Health security

Suicides in the US are up, says CDC official

The principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) warned on Wednesday that suicide is on the rise in the U.S. among almost every age group.

“Suicide – in all ages except for young children and the elderly – is one of the few conditions that’s getting worse instead of better around the country,” Anne Schuchat told “Rising” Hill.TV co-hosts Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton.

Suicide is a leading cause of death in the U.S.

Nearly 45,000 Americans have lost their lives to suicide in 2016, and suicide rates have spiked more than 30 percent in half of states across the country since 1999, according to the CDC.

Schuchat emphasized that suicide is not only a result of mental health conditions, even though they’re often seen as a contributing cause. The CDC reported that more than half of people who committed suicide did not have a known mental health condition. 

Innovations & technologies

60 Years of DARPA's Favorite Toys

This year, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) turned 60. To celebrate, DARPA held a conference in Washington, D.C. One of the highlights was an exhibit hall full of both current DARPA programs as well as unique artifacts from DARPA's history. We've put together a gallery of the most interesting things we saw there. If you'd like to see more, DARPA also published a 140-page retrospective on what they've been up to over the last half century, which you can download here [PDF].

Before there was GPS, there was Transit, a satellite navigation system developed by DARPA and Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab for Polaris ballistic missile submarines. Operational from the 1960s through the mid-1990s, ground receivers used the Doppler shift of the satellite's signal to calculate their location within a few tens of meters. Transit was one of the earliest space-related activities that DARPA participated in.

Nuclear security

The real story of Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet officer who 'saved' the world from nuclear war

Legend has it that on September 26, 1983, in a nuclear command and control center outside of Moscow, Lt. Col. Stanislav Petrov detected five US nuclear warheads headed right for him but stood down from calling for a massive Soviet retaliation, thereby saving the world from nuclear annihilation at the height of the Cold War.

The blips on Petrov's radar turned out to be a false alarm, something he supposedly instinctively knew so well he disobeyed protocol and backed off.

But like all legends, even semi-recent nuclear ones, the story may have outgrown the truth, thanks in part to shadowy and opaque Soviet and Russian nuclear launch procedures.

Pavel Podvig, director of the Russian Nuclear Forces Project and one of the world's top experts on Russia's nukes, told Business Insider that Petrov did a brave thing, but it's entirely unclear if he really prevented a nuclear war.

Air defense

Work on Russia's New S-500 Air Defense System Almost Complete - Deputy PM

The S-500 Prometey ("Prometheus") is a new generation surface-to-air missile system with a range of 400-600 kilometers (250-370 miles), designed for intercepting and destroying intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as hypersonic cruise missiles and aircraft.

On May 15, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that development and preparation for the serial production of the newest S-500 air defense system should be completed as quickly as possible. The deliveries of S-500 systems to Russia's Aerospace Forces are expected to start around 2020.

Weapons

These Top Defense Stocks Have Been Tipped To Go Hypersonic

Defense giants Lockheed Martin (LMT), Raytheon (RTN), Northrop Grumman (NOC) and Boeing(BA), as well as Kratos (KTOS) and Aerojet Rocketdyne (AJRD), have all been tipped to benefit from the emergence of hypersonic weapons by a Wall Street analyst.

Analysts believe that hypersonic weapons have the potential to be the most disruptive battlefield technology since the advent of stealth. According to JPMorgan Vice President Seth Seifman, their importance has "grown substantially" due to aggressive investment by U.S. rivals China and Russia.Budget dollars pouring into hypersonic weapons should soar from around $400 million in fiscal 2018 to $1.5 billion fiscal 2019, he estimated, adding that while sales are still modest, they should shoot up to more than $5 billion by the mid-2020s and "perhaps significantly more."

Aerospace

Russia’s Su-57 jet gets hypersonic missile that can shoot down enemy aircraft ‘300km away’

A hypersonic anti-aircraft missile with a range of over 300km will be part of the arsenal of the Su-57, Russia’s most-advanced multipurpose fighter jet. The weapon is meant to take out high-value targets with impunity.

The Su-57 is Russia’s first 5th-generation aircraft, designed to be a formidable threat to major air powers such as the US. It is normally expected to carry weapons in its internal bays, to reduce radar cross-section and avoid compromising its stealth capabilities. But larger missiles may be carried externally at a hardpoint, and one of those will be the R-37M, a missile with a greater range than anything the US aircraft would have at their disposal.

