stronger sexual harassment reporting, mandatory training and outside data collection on how often it occurs.

“This is not just a problem in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, newsrooms or Congress,” reads the letter, which was shared with TIME. “These abuses are born of imbalances of power and environments that permit such practices while silencing and shaming their survivors.”

The open letter is titled #metoonatsec, a reference to the “Me Too” movement which sprung up on social networks in October over sexual harassment in the aftermath of explosive reports about Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein’s years of abusive behavior, along with allegations about other notable men.

Korea

North Korea’s latest missile launch suggests weapons testing lull was seasonal, rather than strategic

North Korea's latest missile launch is its 20th in 2017 — and it seems to dash the idea that Pyongyang's lull in weapons testing over the past two months indicated a willingness to negotiate.

There had been 74 days between Tuesday's test and the last North Korean provocation, a missile launch on Sept. 15 that capped off a bout of activity over the summer months. Some hoped that this apparent lull might show that Washington's hard-line policy on North Korea was working or that Pyongyang was open to a “freeze for freeze” policy like that advocated by China and Russia.

Instead, just before 3 a.m. local time, North Korea fired a missile to the east. The Japanese Defense Ministry said the missile appeared to have flown for about 50 minutes. This missile test may prove a theory put forward by analysts such as Shea Cotton, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies: The lack of weapons tests from North Korea was not strategic — it was seasonal.

International security

North Korea says new missile puts all of US in striking range

North Korea says it has successfully tested a new type of intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the whole of the continental United States.

State television claimed that Pyongyang had now achieved its mission of becoming a nuclear state.

The Hwasong-15 missile, which it said was its "most powerful", was launched in darkness early on Wednesday.

It landed in Japanese waters but flew higher than any other missile the North has previously tested.

State news agency KCNA said that the missile reached an altitude of 4,475km (2,780 miles) and flew 950km in 53 minutes.

It added that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who personally signed off on the launch, "declared with pride that now we have finally realised the great historic cause of completing the state nuclear force, the cause of building a rocket power".

National security threat

Russia Is Not the ‘No. 1 Threat’—or Even Among the Top 5

Nation contributing editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fourth year, are at TheNation.com. This installment is posted a few days later than usual because of the Thanksgiving holiday.)

In the 1990s, the Clinton administration embraced post-Soviet Russia as America’s “strategic partner and friend.” Twenty years later, the US policy establishment, from liberals to conservatives, insists that Russia under Vladimir Putin is the number-one threat to American national security. The primary explanation for this transformed perception, which began under President George W. Bush, became more insistent during the Obama administration, and is now a virtual bipartisan axiom, lies in Washington, not in Moscow. But whatever the full explanation, it is gravely endangering US national security by diminishing real threats and preventing the partnership with Russia needed to cope with them.

Media

Suddenly, I’m a ‘Russian Agent’!

For a number of years now, I have been periodically interviewed as a source or a commentator on news programs and as an occasional panel participant on RT TV, the Russian government-funded English-language television station. For the past year, I’ve been paid a small amount for my work.

Effective Monday, November 13, something changed, though. RT suddenly became a“registered foreign agent.” The Russian government-funded news service, which has its headquarters in Washington, with bureaus in several other US cities, filed the required papers under protest — the only foreign news service operating here that is required to do so — and said it intends to sue. Russia is also retaliating and will be requiring some US news organizations operating in Russia, including Voice of America, to similarly register as foreign agents.

This means that as of two weeks ago, I have been working, at least on a minimal basis of perhaps one short 5-10-minute interview per week, for a “foreign agent.”

Middle East

Saudi Arabia’s New Strongman Wants the Kingdom to Become a Middle East Arms Powerhouse


What does Saudi Arabia’s crown prince want to do now that he’s holding potential rivals prisoner at the Riyadh Ritz? Among other things: turn his country into a major weapons manufacturer.

Currently, Saudi Arabia is one of the world’s biggest arms importers. In May, Riyadh pledged to buy U.S.-made weapons worth up to $110 billion (a deal that Donald Trump claimed credit for, though it was in the works long before his election). The package includes THAAD missiles, spy planes, tanks, and more. But Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud — informally, MBS — wants his country to produce a lot more of its own arms.

MBS is believed to have been the guiding voice behind last year’s Saudi Vision 2030, which lays out an agenda for diversifying the Saudi Arabian economy beyond oil. Among other things, the plan aims to enable the country to build half of its own military weapons in less than two decades.

Radiation safety

Evacuating nuclear disaster areas can waste time and money

Over 110,000 people were moved from their homes following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in March 2011. Another 50,000 left of their own will, and 85,000 had still not returned four-and-a-half years later.

While this might seem like an obvious way of keeping people safe, my colleagues and I have just completed research that shows this kind of mass evacuation is unnecessary, and can even do more harm than good. We calculated that the Fukushima evacuation extended the population’s average life expectancy by less than three months.

To do this, we had to estimate how such a nuclear meltdown could affect the average remaining life expectancy of a population from the date of the event. The radiation would cause some people to get cancer and so die younger than they otherwise would have (other health effects are very unlikely because the radiation exposure is so limited). This brings down the average life expectancy of the whole group.

