On September 27, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan will address the United Nations General Assembly in New York. This appearance will come at a time of great concern about the increasingly hostile relationship between their two countries. Now is a good time to resurrect an old idea proposed at various times by both India and Pakistan but never fully agreed: a binding commitment never to resort to war to settle their disputes.

How Putin has undermined Russian interests with his actions in Ukraine, and why the United States needs to help Russia find a face-saving way to withdraw its forces from Crimea.

During the Bush administration, funding for the Defense Department, State Department, and Department of Homeland Security more or less doubled. But in all three cases, the goal of the budget increases wasn't to create functioning, efficient, and effective bureaucracies. Instead, it was to push a political agenda--at the cost of effective management. As a result, all three departments emerge from the last eight years less focused, less disciplined, and less effective.

The systemic use of AI technology in nuclear strategy, threat prediction, and force planning could erode human skills and critical thinking. It could also lure users into believing that a nuclear war cannot be won.

The United States and other countries must consider the possible impact of AI on their armed forces and their preparedness for war fighting or deterrence. Military theorists, strategic planners, scientists, and political leaders will face at least seven different challenges in anticipating the directions in which the interface between human and machine will move in the next few decades.

US-North Korea negotiations are stuck. Trump should deploy the European Union.

The film tells the story of the communities living in the North St. Louis County as they fight against the illegal dump of radioactive materials at the West Lake Landfill and the contamination spread around Coldwater Creek. The film has a dramatic progression as an underground fire, known in bureaucratese as a subsurface smoldering event, on the Bridgeton side of the landfill gets closer to the West Lake side where the radioactive materials are located.

Recent concerns that Washington is “behind” in a hypersonic arms race are unwarranted. Hypersonic missiles do not shift the strategic balance, and the United States stands to gain very little by deploying its own.

China’s nuclear establishment needs a cultural shift.

You’re far more likely to die in an existential catastrophe than you think. And the risk of such a catastrophe is growing.

Beating China to an objective that the United States aleady achieved 50 years ago would win few hearts or minds. It's an aim that seems of dubious worth in an international landscape defined more by geo-economic than ideological competition.

Despite the dramatic pace of discoveries in the life sciences, the regulatory systems established for other dual-use risk domains, such as chemical and nuclear research, remain far more mature than those for oversight of the bioeconomy. Developing a well-balanced oversight system will not be easy. Nonetheless, the expanding gaps in national and international governance of dual-use biotechnology dictate that this subject be a core component of national security policies.

Digitally-colorized electron microscopic image of an isolate of Ebola virus. (CDC, Frederick Murphy) Matthew Meselson is a true eminence grise of arms control in the realm of biological weaponry. In 1984, he traveled to Thailand to debunk the US assertion that forces backed by the Soviet Union were using “toxin warfare” on Hmong and Cambodian … Continued

Inside DARPA’s competition to build a better humanitarian-assistance and disaster-relief robot.

Senate Bill 1047 debate shows regulators need to create legislation that protects against the risks of AI models without stifling innovation.

Transparency in scientific research is undeniably valuable. But it would be a mistake for AI research to be completely transparent. To minimize harm, dual use technologies—especially those like AI that have weapons and biomedical applications—need restrictions on transparency.