U.S. elections


Despite new accusers, Democrats war on Brett Kavanaugh could cost them midterm elections

Have Democrats gone so overboard in trying to demonize Brett Kavanaugh that they risk a backlash from upstanding men and the women who love them?

Let’s start with the premise that Democrats want to keep Judge Kavanaugh off the high court by any means necessary. Their modus operandi is to bring up alleged sexual assault charges late in the game to delay or derail the nomination process. They see it as a win-win: they either destroy Kavanaugh, discourage the Republican voter base, and deal a significant blow to the Trump presidency (the real target of all this); or Republicans hang together in the face of this political monsoon, confirm Kavanaugh, and alienate women voters in the process, leading to Democratic victories in the midterm election.

Democrats seem to think this political game won’t cost them. But they have left the reaction of men out of the equation.

Nuclear security

Bill Clinton-Boris Yeltsin Discussions of the Nuclear Football

The “Football,” the nominally secret command-and-control system used to assure presidential control of nuclear use decisions, was the unusual subject of high-level discussion between President William J. Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin during meetings in 1994 and 1997.  According to recently declassified memoranda of conversation (memcons) published for the first time by the National Security Archive, Yeltsin suggested getting “rid” of the Football, so that military aides no longer had to “drag” it around.  He saw the U.S. Football and the Russian equivalent (“chemodanchik”) as obsolete because of the advanced communications technologies that presidents had at their disposal.

Clinton politely demurred because he saw the Football as an important symbol of civilian control of nuclear weapons.  When Yeltsin brought up his proposal at a second meeting in 1997, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot commented that it was better for presidents “to have these devices with you at all times rather than to have the function assigned to a computer somewhere or to anyone else.”  

Economic security

U.S. consumer confidence hits 18-year high; house prices slowing

U.S. consumer confidence surged to an 18-year high in September as households grew more upbeat about the labor market, pointing to sustained strength in the economy despite an increasingly bitter trade dispute between the United States and China.

While other data on Tuesday showed a moderation in house price increases in July, the gains probably remain sufficient to boost household wealth and continue to support consumer spending, as well as making home purchasing a bit more affordable for first-time buyers.

"The consumer is always in the driver's seat when it comes to stoking the fires that run the engines of economic growth, but the million dollar question is what is going to happen down the road when the trade tariffs start to bite?" said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG in New York.

The Conference Board said its consumer confidence index increased to a reading of 138.4 this month from an upwardly revised 134.7 in August. That was the best reading since September 2000 and the index is not too far from an all-time high of 144.7 reached that year.

Privacy security

UK intelligence agencies illegally spied on privacy organisation

UK intelligence agencies MI5, MI6 and GCHQ violated the law by collecting and examining data of human rights group Privacy International, a court said on Tuesday.

The data was collected as part of two mass surveillance programmes called Bulk Communications Data and Bulk Personal Datasets, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal said.

"We do not know why MI5 reviewed Privacy International's data, but the fact that it happened at all should raise serious questions for all of us," Caroline Wilson Palow, general counsel of Privacy International, said in a statement.

Innovations & technologies

Magic Leap and HoloLens competing for military funding

Magic Leap and Microsoft are reportedly in a bidding war for a contract with the US Army to develop their respective AR devices for its soldiers.

Bloomberg reports that both companies are in the running for the military partnership, which could see the United States spending up more than $500 million on over 100,000 augmented reality headsets. This is part of a program currently known as HUD 3.0.

Sources tell the site Magic Leap is in a stronger position as its technology aligns with the army's technical requirements, such as waveguide optics, which the start-up has been working on for years.

Microsoft has confirmed it attended a meeting with Army officials about this proposed AR program. Magic Leap has yet to do so, although Bloomberg notes that employees did attend a meeting in early August under the guides of ML Horizons - a company that shares its address with Magic Leap.

Sanctions

Europe, Russia and China join forces with a new mechanism to dodge Iran sanctions

In the latest sign of the growing divide between Washington and its allies, the European Union's foreign policy chief announced Monday that the bloc was creating a new payment mechanism to allow countries to transact with Iran while avoiding U.S. sanctions.

Called the "special purpose vehicle" (SPV), this mechanism would aim to "assist and reassure economic operators pursuing legitimate business with Iran," according to a joint statement released by the remaining members of the Iran nuclear deal — France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China.