But the average radiation cancer victim will still live into their 60s or 70s. The loss of life expectancy from a radiation cancer will always be less than from an immediately fatal accident such as a train or car crash. These victims have their lives cut short by an average of 40 years, double the 20 years that the average sufferer of cancer caused by radiation exposure. So if you could choose your way of dying from the two, radiation exposure and cancer would on average leave you with a much longer lifespan.

Navy

Argentina: Water Got in Sub's Snorkel, Caused Short Circuit

Water entered the snorkel of an Argentine submarine and caused one of its batteries to short circuit before the vessel went missing 12 days ago, a navy spokesman said Monday.

Hopes for survivors have been largely crushed by reports of an explosion detected near the time and place where the ARA San Juan was last heard from on Nov. 15.

Since then, there have been no signs of the sub or debris despite an intensive multinational search. Experts have said the 44 sailors aboard had only enough oxygen to last up to 10 days if the sub remained intact but submerged.

The navy said last week that before the submarine went missing, the captain reported an electrical problem in a battery compartment and the vessel was ordered to return to its base in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, about 250 miles (400 kilometers) southeast of Buenos Aires.

Robots

Robots Are Becoming Alarmingly Strong

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University have developed a variety of origami-inspired artificial muscles that can lift up to a thousand times their own weight — and yet be dexterous enough to grip and raise a delicate flower. The devices, described in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offer a new way to give soft robots super-strength, which could be used everywhere from inside our bodies to outer space.

Cool! But before you get too alarmed at the prospect of robots with the strength of Superman, check out the PNAS paper itself:

This 10 cm-long linear actuator was fabricated within 10 min, with materials costing less than $1. This actuator weighs 2.6 g, and it can lift a 3 kg object within 0.2 s using a -80 kPa vacuum.

Sure enough, that’s a thousand times its weight. But it’s still only about six pounds. Robots with grippers made of FOAM (fluid-driven origami-inspired artificial muscles) won’t be destroying human civilization any time soon.

Economic security

Paying Off Post-9/11 War Debt Could Cost $8 Trillion: Report


The post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere have been fought with borrowed money, enough to require up to $8 trillion in interest payments in coming decades, a new report says.

Unlike America’s previous wars, its 21st-century conflicts have been paired not with a tax hike or massive sale of U.S. bonds, but a tax cut. The federal government has been operating at a deficit since 2002, accruing a national debt that now totals $20 trillion and counting.

“We have to recognize that we have been borrowing for 16 years to pay for military operations,” said Sen. Jack Reed, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It’s the “first time really in history with any major conflict that we have borrowed rather than ask people to contribute to the national defense directly, and the result is we’ve got this huge fiscal drag…that we’re not really accounting for or factoring into deliberations about fiscal policy as well as military policy.”

The 2017 report from Brown University’s Costs of War Project arrives as U.S. lawmakers and President Donald Trump strive to enact tax changes that will add at least $1.5 trillion to the national debt.

Climate security

Floods, Droughts, and India's Uncertain Climate Future

A recent report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) confirmed what millions of Indians – and many more in South Asian countries – have been experiencing: the region has the highest exposure to floods. A whopping 130 million people in coastal zones of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan are at risk of being displaced by the end of the century.

At the same time, the researchers observed that the “average global flood losses in 2005 were approximately $6 billion per year and will increase to $52 billion by 2050.” Of the top 20 cities incurring these losses, 13 are in Asia, of which four are in India: Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, and Surat. Another study published in the scientific journal Global Change Biology reported that only six of 22 river basins in India have the potential to cope with climate change.

In June 2013, nearly 5,700 were presumed dead after a series of cloud bursts caused severe floods and devastating landslides in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand, home to several Hindu and Sikh pilgrimage sites. The heavy rainfall was 375 percent more than the average rain received, causing the Chorabari Glacier at 3,800 meters to melt, and eruption of the Mandakini river. The high number of casualties is attributed to the warnings by the meteorological department not being taken seriously. This is a common feature across India: local administrations claim that warnings are not geographically specific and hence evacuation is not always possible.

Weapons

China’s latest intercontinental ballistic missile expected to be deployed next year

China’s intercontinental ballistic missile DF-41 is expected to be deployed in early 2018, said military expert Yang Chengjun on a TV program broadcasted on China Central Television (CCTV) on Nov. 26.

According to military experts, no failure has occurred during the test launches of DF-41, and the success rates of the US and Russia are around 90% and 85%, respectively.

“DF-41 is 4th-generation and China’s latest strategic missile,” said Yang, adding that the reliable missile is quick, mobile, and precise.

Public data shows that DF-41 is a rival of the 6th-generation missiles of some developed countries, such as the American LGM-30 Minuteman and the Russian RT-2PM2. The Chinese missile even has an edge with regard to some technologies.

The DF-41 has a range of 12,000 kilometers and a deviation of some one hundred meters. It can carry six to 10 multiple maneuverable warheads, which makes it difficult to be intercepted.

The missile is 16.5 meters in length with a diameter of 2.78 meters. It can be launched from road- and rail-mobile launcher platforms, as well as silo-based launchers.