If you’re one of the millions of Americans who live within range of its 450 intercontinental ballistic missile silos, the Pentagon has written you off as an acceptable casualty. The silos are scattered across North Dakota, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska in a zone of sacrifice—what lawmakers and military planners …
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The day is slowly turning into night, and the American special operators are growing concerned. They are deployed to a densely populated urban center in a politically volatile region, and local activity has grown increasingly frenetic in recent days, the roads and markets overflowing with more than the normal bustle …
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When Palmer Luckey cofounded the defense startup Anduril in 2017, three years after selling his virtual reality startup Oculus to Facebook, the idea of a twentysomething from the tech industry challenging the giant contractors that build fighter jets, tanks, and warships for the US military seemed somewhat far-fetched. Seven years …
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United States officials fought to conceal details of arrangements between US spy agencies and private companies tracking the whereabouts of Americans via their cell phones. Obtaining location data from US phones normally requires a warrant, but police and intelligence agencies routinely pay companies instead for the data, effectively circumventing the …
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When US president Joe Biden meets with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in the San Francisco Bay Area this week, the pair will have a long list of matters to discuss, including the Israel-Hamas war and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Behind the scenes at the APEC summit, however, US …
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When politicians, tech executives, and researchers gathered in the UK last week to discuss the risks of artificial intelligence, one prominent worry was that algorithms might someday turn against their human masters. More quietly, the group made progress on controlling the use of AI for military ends. On November 1, …
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Four years after it was formed, the US Space Force has begun deploying its first satellite network. For the military, it marks a significant shift from relying on a handful of powerful, expensive satellites to a swarm of smaller, cheaper ones. From the Pentagon’s perspective, they’ll be a harder target …
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