"This will mean that EU member states will set up a legal entity to facilitate legitimate financial transactions with Iran and this will allow European companies to continue to trade with Iran in accordance with European Union law and could be open to other partners in the world," Federica Mogherini, the EU's high representative for foreign affairs, told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

Information security

NSA engineer gets 5+ years for security breach

A federal judge on Tuesday imposed a stiff sentence on a rank-and-file engineer who caused a major security breach for the National Security Agency, but the judge also sounded an alarm in the process about a double-standard for high-ranking officials who violate laws governing the nation's secrets.

Nghia Pho, 68, was sentenced to five years and six months in prison for taking home what prosecutors called a "massive trove" of top secret information between 2010 and 2015 as he worked on sensitive NSA programs aimed at hacking into computers used by terrorists, foreign governments and U.S. adversaries.

Some of those hacking tools are believed to have made their way to the Shadow Brokers, a murky entity that attempted to auction the tools and then exposed many of them on the internet.

The prison sentence imposed by U.S. District Court Judge George Russell was a far cry from the sentence of home detention and probation Pho's lawyer asked for, but came in two-and-a-half years short of the eight years that prosecutors sought.

However, one of the most striking aspects of Tuesday's sentencing was Russell's lament that top government officials seem to have escaped with little more than a slap on the wrist for engaging in similar behavior.

Politics

Why the Left Is Consumed With Hate

Even before President Trump’s election, hatred had begun to emerge on the American left—counterintuitively, as an assertion of guilelessness and moral superiority. At the Women’s March in Washington the weekend after Mr. Trump’s inauguration, the pop star Madonna said, “I have thought an awful lot of blowing up the White House.” Here hatred was a vanity, a braggadocio meant to signal her innocence of the sort of evil that, in her mind, the White House represented. (She later said the comment was “taken wildly out of context.”)

For many on the left a hateful anti-Americanism has become a self-congratulatory lifestyle. “America was never that great,” New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently said. For radical groups like Black Lives Matter, hatred of America is a theme of identity, a display of racial pride.

For other leftists, hate is a license. Conservative speakers can be shouted down, even assaulted, on university campuses. Republican officials can be harassed in restaurants, in the street, in front of their homes. Certain leaders of the left—Rep. Maxine Waters comes to mind—are self-appointed practitioners of hate, urging their followers to think of hatred as power itself.

Whistleblowing

Overseas whistleblower awarded $4 million

Chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower Jane Norberg said, “Whistleblowers, whether they are located in the United States or abroad, provide a valuable service to investors and help us stop wrongdoing."
“This award recognizes the continued, important assistance provided by the whistleblower throughout the course of the investigation,” Norberg said.
In Monday's order (pdf), the SEC said the outcome of the action was a direct result of the whistleblower's tip.
The SEC didn't specify the citizenship of the whistleblower.
Last year, a foreign national working outside the United States was awarded $4.1 million for providing information on "a widespread, multi-year securities law violation."
In 2014, the SEC awarded an overseas whistleblower $30 million. At the time it was the largest award under the whistleblower program.
By law, the SEC protects the confidentiality of whistleblowers and doesn't disclose information that might reveal their identity.
Since 2012, the SEC has awarded over $326 million to 59 individuals.

Economic security

The catastrophic threat to national security: Exploding debt

The politics of division imposes an invisible cost to the Nation.  Divisive politics inherently mean that almost no common ground exists for action on issues of great importance, and falling into the chasm between the two parties are calamitous dangers to national security that make our actual headlines today pale in comparison. One such danger in the political no-man’s-land is not even being discussed, and so no one is working on a solution: the national debt.

Almost ten years ago, Admiral Mike Mullen, then Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, did not identify an adversary nation or terrorist organization as the paramount threat to our country. He stated emphatically: “The most significant threat to our national security is our debt.”

In the decade since then, the U.S. has continued to pursue two wars and other conflicts, largely outside the budget process and with no war tax to ameliorate the more than $5 trillion that has been spent.

Intel gathering

US Looking to Place More Spies Worldwide

The United States' premier spy agency is looking to expand its presence around the globe in order to eliminate so-called "intelligence gaps" and take on the growing threat from major powers like Russia and China.

CIA Director Gina Haspel on Monday called the shift from counterterrorism back to more traditional espionage against nation-states "a strategic priority," saying the need to get better intelligence on current and potential U.S. rivals among "the hardest issues" facing the spy agency.

"We are sharpening our focus on nation-state adversaries," Haspel told an audience at her alma mater, the University of Louisville, in her first public appearance since being sworn in as CIA director this past May.

Haspel also said she is intent on "increasing the number of officers stationed overseas."

