The common conception of a technologically enabled apocalypse foresees a powerful artificial intelligence that, either deliberately or by accident, destroys human civilization. But as a new report from the RAND Corporation points out, the reality may be far subtler: As AI slowly erodes the foundations that made the…
Top researchers in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) have called for a boycott of the South Korean university KAIST after it opened a lab with the defense firm Hanwha Systems. Even if you’re not familiar with KAIST, you might know some of the school’s robots. The university won the top prize at the last DARPA…
During World War I, far away from the lines of battle, the UK was faced with a different crisis. As thousands of khaki-clad “Tommies” shipped off to the front, the British economy teetered on the cusp of grinding to a halt. With the men gone, the task of keeping the country’s lights on fell to women. British women…
You might not be cool sending your elderly grandparents to front lines of war. But termites think differently—if grandma and gramps are already old and close to death, termites figure they might as well be the first casualties.
As the U.S. commitment to its long-running railgun program appears ready to wane, China’s own program might be winding up, recent reports suggest.
Scottish and Australian researchers have found surprising evidence than detonating landmines, lethal explosives that leech toxic chemicals into soil, may actually be better for the environment than removing them outright. Their paper appears in the journal PLoS One.
North Korea conducted a missile test on April 28, 2017 that didn’t go quite as planned. In fact, we’re now learning that the Hwasong-12 missile that the country launched actually went astray and may have hit the North Korean city of Tokchon.
A million Russian artillery shells helped scientists discover the Higgs boson. And all over the world, remnants of World War II weapons are built into the most mysterious experiments in physics.
In the mid-1990s, physicists needed tons of a metal strong enough to withstand the massive magnetic fields of the house-sized…
As North Korea and the US keep escalating their war of words, the world sits on the brink of nuclear destruction. So you’d hope that the people in charge of America’s nukes are keeping a cool head under pressure. But the latest tweet from US Strategic Command doesn’t give much confidence in that.
North Korea’s foreign minister Ri Yong Ho just had a rare press conference outside the United Nations in New York. And it’s not great. The diplomat declared that the US has declared war on North Korea. And he stressed that he hopes the world remembers in the future that it was the US who declared war first.
Lasers are the future of war. And if this new video by defense company Lockheed Martin is any indication, that future is pretty damn close.
On September 26, 1983, Soviet military officer Stanislav Petrov received a message that five nuclear missiles had been launched by the United States and were heading to Moscow. He didn’t launch a retaliatory strike, believing correctly that it was a false alarm. And with that, he saved the world from nuclear war. But…
North Korea successfully tested a hydrogen bomb on Sunday, according to officials in the country. If confirmed, it would be the most powerful nuclear explosion ever achieved by the isolated country. And South Korean media now report that the US and South Korea have agreed to jointly pursue some kind of military…
Another week, another missile test by North Korea. This time the country shot a missile over northern Japan, leaving the Japanese scrambling to gauge whether it was a legitimate threat. And in response, the US military has done was it always does after a North Korean test: It fired off its own missile test and…
The classic US stereotype of attempted Iranian ideological indoctrination via chants of “Death to America” and such has been old hat for quite some time. As noted by the New York Times on Saturday, in the past few years Iranian pro-government propaganda efforts have increasingly taken the form of rap videos glorifying…
After North Korea threatened to launch an “enveloping strike” at Guam, the territory’s office of civil defense posted emergency guidelines on Friday, explaining what citizens should do in the event of a missile attack. (“Do not look at the flash or fireball—It can blind you. Take cover behind anything that might offer…
The US Air Force successfully launched an unarmed intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California this morning at 2:10am local time, 5:10am Eastern. The missile test, conducted with a Minuteman III, comes on the heels of North Korea’s second successful test of an ICBM.
Donald Trump loves a good deal. And sitting in Afghanistan, much of it in Taliban-controlled regions, there’s a doozy: deposits of rare-earth minerals once estimated to be worth $1 trillion. So the president is considering keeping troops in the country so that they can blaze the way to the country’s untapped natural…
It’s official. North Korea’s latest rocket has been confirmed by US authorities as an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), meaning that it has a range of at least 3,400 miles (5,500 kilometers). And the US has responded with its own missile test from an undisclosed location in South Korea.
North Korean state media just released a video showing the country’s latest missile test, the first successful test in some time. The intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) has been identified as the Hwasong-12, a new name given to the missile by North Korea. The missile was first put on display during a military…
