Science, Technology, and Public Policy

A future where A.I.s interpret, apply, and enforce most laws at societal scale like this will exponentially magnify problems around fairness, transparency, and freedom, warn Jonathon W. Penney and Bruce Schneier.

Michael Lipin interviews Project on Managing the Atom Associate Nicole Grajewski on why Iran may not benefit much from its new membership of Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Joel Clement characterizes the growing greenhouse-gas emissions from the commercial shipping industry as well as the efforts of the United Nations body, the International Maritime Organization, to reduce these emissions as unacceptable.

The cryptocurrency depends on the integrity of the blockchain. But China's censors, the FBI, or powerful corporations could fragment it into oblivion, warn Barath Raghavan and Bruce Schneier.

The Icelandic Ministry for Foreign Affairs recently published an extensive report with a detailed analysis on the current relationship between Greenland and Iceland with 99 recommendations on how to strengthen their co-operation. Halla Hrund Logadóttir moderated the discussion.

If Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump in November, the question he will face is not whether to restore the liberal international order. It is whether the United States can work with an inner core of allies to promote democracy and human rights while cooperating with a broader set of states to manage the rules-based international institutions needed to face transnational threats.

The authors argue that more determined efforts to globalize renewable energy transmission can confer significantly higher economic and environmental benefits from renewables on billions of people. This can be done by exploiting spatial differences between electricity loads and net renewable generation across time zones (temporal arbitrage) and latitude (seasonal arbitrage). Using very long distance, ultra-high voltage (UHV) transmission infrastructure, temporal and spatial arbitrage can move low-cost clean electricity from areas with excess capacity to high demand zones in other countries and even continents.

If nothing else, the long-running Huawei situation shows the importance of considering the supply chain when it comes to cybersecurity. Huawei being the Chinese telecommunications equipment maker basically banned by the federal government. Bruce Schneier joins Host Tom Temin on Federal Drive.

Bruce Schneier elaborates on why the distinction between military and consumer products largely doesn't exist. This means that consumer systems cannot be weakened without also weakening commercial, government, and military systems.