"Having a larger foreign footprint allows for a robust posture," she said.

As part of that push, Haspel said the CIA is hoping to recruit more foreign language speakers, including those fluent in Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, French and Spanish.

Military

Israel’s Military Is World-Class. But Is It Ready?

The Israel Defense Forces are widely respected as a cutting-edge military machine. The IDF is equipped with extremely lethal cyberwar capacity, eyes-on-the-world intel, star-wars level missile defense systems, a justly famous air force, and a small but superbly trained cadre of special forces troops.

But a scathing critique of the IDF’s culture and readiness from a retired general has created a debate within Israel about whether the country has become complacent. It’s a debate worth having, even if some of the fears are likely overblown.

The criticism came earlier this month from Yitzhak Brick, a hero of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, who has been the IDF ombudsman for the past decade. He is not a member of the IDF general staff, but an independent actor who is leaving his post on Jan. 1, after a 10-year stint.

Middle East

S-300 missile system: Russia to upgrade Syrian air defences

Russia is to send new anti-aircraft missiles to Syria, a week after Syrian forces accidentally shot down a Russian aircraft during an Israeli air strike.

The S-300 missile defence system will be delivered within two weeks.

The Russian reconnaissance plane was downed last Monday after Israeli jets attacked targets in Latakia province.

Israel, which insisted Syria's military was to blame, warned that giving the S-300 to "irresponsible actors" would make the region more dangerous.

US national security adviser John Bolton said the decision would cause a "significant escalation" in Syria's civil war and urged Russia to reconsider.

Economic security

Trump's Overconfidence May Bring 'Major Miscalculation': JPMorgan

JPMorgan Chase & Co. strategists are starting to make forecast and strategy changes around the potential that President Donald Trump gets so overconfident in the robust economy and markets that he makes a “major miscalculation." The worry is that “U.S. economic and equity market resilience despite tariffs will embolden the President on all geopolitical fronts -- autos, Nafta and particularly Iran -- and thus risk a major miscalculation from sanctions that are tough to calibrate,” strategists led by John Normand wrote in a note Sept. 21. The strategists said that’s part of the reason the firm has boosted oil-price forecasts, with a spike in Brent to $90 a barrel “likely” on revised estimates of how much crude demand from Iran might drop as countries respect the U.S. sanctions due to begin in November.

Economic security

Saudi Arabia And Russia Fire Back At Trump On Oil Prices

Last week, Donald Trump attacked the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in yet another extension of what has become a semi-regular war of words over oil prices.

...Rather than engaging Trump in a twitter battle, the Saudi oil minister, Khalid al-Falih, responded from Algeria on Sunday, after a meeting of the joint OPEC and non-OPEC ministerial monitoring committee. His response to President Trump’s call to increase oil production was an emphatic “not now.”

Specifically, al-Falih and OPEC’s message was that OPEC will listen to President Trump’s calls for increased oil production “if there is a need.” However, oil market fundamentals do not indicate that this need is apparent. In fact, Saudi Arabia said it knew of no refiner that needed oil and was not able to procure it.

Nevertheless, the oil markets and OPEC (and its non-OPEC partners like Russia) are operating in the shadow of President Trump’s tweet and his upcoming sanctions on Iran’s oil industry. Al-Falih rejected President Trump’s claim that OPEC is keeping oil prices elevated, but, at the same time, he told reporters that Saudi Arabia has 1.5 million barrels per day in additional spare capacity that it can bring online. He also explained that Aramco, the Saudi national oil company, is making the necessary preparations to access that spare capacity “within days and weeks” if needed.

Information security

Russian passport leak after Salisbury may reveal spy methods

A leak of Russian government data about the suspects in the Salisbury poisoning may provide a rare insight into how Russia’s military intelligence agency provides cover identities for its agents abroad.

Investigative journalists have unearthed what appears to be a series of passports with similar numbers belonging to suspected Russian intelligence officers, including the Salisbury suspects Ruslan Boshirov and Alexander Petrov.

The passport holders include a former Russian military attache who was expelled from Poland for espionage in 2014 and is alleged to be tied to an attempted coup in Montenegro.

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Other men with similar passport numbers identified by the St Petersburg-based Fontanka news site listed their address as Khoroshevskoye Shosse 76 B, the Moscow headquarters of Russia’s Main Directorate, the military agency often referred to as the GRU.

Their travel records, as reported by Fontanka, could be tied to recent diplomatic incidents in Europe and, in at least one case, matched the details of a foreign trip taken by Vladimir Putin.

