Defense One July 13, 2018 Russia and China are using nuclear power projects to build spheres of energy dependence, and the United States is unprepared to respond. Russia bids for such projects through its state-owned nuclear company, Rosatom, under a model that finances construction of nuclear plants, furnishes the trained personnel to run them, and leases them back to the client country. This has allowed Russia to secure 60 percent of the recent global nuclear reactor sales. China has identified 41 countries along the Belt and Road as potential sites for nuclear power projects. China also aims to establish long-term […]
Category Archives: National security
How prepared is the world for the next epidemic? This tool shows most countries are not.
Washington Post June 21, 2018 AA team of researchers at CDC has developed a tool that spotlights gaps in preparedness, and actions that countries and organizations can take to close them. The new website, PreventEpidemics.org gives an individual score to each country and uses color codes to rank the world by five levels of preparedness. More than 60 percent of countries, representing nearly 5 billion people, have not volunteered to conduct these epidemic preparedness evaluations, including most of Europe, Russia, China, India and virtually all South America…read more.
Why 50,000 ships are so vulnerable to cyberattacks
The Conversation June 13, 2018 The maritime industry has been slow to realize that ships, just like everything else, are now part of cyberspace. There are several core issues that make cybersecurity for the maritime industry particularly challenging to address. There are many different classes of vessel, all of which operate in very different environments; the users of these maritime computer systems are constantly in flux; the complexity is the linkage between onboard and terrestrial systems. In 2017, the IMO amended two of their general security management codes to explicitly include cybersecurity…read more.
Universal migration predicts human movements under climate change
Physics World June 12, 2018 An international team of researchers (USA – Columbia University, The Nature Conservancy, North Carolina State University, UC Berkeley, Italy) modified a diffusion-based model of human mobility in combination with population, geographic, and climatic data to estimate the sources, destinations, and flux of potential migrants as driven by sea level rise (SLR) in Bangladesh in the years 2050 and 2100. By linking the sources of migrants displaced by SLR with their likely destinations, they demonstrated an effective approach for predicting climate-driven migrant flows, especially in data-limited settings… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Researcher warns China’s program ‘riskiest environmental project in history’
Eurekalert May 15, 2018 An international team of researchers (Portugal, Spain Canada, USA – Montana State University, China, Australia, Germany) is urging China to undertake rigorous strategic planning before embarking on its ‘Belt and Road Initiative’, which will ultimately span at least 64 nations across Asia, Africa, Europe and the Pacific region. By mid-century, the Belt and Road could involve 7,000 infrastructure projects and $8 trillion in investment. It could impact over 1,700 critical biodiversity areas and hundreds of threatened species. China claims its Belt and Road will be a blueprint for responsible development… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Workshop explores intertwined future of food production, water, and climate
MIT News May 11, 2018 Choices by consumers and farmers can help limit global warming, but climate change may also curtail those choices in the future. While all global climate models show an overall increase in surface temperatures over the coming decades when it comes down to regional effects on temperature and rainfall there are areas of significant uncertainty. To clarify some of what is known about these complex interactions, and what areas have a pressing need for further research, a two-day MIT workshop this week brought together a group of specialists from around the world to explore the interactions […]