Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced July 29 that President Trump wanted a U.S. troop drawdown in Afghanistan before the 2020 election—something the president has wanted in the past, but it has yet to happen. It’s been nearly 18 years since the United States invaded Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001, in response to the 9/11 […]
Defense
An International Race Toward Hypersonic Missiles
Another arms race is shaping up, and this time around, the race is to develop hypersonic missiles. A discussion of this was the centerpiece of a panel at a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace panel on July 9. According to R. Jeffrey Smith, managing editor for National Security at the Center for Public Integrity, China, […]
BeiDou Rivaling GPS and Prompting Security Concerns
When China launched Long March 3B on June 24, it was China’s ninth successful launch in 2019 and the country’s latest move to develop their own advanced positioning, navigation, and timing system—the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS). It also was the latest show of power from China’s National Space Administration. In early January 2019, China […]
Iranian Revolution at 40: Escaping the ’79 Hostage Crisis
It was around 9:30 a.m. on Nov. 4, 1979, almost 40 years ago, when Mark Lijek, a 29-year-old American Citizens Services officer for the U.S. Consulate in Tehran, heard commotion outside his office. That day, Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and captured 66 Americans. The takeover was, in part, a response to […]
Hollywood, Surveillance Technology, and Privacy
WASHINGTON—On a night in 1998, an engineer from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and his wife went to the movie theater and watched Will Smith star in Enemy of the State, a film that features wide-area surveillance systems. “Where everyone else in the audience was no doubt terrified by what they saw on the screen, he […]