Energy security

Four maps show how electricity generation has changed in the US

The second map takes a look at the predominant form of renewable energy in each state in 2007 and in 2017. Here, we really see the growth of solar. In 2007, solar was the most-used renewable energy source in zero states, but by 2017, it had replaced biomass or hydro in seven states. Wind grew even more than solar over that decade, going from the predominant renewable source of electricity in seven states to the leader in 16 states.

Interestingly, hydro's share of the renewable energy landscape played out a lot like coal's over the past decade: hydro went from the most prevalent renewable resource in 28 states down to 19. But that's not because hydro plants are getting retired—rather, hydro is losing ground to other energy sources because so much solar and wind power are coming online.

"In Maine and Vermont, the share of electricity generated by biomass trails only hydroelectricity, making them two of only three states where renewable fuels provided both of the top two generation shares," the EIA wrote. "South Dakota, where hydroelectricity and wind were the most prevalent sources, is the third state."

Drug smuggling

A Bunch Of Cocaine: Boxes Of Donated Bananas Contained $17.8 Million Worth Of Drugs

Two sergeants from a Texas prison were picking up two donated pallets of bananas at the Ports of America in Freeport on Friday, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The bananas were being donated to the Wayne Scott Unit in Texas' Brazoria County. The department says they were already ripe — and according to USA Today, they were never claimed at the port.

But the 45 boxes of bananas also concealed a secret.

"One of the boxes felt different than the others," the TDCJ said. A sergeant freed the box from a strap and opened it.

"Inside, under a bundle of bananas, he found another bundle!" TDCJ said. "Inside that? What appeared to be a white powdery substance."

They alerted U.S. customs officials, who tested the powder and found it was cocaine. That set off a search of the whole shipment of bananas.

And the results were staggering: According to TDCJ, the officials found 540 packages of cocaine. They say the street value of the drugs is nearly $18 million.

Poll results

NBC News/WSJ poll: Democrats hold the advantage in November's elections

Six weeks before the 2018 midterm elections, Democrats hold a 12-point lead in congressional preference among registered voters, with nearly six-in-10 saying they’d like to see significant change in the direction President Donald Trump has been leading the country, according to a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

The results suggest a political environment where Democrats have the clear advantage in their pursuit to win back control of Congress in November.

“Americans are hitting the brake in a midterm, and trying to send the signal that they’re not satisfied,” said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the survey with Democratic pollsters at Hart Research Associates.

“The public is clearly saying, once again, they want to shake up the status quo,” added Democratic pollster Fred Yang.

EMP

Short-circuiting the electromagnetic threat

Electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a major threat to the continued existence of America. An enemy could destroy our nation simply by detonating a single nuclear weapon above the atmosphere over our country. All our enemies, including some terrorist groups, have, or can acquire, this capability. The electromagnetic pulse from this detonation would destroy our national electric power grid, and it would take many months or years to rebuild it. Without electricity, virtually all our everyday life-support systems would remain paralyzed, and millions would die of disease or starvation.

Protection from this threat would be relatively simple and affordable, but for decades our leaders have refused to take action. This is because of near-total disagreement over the threat. The tragedy is that those who support protection against EMP know what they’re talking about, and those who deny the threat don’t. One would think this type of dispute would be easily resolvable. But not in this case. Here’s why.

EMP was discovered — almost by accident — by our nuclear weapons scientists during the Cold War. It loomed as an immense threat, and these scientists plunged into understanding it. Everything about EMP was highly classified — at least secret, often top secret. A great many of our underground nuclear weapon tests in the 1970s and 1980s focused on EMP. They were intensively instrumented. Progressively, EMP came to be understood as a complex scientific phenomenon. But it was still highly classified, and the only individuals who had access to scientific data on EMP were government nuclear weapons scientists.

Economic security

Next crash will be ‘worse than the Great Depression’: experts

Ten years ago, it was too-easy credit that brought financial markets to their knees. Today, it could be a global debt of $247 trillion that causes the next crash.

After a decade of escalating US household debt brought on by low wages and the national debt more than doubling over the same time frame, to $21 trillion, debt could soon put the brakes on this economic recovery, analysts warn.

“We think the major economies are on the cusp of this turning into the worst recession we have seen in 10 years,” said Murray Gunn, head of global research at Elliott Wave International.

And in a note, he added: “Should the [US] economy start to shrink, and our analysis suggests that it will, the high nominal levels of debt will instantly become a very big issue.”